- How much of an impact does one common knee surgery have?
According to a team of Finnish researchers, little more than the effect of
having no surgery at all. The researchers examined improvements in knee pain following a common
orthopedic procedure and found that those positive repercussions seemed to largely
due to the placebo effect. Dr. Teppo Jarvinen, who led the
research team, looked at arthroscopic surgery to repair a torn meniscus. The
meniscus is a C-shaped pad of cartilage that cushions the knee joint and tears
are common among athletes. Some 700,000 people in the United States have
surgery for a torn meniscus each year, a procedure in which orthopedic surgeons
use a camera and tiny instruments inserted through small incisions around the
knee to shave damaged tissue away. Cleaning out the affected area is supposed
to relieve pain, but Jarvinen and his crew ruled that it does not. For the
study, the researchers recruited patients between the ages of 35 and 65
who'd had a meniscal tear and knee pain for at least three months. Participants
underwent an arthroscopic procedure to examine the knee joint. If the patient
did not have arthritis and they were deemed eligible for the study, the surgeon
opened an envelope in the operating room with further instructions. Seventy
patients had their damaged meniscus removed, while 76 other patients had
nothing further done. However, the surgeons carried out the rest of their faux
procedure the same way they would a real operation. They mimicked the surgery,
handling the same instruments and simulating the sights and sounds of a
meniscal repair. Patients weren't told if they'd had their knee repaired or not
and afterward, those who'd had the sham procedure reported improvements in pain
and function that were nearly identical to those who'd had actual meniscal
repairs. Both groups showed average improvement between 20-30 points on
100-point pain scales. "It's pretty obvious to anyone who really has an
interest in this that what we've called a meniscal tear isn't really a
tear," Jarvinen said. "It has nothing to do with the tears we talk
about in a 20-year-old athlete who twists or sprains their knee." Behold
the power of the Finnish Jedi surgery mind trick………
- There appears to be a fatal flaw in the multimillion-dollar
detection system designed to protect New York-area airports. The weakness no
one saw coming was exploited on Christmas Day when a cross-dressing weird
breached a perimeter fence and wandered onto a runway at Newark airport. Yes,
this state-of-the-art system has a blind spot for cross dressers and the police
department of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey clearly had no
clue. It was the second known failure of the system and while authorities have
yet to confirm if the first breach involved dudes who like ladies’ attire, it
is definitely time to explore this theory further. What the agency did say
about the incident was that there was no evidence the man jumped the fence. The
union representing port authority police officers gave a conflicting story,
saying the trespasser scaled a fence and ran across two runways to Terminal C.
The freak in question may have been drunk, mentally troubled or simply overly
enthusiastic about the chance to get away from his family and fly home to his
normal life. His name is Siyah Bryan and the Jersey City resident was charged
with trespassing and released. Newark Liberty International Airport as well as
other New York-area airports are equipped with a Perimeter Intrusion Detection
System, or PIDS, manufactured by the Massachusetts-based Raytheon Co. Raytheon
Co. is probably not digging their newfound fame at this point, but when you
charge $100 million for a system purported to “detect, assess and track
intruders attempting to gain access into exterior secure areas” using ground
surveillance radars, video cameras with motion detection and "smart"
fencing, you’re going to be held to a higher standard. In spite of these
supposed capabilities and the overwhelming evidence that the system failed,
everyone involved is adamant that everything went just as planned. "The
preliminary investigation indicates the airport's PIDS security system worked
properly during the incident, and at this point, there is no visual evidence
that an individual scaled a security fence," Port Authority Police
Department Chief Louie Koumoutsos said in a statement. Something isn't adding
up here, Lou, and it’s your math that’s suspect……..
- Despite several high-profile players having their seasons
ended riding off the field on the back of a cart with a shredded knee, the
NFL says ACL injuries in the league are down this season. That is the message
NFL officials passed along to their Health
and Safety Advisory Committee earlier this week. In a memo sent to the
committee, the league shared research showing 30 ACL injuries in games through
the preseason and first 13 weeks of the schedule, down from 39 such injuries in
2012 and 35 in 2011. In fact, this year’s total is the lowest in the past five
seasons. Knee injuries in general did not follow the same trend, as there was
an increase in medial collateral ligament injuries (MCL), from 74 in 2012 to 89
in games this season through 13 weeks. Injury reporting service
Quintiles/Outcome provided the numbers to the league, which in turn submitted
them to the committee chaired by 49ers owner John York. The report conveniently
came days after Patriots coach Bill Belichick claimed injuries were up and said
it was "a matter of record not opinion" that injuries league-wide
have been on the rise over the past three years. Belichick added that he
believed the supposed uptick in injuries was due to stricter regulations on
when, how often and to what level of intensity teams can practice before and
during the season. He cited a decrease in the number of offseason, preseason
and in-season practice sessions and workouts allowed under the league’s
collective bargaining agreement as the cause. League spokesman Michael Signora
rejected those claims and said there was no evidence to support them. "We
carefully monitor player injuries," Signora said. "There is no
evidence that the new work rules have had an adverse effect on the injury rate
or that injuries have in fact increased." For the ACL injuries that
occurred through the first 13 weeks, 68 percent involved contact with another
player. Three of the ACL injuries happened to high-profile, skill position
players: one tight end, one wide receiver and one quarterback. Conveniently
enough, the tight end in question just happens to be Belichick’s All-Pro tight
end Rob Gronkowski………
- Score one for the ladies. Women deserve every opportunity
they can earn and no place on Earth knows this more at the moment than the
small city in Bolivia's
highlands known as El Alto. This bustling, impoverished sister city of La Paz
is tucked away inside Bolivia's Andes mountains and it is here that city
officials have hired indigenous Aymara women dressed in traditional
multilayered Andean skirts and brightly embroidered vests to work as traffic
cops and bring order to the city’s road chaos. These so-called "traffic
cholitas" have been trained to direct cars and buses in El Alto and these
20 lovely ladies have already begun to make their mark. They don the bright
petticoats and shawls of Andean indigenous women and in Bolivian slang, they
are referred to as cholitas. Traditional cholitas wear bowler hats, but the
traffic-directing version rocks a green police-style cap. A few even represent with
fluorescent traffic vests. The experiment has definitely made an impact on El
Alto, but it hasn’t been entirely positive. According to 24-year-old Sofia
Colque, blowing her police whistle and waving her hands doesn’t always have the
desired effect. "Some drivers don't obey us and try to flirt with us, but
they are making a mistake. It is not easy but we make them respect us,"
Colque said. Some motorists and transportation workers have expressed doubt
that the cholitas will have a significant effect on traffic flow in the clogged
streets of the city as people hop on and off buses randomly and vehicles stop
in the middle of traffic for no apparent reason. If nothing else, the cholitas
can continue assisting the elderly across the roads and educate pedestrians on
the rules of the road. Their hiring continues a recent run of success for the
cholitas, who have snagged spots hosting television shows, working in offices
and holding elected office in recent years……….
- Noooooooooooooo! Two of the most fabricated, artificial,
contrived and hacky pop singers around do more than enough damage on their own.
There is absolutely NO need for the authors of awfulness that are Katy Perry
and Rihanna to combine their efforts and churn out the musical equivalent of
the worst superhero team-up movie ever. Hopefully this will never happen, but
it certainly seems a distinct possibility now that Perry has revealed she and
Rihanna have discussed collaborating on a song together "for years."
Perry spoke about this burning desire to unite and make some truly terrible
music while guest hosting the American Top 40 show on Los Angeles radio station
102.7 KIIS FM and clearly, this threat is more real than anyone would ever want
to imagine. "We've actually been talking about it for years so we can't
let anyone down," said Perry. "We have to do the best song ever.
Beyond that, I think we'll definitely get around to it and when it happens, you
are going to know." Sadly, the last part of that statement is almost
certainly true and at the same time, drenched in incredible hypocrisy. See,
Perry has been on a mini-crusade of late against fellow pop hacks who do
exactly what she does virtually every time she shows up on stage or in a music
video: get naked. "Like, females in pop – everybody's getting naked, I
mean, I've been naked before but I don't feel like I have to always get naked
to be noticed,” Perry said of the trend. "I'm not talking about anyone in
particular, I’m talking about all of them. I mean, it's like everybody's so
naked.” Umm….I make a ton of money off of my huge rack and sex appeal, along
with wearing incredibly revealing outfits everywhere I go, but girls who take
their clothes off are sluts! Well said, K.P. Just know that the woman with whom
you are so intent to team up is one of the biggest offenders in this area and
the two of you aren't likely to be wearing burqas in the music video for the
wretched song you two eventually produce……..
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