Quadcopter athletics

These quadcopters throw a ball, move as if they're in a viscous fluid, or respond to hand gestures.

Reversal neuromuscular blockade nmb rocuronium

Two competing ideas here. On the one hand, a small number of patients given rocuronium will have prolonged blockade, so you need to reverse all patients to make sure you catch the ones with minimal residual blockade. However, the second paper shows that patients whose rocuronium has nearly worn off can actually be paradoxically *weakened* by a dose of reversal. So you're between a rock and a hard place.

Reversal of residual neuromuscular block with neostigmine at one to four hours after a single intubating dose of vecuronium.
Caldwell JE. Anesth Analg. 1995.

The purpose of this study was to measure the degree of residual neuromuscular block at different times after a single dose of vecuronium, and to evaluate the effectiveness of two different doses of neostigmine in antagonizing this residual block. Train-of-four (TOF) ratios were examined for up to 4 h after a single dose of vecuronium, 0.1 mg/kg, in 60 patients during nitrous oxide/isoflurane/fentanyl anesthesia. The effect of neostigmine, 40 micrograms/kg, was studied at 1,2,3, or 4 h. The effect of neostigmine, 20 micrograms/kg, was studied at 2 or 4 h after the vecuronium. Before neostigmine administration, the TOF ratio was less than 0.75 in 17 patients (including one patient at 4 h). Neostigmine produced an increase in TOF ratio in 52 patients and a decrease in 8. The TOF ratio decreased after neostigmine only, at 2,3, or 4 h after vecuronium, when the TOF ratio was > or = 0.9 and when neostigmine 40 micrograms/kg was administered. One patient, at 1 h, had a TOF ratio of 0.00 and this did not reach 0.75 until 57 min after neostigmine, 40 micrograms/kg. There was a high incidence (50%) of adverse cardiovascular effects after both doses of neostigmine. In making the decision as to whether neostigmine should be administered, the risk to the patient of residual neuromuscular block must be balanced against the adverse cardiovascular effects of the neostigmine.

PMID 7762847
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7762847

Neostigmine/glycopyrrolate administered after recovery from neuromuscular block increases upper airway collapsibility by decreasing genioglossus muscle activity in response to negative pharyngeal pressure.
Herbstreit F, et al. Anesthesiology. 2010.
BACKGROUND: Reversal of residual neuromuscular blockade by acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (e.g., neostigmine) improves respiratory function. However, neostigmine may also impair muscle strength. We hypothesized that neostigmine administered after recovery of the train-of-four (TOF) ratio impairs upper airway integrity and genioglossus muscle function.

METHODS: We measured, in 10 healthy male volunteers, epiglottic and nasal mask pressures, genioglossus electromyogram, air flow, respiratory timing, and changes in lung volume before, during (TOF ratio: 0.5), and after recovery of the TOF ratio to unity, and after administration of neostigmine 0.03 mg/kg IV (with glycopyrrolate 0.0075 mg/kg). Upper airway critical closing pressure (Pcrit) was calculated from flow-limited breaths during random pharyngeal negative pressure challenges.

RESULTS: Pcrit increased significantly after administration of neostigmine/glycopyrrolate compared with both TOF recovery (mean ± SD, by 27 ± 21%; P = 0.02) and baseline (by 38 ± 17%; P = 0.002). In parallel, phasic genioglossus activity evoked by negative pharyngeal pressure decreased (by 37 ± 29%, P = 0.005) compared with recovery, almost to a level observed at a TOF ratio of 0.5. Lung volume, respiratory timing, tidal volume, and minute ventilation remained unchanged after neostigmine/glycopyrrolate injection.

CONCLUSION: Neostigmine/glycopyrrolate, when administered after recovery from neuromuscular block, increases upper airway collapsibility and impairs genioglossus muscle activation in response to negative pharyngeal pressure. Reversal with acetylcholinesterase inhibitors may be undesirable in the absence of neuromuscular blockade.

PMID 20980910
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20980910

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NYTimes.com: With G.M.O. Policies, Europe Turns Against Science

Great article. I think the sentence that sums it up is  "a historic injustice perpetrated by the well fed on the food insecure""

I'm enjoying the juxtaposition between a desire for scientific advising on climate change and lack thereof with GMOs. Sent by mfmaster@gmail.com: Opinion With G.M.O. Policies, Europe Turns Against Science By MARK LYNAS An irrational phobia of genetically modified crops is causing real harm. Or, copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://nyti.ms/1R4l6pM

Amazing beatboxing

https://youtu.be/1FZ06eJGyoE

Fun with a capella

This one took months, including one day when his voice went incredibly low.


This team does it all on a single take for each person. (per the description)

femtosecond photography

watch light bathe an object like ripples spreading on a pond. 

https://youtu.be/mfgsQX78hg8

GravityLight: lighting for a billion people

A $5 light source for the third world, powered by lifting a bag of rocks.

http://youtu.be/1dd9NIlhvlI

Masssive metal shredder documentary

This shredder loses a ton of its own metal every day in grinding up steel into tiny handfuls of scrap. (11:25)

Self driving cars

Soon we'll have self driving cars. Have you seen how far this technology has advanced?
The stumbling block has been the conflict between human drivers and a vehicle that strictly flows the letter of the law. NY Times on driverless cars
Here's an owner showing how his car automatically stays in the lane.

http://youtu.be/zY_zqEmKV1k
Here's a customer being given a demo of a self-parking car, so you can see what it's like to park for the first time.

http://youtu.be/4yJcTQrSAs0
Here's a TED talk on developing the driverless technology. Gets most interesting at 7:51

http://youtu.be/tiwVMrTLUWg
Here's another presentation on the challenges of driverless systems...predicting what unpredictable humans are going to do. Doesn't get interesting until 5:24 A google rep entreats a city council to let them test their self-driving vehicles on the roads in Austin. At 8:25, she goes through some unusual situations a self-driving car has to recognize and navigate.

http://youtu.be/br7dV9irIb8

Here's a test model Mercedes going through the driverless paces in real traffic

http://youtu.be/VDwMhSobaOg
Here's a Mercedes concept car showing off for reporters.

http://youtu.be/8aEWHdduPwc

Elon Musk describes the autopilot technology in a Tesla. Skip to 6:31

http://youtu.be/aBYnj10wzbw

Here's a driver in his own Tesla showing the currently-enabled portion of autopilot, the cruise control that stops and starts the vehicle behind cars in front in city traffic.

http://youtu.be/PcwObeGB_mU 

Here's a test of 3 automatic braking systems both against aspired vehicle and a slow vehicle. http://youtu.be/PzHM6PVTjXo Monthly updates on the google project at
http://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/
http://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/reports/

Shaper Origin - How It Works

I found this intriguing, and symbolic of an evolution in hand tools. A cutter tool makes micro adjustments to your hand movements to trace a design pattern perfectly. Estimated to cost $1500, it would be a lot cheaper than alternatives for cutting a shape drawn on a computer. 

The first video explains the basics, the second one shows the resulting cut object.

http://youtu.be/jxQ_NH4bj9o

http://youtu.be/eoSYjWN2CJ0

A Safer, Cleaner Nuclear Reactor | Popular Science

I can't stop reading about this startup and all the advantages of a molten salt nuclear reactor. It takes waste uranium, and recovers the vast amount of energy left over in it and (in so doing) turns it into far safer waste material. The reactor is "walkaway safe" in that if everything fails it chemically shuts itself down with no intervention. The full-scale reactor makes electricity cheaper than coal.
http://www.popsci.com/leslie-dewan-and-mark-massie-are-reviving-nuclear-dream
http://www.transatomicpower.com/

"Traditional nuclear power plants, however, come with two inherent problems...threat of a meltdown...and the fuel must be manufactured in long rods, each encased in a thin metal layer, called cladding...Dewan and Massie’s design seems to solve both problems at once."..."To explain the second trick—modifying the reactor to run on nuclear waste—Dewan explained a key subtlety of nuclear physics: a neutron can only split an atom if it is moving at the right velocity, neither too slow nor too fast. Imagine cracking eggs: if you bring the egg down too softly on the lip of a mixing bowl, it will not break. In the bizarre world of atomic physics, the egg will also fail to break if struck too hard."
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/a-new-way-to-do-nuclear
"although there were hard problems left to solve...in 1973, when the program was defunded, it was “in spite of the technical success of the MSRE.""..."One of the main reasons funding for the project was stopped...is that the breeder reactor wasn’t a good source of plutonium...for use in a nuclear weapons program. Today, the lack of a weaponization potential is a selling point, not a showstopper."
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/is-nuclear-power-ever-coming-back/373315/


http://youtu.be/4UXXwWOImm8

A related discussion/tour of salt-based nuclear reactors. This documentary has blunt and choppy editing, but contains some rare and interesting interviews with the octagenarians who worked on the original project and if you pay attention it actually follows a thread explaining a lot about the reactors.

https://youtu.be/xIDytUCRtTA

How do they do it - Ikea

Massive warehouse is 1km long and 23 stories high.

http://youtu.be/fGFB1wAFmwo

http://youtu.be/E_y_PuNdm7E

Cool inventions - streamlined wheelchair etc.

Ferrari Factory Tour

Beautiful photography

http://youtu.be/z6n1lEHCFM0

Animate your coloring book

From coloring book to animated 3-D character on your screen takes a surprising amount of computing.

http://youtu.be/SWzurBQ81CM

How It's Made Mine Truck Engine Rebuild

Rebuilding this gigantic engine takes 700 man hours. It seems like they're saying that they grind some parts down (like the piston arms) to take slightly larger components in the rebuild. I thought that would throw off the balance of the camshaft, but maybe they account for that in reprinting the camshaft also.

http://youtu.be/kULbi1zckXo

Persistence of vision

Interesting discussion of persistence of vision. I can remember hearing as a young boy that persistence of vision was more pronounced for red light. We were looking at flashing red lights for bicycles.

http://youtu.be/_FlV6pgwlrk

How It's Made: Bicycle Tires

More interesting than most in the series. A process includes a surprising number of handmade steps.

http://youtu.be/gm3JJW9wjA0

Dumping slag at Bethlehem Steel in 1994

Wow, that's an impressive amount of energy it takes to make steel.

http://youtu.be/zhJF_hTJ2Rw

It's actually quite a sight as it trickles down.