Archive for the ‘Science’ Category:
In 1983, 
Rom Houben was 23 years old when he was involved in a serious car accident in London, England. It was a near fatal car accident that left him completely paralyzed. The doctors treated him as being in a Vegetative State Coma. For 23 years, doctors believed that he could feel or hear nothing.
Recently, Neurologist Dr. Steven Laureys performed a state of the art brain scanning tests and realized that Houben’s brain was fully functional. Even though he is still in a coma, he is what they consider Minimally Conscious State Coma. Many patients are misdiagnosed because their doctor will diagnosis them by evaluating the patient’s actions and reactions vs. performing the critical test needed to differentiate the correct diagnosis. The problem with misdiagnosing could be a matter of life and death! If someone is diagnosed as being in a vegetative state, meaning absolutely no brain function and awareness of their surroundings, then the patient’s family may decide to “pull the plug”.
Fortunately, Houben’s family had faith and believed that he might some day get better! Now he can communicate by typing on a special keyboard attached to his wheelchair and with the help of a caregiver.
Every year, about 103 patients are misdiagnosed by their doctors which is why it is very critical that doctors use the standardized brain scanning system. This machine helps determine the consciousness in someone recovering from a coma vs. just simply observing their reaction or lack or reaction to their surroundings. Just because a coma patient may smile or flinch at something doesn’t mean they are capable of repeating the same type of reaction one hour later.
Triboelectification is basically like the ’shock’ you get after you walk on carpet with your socks or touch your car after you get out. So imagine that, on a much larger scale…and then you see why NASA is hesistant to launch a rocket, even though it is a clear forecast
This static can interfere with radio signals send to or from the rocket and directly affect the safety because no data can be transmitted.
Just as a biopic of her life is released, a group of researchers claim to have found the spot in the western Pacific where Amelia Earhart disappeared on an attempted round-the-world flight in 1937. As the Discovery Channel points out, the awkwardly-acronymed The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) said it has evidence that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, made a forced landing on a coral atoll called Nikumaroro – part of the Phoenix Islands, Kiribati – and became castaways and eventually succumbed to disease, thirst, hunger, or injury.
Exhibit A, according to TIGHAR, are human bones that were recovered from Nikumaroro in 1940 by a British Colonial Service Officer named Gerald Gallagher. Sadly, those bones have been lost, but records of the discovery indicate they matched Earhart’s physical characteristics. Whatever other skeletal remains might have been on the island, though, have likely been plundered by the thousands of coconut crabs in the area.
Other physical evidence includes a “woman’s shoe, an empty bottle and a sextant box whose serial numbers are consistent with a type known to have been carried by Noonan,” as well as reports that radio signals had been picked up for several days after the disappearance that could have only been transmitted from land.
The anti-vaccination nutters are having a field day this week based on a story of a cheerleader who received a flu shot and is, at least according to reports, now suffering from a neurological disorder.
Desiree Jennings, who before the flu shot was a healthy cheerleader for the Washington Redskins, claims that she developed the disorder Dystonia 10 days after receiving her flu shot. The disorder means that among other things she can’t walk forward properly, but (and this is where it gets weird) she can walk backwards or run forwards without any issues. She also has difficulty in talking….except when she’s running that is.
The bizarre nature of her symptoms has left some people believing it’s a hoax, although doctors stress that she’s not putting it on.
Hooray for bogus holidays that no one celebrates!
Mole Day is celebrated from 6:02 a.m. to 6:02 p.m. every Oct. 23 and commemorates Avogadro’s Number: 6.02 x 1023. For a given molecule, a mole is a mass in grams whose number is equal to the atomic mass of the molecule.
For example, a water molecule has an atomic mass of 18, so one mole of water weighs 18 grams, and it contains 6.02 x 10 with 23 zeros after it molecules of water, and 18 grams of wet mole weighs the same as an avocado. But you knew that.
Fossil bones housed at a Los Angeles museum belong to the smallest dinosaur discovered in North America, scientists said Tuesday. The newly identified creature weighed less than two pounds and stood about 4 inches tall. From head to tail, it measured a little over 2 feet long, said Luis Chiappe, director of the Dinosaur Institute of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County where the fossil bones are stored.
It likely ate plants and hunted bugs during the late Jurassic period, about 150 million years ago. It was so tiny and fast that it probably darted between the legs of larger dinosaurs, researchers said. Bones of four individuals – including skull, arm and leg fragments – were discovered three decades ago in Fruita in western Colorado and kept at the museum.
Chiappe and an international team recently identified and named it Fruitadens haagarorum, which incorporates where the bones were found and the name of the president of the museum’s board of trustees, Paul Haaga.
If you don’t mind staying up late, or getting up early, you could be treated a spectacular show from outer space.
The Orionid meteor shower is expected to peak between 1:00 a.m. and dawn on Wednesday.
The shower is made up of debris left by Halley’s comet. About 30 meteors an hour are expected, and you won’t even need a telescope to see them.
Orionids appear every year around this time when Earth orbits through an area of space littered with debris from the ancient comet. Normally, the shower produces 10 to 20 meteors per hour, a modest display. The past few years, however, have been much better than usual.
