["Literally torn apart by coughing"].

The present case reports on a 53-year-old patient with severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and acute pneumonia who complained of massive right-sided chest pain and hemoptysis after a severe coughing fit. To the authors' great surprise, further clinical and radiological investigations revealed a rupture of the right intercostal muscles caused by the coughing fit, with herniation of parts of the right lower lobe of the lung down to the subcutaneous and below the M. latissimus dorsi.

Methodological troubles as problems and phenomena: ethnomethodology and the question of 'method' in the social sciences.

Across the disciplinary frontiers of the social sciences, studies by social scientists treating their own investigative practices as sites of empirical inquiry have proliferated. Most of these studies have been retrospective, historical, after-the-fact reconstructions of social scientific studies mixing interview data with the (predominantly textual) traces that investigations leave behind. Observational studies of in situ work in social science research are, however, relatively scarce.

Patients' uses of information as researchable domains of social practice.

In this article we argue that research into information for patients has to extend beyond an evaluation of particular information resources to studies of how those resources are engaged with, made sense of and used in practice. We draw on empirical data collected in the course of a study of a patient information resource designed for breast cancer patients in Liverpool and Newcastle in order to demonstrate the limitations of a restricted focus on information resources alone - namely, that it does not take into account the specific ways in which information is incorporated within what patients do as the grounds of 'further inference and action'. Our interest is less in discussing the strengths and weaknesses of this particular resource than in explicating some neglected aspects of the commonplace ways in which patients 'work' with information.

War-making and sense-making: some technical reflections on an instance of 'friendly fire'.

In this paper we analyse a 'friendly fire' incident from the second Gulf War and the controversy which came to envelop it during a coroner's inquest in 2007. Focusing on the cockpit video of the incident that was leaked to the media during that inquest, we examine what the military and civilian investigators were involved in reconstructing: the incident as it unfolded in real time. Our analysis is grounded in a praxeological perspective that draws on and links ethnomethodological studies of work, research into 'normal' accidents, disasters and risks, and recent ethnographies of the military.

Incentives for biodefense countermeasure development.

Therapeutics and vaccines are available for only a fraction of biological threats, leaving populations vulnerable to attacks involving biological weapons. Existing U.S.

Comparison of left and right ventricular volume measurement using the Simpson's method and the area length method.

Purpose: To compare ventricular volume measurement using a volumetric approach in the three standard cardiac planes and ventricular volume estimation by a geometrical model, the Area-Length method (ALM).

Materials And Methods: Fifty-six healthy volunteers were examined (27 males, 29 females) on a 1.5T MR-unit with ECG-triggered steady state free precision (SSFP) Cine-MR sequences and parallel image acquisition.

Improving performance of HVAC systems to reduce exposure to aerosolized infectious agents in buildings; recommendations to reduce risks posed by biological attacks.

The prospect of biological attacks is a growing strategic threat. Covert aerosol attacks inside a building are of particular concern. In the summer of 2005, the Center for Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center convened a Working Group to determine what steps could be taken to reduce the risk of exposure of building occupants after an aerosol release of a biological weapon.

Universal influenza vaccination: the time to act is now.

Annual influenza epidemics create a significant public health burden each year in the United States. That influenza continues to pose a public health threat despite being largely preventable through vaccination is indicative of continuing weaknesses in the U.S.

Lies, damned lies and statistics? Reliability and personal accounts of smoking among young people.

Smoking remains a major problem among young people in Europe. However, within the research community examining the issue, debate continues about the best way of assessing the extent of that problem. Questions have been raised about the extent to which existing techniques for generating statistical representations of patterns of youth smoking can address a range of problems connected with identifying, accounting for and correcting unreliable self-report smoking data.