Both the ACR and the SNM are celebrating the passage of H. R. 6331, the Medicare Improvement for Patients and Providers Act of 2008. Both houses of Congress garnered the necessary majorities to override a presidential veto of the act. The House overrode the veto by a margin of 383-41, while the tally in the Senate was 70-26. The bill ...

New Orleans put on its best face for the technologists, physicians and scientists attending the annual SNM conference June 14-18. In return, SNM and SNMTS members gave a bit of their time and their blood to the city. Coming into New Orleans, it looked very much like it did five years ago when the SNM held its 50th ...

I have been moving from one apartment to another and just as I was opening the boxes and just getting settled in my new place the power went out. It stayed out for about 15 hours and people were complaining that they would need to throw out the food, especially since the temperature was in the high 90s. It was a relief to have the power back. You ...

 On June 3, the Times-Picayune in New Orleans reported that a vehicle transporting diagnostic radioisotopes in New Orleans struck a Jeep ejecting some containers of radioactive isotopes. Later in the story, it noted that the Jeep, not the medical isotope transport vehicle, caused the accident, because it was being operated in a careless ...

The other day I was talking to Amy Shaw, associte director of public relations at the SNM, and she told me that SNMTS and United Blood Services will come together to be ''Blood Heroes'' by hosting a blood drive during SNM's 55th Annual Meeting in New Orleans. According to Shaw, the Technologist Section of SNM will host the drive on ...

  There was bad news out of Canada last week when Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd, a Crown corporation announced it was abandoning development of its two MAPLE medical-isotope reactors Ontario. The company had spent hundreds of millions of dollars in developing these reactors, designed to supply the entire global demand for iodine-125, ...

Have you looked at your keyboard lately? I usually don't, unless I accidentally spill something on it. Then I read in an article on ABC News about a study by a microbiologist in the United Kingdom that showed that the typical office keyboard had contamination by a host of potentially harmful bacteria at levels that were up to five times ...

According to a May 5 report from Reuters news service, a one-day snapshot of emergency room conditions at 34 U.S. hospitals shows they are all overwhelmed and none is prepared to handle a big event like a disaster or attack. The snapshot, which included seven major cities---New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago, Houston, Denver and ...

  I just got my airplane reservations to fly down to New Orleans this June 14 for the SNM annual meeting. I am looking forward to the conference which allows me to learn the latest research in nuclear medicine and PET and to connectwith old friends and make new ones. To tell the truth, I am also curious about how the Big Easy has changed ...

On Saturday night, I was watching ''Myth Busters'' with my grandson. This week, they were trying to bust the myth that cockroaches would be the only thing living after a nuclear war. To test this, they put four different bugs, including fruit flies and roaches, into four containers each and had them irradiated with the cobalt source at ...