Links for 2006-12-29

• Top Five Nanotech Breakthroughs Of 2006 - Forbes.com
• City Drops Plan to Change Definition of Gender - New York Times
  New York City's Board of Health unexpectedly withdrew a proposal yesterday that would have allowed people to alter the sex on their birth certificates without sex-change surgery.
• Parrots Have Colonized the Wilds of Brooklyn - washingtonpost.com
  Thought to be long-ago escapees from a container at John F. Kennedy International Airport, their ranks replenished by unauthorized releases from pet shops...
• Flight Patterns -- Animation
• NEJM -- An Intervention to Decrease Catheter-Related Bloodstream Infections in the ICU
  An evidence-based intervention resulted in a large and sustained reduction (up to 66%) in rates of catheter-related bloodstream infection that was maintained throughout the 18-month study period.
• Low-Tech Measures Slash Catheter-Related ICU Infections - CME Teaching Brief® - MedPage Today
• Dialysis in N.Y. Lags as Diabetes Ruins Kidneys - New York Times
  Newly released patient data show that people who receive their dialysis from a national chain generally fare better than those treated by an independent provider.
• Clinical Cases and Images - Blog: Interesting Medical Links
• Amazon.com: Best of 2006: Books
• Music denied -- shoppers overwhelm iTunes - CNN.com
  Swarms of online shoppers armed with new iPods and iTunes gift cards apparently overwhelmed Apple's iTunes music store over the holiday, prompting error messages and slowdowns of 20 minutes or more for downloads of a single song.