Great idea to combine a sleeping-pod hotel with transportation. I've often thought that airplanes could do the same, fitting just as many people in lengthwise as they do in the normal sitting configuration, by stacking pods on top of each other.
Tuesday, October 30, 2018
Stunt robots
Can adjust their limbs to change their rotation mid-flight and stick a perfect landing. Could be used to test a stunt before a human stunt person does it.
Astrobleme - crater left after asteroid impact
The West and East Clearwater Lake impact structures are two of the most distinctive and recognizable impact structures on Earth.
https://www.science.gov/topicpages/i/impact+structure+canada
https://www.science.gov/topicpages/i/impact+structure+canada
West and East Clearwater Lake 56°12'45.0"N 74°30'38.8"W
Manicougan Lake 51°21'39.9"N 68°41'47.8"W
There are lots more astroblemes in North America alone, but the above 2 are remarkable.
Here's a map of the craters in North America:
Cautery vs Scalpel for skin incisions?
I really don't understand why we're continuing to use scalpels for skin incision. Using the 'cut' option in cautery is faster, causes less blood loss and pain, and does not increase infections, in multiple studies.
Diathermy versus scalpel incisions in elective abdominal surgery: a comparative study.
"There was a significant increase in mean time taken for incision by scalpel when compared to cautery. Mean incision blood loss ...and postoperative pain was significantly higher in the scalpel group (p value <0.05) on postoperative day 1."
Advanced Cutting Effect System versus Cold Steel Scalpel: Comparative Wound Healing and Scar Formation in Targeted Surgical Applications.
"modern electrosurgical generators that produce pure sinusoidal "CUT" waveforms have shown reductions in thermal damage along incisions...Results showed noninferior wound healing/scar formation in skin incisions made with [cautery] compared with incisions made with a [scalpel].
Comparison of electrocautery incision with scalpel incision in midline abdominal surgery RCT. "...mean incision time per unit wound area in the electrocautery group and scalpel group was 9.40 ± 3.37 s/cm2 and 9.07 ± 3.40 s/cm2 (p = 0.87) respectively. The mean blood loss per unit wound area was significantly lower in the electrocautery group at 6.46 ± 3.94 ml when compared to that of 23.40 ± 15.28 ml in the scalpel group (p= < 0.0001, CI = 11.97–21.89). There was no significant difference in pain [or] wound infection rates…"
A comparative study to evaluate the outcome between electrocautery versus scalpel skin incision in tension-free inguinal hernioplasty: a tertiary care teaching centre experience. "...incision time was shorter in the electrocautery group (P <0.001). The blood loss was less with the electrocautery compared to the scalpel (6.53±3.84 ml vs. 18.16±7.36 ml, P<0.001). The cumulative numerical rating scale score for pain was 12.65 (standard deviation SD 8.06) and 17.12 (SD 9.49) in the diathermy and scalpel groups respectively (P<0.001). There was no statistically significant difference in wound infection and wound closure
(epithelialization time) (P=0.206)..."
Monday, October 29, 2018
How to Travel the World After You Retire | Travel + Leisure
Look for person to person experiences.
In this age of increased longevity, costly health care, and declining availability of pensions, many retirees find that their savings and investments are not adequate...Chief Financial Analyst Greg McBride of Bankrate.com...advises pre-retirees to build travel costs into anticipated retirement expenses as opposed to waiting until retirement to figure out how to pay for travel. He warns against pulling too much money from savings early in retirement...use credit cards that offer attractive rewards. “They can fund significant travel expenses..”
Peggy Goldman, president and founder of Friendly Planet Travel...“Individuals have to be realistic about themselves, what they’re capable of, and what arrangements they need. We advise them not to limit themselves in terms of selecting programs — if they feel good and can do it, they should go for it.”
“People want to interact with locals; they want to get their hands dirty in the kitchen, meet people in their homes,” she said. “That’s what is so wonderful about people-to-people experiences and optional excursions. It’s more than just visiting monuments; it’s about having experiences with people.” [for example -] visitors to Hangzhou can visit tea plantations for demonstrations on how agricultural workers select and pick the leaves. Travelers get a chance to do it for themselves and gain a new appreciation for the tea they’re drinking.
Volunteer vacations offer travel along with an opportunity to contribute skills and experience to others both domestic and abroad. Many seniors are finding these trips to be rewarding, and they can also fulfill the desire to interact with locals and broaden cultural experiences. Others enjoy “learning vacations,” traveling for workshops, conferences, cooking schools, cultural programs, or music festivals.
Sunday, October 28, 2018
Why we pee less at night
Circadian rhythm of glomerular filtration rate in normal individuals.
"...circadian rhythm for GFR with a maximum of 122 ml/min (SD 22) in the daytime, a minimum of 86 ml/min (SD 12) at night..."
Friday, October 26, 2018
How Capitalism Ruined China’s Health Care System | NYT
Medicine in China being compared to a caste system - limited availability of specialists who see 6x as many patients per day as the US, scalpers selling tickets in line to see doctors, violence in hospitals (see 6:04 onward) out of frustration with the system. And a man blindly making random home-made chemo in his living room in desperation.
Engineering The Strongest Foam in the World
Syntactic foam has microspheres inside a material to decrease density but maintain strength.
Thursday, October 25, 2018
Former CIA Chief Explains How Spies Use Disguises.
At 8:40, she says "We can make you taller, older, heavier, but not the other way."
It's also nearly impossible to go from man to woman.
Wednesday, October 24, 2018
The Quest to Make Lab Grown Meat
As with humanoid robots and animation, they're hitting a wall of the "uncanny gap" or "uncanny valley" which occurs when an imitation becomes very realistic, suddenly the differences between real and imitation become heightened, and repulsive. Because your brain is hard-wired to protect you from food that is not the real thing. Fear of clowns or coulorophobia may be rooted in the same phenomenon.
People who remember every second of their life
Something I never know about Mary Lu Henner from Taxi.
This feat of memory is astounding. MRI shows their caudate nucleus is up to 7 times larger than average.
This boy remembers almost every day, but not every day if his life.
https://youtu.be/9Bnu0UrgxBgThe Gruen effect: How IKEA gets you to impulsively buy more
At 0:54 he mentions the Gruen effect of how architecture affects buying. Paradoxically, the effect is that of drawing customers inside with elaborate displays, and yet he is considered the father of shopping malls which he designed with blank exteriors, leaving the luring windows until customers are inside.
Tuesday, October 23, 2018
The pivotal importance of giant metal presses
I had no idea the military and economic importance of having a 50,000-ton metal press, but this video lays out the facts very well.
Diesel therapy
Diesel therapy is a form of punishment in which prisoners are shackled and then transported for days or weeks.
Monday, October 22, 2018
How we pick juries - racial bias
How can the process be fair if minorities aren't represented at least proportionally with respect to the local population.
Grow a ten-fold yield of potatoes without digging, watering, or work
Nice trick - plant potatoes in a bed of old rotting hay. The hay suppresses weeds, promotes a healthy
biome of insects, and is very easy to harvest from.
The Machinists Who Keep the New York Times Running
Delightful interview with a dying breed of repairmen-machinists that keep the massive printing presses running, sometimes elbows-deep in ink.
Free Solo
Free Solo
An incredible movie about the world's first free climb of El Capitan in Yosemite.
It really does justice to capturing the determination, emotion, persistence, obstacles, and extremes of human temperament needed to achieve a pinnacle of human achievement of a world first.
When he is 3 hours into the climb, every single hand-hold and foot-grip memorized on the entire climb, and he's contorting his body and reaching for the most difficult reach of the climb, the movie has informed you of everything that goes into that moment and you really feel the tension and gripping emotion of it.
Cliff-hanger doesn't come close to describing it.
This interview covers many facets of the film.
Is that a real customer review?
Fake reviews are everywhere - how can you spot them, weed them out, and figure out what the "real" rating for a product is? This website does it for you.
This site was created by an unlikely source - a guy selling a bodybuilding supplement, who suspected his own product was getting mostly fake reviews, so he coded a website to detect and remove the fake ones.
https://reviewmeta.com/
Here's the back story:
https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=623988370
In the example provided in the NPR story, "So it went from a 4 star out of 5, with 177 reviews on Amazon. And the adjusted rating on ReviewMeta is 1.7 stars after 10 reviews."
This site was created by an unlikely source - a guy selling a bodybuilding supplement, who suspected his own product was getting mostly fake reviews, so he coded a website to detect and remove the fake ones.
https://reviewmeta.com/
Here's the back story:
https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=623988370
In the example provided in the NPR story, "So it went from a 4 star out of 5, with 177 reviews on Amazon. And the adjusted rating on ReviewMeta is 1.7 stars after 10 reviews."
The Navajo Water Lady
No running water at the majority of homes? Where in North America does that exist? Not far from Albuquerque.
Sunday, October 21, 2018
The Foreigners Invading Canada
Interesting video essay and autobiography of a 4th-generation Canadian on his small tuft of an island in the St. Lawrence, and the invasive species that changed everything.
Continuous welded rail and why it doesn't buckle or "sun kink."
Short answer: it's laid under just enough tension that it doesn't expand when it's warm out, and fixed in position so tightly that it doesn't move.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_(rail_transport)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_(rail_transport)
"If not restrained, rails would lengthen in hot weather and shrink in cold weather. To provide this restraint, the rail is prevented from moving in relation to the sleeper by use of clips or anchors. Attention needs to be paid to compacting the ballast effectively, including under, between, and at the ends of the sleepers, to prevent the sleepers from moving. Anchors are more common for wooden sleepers, whereas most concrete or steel sleepers are fastened to the rail by special clips that resist longitudinal movement of the rail. There is no theoretical limit to how long a welded rail can be. However, if longitudinal and lateral restraint are insufficient, the track could become distorted in hot weather and cause a derailment. Distortion due to heat expansion is known in North America as sun kink, and elsewhere as buckling. In extreme hot weather special inspections are required to monitor sections of track known to be problematic. In North American practice extreme temperature conditions will trigger slow orders to allow for crews to react to buckling or "sun kinks" if encountered."
After new segments of rail are laid, or defective rails replaced (welded-in), the rails can be artificially stressed if the temperature of the rail during laying is cooler than what is desired. The stressing processinvolves either heating the rails, causing them to expand,[16] or stretching the rails with hydraulicequipment. They are then fastened (clipped) to the sleepers in their expanded form. This process ensures that the rail will not expand much further in subsequent hot weather. In cold weather the rails try to contract, but because they are firmly fastened, cannot do so. In effect, stressed rails are a bit like a piece of stretched elastic firmly fastened down.
CWR is laid (including fastening) at a temperature roughly midway between the extremes experienced at that location, known as the "rail neutral temperature." This installation procedure is intended to prevent tracks from buckling in summer heat or pulling apart in winter cold. In North America, because broken rails (known as a pull-apart) are typically detected by interruption of the current in the signaling system, they are seen as less of a potential hazard than undetected heat kinks.
Saturday, October 20, 2018
Calvin cycle - equivalent of the Krebs cycle in plants
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_cycle
The Calvin cycle (also known as the Benson-Calvin cycle) is the set of chemical reactions that take place in chloroplasts during photosynthesis.
The cycle is light-independent because it takes place after the energy has been captured from sunlight.
Prop Pro of Paper
This person's proclivity and penchant is the production of a profusion of paper products that play parts in motion pictures.
Deepfake Videos Are Getting Real and That’s a Problem | Moving Upstream
Detecting and exposing deep fake videos is an ever shifting target - any new way to detect a fake can be circumvented by those who create them.
TOMATO | How Does it Grow?
At 8:44 she says they're harvesting 1.2 million pounds of tomatoes a day for two months.
Wednesday, October 17, 2018
PEA H's and T's mnemonic for pulseless electrical activity VOKKAT DAMIEXT
I hate the H's and T's mnemonic - you can never remember that last H or T...
So here's a better mnemonic - let me know if it works better for you
VOKKAT DAMIEXT
Volume (hypovolemia)
Oxygen (hypoxia)
K+ hyperkalemia
K+ hypokalemia
Acidosis
Temperature - hypothermia
Drugs (& poisons)
Anaphylaxis
MI (& myocardial ischemia)
PTE (pulmonary thromboembolus)
PTX (pneumothorax)
Tamponade
So here's a better mnemonic - let me know if it works better for you
VOKKAT DAMIEXT
Volume (hypovolemia)
Oxygen (hypoxia)
K+ hyperkalemia
K+ hypokalemia
Acidosis
Temperature - hypothermia
Drugs (& poisons)
Anaphylaxis
MI (& myocardial ischemia)
PTE (pulmonary thromboembolus)
PTX (pneumothorax)
Tamponade
Saturday, October 13, 2018
Friday, October 12, 2018
Trip ideas
Does this list give you any good ideas?
Bali
Santorini, Greece
Safari in Tanzania
Tulum, Mexico
Oxford, England
Cappadocia, Turkey
Hakone, Japan
Northern Norway
Porto, Portugal
Amalfi Coast, Italy
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Whitsunday islands, Australia
Sunday, October 7, 2018
Floating Backpack Will Reduce Weight On Shoulders And Back
Looks a lot easier to wear. Kickstarter campaign is offering them at the bargain price of about $400
Saturday, October 6, 2018
Plastic-Free Shampoo
I hope this catches on, especially in hotels. The plant-based packaging melts away in seconds on contact with water.
Order at http://www.nohbodrops.com/
Order at http://www.nohbodrops.com/
Friday, October 5, 2018
How Starbucks changed culture
This graphic, starting at 10:32, shows that their profit margin rises substantially on their larger drinks.
Does near-sightedness vary during the day or with the weather? Circadian changes myopia
I've noticed my vision can be slightly worse just after waking up, or on a rainy day. Any science to this?
Changes in length of the eye, and the strength of glasses you need, does change slightly over the course of the day.
"During at least 1 day, 15 subjects showed a statistically significant (ANOVA, P < 0.05) diurnal fluctuation of axial length, with a magnitude generally between 15 and 40 μm."
Atmospheric pressure, not so much.
"No, eye pressure is not significantly influenced by changes in barometric pressure."
It took a massive two atmospheres of pressure to make a measurable change in strength of glasses required, in people placed in a hyperbaric chamber.
"The mean IOP decreased significantly from 11.8 mm Hg in the right eye (RE) and 11.7 mm Hg in the left eye (LE) at 1 Bar to 10.7 mm Hg (RE) and 10.3 mm Hg (LE) at 2 Bar (P = 0.024, RE; P= 0.0006, LE)."
Likewise, the massive pressures working underground or in an underwater air bubble used to construct bridge foundations (a caisson) can cause a myopic shift (change in strength of glasses needed.)
High atmospheric pressure and myopic shift in caisson workers.
How many minutes to run an engine to restore the battery to the level before starting?
A few minutes, it seems, though it depends on lots of things.
How long do you have to run a car engine to charge the battery back to the point it was at before starting the car? by Glen McMillian https://www.quora.com/How-long-do-you-have-to-run-a-car-engine-to-charge-the-battery-back-to-the-point-it-was-at-before-starting-the-car/answer/Glen-McMillian?share=9a35e1bf&srid=3um4T
How long do you have to run a car engine to charge the battery back to the point it was at before starting the car? by Glen McMillian https://www.quora.com/How-long-do-you-have-to-run-a-car-engine-to-charge-the-battery-back-to-the-point-it-was-at-before-starting-the-car/answer/Glen-McMillian?share=9a35e1bf&srid=3um4T
A Star is Born
This movie contains one of those perfect cinematic moments, the turning point where Lady Gaga's character takes the plunge into the world of fame and says goodbye to her minimum-wage job. She and her coworker-friend face each other in profile, he egging her on to make the leap, and she waiting just long enough before a smile creeps across her face - a smile that says "To hell with this job," "I've no idea where this will lead but I can't wait," and "This is my shot, I'd better take it." The moment is perfectly played, timed, lit, set, and costumed - it's just one of those cinematic moments where everything comes together magically.
Wednesday, October 3, 2018
How AI could compose a personalized soundtrack to your life.
Computers composing music by following patterns from thousands of pieces, and taking cues from 30 different moods assigned to pieces.
Tuesday, October 2, 2018
Frank Abagnale: "Catch Me If You Can"
I highly recommend this documentary. It covers his life, his remorse, what he values in life. The&A session, if you don't have time for the philosophical side above, begins at 28:00, and deals with how to keep your personal information and savings safe. Passwords will soon be a thing of the past, at 56:56.
What I find especially intriguing is his unique mannerisms, which were his advantage when he was perpetuating his multiple frauds. He speaks quickly, factually, with a monotone and expressionless face, as if he's had botox.
You can imagine him being very believable impersonating various professionals.
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