Word: pump
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...beach, its gray body against the white sand. Once the chopper touched down, they discovered that Jessie had basically been drained of blood, the worst situation in a trauma. In such situations, fewer than 1% of victims survive. No medication can help the heart. "There is nothing left to pump," says Greg Smith, an emergency-room physician who had hopped onto the helicopter when he heard there had been a shark attack. "You've basically run the pump dry." The medics could well have declared Jessie dead. But Smith and paramedic Chris Warnock had kept the chopper's engines running...
...Remember the $3 gallon of gas? Pump prices have declined by 30 cents a gallon to a national average of $1.41 a gallon since their mid-May high - 16 cents in the last week alone and 13 cents lower than last summer at this time, according to the Energy Department. Natural gas prices, after hitting $10 a thousand cubic feet last December, have dropped to the $3 range. Even in California, dire warnings of countless days of blackouts this summer have not materialized - there hasn't been one since early May - and electricity prices have declined dramatically. And more power...
...course, technology has advanced considerably since then. The sophisticated pump used in last week's operation is designed to be completely implanted. Developed by Abiomed in Danvers, Mass., with funding from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, the softball-size device is charged across the skin, so there's no need for chest tubes. Its batteries are miniaturized, and its pumping chambers are lined with a specialized coating that should cut down on blood clots...
Meanwhile, doctors have had growing success with a different kind of mechanical pump, called a left ventricular assist device (LVAD), that is also implanted in the body but helps boost the heart's output without replacing the organ. In some cases the ailing heart gets enough rest on the LVAD that it no longer needs artificial support. Researchers are trying to figure out if they can nudge that process along, perhaps by using stem cells to stimulate healing...
...good news (there's always some) is limited. If you exclude energy prices, inflation is within tolerable limits. American consumers will shortly receive tax rebates, which will pump some extra demand into the system. And interest-rate changes have a "lagged" effect on the real economy, which means that they do not show results until some months after their announcement. Conceivably, the impact of the Fed's cuts is yet to be felt...