You might have heard of …
But have you heard of …
Fear of certain animals …
Duct tape is quite a useful tape and good for many things. It was even used for some repairs on by astronauts on Apollo 13 to get home to Earth.[reference]
However, duct tape is not good on ducts. It is called “duct tape”, because they colored it to match the color of ducts. But it did not do a good job of sealing ducts. This was determined in a study in 1998 by Max Sherman and Iain Walker of the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory where …
“We tried as many different kinds of duct sealants as we could get our hands on. Of all the things we tested, only duct tape failed. It failed reliably and often quite catastrophically.” said Sherman [reference]
There are many causes of sudden infant death syndrome — many of which are unknown. However one possible cause is a link between Medium-chain acyl-coenzyme A dehydrogenase deficiency and sudden infant death syndrome
“Medium-chain acyl-coenzyme A dehydrogenase (MCAD) is one of the enzymes involved in mitochondrial fatty acid β-oxidation, which fuels hepatic ketogenesis, a major source of energy once hepatic glycogen stores become depleted during prolonged fasting and periods of higher energy demands.”
Wikipedia says about MCAD deficiency…
“Prior to expanded newborn screening, MCADD was an underdiagnosed cause of sudden death in infants. For individuals who have been identified prior to the onset of symptoms have an excellent prognosis.”
Kevin Ahern’s biochemistry lecture mentions this link as well.
There is other theory that says …
“defective signaling of serotonin in the brain may be the root cause of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).” [wikipedia]
To “brick your phone” is to render it useless (like a piece of brick). It probably is a play on the phrase “break your phone”. Because essentially when you “brick your phone”, you have broken the software that make the phone runs.
This usually happens when one attempting to do some hack on an Android-based phone. There are many articles on the web with instructions on how to “hack your phone” to get it to do things that it normally would not do. For example, lifehacker.com has an article on how to tether your Android phone.
Or it can happens if one runs a misbehaved apps on a smartphone.
If you use your phone as a phone, or use it as it should be used, then the chances of bricking your phone is quite slim.
University of California Irvine neurologist Dr. Steven Cramer did a study that showed that bad driving may have a genetic basis. People with a certain gene variant performed more than 20 percent worst in learning a new driving course in a simulator than person without the gene variant.
29 subjects was asked to learn a new driving course by being placed in a driving simulator and drive 15 laps consisting of difficult curves and turns. The subjects re-did the driving test 4 days later. Of the 29 subjects, 22 did not have the gene variant and 7 of them did. The subjects with the gene variant did worst in both tests. Dr. Cramer said “These people make more errors from the get-go, and they forget more of what they learned after time away.”[1]
BDNF is brain-derived neurotropic factor. This protein plays a role in memory and communication between cells. UC Irvine article says “BDNF keeps memory strong by supporting communication among brain cells and keeping them functioning optimally. When a person is engaged in a particular task, BDNF is secreted in the brain area connected with that activity to help the body respond.”
When a person performs a motor-related task such as driving for example, BDNF is secreted to the relevant area of the brain for that activity.
However, people with this particular gene variant known as Val66Met does not secret as much BDNF. They make more errors in the initial learning and they retain less.
The study was published online in Cerebral Cortex on September 10, 2009 was titled “BDNF Val66Met Polymorphism Influences Motor System Function in the Human Brain”.
The study abstract says “A single nucleotide polymorphism for this growth factor, val66met, is common and associated with decreased activity-dependent BDNF release.”[3]
It further says “subjects with the polymorphism showed smaller activation volume within several brain regions as compared with subjects without the polymorphism.” The conclusion is that “subjects with the polymorphism showed greater error during short-term learning and poorer retention over 4 days, relative to subjects without the polymorphism.”[3]
How common is this gene variant? Almost 30% of American have this gene variant. At the time of the study, there are no commercial test for this gene. So it is hard to say who has it.
It is important to note that the study has only a sample size of 29. And the study involves motor-learning skills in driving a new course in simulator. It does not take into account driving experience and attention to driving in real-world automobiles and roads.
In fact Cramer says “I’d be curious to know the genetics of people who get into car crashes … I wonder if the accident rate is higher for drivers with the variant.”[1]
[1] University of California Irvine: “Bad Driving may have genetic basis“
[2] CNN: “Blame genetics for bad driving“
[3] Cerebral Cortex: “BDNF Val66Met Polymorphism Influences Motor System Function in the Human Brain“
Wikipedia defines “job lock” as “the inability of an employee to freely leave a job because doing so will result in the loss of employee benefits (usually health or retirement related).”
This article is dated May 2011.
Many people do not realize, but the current US health care system is limiting our individual freedom which is one of our core values. Here, we are not talking about the freedom to choose our doctors — although that is a different story. Here we are talking about basic freedom as in what jobs to take, what careers to go into, who to marry or stay married to, and even whether to stay in the United States.
Health policy research professor Karen Pollitz says the following in FrontLine’s 2009 documentary film “Sick Around America“:
“I think people do make heroic changes in their lives — take a job or keep a job that they don’t want, decisions about getting married, decisions about retiring — driven by health insurance.“
Because our health insurance system centers around employer-provided health insurance plans, people will choose jobs based on the insurance benefits they offer. In the FrontLine documentary, we saw how a large company such as Microsoft paid the bill for a complicated pre-term pregnancy that costs somewhere between half a million to a million dollars. And for those who works for Microsoft, they are lucky to have such a health plan provided to them.
However not everyone can be that lucky. What about those who work part time and do not qualify for health insurance? What about those who work for a very small company that does not offer health insurance? And what about those who work are self employed doing freelance work or running their own business? The reality is that even for those who are employed with insurance coverage, they can be laid-off and lose their health insurance at any time. Fortunately there is a Federal COBRA law where the individual can continue their coverage provided that they paid the full premiums themselves. But many can not afford these premiums and 90% do not opt for it. Even if one choose COBRA, that will last only for a limited time.
In any three-year period, one in four American’s will find themselves looking for insurance in the private individual insurance market as they transition between jobs. For all those who have to purchase insurance themselves, things can be tough or impossible as examples in the documentary had shown. That is because insurance companies practices “medical underwriting” — which means that insurance company will look through your entire health history to decide whether you are a good risk on not. If not, they will deny you coverage.
George Halverson says “I could not get insurance. I’ve had heart surgery, and so I am completely uninsurable in the private market. So it’s important that I keep my job.”
Take another example of 23-year-old Matt Johnson who had plans for a career in industrial chemistry. But when he got ulcerative colitis during the last year before college graduation, he had to put his career on hold in order to take a job at a Menards home improvement store simply because it offered the insurance coverage that he needed. He was facing medication costs of about $1000 a month otherwise. By working for a company that offers health benefits, the employee must be covered regardless of health or pre-existing conditions. If he had not taken this job and tried to purchase insurance on his own in the private individual insurance market where insurance company do not have to cover everyone, he would have a hard time finding any insurance company that would cover his pre-existing condition or the premiums would be astronomically high. He is essentially locked into this job.
There are many other cases where a person currently has a job that offers insurance but the person is unable to leave that job. Thomas Murray, President of the Hastings Center, had given the example on Science Friday NPR program where suppose a person has a child with diabetes and the person is currently in a job that offers health insurance that would cover the medical costs. Now if the person wanted to leave the job to start his or her own business, he/she would then lose that insurance coverage and it be impossible to find affordable insurance in the private individual market. Hence, the freedom to follow ones dream and to start one’s own business has been limited.
USNews article says …
“The value of staying with the same employer—and the same health plan—goes beyond cost. Job-lock is most common among people with pre-existing conditions, as they may not be able to get coverage of those conditions in a new plan.” Last year, a survey of finance and accounting workers showed that as much as 78% of them said health care benefits were “most crucial to retaining them“.
A 2008 Kaiser Family Foundation survey showed 23% took a new job or stayed at a job mainly because of better health benefits.
Deciding when to retire depends heavily on whether you will have insurance coverage from another source after retiring early. As noted by Marketwatch, many are delaying retirement in order to retain their current health plans from their employers.
California’s Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in video linked here talks about job lock. The video also shows a few small business owners talks about their stories and how their decisions have been affected by health care choices.
In a similar but parallel situation, suppose that one is married to a spouse that has health insurance coverage (probably through his or her job), then one has to think twice before deciding to divorce that spouse — since that would mean severing that health insurance coverage as well. Professor Pollitz says “because they just can’t afford to divorce their health insurance.”
Divorce360.com sites a person saying
“I have been dragging my feet on a divorce because my husband has outstanding health insurance, and because I now have what would be considered pre-existing conditions by an insurance company, that would make it difficult if not impossible to get health coverage.“
MSNMoney article describes “nondivorce” as the situation of living together for financial or health-benefit needs instead of getting a divorce.
A 2008 Kaiser Family Foundation survey showed that 7 percent got married for the health-insurance.
As shown in the Frontline documentary, realtor Jennifer Thompson, having cancer as a pre-existing condition, simply cannot find any insurance company that would cover her. And the insurance company whom she had been accepted and whom she had been paying her premiums to had retroactively rescinded her coverage. It is hard to believe that the United States, one of the richest country in the world, has these kinds of problems. She finally had decided to move to New Zealand, just one of many numerous developed countries that does not have the kind of problems that the United States has.
Why is it that other developed country can have universal health care, when United States cannot? They are able to do it because everyone is mandated to have insurance and insurance companies cover everyone, thereby pooling the risk.
The United States have made similar attempts. Five states (New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maine and Vermont) require that insurance companies cover everyone and can not deny anyone coverage. But when individuals only starts buying insurance when they start getting sick, insurance premiums increase to three times higher than in other states that allow medical underwriting. Some insurance companies stopped doing business in these states that require universal coverage.
So in 2006, Massachusetts mandated that everyone must purchase insurance so that insurance companies can pool the risk by covering both the healthy and the sick. Even so, the large premiums can still be a problem for many. The Abramses is a family of four in Massachuesetts with annual income of $63,000. This is too high to qualify for government subsidies. And they find it difficult to afford to buy insurance which costs around $12,000 a year.
So it is not a easy problem to solve. As of the time of this writing in November 2009 the United States government is still busy working on a the health care reform bill. Its citizens are waiting to see if a bill for health care reform gets past this year.
You know that social networks have become a dominant part of our society when requests for emergency help are being sent through Facebook and Twitter. In one case, two Australian girls aged 10 and 12 was trapped in a storm drain. They had a mobile phone where updated their Facebook status of their situation. Fortunately one of their “Facebook friend” was online at the time and called for help. If they had a mobile phone why didn’t they called for help themselves?
In another case a man use Twitter to report “Need a paramedic on corner of John Wesley Dobbs and Jackson st. Woman on the ground unconscious. Pls ReTweet.” [see reference] Some of his twitter followers saw his tweet and called emergency help. Why hadn’t he used his phone and make the call instead of tweeting? The man’s reasoning was that his cell phone’s battery was running low and he didn’t want the call dropped while on hold.
Although both cases turned out well, it is not standard nor recommended practice to use social media to request emergency help. As stated by the firefighter in the first story, “It seems absolutely crazy that they updated their status rather than call us directly. We could have come to their rescue much faster than relying on someone else being online, then replying to them, then calling us.” [see reference to news article]
It is unclear as to how dangerous the girl situation was. Perhaps they were not in eminent danger. And it is also unclear whether the girls knew the telephone number for emergency services. That would have been a phone call to 000 in Australia — the equivalent of 911 emergency call in the United States. If the girls had a netbook instead of a mobile phone, then perhaps they would not have been able to make the call. However it does appears that they did have a mobile phone.
Both incidents occurred in 2009 and at the present time of this writing, using social network to request help is not what most people would typically do — at least not yet. That is why the two stories are still considered newsworthy.
In another incident, a person found himself in a public restroom stall without toilet paper. He tweeted his predicament and got toilet paper in 20 minutes from a twitter user.[ref]
Titled Great Crawl of China, DailyMail reports of an 11-day traffic jam in August 2010 that is 60 miles long in China involving thousands of motorists, some of which played cards, take turns at the wheel, or sleeping.
400 police was dispatched to keep road rage in check. Vendors set up stalls to sell goods and food at inflated prices.
This was dubbed as the “world’s longest traffic” jam at the time by many reporters.
Which way are the faces on the US coins facing? To the left or to the right?
The penny and the dollar coins are the only coins where the profile of the face is pointing right. All other coins (including the half-dollar coin) faces left. See coin pictures on Wikipedia.
Now you know.
According to DailyMail in August 2010, linked here is the world’s toughest sudoku at the time.
It was created by Dr. Arto Inkala, an environmental scientist with a doctorate in applied mathematics. It was generated by a computer program that he devised. The puzzle has only one solution and can take someone 3 days to solve by logic.
The article says …
“So its difficulty – and frustration factor – lies in the number of mental leaps needed to complete each square.
Like chess, those trying to solve it will have to think several moves ahead. Many exasperating deadends have also been built in.”
You can play sudoku online here.