Barreling down the lanes of memory

Kae’s challenge: What do you love the most about where you live? This week's challenge is to tell us about where you live by setting the beginning of a story there. You must have at least two characters, and you must make your street, or community, or town come alive for us. The sudden back and forth swaying startled me away from some nameless dream I was caught in. Pulling open the heavy curtains, I tilt my hat back and wiping the day old sweat off my brow, I looked down into the valley and see a dust cloud swirling crazily and throwing debris all over. The sun was just peeking over the horizon and the passing landscape outside the train window was covered in a fine mist and the sun bathed it in an orange light which slowly turned into yellow. Feeling a little bored, I stood up and started to wander down the aisle to break the monotony. I eventually found myself in the kitchen box where the cook and his assistant were doing the dishes and getting ready for a new day. I found my way to the small cubicle which they called the restroom and took a moment which seemed like an eternity to wash off all the dust, grime and sweat off me. The weariness fell off me and I felt refreshed. Even at this age, my ever constant and faithful companion has stayed by my side. As I move from the sleeper section window to the hallway, I see Vanitas reflection on the mirror and the image holds me in a hypnotic trance for a moment. The ‘old woman’ as I fondly call her looks up by chance and sees me staring at her. The comb stops midway on her scalp and she lets out a sharp laughter and wonders out loud what’s on my silly mind. Taking a deep breath, I turn back around and walk back down the passage where I had come from. A loud curse and then a cough from one of the kitchen guys who was taking orders for breakfast brought me out of the thoughts I was in. and asked if we were coming down or not. I told him to head on over and we’ll be there in a bit. After what seemed like a lifetime, we finally made our way to the dining room to have our fill before getting off the train and see if I could locate the town which I grew up in and loved the most without failing this time. The constant chatter of others at the table could not keep my mind from feeling a little uneasiness I was feeling. Heading down the aisle to drive away the boredom, I noticed that it was late in the afternoon and the train was dead empty. The train came to a full halt and looking out the window I saw a few porters were seen idling away their time in the far end of the platform playing a card game and stray dogs chased the rest till all disappeared around the bend. Looking upwards as we stepped out of my compartment, I noticed that the sky was starting to cloud up and a torrential downpour might happen anytime. The winds from the north were already rocking the city and hardly anyone was venturing outside. Looking intently into my cellphone, I hunted up the radio taxi number and asked for one to pick us up right away. The old woman gave me an inquiring look and I replied “Hold your horses woman. The taxi man is coming over for us. Be still for a few minutes will you.” Vanita glared at me like I was some foul man whom she indented to do serious harm. I started to pace back and forth across the platform waiting for the taxi to pick us up. A taxi finally arrived and I checked our bags once more before I zipped them a final time and told the driver to put them in the trunk of the car. Time moved slowly as I saw one familiar landmark after another and I suddenly realized that I had reached my old home which we had sold long back. At one time, what seemed like another life I lived in a city called Solon. It used to be a really fantastic city where everything moved at a snails pace. Hardly anything happened there. No major crime and the population seemed just right. Over the past decade or so, time has flown by yet I still remember my old city like it was just yesterday. Our last house stood on a slight rise just on the edge of the city and it overlooked a park which was located just a little distance from our house. We lived in a quiet neighborhood. Not much ever happened there. Spring and summer months were real nice since we had a huge park located near by and alot of kids used to come to the park to play baseball, football or any other sports activity which caught their fancy. Sometimes families used to come to the park for a picnic. One could always tell when a picnic was going on because the delicious food smells used to come our way at times. Usually I used to go up to the park and join a game in progress if they were willing to let me in or if they were short of a few guys. If I was feeling too lazy, I used to just sit on the sidelines and watch. Sometimes, if a few of my buddies were there, I enjoyed my trip to the park more. My buddies and I either used to just sit under the shade of the Maple tree... munch on snacks and just talk, play our own game or join a game in progress. We lived in this house for many years until we finally sold it one day. Time moved on....we grew up and went our own ways, made new friends along the way and changed alot of house and cities with the passage of time. But this park still holds a special place for me. The house had a splendid view of the park and I am sure that the new owners must be enjoying it as much as I did when I was younger. Sometimes when I look back, the park always pops up in my mind and brings back some fond memories and I am reminded of how much carefree fun I had when I was younger. It was as if Vanita had read my mind when she turned to face me and said “One should enjoy each moment every day, because you will never have another chance to change it. Dark stormy clouds will always come into your life, but try not to be weighed down by it. The brighter moments in your life will always dispel these dark moments.” I replied a bit sadly “At times when I am walking or driving past a park and some activity is happening in the park, it takes me back in time to the bygone era. These days will never come back yet I am a firm believer that one should enjoy each moment every day, since you will never have another chance to change it. Time has flown by and the park is gone, yet it still is as prominent to me as it was to me when I was a child.” Taking a final look, we made our way through the town and finally decided to head back home. Read more...

What are surgical instruments

A surgicalinstruments are a specially designed tools or devices for performing specific actions of carrying out desired effects during a or operation or to provide access for viewing it. Over time, many different kinds of surgicalinstruments and tools have been invented. Some surgical instruments are designed for general use in surgery, while others are designed for a specific procedure or surgery. Accordingly, the nomenclature of surgicalinstruments follows certain patterns, such as a description of the action it performs or a compound scientific name related to the kind of surgery. One of the most common use of a surgical instruments is an ultrasonic cleaner which is a cleaning device that uses ultrasound and an appropriate cleaning solvent (sometimes ordinary tap water) to clean delicate items. The ultrasound can be used with only water but use of a solvent appropriate for the item to be cleaned and the soiling enhances the effect. This cleaning method normally lasts between three and six minutes Many different types of objects, including lenses, jewelry and other optical parts, watches, dental, surgical instruments industrial parts and electronic equipment are cleaned by this method. These types of surgical instruments comes with the technology equipped to clean at a high frequency sound waves (ultrasonic: above the range of human hearing) to agitate an aqueous or organic medium (cleaning chemistry) that in turn acts on contaminants adhering to substrates like metals, plastics, glass, rubber and ceramics. Contaminants can be dust, dirt, oil, pigments, grease, polishing compounds, flux agents, fingerprints, soot wax and mold release agents, biological soil like blood, and so on. Numerous gas bubbles are formed and expand in the liquid during the expansion phase. This is a low-pressure phase that in essence "cold boils" the water. The water vapor in the bubble condenses rapidly creating a vacuum-filled 'cavity'. In the compression phase, the great amount of pressure exerted on the newly expanded bubble leads to a sudden implosion of the bubble. The liquid molecules collide releasing a vast amount of impact energy that rapidly increases the local temperature producing a high-energy liquid stream that collides with the surface of the object being cleaned. This collision agitates contaminants adhering to the surface, effectively and efficiently dislodging them at micron levels. Read more...

Purchasing karl storz equipment at affordable price to save lives

The body is a complex system. If someone falls ill, there are two ways to inquire about the illness which is plaguing the person. The two methods are invasive and non invasive. Invasive method does not always give the complete picture, yet the non invasive method gives a more complete idea on what is wrong with the patient without the hassles of surgery. Such a method requires expensive medical equipment which might be out of reach of many. What shall the affected party do? Well, they can always look into medical tools like: used mri equipment, used cath lab or a used c-arm. CT scanner which helps to visualize detailed internal structures. This type of machine uses radiation for either a full or a partial scan. This causes the nuclei to produce a rotating image detectable by the scanner-and this information is recorded to construct an image of the scanned area of the body. Low dose radiation field gradients cause nuclei at different locations to rotate at different speeds. 3-D spatial information can be obtained by providing gradients in each direction. used cath lab is an examination room in a hospital or clinic with diagnostic imaging equipment used to support the catheterization procedure. A karl storz catheter is inserted into a large artery, and various wires and devices can be inserted through the body via the catheter which is inside the artery. The artery most used is the femoral artery. However, the femoral artery is associated with local complication in up to 3% of patients and hence, more interventional physicians are moving towards the radial (wrist) artery, as an alternative site. Disadvantages of the radial artery include small vessel caliber and a different "learning curve" for physicians used to the femoral (groin) access. Most catheterization laboratories are "single plane" facilities, those that have a single X-ray generator source and an image intensifier. Older cath labs used cine film to record the information obtained, but since 2000, most new facilities are digital. The latest digital cath labs are biplane (have two X-ray sources) and digital, flat panel labs. Biplane laboratories achieve two separate planes of view with the same injection and thus save time and limit contrast dye, limiting kidney damage in susceptible patients. A karl storz gamma camera, also called a scintillation camera or Anger camera, is a device used to image gamma radiation emitting radioisotopes, a technique known as scintigraphy. The applications of scintigraphy include early drug development, nuclear medical imaging and to view and analyze images of the human body or the distribution of medically injected, inhaled, or ingested radionuclide emitting gamma rays. A gamma camera consists of one or more flat crystal planes (or detectors) optically coupled to an array of photomultiplier tubes, the assembly is known as a "head", mounted on a gantry. The gantry is connected to a computer system that both controls the operation of the camera as well as acquisition and storage of acquired images. The best current camera system designs are by karl storz which can differentiate two separate point sources of gamma photons located a minimum of 1.8 cm apart, at 5 cm away from the camera face. Spatial resolution decreases rapidly at increasing distances from the camera face. This limits the spatial accuracy of the computer image: it is a fuzzy image made up of many dots of detected but not precisely located scintillation. This is a major limitation for heart muscle imaging systems; the thickest normal heart muscle in the left ventricle is about 1.2 cm and most of the left ventricle muscle is about 0.8 cm, always moving and much of it beyond 5 cm from the collimator face. To help compensate, better imaging systems limit scintillation counting to a portion of the heart contraction cycle, called gating, however this further limits system sensitivity.

Read more...