ABCDE
HEALTH SCIENCE
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tuesday, march 30, 2010
&
URBAN JUNGLE
They’re baaack
Carrion-eating blowflies emerge from the soil where they overwintered.
E6
DINOSAURS
Down under
Scientists find evidence of T. rex in the Southern Hemisphere. E6
PHYSICS
When subatomic particles collide
Our intrepid Achenblogger considers the latest big bang. E3
That’s the best damn synthetic soybean scallop I’ve ever had!” Science Scan, E3
LANTERN
Tell me about your childhood.
Data from solar-powered devices may explain spike in whooping cranes’ deaths
by David Brown
wood river, neb. — Each dawn and
dusk, numberless birds stopping here to feed on their migration north take to the air. Against the steel-colored sky they look like iron filings wheeling and mill- ing to an invisible magnet. Most are sandhill cranes, whose beau-
ty and marionette-like dance draw bird- watchers from across the country each spring. Some are snow geese, dabbing the dun fields with their white bodies. Teal, pintail, mallard — and dozens of other species of waterfowl — pass through in thousands. On the avian in- terstate known as the Central Flyway, Nebraska straddles the middle lane. Somewhere among the flocks over the
next few weeks will be a small number of whooping cranes. Huge white birds with red crowns and black legs, they will be flying in twos and threes, with rarely more than a dozen congregating on the brief sojourn here en route from Texas to Alberta. At five feet, they are the tallest birds in
North America and also among the rar- est. As of last month, only 256 survived in the wild. They’ve always been a bit mysterious, too — which is saying some- thing for a bird that weighs 14 pounds, has a wingspan of 71
⁄2
Mystery in fl ight
Researchers hope new tracking methods will provide clues to a recent spike in whooping crane deaths.
Deaths per decade since 1940:
feet and lives 30
years. Flying 500 miles a day at 40 mph 3,000 feet above the ground, they’re na- ture’s version of a spy plane. Although they are ancient inhabitants of the continent — whooping crane bones have been found in the 38,000- year-old La Brea tar pits of California — the birds apparently never remotely ap- proached the numbers of their smaller
cranes continued on E6
1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s
2000s
27
43 41 41
67 127
197
By year since 2000:
2009: 28 2008: 34 2007: 10 2006: 28 2005: 27
2004: 11 2003: 16 2002: 7 2001: 19 2000: 17
THE WASHINGTON POST
E
DM VA
Shake it out
THE GREEN
Comparing the impact of getting salt from the land or the sea. E3
GPS will keep an eye on a tall and very rare bird
LM OTERO/ASSOCIATED PRESS
A whooping crane holds a crab at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge.
therapistand the Internet
The
by Dana Scarton
Special to The Washington Post
As his patient lay unconscious in an emergency room from an overdose of sedatives, psychiatrist Damir Huremovic was faced with a moral dilem- ma: A friend of the patient had forwarded to Hure- movic a suicidal e-mail from the patient that in- cluded a link to a Web site and blog he wrote. Should Huremovic go online and check it out, even without his patient’s consent? Huremovic decided yes; after all, the Web site was in the public domain and it might contain some potentially important information for treat- ment. When Huremovic clicked on the blog, he found quotations such as this: “Death makes angels of us all and gives us wings.” A final blog post read: “I wish I didn’t wake up.” Yet as Huremovic contin- ued scanning the patient’s personal photographs and writings, he began to feel uncomfortable, that perhaps he’d crossed some line he shouldn’t have. Across the country, therapists are facing similar
situations and conflicted feelings. When Huremov- ic, director of psychosomatic medicine services at Nassau University Medical Center in New York, re- counted his vignette last year at an American Psy- chiatric Association meeting and asked whether
others would have read the suicidal man’s blog, his audience responded with resounding calls — of both “yes!” and “no!” One thing was clear: How and when a therapist should use the Internet — and even whether he or she should — are questions sub- ject to vigorous debate. “We are just beginning to understand what ethi- cal issues the Internet is raising,” says Stephen Behnke, ethics director for the American Psycho- logical Association. “To write rules that allow our field to grow and develop and yet prevent [patient] harm at the same time: That’s the challenge.” In fact, the tremendous availability online of per- sonal information threatens to alter what has been an almost sacred relationship between therapist and patient. Traditionally, therapists obtained in- formation about a patient through face-to-face dia- logue. If outside information was needed, the therapist would obtain the patient’s consent to speak with family members or a previous mental- health practitioner. At the same time, patients tra- ditionally knew little about their therapists outside the consulting room. Now, with the click of a mouse, tech-savvy therapists and patients are chal- lenging the old rules and raising serious questions about how much each should know about the other
therapy continued on E5
Is it ethical to Google a patient? Or to read his Facebook page?
ALAMY
New type of ultrasound might lessen need for some biopsies
Elastography produces an image of tis-
by Jonathan Kolatch
Special to The Washington Post
Every year in the United States, more than 5 million biopsies are performed on suspicious tissue from all parts of the body, primarily to detect cancer. Biopsies are most commonly done by taking a tis- sue sample for lab analysis using a nee- dle, and remain the best test for diagnos- ing and staging cancer.
But biopsies are not without risk: They can cause infection, major blood vessels can be punctured, untargeted organs can be injured. And they are expensive: from $135 and up for suspicious skin growths to $1,950 for the liver and $4,500 for the prostate. As of now, up to 80 percent of biopsied tissue proves to be benign. Now, a technique called elastography is being tested that can distinguish be- tween malignant and benign tissue with- out using a needle or scalpel.
sue that has been compressed: Healthy tissue compresses more readily than can- cerous tissue. The technique is suffi- ciently promising for the major medical equipment manufacturers — GE, Sie- mens, Hitachi, Aloka — to be investing large sums in the technology. Elastography is based on ultrasound, which employs the principle that high- frequency sound waves travel through different parts of the body at different speeds. In diagnostic ultrasound, doctors place a hand-held device, called a trans- ducer, on a specific part of the body. The transducer broadcasts sound waves and receives waves reflected back to it by tis- sue it cannot penetrate. These reflected waves are processed into an image, which is projected onto a monitor. Unlike X-ray, CT and MRI images, which are produced according to preset
biopsies continued on E4
How & Why:
The
science of tire
eaters
Page E3
VIGG FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
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