June 29, 2013

A tiny balloon inserted into dangerously clogged arteries at the tip end of a long tube is saving lives by sweeping away the blood clots. A 29-year-old resident in surgery invented the device…. It has been used on 22 patients at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati. Dr. Thomas J. Fogarty, now at the University of Oregon Medical School, originated the new … balloon-catheter technique….  A small incision is made either in the groin or other location nearest the clot, and the tube is inserted as far as i

The periodic table, which arranges elements based on chemical behavior and physical properties, is a triumph of science. Yet the first table, developed in the late 1860s, was riddled with gaps created by undiscovered elements.

By the time researchers recognized in 1913 that elements should be arranged by atomic number (the number of protons in their nuclei) rather than by atomic weight, only seven gaps remained in the list of naturally occurring elements. Chapter by chapter and element by element, Scerri, a historian of scien