Ethiopia has a rich, variable and distinguished history and landscape. Located in the Horn of Africa, it shares borders with Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya, Sudan and South Sudan. Ethiopia has claim to the oldest humanoid fossils, named “Lucy,” which were discovered in 1974 and are estimated to be 3.2 million years of age.1 The country’s…
Every so often, a major scientific breakthrough profoundly alters the trajectory of scientific research. In the 1960s, microbiologists sparked the recombinant-DNA revolution with the discovery that bacteria have innate immune systems based on restriction enzymes. These enzymes bind and cut invading viral genomes at specific short sequences, and scientists rapidly repurposed them to cut and…
Dr. Soumya Raychaudhuri of the Harvard Medical School, Boston, discusses how his interest in math led him to the study of bioinformatics in rheumatology. He addresses how big data can play a role in clinical rheumatology in years to come…
When Rodolfo “Rudy” Molina, MD, was 8 years old, a college recruiter visited his home. Unbeknownst to his parents, their son, now a rheumatologist at Arthritis Associates in San Antonio, Texas, had entered several of his drawings in a competition intended for high school students. The recruiter, unaware of the young artist’s age, was definitely…
My dear friends, we come to praise Caesar. As we march toward 2016, we ought to acknowledge the great Roman emperor’s role in creating a proper calendar. At the start of Caesar’s reign, the calendar year lasted 355 days, 10¼ days fewer than the time it took the earth to fully orbit the sun.1 Although…
On May 23, 2010, Cindy Abbott was standing on top of the world. She had spent the past 51 days climbing Mount Everest, the tallest mountain in the world, and had finally reached the summit. “I was very anxious to get off and get back down,” she says, adding that the summit is about the…
Two years ago, at the age of 102, rheumatologist Ephraim P. Engleman, MD, FACR, FACP, published a memoir, My Century, in which he detailed his personal and professional accomplishments, as well as his secrets to longevity. With his characteristic sense of humor, Dr. Engleman noted that the first secret to a long life is to…
James K. Smith, MD, believes in thinking several moves ahead. Consider your opponent. Gauge your strategy. Be aggressive when you need to be. Those are key aspects of his philosophy in rheumatology—and chess. Initiation Dr. Smith’s love of chess started after he had started his family. “I first got involved in the game through my…
Patient education has always been at the core of the nursing profession. Nurses pride themselves on being great teachers and patient advocates. When self-injectable biologics were first introduced to the market, one of the main goals was to make patients independent and put them in the driver’s seat of their own care. Yet without a…
To practice rheumatology, you’ve got to love a challenge and be prepared to navigate some twists and turns before arriving at the right diagnosis. Rheumatologist and avid kayaker William Truslow, MD, says the same qualities apply to running rivers. “The toughest part is the mental attitude—feeling that I can do this,” says Dr. Truslow, a…