UnivacGrl's New Writeups

Hematocrit (thing)

2001-02-18T08:30:37Z

A Hematocrit, or HCT, is a simple blood test done to determine the proportion of cells and fluid in the blood.

A low hematocrit may indicate the presence of one or more of these:

anemia (various types)
blood loss (hemmorrhage)
bone marrow failure (for example, due to radiation, toxin, fibrosis, or tumor)
hemolysis (red blood cell destruction) related to transfusion reaction.
leukemia
malnutrition or specific nutritional deficiency
multiple myeloma
overhydration
rheumatoid arthritis

A high HCT may indicate the presence of one or more of these:

dehydration, especially due to burns or diarrhea
eclampsia
erythrocytosis (excessive red blood cell production)
polycythemia vera

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Giving blood (thing)

2001-02-18T08:05:18Z

Donating blood is a pretty simple process. You should try it if you can. Here's how it goes.

In the interview process a questionnaire is filled out. The questions are designed to identify potential health problems for the donor or potential infections that may be present in the donor that could be transmitted through transfusion to another person.
You walk into the blood bank or bloodmobile and fill out a questionnaire. Then you wait a bit until someone comes to interview you. It's to check if you have any reasons why you shouldn't donate blood or if you would be adversely affected by the process itself.

A fingerstick yields a drop of blood for testing to determine if the donor has a high enough hematocrit to safely donate blood.
It's only a little tiny sting, and as long as you don't actually know when they're going to stick you, you won't flinch.

The blood is drawn into a capillary tube which is then spun in the

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packed cells (thing)

2001-02-18T07:14:06Z

A slang term for a red blood cell transfusion made up of 'packed' red blood cells (PRBC). When donors give blood, the blood bank concentrates the red blood cells in a small volume of plasma. The excess plasma is saved for transfusion to those who need plasma. The concentrated red blood cells are called 'packed' because they are in a more compressed volume of blood than they were in the donor's blood.

The above paragraph was taken from www.babyzone.com

This type of blood transfusion is usually done to raise hematocrit levels in patients who are deficient for one reason or another (like anemia).

The book is better than the movie (idea)

2001-02-17T03:44:41Z

There is a definite reason why the book is almost always better. Books, especially novels, run into the hundreds, or if you're Stephen King, into the thousands of pages. Screenplays and shooting scripts have only about a hundred to a hundred and fifty pages, most of them being taken up by the white space between paragraphs.

The very very difficult job of ripping the bare bones of the story out of all of those pages gets delegated to the screenwriter in the transition from book to script. Something always must be left out, and quite often, it's most of what people liked about the book in the first place. All of that gorgeous descriptive language talking about The swirling of the snow as it falls from the looming grey sky on the cold November day gets compressed down into "ext. snowstorm" on the page.

Mayerling (place)

2001-02-11T21:28:14Z

Mayerling is the name of a hunting lodge in Austria, most well known as the site of the Archduke Rudolph of Habsburg's death, along with that of his mistress, Baroness Marie Vetsera, on January 30, 1889.

The two deaths were originally thought to be a lovers' death pact, either a double suicide or a murder and suicide, with the Archduke killing Vetsera with his pistol, then himself. Because of the public nature of the victims, there was most likely a cover-up by the police.

A 1996 examination of Vetsera's remains showed no bullet damage, only skull trauma as from a garden tool or blunt object. This has led some historians to believe that there was no lovers' pact, only an extraordinarily subtle assasination of the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary.

There are two very good films detailing the popular version of what happened at the Archduke's lodge that winter. Both named "Mayerling", the first was a 1936 feature directed by Anton Litvak…

February 8, 2001 (idea)

2001-02-11T10:27:24Z

Today is the day that the Doctor has waited over a hundred years for. He remembers waking up in a train carriage with no memory and only a note in his pocket.

Meet me in Saint Louis on February 8, 2001. -Fitz

He's waited so long.

Doctor Who is a trademark of the BBC.