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An American teenager survived for nearly four months without a heart, kept alive by a custom-built artificial blood-pumping device, until she was able to have a heart transplant, doctors in Miami said on Wednesday.

The doctors said they knew of another case in which an adult had been kept alive in Germany for nine months without a heart but said they believed this was the first time a child had survived in this manner for so long.

The patient, D’Zhana Simmons of South Carolina, said the experience of living for so long with a machine pumping her blood was “scary”.

“You never knew when it would malfunction,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper, at a news conference at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Medical Center.

“It was like I was a fake person, like I didn’t really exist. I was just here,” she said of living without a heart.

Simmons, 14, suffered from  dilated cardiomy opathy, a condition in which the patient’s heart becomes weakened and enlarged and does not pump blood efficiently.

She had a heart transplant on July 2 at Miami’s Holtz Children’s Hospital but the new heart failed to function properly and was quickly removed.

Two heart pumps made by Thoratec Corp of Pleasanton, California, were implanted to keep her blood flowing while she fought a host of ailments and recovered her strength. Doctors implanted another heart on Oct 29.

“She essentially lived for 118 days without a heart, with her circulation supported only by the two blood pumps,” said Dr Marco Ricci, the hospital’s director of pediatric cardiac surgery. During that time, Simmons was mobile but remained hospitalized.

When an artificial heart is used to sustain a patient, the patient’s own heart is usually left in the body, doctors said.

In some cases, adult patients have been kept alive that way for more than a year, they said.

“This, we believe, is the first pediatric patient who has received such a device in this configuration without the heart, and possibly one of the youngest that has … been bridged to transplantation without her native heart,” Ricci said.

Transplant pioneer dies

Dr Adrian Kantrowitz, a cardiac surgeon who performed the first human heart transplant in the United States and who also developed lifesaving medical implants, has died. He was 90.

Kantrowitz died last Friday in Ann Arbor of complications from heart failure, said his wife, Jean Kantrowitz.

In 1967, Kantrowitz performed a human heart transplant three days after the world’s first was performed in South Africa.

But the transplant, on an infant who died several hours later, was only a small part of his life’s work to solve the problem of heart failure, his wife said.

Adrian Kantrowitz invented and for decades continued to improve the left ventricular assist device, or LVAD, which would later lend its name to his Detroit-based research company, L-VAD Technology Inc.

The device is designed to be permanently implanted in patients with otherwise-terminal heart failure, helping their hearts circulate blood and allowing them to leave the hospital.

Kantrowitz also invented other lifesaving cardiac devices, including the intra-aortic balloon pump.

He never retired, and “he never lost his mental alertness”, said Jean Kantrowitz. He was an avid pilot, motorcyclist and sailor.

Chinese Americans in the United States earn less than non-Hispanic Whites of the same educational level, despite having a higher educational level than the average population, a study has said.

The compilers of a 64-page report, A Portrait of Chinese Americans, analyzed data from the US Bureau of Census and the American Community Survey of 2006, science portal EurekAlert! Chinese reported last week.

The study, jointly carried out by the University of Maryland and the Organization of Chinese Americans (OCA), said there are twice as many college degree holders among Chinese Americans aged 25 and above than among the general population, but they earn less than non-Hispanic Whites of all levels of education.

“Chinese American men earn $5,000 to $15,000 less than non-Hispanic Whites with the same level of education,” the report said.

The reasons behind the discrepancy include racial discrimination, perceptions of “a lack of leadership potential”, and differences between Chinese Americans and the majority in “standing out” and “receiving recognition”, Professor Larry Hajime Shinagawa of the University of Maryland, who led the study team, said.

Also, Chinese Americans do not earn increasing incomes with each successive generation, the study said.

Members of the “1.5 generation” – those who arrived in the US aged 15 or younger – receive the highest returns on their educational achievements, it said.

This is because these people have better language skills than their parents, the first generation, and are generally better educated, Michael Lin, executive director of the OCA and member of the research team, said.

The first generation has also not been totally Americanized, and still “maintains a drive” to pursue professional careers, he said.

While Shinagawa is optimistic about the future for Chinese Americans, he said the study implies a need for the development of “constituency groups” among Chinese and Asian Americans in the workplace that can lead to recognition, protection and advocacy.

Other ways to combat the lower income levels include sensitivity training for company managers, enforcement of civil rights laws, training programs for recognizing different kinds of leadership, and a redirection of management approaches, he said.

The Nobel Prize resulted form a late change in the will of Alfred Nobel, who did not want to be remembered after his death as a propagator of violence – he invented dynamite.

Alfred Nobel’s will

Alfred Nobel’s will from November 25, 1895Five Nobel Prizes were instituted by the final will of Alfred Nobel, a Swedish chemist and industrialist, who was the inventor of the high explosive dynamite. Though Nobel wrote several wills during his lifetime, the last was written a little over a year before he died, and signed at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris on 27 November 1895. Nobel bequeathed 94% of his total assets, 31 million Swedish Kronor, to establish and endow the five Nobel Prizes.(As of 2008 that equates to 186 million US dollars.)

“ The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way:

The capital shall be invested by my executors in safe securities and shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind. The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics; one part to the person who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement; one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine; one part to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work of an idealistic tendency; and one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.

The prizes for physics and chemistry shall be awarded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences; that for physiological or medical works by Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm; that for literature by the Academy in Stockholm; and that for champions of peace by a committee of five persons to be elected by the Norwegian Storting. It is my expressed wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration whatever shall be given to the nationality of the candidates, so that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be Scandinavian or not.
”
—Alfred Nobel, Alfred Nobel’s Will

Although Nobel’s will established the prizes, his plan was incomplete and, due to various other hurdles, it took five years before the Nobel Foundation could be established and the first prizes awarded on 10 December 1901.The current size of the Nobel endowment fund is about $400 million USD.

 ”Rolex”, the predecessor of the company is “W & D” companies. German Khan from the Andean Wise, Astoria and the British Davis in 1905 in Dayton Fallon partnership. 1908, Wise Astoria in Switzerland Lajia Defen registered “Rolex” trademark, “W & D,” which replaced “Rolex.” Rolex table for the first signs of an open our five fingers palm, it said that the brands of watches entirely on the hand-crafted. After gradually evolved into a registered trademark of the crown, so as to show its watches in its hegemonic position in the field.

In the 1920s, developed the first full Rolex companies only waterproof watches. 1926, Rolex waterproof Table formally registered. Rolex watches has been designed in the style of “decency and practical, no significant vanity” by the people loved the first Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Tung Chee-hwa, with the long-term wear is a dignified and the Rolex steel table.

The company’s Web site at Rolex watches and clocks, many are outstanding in the company’s Web site, Home Music is a very 1970s in the United States popular oldies, sub-tidal pages using sound, included in the FLASH, and the commercial miracle like Rolex , the website also showed that outstanding commercial operators demeanor.