Warning: Your reusable grocery bags can become contaminated with bacteria

97% of shoppers admit they never wash their reusable grocery bags. Dr. Susan Rehm from Cleveland Clinic talks about avoiding illness from contaminated grocery bags:



Another video: Viruses and Bacteria In Reusable Grocery Bags, from a local TV station, KOBITV:



Comments from Twitter:

SwoodLady @SwoodLady: Always something! RT @DrVes: Warning: Your reusable grocery bags can become contaminated with bacteria goo.gl/fb/sDOMs

Pediatrician retires at 89, enjoys seeing 40-50 patients a day, will become an artist

From Scripps Interactive Newspapers Group:

"How are you? Have you retired?"

"No," said Dr. Segal, "I need to keep practicing until I get it right."

"You took care of my baby for me."

"Wonderful. How old is your baby now?"

"He's 58."

Dr. Segal laughed when he recounted this story. But, then, Segal laughs a lot. Maybe that's how he practiced medicine for more than six decades. Because he found pleasure in his work. So many people are in a hurry to retire so they can start having fun. Segal never understood the reason to wait.

He had fun going to the office every day, had fun saying hello to children and making them well.

Segal got an art degree from Memphis State. When World War II broke out, there wasn't much demand for artists. So Segal went to medical school.

Six decades later, he's not one of those doctors who will tell you how much better things used to be. Sitting in his office during his last week of work, Segal mostly wanted to talk about how good we have it now."

References:
Geoff Calkins: Retiring Dr. Segal didn't wait to have fun — he worked at it. Scripps Interactive Newspapers Group, 2010.

Pediatrics and Medicine

Image source: Wikipedia, GNU Free Documentation License.

Promoting women in science and medicine to become a priority

The University of Tromsø in Norway - the world's northernmost university - has adopted new recommendations designed to increase the number of female full professors from the current 23% to 30% by 2014.

Women spend longer as Associate Professors than men, partly because “men apply as soon as they think they have a chance of promotion, while women tend to wait until they are very confident”.

The panel developed 13 recommendations, among them:

- re-advertising positions if there are no women in the applicant pool
- ensuring that women receive training in salary negotiation
- assessing research quality rather than quantity
- improving the visibility of women within institutions
- encouraging diversity in leadership style

References:

Promoting women in science and medicine. The Lancet, Volume 376, Issue 9754, Page 1712, 20 November 2010.

Image source: OpenClipArt.org, public domain.