With a row of seats to herself on a 15-hour trans-Atlantic Delta Air Lines flight out of Atlanta, Brandi DeLaO was stretched out and fast asleep when a sharp pinch to her inner thigh jolted her awake.
She complained to a flight attendant, she said, who told her it was probably just a mosquito bite.
But then the small red mark grew into a darkened, crusty, oozing mass of dead skin about the size of a hand. Fever and such severe pain followed that DeLaO couldn’t walk up stairs. It was no mosquito, a South African doctor told her — DeLaO had been bit by Loxosceles reclusa, the notorious brown recluse spider, the most dangerous spider in North America.
The bite happened in January, and Delta has since agreed to an $80,000 settlement with DeLaO, her attorney says.
“I would not wish that on my worst enemy for anything,” said DeLaO, 38, who underwent three excruciating operations to dig out the venom and is awaiting plastic surgery. “It was horrible. It was amazing that a spider could do all that.”
Spokeswoman Betsy Talton confirmed in an email that Delta settled, but she added, “that particular aircraft also was inspected after her flight and no infestation was found.”
Talton described Delta’s pest control program as “a multilayered approach that leans heavily on inspection and cleanliness.”
DeLaO’s attorney, Jonathan Johnson of Atlanta, said the maximum she could have received would have been roughly $175,000 under the Montreal Convention, an international treaty covering air carrier liabilities. Because of uncertainty about where the spider came from and the difficulty of laying blame on Delta, they settled for less, he said.
Recluse spiders are known for inhabiting dark crawlspace corners, not airline cabins. Still, DeLaO’s ordeal isn’t the first of its kind.
In 2006 a San Antonio woman sued American Airlines over a disfiguring spider bite during a flight from Germany to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. Ursula Riederer settled for an undisclosed sum.
Last year, a college student reportedly lost part of an ear after being bit at the airport in Amarillo, Texas.
On Jan. 9, after spending Christmas with her mother in North Carolina, DeLaO and her three daughters were connecting out of Atlanta to Johannesburg, South Africa. Her husband is a Marine stationed at the U.S. Embassy there.
DeLaO said she’s thankful that her daughters were sitting elsewhere on the plane.
“I just feel that they are not checking those planes like they are supposed to,” she said. “I tell everybody who’s flying, especially those flying Delta, spray yourself down and check under the seats.”
KEY WEST, Fla. (AP) – Diana Nyad ended her fourth attempt to swim across the Straits of Florida on Tuesday, her decades-old dream thwarted, more than anything else, by jellyfish.
Storms brewing around her and repeated jellyfish stings forced her out of the water at 12:55 a.m., her crew said. She traveled by boat close to a rocky shoreline in Key West on Tuesday afternoon, just over 72 hours after setting out from Cuba. She made a final short swim to a waiting crowd.
“I've been dreaming of this crossing for 35 years now and tried it four times. and should I say that there's no disappointment? no,” she said. “I'm not going to get that moment I dreamed of for so long.”
Nyad turns 63 on Wednesday and, all told, logged 41 hours and 45 minutes of swim time. Her team acknowledged at 8 a.m. that she had to be pulled from the water, but said it had been about 20 minutes earlier, not nearly seven hours earlier as was the case. She also spent time out of the water during a stormy Sunday night, though that was not acknowledged until Tuesday afternoon.
Under rules set by the World Open Waters Swimming Association, she could emerge from the water and preserve her chance at a record if her life was in danger. all of that was made moot by the fact that she didn't finish.
Her lips swollen from jellyfish stings, she appeared weary as she was helped up from the water at her arrival in Key West, though she insisted her muscles weren't even sore. She was given asthma inhalers, oxygen and an intravenous drip, mostly out of sight of the gathering crowd.
She all but ruled out a fifth try at attempting the crossing, though she also had ruled out a fourth one after failing last year.
“I'm not a quitter, but the sport and this particular ocean are different than they used to be,” she said. “These jellyfish are prolific. and, you know what? to me, there's no joy in that.”
She added: “This isn't swimming. It's like some Navy SEAL.”
Nyad plunged into the water Saturday afternoon in Havana and lasted longer and made it further than on her previous attempts, her team said. She first tried the swim in 1978, in a shark cage. She tried twice last year, without a shark cage, but again and again the record eluded her.
Australian Susie Maroney successfully swam the Straits in 1997, but she used a shark cage. In June, another Australian, Penny Palfrey, made it 79 miles (127 kilometers) toward Florida without a cage before strong currents forced her to abandon the attempt.
Monday night proved the most challenging of all for Nyad, with team members fending off sharks, waves crashing in stormy weather, jellyfish sting after sting, and Nyad fighting off a lowered body temperature and the threat of hypothermia.
“Instead of getting hit with one doozy they got hit with three,” said Vanessa Linsley, a member of Nyad's team. “They got hit with the weather, they got hit with the jellyfish and they got hit with the sharks all at the same time.”
Nyad had been training for three years for the attempt. She was accompanied by a support team in boats, and a kayak-borne apparatus shadowing her to keep sharks at bay by generating a faint electric field. A team of handlers was on alert to dive in and distract any sharks that made it through.
She took periodic short breaks to rest, hydrate and eat high-energy foods such as peanut butter. She said she had been reduced to tears several times – and expected more to flow – but turned reflective after arriving in Key West.
“I didn't get that final moment, but what a magnificent experience it all was,” she said.
Follow Matt Sedensky on Twitter at www.twitter.com/sedensky
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. all rights reserved. this material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Nadia Ilse, a teen bullied into plastic surgery – before and after
Nadia Ilse, the 14-year-old Georgia girl who underwent radical facial plastic surgery after being bullied for years about her looks, said she is more confident than ever now and is ready to forgive her tormentors.
“I believe in forgiveness, but I will never forget the times that they did that, the times they made fun of me, and the times they hurt me,” she said. “You have to make them earn it.”
While most teenagers may get a new wardrobe before they head back to school in the fall, Ilse got a new face. in June, she went under the knife, getting a nose job, a chin implant and had her ears pinned back.
On her first day of ninth grade, Ilse was all smiles as she wore her hair up, showing her ears for the first time years. She even received compliments on her new look from a former bully.
The Cumming, Ga., teenager was born with bilateral lop-eared deformities on both ears, a condition where the person is missing the folds within the ear and the bowl of the ear sticks out. She said school used to be a nightmare because she was constantly taunted about her appearance.
“They said I have the biggest ears that they’ve ever seen, they called me Dumbo, elephant ears,” Ilse said. “I act like I didn’t care though I really did. it hurt a lot.”
She said the was bullying so bad that she often had to stop herself from crying in front of her tormentors.
“I tried to hold it in as much as I could, and when I got, usually when I’m walking home from the bus stop, I usually start to cry or I usually cry myself to sleep sometimes too,” she said.
The teenager tried to keep the bullying a secret from her mother, Lynda Ilse, because she said she didn’t want to burden her. having recently been laid off, Lynda was already coping with mounting medical bills for her 9-year-old son, Josh. he has cerebral palsy and will have to undergo heart surgery soon.
To Nadia, whatever issues she was having felt superficial so she kept it to herself. when her mother did finally find out about the bullying, she said she was heartbroken.
“I didn’t realize it was that bad,” Lynda Ilse said. “She would mostly say that she has migraines.”
Nadia Ilse became convinced that the solution to ending the bullying was plastic surgery. After a year’s worth of constantly nudging, her mother agreed.
“every family has to make their own decision,” Lynda Ilse said. “I let Nadia make the decision. She’s been begging me for so long to get her ears pinned back and so that’s what she wanted to do and so I just supported her.”
“It’s no different than somebody having teeth that require braces,” she added. “If you had teeth that stuck out, wouldn’t you go to a dentist and have braces put on?”
In fact, according to The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, ear surgery, or otoplasty, is the most common plastic surgery procedure among teens, with over 11,000 surgeries performed last year.
Given the family’s financial constraints, Lynda Ilse turned to the little Baby Face Foundation, a Manhattan-based organization that provides free surgeries around the world for children with facial deformities who have a financial need.
Dr. Thomas Romo, the president of the organization and the head of facial plastic surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, said Nadia Ilse’s case met the foundation’s criteria to have the corrective surgery, even though to the naked eye, her deformities may not have seemed so extreme.
“She wasn’t picked to have her surgery because she was bullied,” Dr. Romo said. “She was picked for her surgery because of her deformities and we could correct that surgically. If that helps her from getting bullied, thank you, God. No one is going to get accepted through the foundation because they don’t like the way they look.”
Nadia Ilse originally just wanted her ear pinned back, but Dr. Romo also suggested she get a chin implant to balance her face and a nose job to fix a deviated septum. in total, the teenager received $40,000 worth of surgery for free.
Dr. Brian C. Reuben says that while bullying is a serious issue affecting children of all ages, cosmetic surgery may be a solution for some of them. he performs plastic surgery in Salt Lake City, but only on patients whom he feels are emotionally and physically ready.
“while plastic surgery could help children whose physical deformities make them victims of bullying, it may not be the right answer for everyone,” Dr. Reuben says. “Bullying is a complex psychological situation, so there may be emotional and behavioral issues involved as well.”
Recent news reports (http://tiny.cc/jgmejw) tell of groups, such as the little Baby Face Foundation, that provide free corrective surgery for eligible children and teens with facial deformities.
“I am an advocate for helping people who may not be able to afford medical care, especially when it comes to children with congenital deformities,” Dr. Reuben says. “while surgery can be an important component in minimizing bullying and boosting self-confidence, I’m glad to hear that many of these organizations also provide counseling for patients, both before and after surgery.”
He points out that regardless of a person’s age or reason for wanting cosmetic surgery, realistic expectations are as important as the surgery itself.“This is why the consultation process is so important,” Dr. Reuben says. “I strive to create open and comfortable communication, allowing each person who visits me to develop a feeling of trust before we move ahead with surgery. it is through mutual respect and sharing expectations for surgery that patients are able to create realistic goals.”
OUR fingers are precision instruments, but there are plenty of things they are not sensitive enough to detect. Now we can augment their talents – using wearable electronic fingertips that provide tingling feedback about whatever we touch.
John Rogers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and colleagues have designed a flexible circuit that can be worn over the fingertips. It contains layers of gold electrodes just a few hundred nanometres thick, sandwiched between layers of polyimide plastic to form a “nanomembrane”. this is mounted on a finger-shaped tube of silicone rubber, allowing one side of the circuit to be in direct contact with the fingertips. on the other side, sensors can be added to measure pressure, temperature or electrical properties such as resistance.
People wearing the device receive electrotactile stimulation – a tingling sensation caused by a small voltage applied to the skin. the size of the voltage is controlled by the sensor and varies depending on the properties of the object being touched.
Surgical gloves are one potential application. Rogers, who worked with colleagues at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and Dalian University of Technology in China, says gloves fitted with the nanomembrane could sense the thickness or composition of tissue via its electrical properties. a surgeon could also whittle away at the tissue using a high-frequency alternating current supplied by a battery attached at the wrist and delivered via the nanomembrane itself, says Rogers.
Fiorenzo Omenetto at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, is impressed. “The work sets the stage for a new generation of devices,” he says.
There are applications beyond surgery, too. MC10, the company commercialising the technology, is running animal trials of a nanomembrane “sock” that can be wrapped around the heart. this provides a 3D map of its electrical activity, useful in treating irregular heartbeat.
MC10 is also working with medical device company Medronic to use the membrane inside the heart, sending it in on a limp balloon, which is then inflated to push the membrane onto the heart’s interior walls.
Rogers says MC10 is also collaborating with sportswear firm Reebok on a product to be launched by the end of this year. the aim is to build a “body-worn piece of electronics” designed for contact sports, although Rogers declined to say exactly how it will be used.
If you would like to reuse any content from new Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. new Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.
Simon Cowell won’t return to judge ‘The X Factor’ in the UK yet because he believes jet-lag ruins his looks.
The 52-year-old music mogul is currently working on the US version of the pop star search show and he won’t shoot both series at the same time because he is convinced cross-Atlantic travel ages his face.
A source told The Sun newspaper: ‘Simon hates the way his face looks when he’s jet-lagged and that’s the real reason he won’t be back.
‘When he’s tired he gets bags and dark circles under his eyes and he hates that.
‘The air-con on the plane also really dries out his skin.
‘When he gets off a plane he wears sunglasses to hide his eyes.’
Simon is known for his vanity and his lavish beauty regime was recently revealed in a new book, ‘Sweet Revenge: The Intimate Life of Simon Cowell’, which describes how he has Botox twice a year, intravenous vitamin injections and regular colonic irrigation.
He has said of the latter process, where waste is removed from the bowels by pumping water through a tube into the body: ‘It’s so cleansing – and it makes my eyes shine brighter.’
‘The X Factor’ UK is currently judged by Gary Barlow, Tulisa, Louis Walsh and Nicole Sherzinger. Gary was brought in as head of the panel after Simon left to go to America last year.
Although reality show standout Evelyn Lozada has remained mum over the head-butting knot she received courtesy of husband Chad Johnson on Saturday, several fans have come to Twitter to rally their support around the “Basketball Wives” star.
Some of the supporting tweets that were posted in response to the star’s altercation with the football star included the following:
“Not even an Evelyn fan but no woman deserves any of this. Stay strong”
“Married for a month and he’s already cheating on you and when you confront him, he headbutts you? Your too strong to stand for such outright disrespect, I hope you do the right thing for your happiness. He’s not worth all this mess.”
“WTF!!!!???? OMG!!??? Im sorry to have [to wake up] to this terrible news ..stay STRONG CHICA !!!”
In other unfortunate related news, ex-NBA baller Eric Williams, who previously appeared alongside Lozada on “Basketball Wives,” posted some of his own tweets on the highly publicized dispute. however, Williams took to writing messages that were quite the opposite of her loyal fans.
Clearly bitter and taking the matter lightly, he had tweeted some of the following:
“Hey @EvelynLozada I bet that knot on your head (is) more shinier than mine. Hey @EvelynLozada, lets do our own show, called ’2Bumps you can’t get enough.’ We’re good @hisknotThensaid, said he needs a companion.”
Literally adding insult to injury, Williams also mocked the bruise on Lozada’s forehead as well as her catchy television phrase “you’re not about that life.”
“Evelyn Lozada I thought you were ‘About that Life,’ but I see you’re #knot about that life,” he controversially tweeted.
NFL Wide Receiver Chad Johnson was arrested on Saturday upon his physical assault on Lozada after she had confronted him in regards to a receipt from a condom purchase. Spending the night in prison, Johnson had posted $2,500 bail and was released on Sunday morning at 10 a.M.
A fabulous surgeon is usually a healthcare professional that’shttp://plasticsurgery-orangecounty.coma pro throughout the re-modification belonging to the entire body. a fabulous surgeon runs various procedures plainly, tracks, face, skin, busts, and also other braches pertaining to dental in addition to dependable problems. to get dependable problems, the individual will have to happen to be malformed or simply maliciously bombarded and sustained lacerations and problems. a fabulous surgeon might renew an individual’s malformed or simply damaged facial area or simply element of the entire body typical again after only tough many hours in procedures and follow-up goes to. Long run cosmetic or plastic surgeons have to get a pre-medical bachelor diploma (biochemistry, chemistry) prior to they’re able to find medical-related doctorate or simply osteopathic doctorate with the school of medicine. At the time of school of medicine, your immediate future plastic surgeons compared with crack ones own occasion in between classes, research laboratory deliver the results, and medical-related responsibilities. once school of medicine, cosmetic or plastic surgeons have to comprehensive in between 5-6 a lot of post degree residency coaching. Around this time these crack ones own decades in between standard surgical procedures and cosmetic surgery. Generally, the earliest a couple of years inplasticsurgery-orangecounty.com/breast-augmentation.html surgical procedures
coaching is there to standard surgical procedures and also very last 2-three decades are developing cosmetic surgery. about completing a medical-related post degree residency, pupils have to move a number of checkups so that you can by law work as a medical specialist. once the end that get the pick of after a post degree residency. Cosmetic or plastic surgeons might choose to chase a fellowship, which sometimes permit them to focus on a subfield in cosmetic surgery, for instance facial area, palms, craniofacial or simply eyesight helmet surgical procedures, curly hair solution or simply chest enlargement project. Certain cosmetic or plastic surgeons pick a niche market, each are been competing in genetic trouble with the thoughts, neck of the guitar and start, burn treatment, substance solution, chest enlargement surgical procedures and also other
basic capabilities. a lot of cosmetic or plastic surgeons chase recognition considering the North american Mother board in Plastic Cosmetic Surgery. In the event you may require a surgeon pertaining to dental problems or simply trouble, look for your personal next medical specialist right away pertaining to consulting. Tend not to miss the boat on this dentalrisk, you realize you’ll be preferred.
Americans spent nearly $10 billion last year to tighten their droopy skin, wrinkled foreheads and saggy eyelids, according to a report by the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. what if you could change all that with just $25?
Facelift Bungee, a new product on the market, claims to do just that.
One woman described the product as being “like Spanx for the face.”
The product consists of two small combs linked by a bungee cord. Users are instructed to make a small braid at each temple. They insert one comb into a braid, pass the cord around the back of the head and insert the second comb into the braid on the other side.
Hair on top of the head is pulled over the bungee cord to hide it.
The device is sold in a little jar.
“It’s easily inserted, it’s easily removable. I can insert it within 30 seconds every morning. I can take it out in less than 10 seconds,” Kimberly Aschauer, the founder of Facelift Bungee, told ABC News.
Asked how she came up with the idea, Aschauer said, “Well, my son was getting married and I went for plastic surgery consultation, and the price was outrageous, so I created this out of pure panic.”
Aschauer said wearing the Facelift Bungee doesn’t cause “any more pain than a ponytail headache.”
Melissa Wexler, a mother and boutique owner, first used the Facelift Bungee at a wedding.
“I just felt like I looked stressed and tired. and when I heard about it I was like, ‘I’ll have to give this a try. and it was great,’” she said.
She gets comments from people who want to know about her skin-care regimen.
“I’ll hear, ‘Oh, your skin looks so great,’ or ‘Oh, you cut your hair,’ or ‘Something’s different, is it your makeup?’ So it feels good,” she said. “People don’t know what it is.”
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) – Virginia is for lovers – and thousands of purple martins.
They begin flitting into town in early June, and by midsummer the purple martins that roost in a one-block section of downtown Richmond are so thick, their synchronized mass movements can be seen on weather radar.
Once scorned for their mess, the purple martins that check in each night in a row of pear trees are now celebrated with their own festival. “Gone to the Birds,” now in its fifth year, will be held Saturday as bartenders serve up “Purple Martinis,” restaurants offer discounts and guides take birders on tours of this urban aviary.
It's a mystery why the blackish-purple birds, the largest of the swallow family in North America, selected a row of 15 Bradford pear trees to spend their last six summers in a crowded entertainment district known for its restaurants, clubs and former tobacco warehouses converted into lofts.
Most people don't care and just enjoy the show, which includes raptors sweeping down from high-rises to snatch a purple martin in flight. there are plenty to go around: organizers said they counted 27,000 birds at the 2011 festival; 14,000 have been counted this year.
The most spectacular show is at dusk when the birds circle the skies, tightening into a ball to return to their roost in waves.
“Who would think standing around watching birds would be something cool to do?” said Jon Baliles, who helped organize the first festival with his brother-in-law.
“We were like, wow, it's totally surreal, right in the middle of the city,” Baliles said. “I'm no bird aficionado but that remains one of the coolest things I've ever seen in Richmond.”
The festival is supposed to help businesses in a section of downtown called Shockoe bottom, once the center of Richmond's slave-trading commerce. The low-lying area is still recovering from floods brought by Hurricane Gaston in 2004.
Purple martins, like other migratory birds, often roost in a staging area before they begin their flight south, which for the martins is South America. They gorge on beetles, increasing their body weight by 30 to 60 percent, to fuel their 5,000-mile journey.
“They're associated with eating insects, so people love having them around, and they're purple,” said Mary Elfner with the Virginia Audubon.
But why pit stop in Richmond?
Louis Verner, a biologist with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, said the dense leaf cover and twig structure can support thousands of birds in one tree and the James River is less than a half mile away.
Mike Wilson, a biologist with the Center for Conservation Biology, said Richmond is not the only urban setting for the birds.
“What these birds do is they're relying on these routes for safety in numbers,” he said. Martins are gregarious, he said, and they form big flocks.
Dilnesaw Bitew wasn't a fan of the birds at first because of the mess they left on the cars at his Addis Ethiopian Restaurant. Now he offers 20 percent discounts while the birds are in town.
“Now I like them. It's fun to watch them in the evening,” he said.
Adolph White, a retired teacher and amateur birder, is out every morning to wash down the sidewalk that runs along the row of pear trees. he was there Wednesday with his grandson.
“It's covered up pretty bad,” White said of the layer of droppings.
His night job is much better. He's a guide several nights a week for people who want to see the purple martins return at dusk to their pear trees.
“They are amazed,” he said.
Steve Szkotak can be reached on Twitter at https://twitter.com/sszkotakap
As a Board Certified Denver Plastic Surgeon, I have watched the field of Cosmetic Surgery grow dramatically over the last several years as has its reach to the American consumer. many men and women who previously would have not considered Cosmetic Surgery now see it as a routine part of their lives and something that is more of a maintenance than a luxury expenditure. And with that explosive growth has come the question of how old is too old.
In my Plastic Surgery practice, I am commonly asked just how old is too old for breast augmentation. And that is really a difficult question to answer. in my mind, age is less of a consideration than maturity of the patient and their underlying expectations. for many women, the appearance of their breasts plays a huge role in how they see themselves as a whole. for those who lost volume as a result of pregnancy or even simply from the aging process itself, their aged breasts represent a lack of proportion with the rest of their body. for these women, restoration of this lost volume and reshaping of their breasts can dramatically restore a sense of well-being, overall proportion, and enhanced well being.
I am personally seeing more women in their 50′s and 60′s who are interested in changing the appearance of their breasts. some of these women had augmentation earlier in life and now find themselves with droop or volume loss as a result of the aging process. Others have developed firmness of the capsule around their implants (capsular contracture) and simply wish to restore a softer, more natural look and feel to their breasts. And others never had augmentation but realize that with an average life expectancy ranging into the 80′s and 90′s, they simply wish to improve their appearance knowing that they have many productive years ahead.
And so is this simply Madison Avenue telling women that they need to have implants to look attractive? Are they simply being manipulated by the latest trend? According to several respected experts such as Nancy Etcoff, it is actually the opposite. These women are proactively taking charge of their appearance and realize that a more youthful look may have far reaching benefits outside of the bedroom, into the boardroom, and beyond. Numerous studies have shown that how we see ourselves has a dramatic effect on our confidence and our ability to participate effectively in society.
Given that, I feel that the growing trend for breast enhancement among women in their 50′s, 60′s, and even 70′s is a positive one and one that is simply reflective of the new American woman and her ability to define and re-define herself on multiple levels.
By MATT SEDENSKYAssociated Press
(Photo : Twitter / Evelyn Lozada) Evelyn Lozada
By STEVE SZKOTAKAssociated Press
