Alexander McQueen art

Before leaving for Mexico I went to the Metropolitan Museum to see the infamous Alexander McQueen exhibit.

Italian and fashionista as I am I had to!

I also have to confess that I wasn't very familiar with his creations. I had heard his name a few times but never looked into any of his collections, sort of dismissing it for being too blunt and, according to me, unwearable.

After meeting with two friends and queuing for over 2h we finally managed to get in and what I found was incredible.

Besides the striking designs of his garments I found that they always seem to tell a story.
He described himself as a manic-depressive romantic... and it showed!
The whole setting that was created to host the exhibit brought you into the mind of this incredibly troubled fashion genius which created not only wearable pieces (yes, some of them are indeed wearable!) but art in its proper form.

He took his own life in February 2010 and we'll never know why.
One can only speculate about what was bothering his soul so much and this agony was perhaps reflected in his creations.

The fact that most often than not his models always wore a dress with a headpiece completely covering their face made me wonder... Was he trying to hide something? Was he uncomfortable with human nature?
Structures, unusual textures, rips and tears, feathers and wings accompanied several of his most famous pieces like if he had to try and escape a hard reality.

So here is an homage to a very troubled genius, he left an incredible legacy and some very serious questions about what is around us...

The touch of death

Well, it had to happen, sooner or later...

It was supposed to be a very fun night: kangoo with Laura and comedy show with other friends.
Instead I found myself spending the evening talking to a counsellor asking me how I felt about death.

Exactly what she expected me to say I don't know...
That I feel sorry for the family?
I feel that the patient shouldn't have died?
I feel it's unfair?

I just looked at her and I said "It's ok, it's part of the job, I knew it was going to come... at some point"
As she prodded even more I promised I'd go home, spend some time thinking about it and write a piece. A piece my teachers would be proud of, something that would really show how "reflective" my writing can get.
But does anybody really care about what you write when you're analysing your feelings?

When my pager started beeping tonight the last thing I expected was to be summoned to the bedside of a 37 year old guy who just 2 days ago was smiling on the operating table.
He was dead.

I shouldn't feel responsible, I personally have done nothing wrong, but I feel a great sense of anger and I should get over that too!
Can I say that this is unfair? Is it really about fairness?
Why does a guy who is my age dies after surgery?
He was weak, stomach cancer and all, tumor goes away after chemotherapy and then comes back with a vengeance. This time it's surgery... But he doesn't do well and leaves earth...

I couldn't bear looking at his wife, I sat outside his room for a while and all I could hear was the constant sobbing and the desperation in the words of this young woman. She could hardly breathe amongst her tears and I had to appeal to every ounce of self control I had not to start crying too... right there...
Memories of the pain that death causes on the ones left behind still fresh in my mind after my mum passed away...

And then the counsellor I was assigned to asking all those questions I didn't have an answer to... Or maybe I just didn't want to answer. The more she was asking the more I was reluctant to talk.
I've always said to myself that when the moment would come I'd be ok, it's part of being a doctor, that an "oh, that's sad" comment would do to express my feelings and that I would briskly move on to the rest of the jobs to be done. But I was just fooling myself.

And maybe it's because I was joking with the guy before surgery, maybe because we shared the same love of cats, maybe because he called me "his doctor", or maybe just because I perceived him as a human being and not just like a patient...
I am a bit dumbfounded because, like someone who has forgotten to activate the alarm gets the house burglarised, I felt robbed of my strong facade, of the professional attitude a doctor should approach death with...

But I'm only human and so, away from other people's eyes, I cried...
Does that make me a bad doctor? Does that say that I should not be working in this field because my heart is too tender? Or does it just mean that I have the empathy needed to understand what it feels like?

I'm just full of pain now...
The touch of death is always cold, no matter how close you are to those who leave...

Time travelling

Have you ever wished things could be changed?

I caught myself quite a few times thinking "Oh if only I could turn back time a little bit" or "if I knew then what I know now" and think what the situation would be if I had said or done things in a different way.
Though mine was only a wish, some people did harbor the thought of time travelling and indeed change the past or take a look at the future.
Einstein's theory of relativity results from two statements -- the two basic postulates of special relativity:

1) The speed of light is the same for all observers, no matter what their relative speeds.
2) The laws of physics are the same in any inertial (non-accelerated) frame of reference. This means that the laws of physics observed by a hypothetical observer traveling with a relativistic particle must be the same as those observed by an observer who is stationary.

The first postulate, the speed of light will be seen to be the same relative to any observer, independent of the motion of the observer -- is the crucial idea that led Einstein to formulate his theory. It means we can define a quantity “c”, the speed of light, which is a fundamental constant of nature and it's how time is calculated too.

It all sounds quite omnious and very difficult but really what this means is that, according to this basis, we can suppose that to travel in time we just need to exceed the speed of light et voila’… it’s done!!!
But clever Mr Einstein had warned us that this would be impossible as nothing will ever travel faster than the speed of light...

During a recent study of the photon (a single particle of light) by some scientists in Hong Kong, this theory was proven right and therefore the idea of time travelling was definitively capped.
See, the probability of time travel is based on the possibility of exceeding the speed of light.
By correctly measuring the speed of a photon, and seeing that not even that could travel faster than light, we have exhausted any reason to explore time travelling... for the moment at least!

Knowing how men are (and thank goodness for their curious nature!) I don't doubt that sooner or later there will be some other attempt at figuring out time travelling... where else are we going to get inspiration for those incredible blockbuster Hollywood movies otherwise???

It's awake!!!!

Well, I would have screamed too if this had happened to me!!!

Let's rewind a little bit...
- South Africa
- Man dies at home (sad news)
- Distraught family calls a private undertaker to take the body to the local morgue
- "Corpse" wakes up at the morgue and screams demanding to be taken out of the cold place
- The two mortuary attendants almost have a heart attack and run away scared to death as they thought they were witnessing a ghostly appearance!

Now, this may seem like a made up story, but it happened for real just a couple of days ago.
Imagine the terror of both the presumed death man waking up after 21 hours in the cold cubicle of a morgue, and the poor mortuary attendants who witnessed a dead corpse coming to life!

I'm happy to report that the story has a happy ending and the un-dead man was rescued from the morgue and put in a hospital where, after a few hours, he was deemed fit to return to his home. He had lost consciousness after an asthma attack. His family called a private company rather than the paramedics and the guy was mistakenly diagnosed dead!

Moral of the story... There is a reason why medical professionals go through years of training and hard work... it keeps people out of refrigerators!!!

Tornadoes in Manhattan

Today the weather was rather bad...
I got spoiled by lovely temperatures, beautiful cloud-free sky and ice-cream vans dotted here and there...
Today I got nothing of it! The weather was cold, wet, windy and more than for an ice-cream I wished for a hot chocolate and marshmallows.

As I was looking out the window, taking in the wonderful view of the Manhattan skyscrapers I started wondering what would happen if a tornado hit the city.
Would the wind be broken by the high towers? Would they be able to stand the wind force or come crashing down?

Apparently the fact that high buildings disperse the whirlwinds is just a myth. No place is immune to tornadoes and it turns out that concentrations of large buildings may help produce stronger tornadoes, not weaker ones!

And I thought I was safe!!!!
But I remember actually asking this question to the guide of the Empire State Building about a year ago when I got to the top and he sort of told me not to worry...

It seems like the skyscrapers are build to withstand big blows and the only parts in danger would be the windows but not the internal steel structure.

As the windborne debris is the major danger the best thing to do would be to go on the lowest floor possible and towards the interior, away from the windows... apparently staircases are quite safe too! This is because the tornado would create a very strong force on the flat surface of the glass windows which would immediately shatter. Then everything inside (furniture, complements...) would fly out like projectiles as the wind blows right through. Once this happens the building itself would put up very little resistance to the wind in relation to how strong the structure is as the surface of the steel beams would be rather small.

In addition these structure are build to be relatively flexible (sometimes, when staying on the higher floors, one can even feel the "swing") and so would be more resistant to strong winds.

This said, I really hope never to see anything like the picture here below...
It makes for an awesome picture but a not so awesome feeling of impending doom!!!

Yaaaawn....

I am so tired!!!

I have just come back from a night shift at the hospital that was a little intense and I'm lovingly looking at my bed... This said, I'm not quite ready to hit the sack yet!

When I'm not studying I always try to publish a blog article a day so let me ignore my sleepiness and get to work...

To stay on the subject I have decided to look into yawning... Why do we do it?

Well, I guess that the most obvious reason is because we are tired or bored.
Because in these occasions breathing is shallow so our levels of carbon dioxide and oxygen are unbalanced and so yawning is a way of restoring the right ratio. But... scientists are not quite sure about that!
Why in fact, would a fetus yawn when there is no oxygen going in its lungs? And how can a baby who is not born yet be bored?

We all know that, like coughing, yawing is contagious... I dare you to look at someone yawning and not be tempted to follow suit...

Some doctors even suggested that yawning is like stretching.
Yawning and stretching increase blood pressure and heart rate and also flex muscles and joints. Evidence that yawning and stretching may be related comes from the observation that if you try to stifle or prevent a yawn by clenching your jaws shut, the yawn is somewhat "unsatisfying."
Don't you hate it when that happens???!
For some reason, the stretching of jaw and face muscles is necessary for a good yawn.

But the most recent theory was proposed in 2007, when researchers hinted that yawning is used to cool the brain. They found that people yawned more in warm environments than in cooler ones. People who breathed through their noses (thought to reduce brain temperature) did not yawn at all.

I'm afraid I won't be able to come to any certain conclusion this morning...
All I know is that in the half hour that it took me to write this article I have yawned about 20 times though sitting in a cool room, not bored at all, maybe a bit tired but not shattered and certainly not conditioned as there is nobody else here with me...

In Italy we say "il sonno porta consiglio" meaning that you may find the answers you are looking for in your dreams or with a rested mind...
I'll try that and report back if anything gets a bit clearer... meanwhile... **yawn** I'm wishing myself sweet dreams!

Can a playground be too safe?

I have just returned from a wonderful weekend away.
My friend Cindy and I went to visit one of her friends who has a house by the lake in Monticello, about 2h North of NYC.
The place was really great.

The group had at disposal a huge house, a speed boat, a floating dock, canoes, kayaks, foam noodles to float in the lake and the coolest hot tub I've ever seen.

I have a confession to make: I had never before swam into a lake and I had never canoed before!
A lake is quite different from the crystal seas I have gotten used to swim in during my travels. I admit that I felt a bit hesitant when I was asked if I wanted to go for a little canoe trip. Hm, I couldn't see my hands a couple of feet underwater let alone the bottom of this lake... And the question that went through my head was "is it safe?"

Despite my little hesitation I decided that really there was nothing to be afraid of and I should just suck it up and go!
I'm happy to report that, non only I turned out to be a natural at canoeing, but I also spend good part of the afternoon floating around in the lake with my new friends having a great time and not having a clue about where my feet were !

There are new regulations being considered now in Europe aiming to reduce the height of climbing frames in playgrounds and change the swing chains so that children won't be able to go too fast or too high.

I remember all the fun I used to have at the playground when I was a kid. I've never been too shy in the sense of joining an adventure (read "getting into trouble" if considered from my parents perspective!).
I used to hang from the frames upside down, I used to ask my dad to push me super high on a swing, I would climb onto the tallest slide, I got bitten by a few dogs and once I even jumped into the deepest part of a swimming pool without knowing how to swim forcing my dad to a sudden dive to come and rescue me from drowning!

By gradually exposing themselves to more and more dangers on the playground children are using the same habituation techniques developed by psychologists to help adults conquer phobias.
As a paradox, our fear of children being harmed by the most harmless injuries may result in more fearful children and increased levels of psychological problems.

And so I wonder, would I be the way I am now, sort of ready to jump into the deep end if I had had nothing "dangerous" to face in my childhood?
What sort of adult a child would turn out to be if he didn't have to confront challenges, fears, if he didn't have to push himself a little higher, a little further, a little harder?

Can a playground become too safe for a child? Judging from my own experience I may answer that with a yes!

Nutcase? No, Nutmeg!

Today I went grocery shopping!
I love to stroll through the supermarket aisles, especially when I'm in a different country. One can learn so much about a place just by looking at their food!!!

One of my favourite parts is always the one of spices.
There is something so inebriating in their smell, the warmth they coat the food with, sometimes the sharpness of taste and always the comfort of a perfume that is somehow connected to a part of everybody's childhood.

I like pretty much every spice except for nutmeg, I feel horror just at the thought of it!
I can't exactly explain why. It's the tang of the smell, that bittersweet after-taste that lingers in your mouth that never convinced me much and it's the pungent odor that attacks you when you grate the nut directly onto your food.

Well, imagine my surprise when a colleague from the hospital commented that possibly I had developed an aversion to nutmeg due to what it does to the brain!

Huh???

It turns out that one can reach and altered state of consciousness by eating, snorting or smoking from a tin of nutmeg!!!
He went on to explain that nutmeg contains Myristicin which is a weak monoamine oxidase inhibitor.
For the "non-medical" readers, this substance is used as an antidepressant and because it's very dangerous it is only reserved as a last line of treatment in case the usual stuff doesn't work!

Myristicin poisoning can induce nausea, convulsions, palpitations and eventual death by dehydration.

So, just a few spoonfuls of nutmeg can cause a hallucinogenic trip for several hours (sometimes even a whole day!!!)

My friend hinted that possibly I am very sensitive and just the smell of it may cause my brain to reject the idea of getting any closer.
This fact though opens a can of worms... I guess that if this information becomes public knowledge the supermarkets will soon have to lock up their stock!

Getting high on Nutmeg... who needs real drugs than when the same can be achieved at a very little fraction of the price????

Google peas

This morning I woke up to find that Google had changed its fun multicoloured logo to green and brown peas... Oh dear!!!

I came across something like this before... I mean, not the peas but definitely Google changed into something that was relating to a special event happening in the world.

Today's peas are dedicated to celebrate the 189th anniversary of Gregor Mendel's birth, the man who is considered the father of genetics.
If you are wondering why peas, it's because he did base pretty much all of his researc

h on pea plants... Yes, he was a "pea meister"!
His work wasn't really recognised and duly appreciated until after his death.
"meine Zeit wird schon kommen" (my time will come) he said... And today we can definitely say that it has come!

But far from happy about this discovery I decided to look into finding out why and who changes the Google Logo (or Goodle doodle, as it's more affectionately know) and discovered that the reason behind this frequent change is to commemorate a special event or person.

And who makes the drawing?
Well, some of them are made by Google's artists. People hired to complete this job, creative minds that are given a task. But some, are made by children!
Google holds a yearly competition called "Doodle 4 Google" where children are asked to create these fun filled logos using their imagination. The 2011's theme was "something I'd love to do" and the kids had an amazing time coming up with fantastic drawings!

This is the drawing that won the competition this year:

In my opinion, some of them are even a lot better than the people who are actually paid to draw!

Have a look at this... I find it wonderful!!!

Hard things to remember

Today I had breakfast with Yuri, a good friend who has just moved to Manhattan for a year to complete his internship at a local hospital.

He arrived a month ago and was busy getting settled and getting his bearings.
We had a lot of catching up to do and at the end of our time together we exchanged phone numbers to keep in contact while I'm here.

It was rather funny how, even if he had repeated his number at least 3 other times during the morning to other people, when the moment came to give it to me, he still couldn't remember it and had to look it up.
It turned out that he had just gotten a new number a couple of days before and still was in the habit of recalling the old number.

Has something like that ever happened to you?
I usually have the same problem with expired computer passwords after the old ones expire.
I tend to type the old one because I am so used to do it and it's only at the 2nd or 3rd try that I remember that I have a new password.

If you are wondering why, do not worry, it is not because you're getting old (though, strictly speaking, you are!) but it is because the brain is competing to recall old and new memories both associated with the same thing.

What happens is that the memory gets cluttered with similar events and it becomes difficult for the brain to distinguish between old and new information as it was used to only have one set of data and now there are multiple, so it will take time for the brain to adjust.

MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) shows that quite well, I discovered through a bit of internet research!

Researchers at Yale and Stanford university led a study asking subjects to recall different faces and scenes (the memory of these items are stored in different areas of the brain) the scan found that blood flowed to both areas simultaneously creating a competition.
So, until when the brain will get used to recall the most recent information associated to a certain aspect or situation in life, confusion is likely to happen.

Now I understand why those few times that I change the place where I park my car it takes me ages then to find it again!!!

The ideal length of a hug

The question popped to my mind actually because of medical reasons.

In our communication skills classes we are taught how to relate to the patient, try to understand if they prefer to be called by first or last name, if they want to shake your hand or not...

So starting from the type of handshake I may want to adopt with a specific patient (delicate with an older patient, assertive and strong with a man...) I started wondering if the same sort of concept could be applied to hugs with people.

We have all been taught that hugs are therapeutic! According to a study led by the American Psychosomatic Society, a hug and 10 minutes of hand-holding with a person we care for, greatly reduce the harmful physical effects of stress.

Researching some more I found out that the ideal length for a hug resulted being 20 seconds.
Because these 20 seconds are all it takes to release oxytocin in the body.
Oxytocin is the binding hormone (also known as the "cuddle" hormone because it is released by mothers during childbirth to help them binding with the new baby) that allows us to establish a deep connection with others.

In a study conducted by NYU in 2003, people who hugged at the beginning of the day for 20 to 30 seconds, were much less stressed in the evening, were generally less prone to react negatively to challenges and had a lower blood pressure therefore lowering the risk of heart problems.

I know it may be awkward, 20 seconds may sound a short time but, seen that the average length of a hug is 3 to 5 seconds, holding someone in your arms for that length of time may feel really long... This said, seen the effect of this great hormone, I'd definitely give this theory a try!



...plus, there is nothing like a scientific excuse to get that hug you have been longing for since a while!!! ;-)

Picturing Science

Everyone who has been around me a while knows I'm a curious being and a definite sucker for science so, when I found out about this "Picturing Science" exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History here in NYC, it was a no-brainer deciding to go and check it out!
I was pleasantly surprised!

At first glance it feels a bit like strolling through an Andy Warhol's expo. Some of the work is arranged in 10 seemingly identical pictures arranged in a 5x2 grid, except that it is not Marilyn Monroe up on the wall but some mineral composition of a meteorite, or the beady eyes and huge jaw belonging to burrowing scorpions in Africa

Being particularly fascinated by the scorpions I started asking questions to the guide and found out that these pictures were taken under an ultraviolet light that causes the scorpions exoskeleton to become fluorescent and reveal the amazing details.

I spent a very long time trying to play a lonely game of "spot the differences" between the 10 insects faces... they all look the same though, unlike with Warhol's work, they are just not!

Other pictures of critters, wooden sculptures, skeletons were instead analysed using a CT scanner that the museum acquired last year in view of the use they could put it to by showing the aesthetics of science.
... and I always only though of a CT scanner as a mere medical diagnosing machine!!!

While in many of the images it is obvious that the subject is something scientific, we can see that there are clearly all these other things that are incredibly abstract and beautiful without being scientific! In fact, many of the departments at the museum are represented in the exhibition with the scanner and electron microscpy being used to take a closer look at the inside of a fossilized skull of a monkey, teeth of an extinct rodent and appendages of goblin spiders.

All quite fascinating, and coming from someone who is horrified just at the idea of bugs and insects, I didn't really mind them staring at me.

If you are in the neighbourhood, "Picturing Science" can be seen through to June 24th, 2012

The world's first "animated" tattoo

Just the other day I was discussing with a friend of mine the idea of a tattoo.
I love them on other people but can't really see one on myself.
I'd be afraid to get tired of it, change my mind on the design... But I guess, most of all, I'd be freaking out at the idea of a needle piercing my skin at supersonic speed (picture me in a slight tinge of green feeling sick!!!)

Anyway, Aaron was telling me about this crazy video I definitely had to check out on Youtube of the world's fist "animated" tattoo.
Before I did that I of course asked what he was talking about... Animated tattoo??? How can the drawing on a person be animated?

So, it turns out that a Parisian ink artist tattooed on somebody's body a multi-media image.
Let me explain it better: basically he tattooed on a guy a QR code (those "checkered images" that you see on your boarding pass, on internet, now in some clubs and restaurants) which are used to activate an URL, an image or whatever you need as soon as they are scanned.

So the artists made a drawing of the frame and right in the middle of the image he tattooed this code... The following video is the real account of how it works!!!

Unbelievable, I say!!!
... And definitely NO, as cool as this may look, I still don't fancy a tattoo!!!

hospital

Contrary to what the title of this post may lead you to think, what I'm writing about is not related to my medical experience here in NYC, but rather to a bizarre theatre show I came across by accident on a warm summer evening by strolling in the West Village.

"hospital" is a play about the interior life of a person in a terminal coma.
Though this is the first time I hear of it, this is a phenomenon in its 11th production, that is well loved for its balance of horror, humour and weirdness.

This year's patient is a grade school teacher with epilepsy who has grown tired of taking the drugs she requires to live normally and, accepting the risk of a major seizure, she stops taking her pills.
During a date the following night, her companion leaves her for a moment, she has the seizure, slips from the rooftop in the rain and falls on the pavement below.

Once in a coma she travels through the dark interiors of her dying mind, being met by dream-like characters from her childhood to guide her through the end.

The show is presented in 4 episodes and I have to say that, after having watched the 1st one last night, I very much look forward to see what happens in the remaining three.

This also sparked many thoughts in me though...

As a doctor in training of course I come across ill people all the time.
According to science our brain works by electrical transmission but when this transmission is just disrupted without being completely interrupted, what is that really happens?
We know that a coma is different from sleep because the individual is incapable of sensing or responding to external stimuli and internal needs, and so can't be woken up.
Many people believe that a coma is similar to deep sleep. However, contrary to popular belief, comatose patients may display signs of movement, make sounds and appear agitated.

I have only seen two patients in a coma so far and now I wonder: what goes on in their minds while we see them just "sleeping"?
Do they hear us? Do they think? Are they afraid? Are they in pain?
And is there someone such as "Jack, who went up the hill with Jill" coming to see them? Because that's exactly what happens in the show... So I'm curious...

Looking around a bit I found testimonies of some people who were in a coma and they claim to recall very specific events of when they found themselves in that state but then, comparing notes with those who were by their side when such event happened, the story never quite exactly matches reality... So, where are we when in a coma? Are we just on "stand-by" like a machine?

I guess I won't find an answer to this question at this point in time... I'll look forward to new findings in medical sciences that may point me in the right direction, something that could explain the how and why of this big mystery and all in all, really hoping that, should I ever find myself in that situation, it won't be the "itsy bitsy spider" coming to pay a visit!!!

Goodbye Shuttle

On July 8th the space shuttle Atlantis was launched to carry a multi-purpose logistics module to deliver supplies and spare parts to the International Space Station.
This event will always be remembered as "the final mission", the end of an era...

A huge amount of people were present at Cape Canaveral for this event, the largest in years!

An occasion that was indeed festive but raised the question on what will happen to the USA space flight.

"We have come full circle since 1961, back when we had yet to show we could launch people into space." said Steven Dick, a retired NASA chief historian. "We will be hitching rides from the Russian to go to the space station that is mainly ours".

But is this really what the future holds?
I remember my mum telling me how she watched on TV the first steps on the moon and how excited she was.
I wasn't born yet and I can only imagine what every person in the world must have felt in that moment.
True, the crew was American, but didn't Armstrong say "One small step for man but one giant leap for mankind"? I guess that involved everybody... Man on the moon... wow!

So it seems a bit sad, puzzling, questionable to abandon such a program as the shuttle was.
President Obama has opted to end it at a huge saving as each of the 135 missions over the years cost about $450 million.

The thing is, the space station is still there, the moon has been conquered...
But there are so many other places to discover...
So yes, this was the last mission of the space shuttle but the world progresses on evolution.

The "achievable" missions have been accomplished, now we can start a new era.
Would we be here where we are today had we just been happy with the first prototype of anything in our civilisations?
Would we have smart phones, sport cars, jet planes, air conditioning and blenders the way we know them today had we been happy with the first discoveries?
Let me answer that for you... NO!

So goodbye shuttle, goodbye to what we know, what we have been conditioned to find fascinating and yet familiar...
But welcome to new challenges, welcome to new machines that for sure, in time, will come, to new missions, new destinations, new crews and training...
Welcome to the unknown... Just like in every other time of change in mankind...
The end of something is always the beginning of something else... And I guess that's also part of what Armstrong meant!