Social Network

Researchers from the University of South Carolina, Columbia have charted on a “death map” of the places in the US where you have the highest chance of becoming a fatal victim of a natural disaster. The map is based on data that has been collected since 1970.  Featured in “International Journal of Health Geographics,” the map charts, county by county, natural disaster deaths that have occurred across the US with t he goal of showing which locations have an increased likelihood of people dying as a result of floods, tornadoes, earthquakes or cases of extreme weather.

According to Dr. Susan Cutter, one of the researchers involved in the project, “This work will enable research and emergency management practitioners to examine hazard deaths through a geographic lens.”

Cutter says:

“Using this as a tool to identify areas with higher than average hazard deaths can justify allocation of resources to these areas with the goal of reducing loss of life.”

“It is at this local scale where defining the deadliest hazard becomes important and emergency management officials can take action to try to reduce the number of future deaths.”

On a smaller, more individual scale you might want to use the death map to identify those regions in the US that might not be the smartest areas to move to should you be considering relocating.

You’ve probably been hearing about the woman who received the first face transplant to be done in the United States. The surgery was performed at a Cleveland clinic on a woman who had suffered severe facial trauma and had no nose or palate and required a special opening in her  windpipe in order to breathe and eat.

The name of the woman who has received the first face transplant in the United States has not been released; however, doctors say she is doing well and happy about her new face.

What exactly is a face transplant? If you’re wondering, the links below will take you to some useful resources that can help answer the question.

Human face transplant slide show

Face Transplant - Wikipedia

Face transplant patient makes an appearance - ‘I feel my lips, my nose and my mouth,’ Frenchwoman says

Transformed by a face transplant

First U.S. Face Transplant Described

You’ll soon be able to get longer eyelashes by taking the glaucoma drug Lumigan. The Associated press reports that government experts have determined that Lumigan, a product from the company Allergan “appears to be a safe and effective way to make eyelashes longer and fuller”.

If you’re African-American you might not want to get too excited at the prospect of longer lashes just yet. It seems there was only 1 African-American included in the trials that were conducted to see if the Glaucoma drug could safely and effectively grow women’s eye-lashes. As such it is not known if Lumigan will grow the eyelashes of Black women the same way it has been proven to grow the eyelashes of other races of women who were included in the trials in balanced enough numbers to determine the drugs effectiveness for them.

You

More from msnbc.com

Sam Esquibel Surgery Scar

Back in October, while preparing to remove a tumor from the brain of 3-day old Sam Esquibel, Dr. Paul Grabb of Memorial Hospital for Children in Colorado Springs made a shocking discovery. There was a foot in the baby’s brain. As Dr. Grabb removed the foot he apparently found other body parts, including what appeared to be part of an intestine. What could account for such an occurrence?

There’s an abnormality known as “fetus in fetu” where something goes wrong during a twin gestation and causes one twin to develop inside the body of another. Experts believe that is what happened in the case of Sam Esquibel. These cases are rare with only about 90 known cases; and the parts usually develop in the torso, not the brain. More on this story