After Just One Use, Vaping Can Damage Your Blood Vessels

A lot of bad news about vaping has come out lately, and here’s some more.

A new study published in Radiology claims that vaping one time – even without nicotine – can damage blood vessels, reduce blood flow, and create dangerous toxins.

The researchers found that the heat created by e-cigs meant to turn liquid into vapor also stirs the compounds into toxic particles. They studied MRI scans of 31 healthy non-smokers before and after vaping nicotine-free e-cigs to come to their conclusions.

After the participants took 3-second drags 16 times from e-cigs loaded with tobacco flavoring and sweeteners, researchers found they had significant decreased blood flow in the femoral artery – the main artery that delivers blood to your thigh and leg.

Felix Wehrli, the study’s principal investigator, says their study defeats “the notion that e-cigarette vaping is harmless.”

“Beyond the harmful effects of nicotine, we’ve shown that vaping has a sudden, immediate effect on the body’s vascular function, and could potentially lead to long-term harmful consequences.”

The researchers observed an average 34% reduction in the artery’s dilation, and found vaping led to a 17.5% reduction in peak blood flow and a 20% reduction in oxygen in the veins.

Author Alessandra Caporale expanded on their findings in a statement:

“E-cigarettes are advertised as not harmful, and many e-cigarette users are convinced that they are just inhaling water vapor. But the solvents, flavorings and additives in the liquid base, after vaporization, expose users to multiple insults to the respiratory tract and blood vessels.”

With the recent issues sweeping the nation – 100 teens in 14 states have reported lung damage after vaping (including 14 hospitalizations and a number of deaths) – these findings are especially troubling.

Earlier this spring, another study found that flavored e-juice also had toxic effects, like weaker cell survival and increased inflammation.

The American Lung Association has joined with the CDC and others in warning care when turning to e-cigs.

“Inhaling chemicals into your lungs is dangerous. E-cigarettes are guilty until proven innocent, and we are very much in the guilty stage,” says one spokesperson.

Dr. Robert Jackler, founder of Stanford Research Into the Impact of Tobacco Advertising, has dark warnings, as well.

“Nobody knows what it does to the human lung to breathe in and out aerosolized propylene glycol and glycerin over and over. It’s an experiment, frankly. We will find out, years from now, the results.”

And since those results could be “it kills you, in time” avoiding the products altogether seems the smartest course of action.

To me, anyway.

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People Share How They Finally Stopped Never-Ending Scam Phone Calls

You know these calls. They’re selling you something about your student loans, or warning you that you’re about to be arrested, or your Social Security number has been suspended (that’s not a thing), or maybe the IRS is coming to toss you in the clink (also not a thing).

But even if you know they’re full of crap and just trying to get you to answer the phone for whatever reason, it’s so annoying to have to send those calls to voicemail and/or delete said voicemails every couple of days.

How do you get it to stop?

These 14 people have their ways – maybe try them for yourself!

14. I wonder how they mark you down in their files after that.

Yeah. Got a call from the “duct cleaning” people. I told them I don’t have ducts, I have geese… They just hung up on me and haven’t bothered me since.

13. When you’ve got more time on your hands than they do.

The thing that gets them is wasting their time. They are getting paid to make calls so the longer you keep them on the better. One thing I like to do is start a rambling story that goes no where like Grampa Simpson does on ‘The Simpsons’.

You know: “Survey? Yes, I’ve taken some surveys in my time, why, I even worked on one. Now I think it was in ’06, or was it ’07? No, it must have been ’06 because that was the Winter I crashed my Buick. God I miss that old car! It was such a beautiful shade of green like the jungle, now, I’ve been to the jungle and BOY do they have mosquitoes…”

12. I can play dumb.

Just play dumb and eat up their time.

They are playing a numbers game and don’t want to spend 30 minutes with some good that gives them nothing

In that 30 they would rather get shot down 20 times and maybe find that old lady they can trick

11. They don’t like to waste their time.

Answer the phone. Connect to an agent, mute your phone and carry on with what you were doing. They quickly take you off their diallers when you waste their agents time.

10. If you happen to be bilingual…

My friend speaks English, Spanish and Russian. He would just start switching randomly switching between languages and each language had a different personality. He would confuse them into total submission. They rarely called back.

9. Even he knew he didn’t sound legit.

Got a call from “the social security administration”. I asked for the company’s address and he paused and then said “New York, America”.

8. That’s awfully professional!

Told them that I was a member of their branch a floor above them and that they misdialed.

They said “Fuck you” and hung up. Didn’t get a call back from them for a few months.

7. Some people are way quicker than I ever would be.

I’m sure another scammer will call again since it’s just an act that all of them do, but I got a social security scam call. They told me they had found 22 pounds of cocaine in a Toyota Camry with some blood in the front seat because they always say that exact line. I responded:

“Oh my god that’s terrible!”

“So are you telling me that this was not you who left the car there?”

“No that was me but I had 30 pounds of cocaine in that car. Are you telling me that 8 pounds just went missing?”

So he was very confused and I was accusing him of stealing it, then he started swearing at me until he hung up.

Edit: Holy jesus I didnt think this would make me so popular! Thank you for the upvotes and the silver

6. Some people just don’t know when to quit.

I tried to troll a guy who was clearly calling people to get their bank account information by saying they were giving away money to help college students. He was from India and was dedicated to his job. I tried to piss him off for about 30 minutes but he kept interrupting me and I eventually told him to fuck off and hung up the phone. He kept cutting me off saying “But MY FRIEND…MY FRIEND!”

5. Even they don’t want to touch that with a ten-foot pole.

Got a call that there was a virus on my computer told them that was impossible as I throw my computer into the river so the cops couldn’t get any evidence on me. Haven’t heard from them since.

4. That wasn’t the level of cash they were looking for…

I took a call from the “I hear you’ve had an accident that wasn’t your fault” call that I get about once a week. It’s automated at first, but as soon as I said yes I got put through to someone. I spent 20 mins explaining how someone reared into my lane and crashed into me and it wasn’t my fault, at the end when they asked me for details of the damage I explained that they bent the handlebars a bit but the bicycle was mostly OK. They hung up on me and I haven’t back from them for about a month.

3. I guess turnabout isn’t fair play.

I asked them for THEIR social security and they hung up on ME. wack

2. This seems like a pretty easy trick!

I always hit the button to speak with a person or get more info, or sometimes they call with a live person to begin with. I put on my ‘sexy’ low voice and say ‘hey baby, how you doin?’. They usually hang up immediately. If not my next response to whatever they say is ‘that sounds really hot, what are you wearing?’.

Pretty close to 100% hang up and don’t call back.

1. Bonus: once you know how long the script is you can do your nails or whatever and ignore them.

I got a call, started reeling off this massive script. Finished probably after 2 minutes of solid talking, and I politely sat through the whole thing.

I paused and said “… Sorry?”

She said “again” and started the whole script again from the start.

Another 2 minute solid talk-wall later, I said “… Sorry?”

This time, there was a bit of frustration in her voice. “AGAIN” and once again did the whole 2 mins again, aggressively this time.

“… Sorry?”

“fuck this” and the call ended.

I wish reasoning with these fools was simple, but of course it’s not – and you can’t just smile and say thank you the way you do to Jehovah’s Witnesses on your porch – so these tips just might be put into action!

Have you ever managed to get away from one of these calls? Tell us how you did it in the comments!

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A Homeless Mother Went to Jail for Enrolling Her Son in the Wrong School District

You’ve heard all about the college cheating scandal in the news – a bunch of super rich people and celebrities paid to get their average kids into Ivy-caliber schools – but for most of the country, there was little surprise that the education system (higher or otherwise) is rigged to favor the wealthy.

This case, in which a homeless woman was arrested and forced to spend time in jail simply for putting her son in a public school (which, in theory, are for everyone), really drives that point home for people still unsure how wealth inequality in America works.

In 2011, Tanya McDowell was a homeless mother in Bridgeport, Connecticut, when she was charged with first-degree larceny for enrolling her son Andrew in a Norwalk, Connecticut, kindergarten class.

McDowell says that though she and her son slept in a Bridgeport apartment at night, during the day they lived in her van or visited shelters for food.

She took a plea deal and received five years in prison (she served them concurrently with a sentence stemming from charges of selling drugs to support herself and her son), but only regrets part of what she did.

“Who would have thought that wanting a good education for my son would put me in this predicament? I have no regrets seeking a better education for him. I do regret my participation in this drug case.”

McDowell isn’t alone, either, according to New York City public defender Rebecca J. Kavanagh.

“In Ohio, Kelley Williams-Bolar was charged for lying about her residency to get her child into a better school and ordered to pay restitution of $30,000. When she did’t pay it she was sent to jail for 15 days.”

Since all public schools aren’t created equal, the practice of using friends and family’s addresses to enroll children in a “better” school district isn’t all that uncommon. It’s hard to blame poor communities and communities of color for wanting access to what should be the same for everyone – especially once you learn that white school districts get about $23 billion more in state and local funding than their nonwhite counterparts.

So while people like McDowell spend five years in jail for wanting their children to have what is available to other children, wealthy folks like Felicity Huffman get off with a slap on the wrist.

Kavanagh says this type of injustice is fairly common.

“This is really just an extension of what people do to get admitted to university already – donating money to buy buildings and fund endowments. The line between legal and illegal, donation and bribe, is blurred.”

She’s also quick to remind us that, regardless of Huffman’s (and others) sentence in this latest “scandal,” McDowell and those like her have suffered an injustice.

“While there is a part of us that may feel some sense of vindication at the idea of these parents serving five years in prison because Tanya McDowell served five years in prison when she was so much more deserving, that’s not justice. Justice is for Tanya McDowell to have never been charged, convicted, or sent to prison and to have the same educational opportunity for her son as these parents have for their children.”

As for McDowell, she hopes that things will be different for others – including her own son – in the future.

“I’m not only doing it for Andrew. I’m doing it for any other parent, any other child out there that has the potential to succeed and excel at a certain level and is just being deprived, period. My son exceeded all of my expectations.”

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A Study Showed That Older Parents Still Lose Sleep over Their Adult Children

I’ve wondered if my parents still do this, even though all five of the kids they raised are grown up and out of the house.

And now I have an answer.

A study published in The Gerontologist Journal shows many older parents worry about their adult children as much as they did when they were raising them as youngsters.

It also found that there was a correlation between sleep quality and parents worrying about their adult children.

It makes sense when you think about it: when kids are raised by their parents, mom and dad are always home and around the children. It’s when the kids leave the house to go out into the world for college or a job that mothers and fathers begin to experience more worry and stress due to uncertainty and not being in close proximity to their sons and daughters at all times.

Amber J. Seidel of Penn State York, the leader of the study, said:

“I feel that many share this value, yet I think much of the socialization in our culture focuses on the family when children are younger. I seek to study topics that help us understand how family continues to be a central part of our lives throughout adulthood, and I encourage considering family-level influences in all situations.”

The study is obviously more reflective of parents in the West and in Europe, as it is more common for children to live with their parents longer in the East. In the U.S. and Europe, children are pushed toward independence at a younger age.

Seidel ended the study by encouraging parents to consider the type of relationships they have with their adult children because the level of involvement they have with their kids and how much support they offer them affects parents’ sleep cycles. The questions Seidel thinks parents should ask themselves include, ‘Are you enabling your child by rewarding lazy or destructive behaviors?’, ‘Are you trying to control your child in any way?’, ‘Or are you simply letting your adult child live their life while providing unconditional support?’

Asking and contemplating these questions can lead to a more transparent relationship between parents and adult children.

Hey, adults who are out of the house, your parents are most likely worried about you and wondering what you’re up to, so check in once in a while.

Call your mother.

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20 Interesting Signs from the Youth-Led World Climate Strike

Many people around the world admit that human emissions are slowly killing the planet via climate change, but no one seems to do anything. Scared for their futures, young people have been pushing the people in charge to not just agree, but to at least try to save us all from a fiery death.

Enter the recent youth-led global climate strike, a movement that numbered in the millions all over the globe. Participants everywhere hope their protest were heard by the UN during their Climate Summit (Greta Thunberg, a leader of the movement, shared some amazing words that made me tear up a little), and if these 20 signs have anything to say about it, these kids will be impossible to ignore.

20. It doesn’t seem like this should be asking too much.

19. I mean it takes a lot to get us out of the house.

18. Priorities, man.

Image Credit: Twitter

17. She’s walking the walk.

16. Incorporating a bit of our history lessons, there.

Image Credit: Twitter

15. Points for relevance.

Image Credit: Twitter

14. And justice for all.

13. Just a little something to think about.

Image Credit: Twitter

12. It’s so hot out you might not be able to feel this burn for much longer.

Image Credit: Twitter

11. I think this one is my favorite.

Image Credit: Twitter

10. That’s not at all romantic.

Image Credit: Twitter

9. On so many levels.

Image

Image Credit: Twitter

8. Fighting for the unborn on a whole other level.

7. A more perfect mashup has ever been conceived.

Image Credit: Twitter

6. It’s always a good time for a well-crafted pun.

Image Credit: Twitter

5. Who knew Mario Bros. would teach us so much about real life?

4. It’s quite backward.

3. My new favorite meme making an appearance.

2. I could not have bigger heart eyes for this sign.

Image Credit: Twitter

1. You are not alone.

 

It’s time to make a change, y’all. If it doesn’t start from the top, we’ll start it from the bottom. Consider looking into ways you can reduce your carbon footprint.

Are you impressed by the world’s youth campaigning for change? Are you inspired? Let us know how you plan to help in the comments!

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You Can Get Paid $770 a Month to Move to a Beautiful Region in Italy

Packing up your entire life and moving to a small village in southern Italy might sound kind of intimidating. But what if you were getting paid $770 a month to do so?

Molise, Italy, just started a campaign to pay newcomers $770 per month for three years, under one condition: You must establish a business in one of its underpopulated villages. The initiative is designed to boost Italy’s decreasing population numbers.

“If we had offered funding, it would have been yet another charity gesture,” Donato Toma, the president of Molise, told The Guardian. “We wanted to do more; we wanted people to invest here. They can open any sort of activity: a bread shop, a stationery shop, a restaurant, anything. It’s a way to breathe life into our towns while also increasing the population.”

Photo Credit: iStock

Towns must have fewer than 2000 residents to be eligible. Those towns will also receive about $11,000 to build infrastructure and promote cultural activities so that newcomers have a reason to stick around.

Photo Credit: iStock

“It’s not just a matter of increasing the population. People also need infrastructure and a reason to stay, otherwise we’ll end up back where we started in a few years,” Donato explained.

There are already some great reasons to move to Molise. The mountainous area has gorgeous, idyllic olive groves and cliffside views.

Photo Credit: iStock

The area has suffered from a massive population decline, however, as young people leave the region to pursue job opportunities elsewhere. Italy’s population as a whole is also on the decline — the number of Italian citizens fell by 677,000 between 2014 and 2018.

And that is non buono.

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This Woman Is 106-Years-Old and Has Been a Drummer for 80 Years

This 106-year-old lady is one of the most well-known drummers in the world — because she’s been doing it for 80 years.

Viola Smith was born in Mount Calvary, Wisconsin, as one of ten kids. Her drumming career began in the 1920s when she formed a family band with six of her sisters, the Smith Sisters Orchestra. She later started the all-women orchestra The Coquettes with her sister, saxophonist Mildred.

Over the ensuing decades, Viola lived through several eras of music, including jazz, swing, rock and roll and beyond.

She appeared on the cover of Billboard, played on television with the swing orchestra Hour of Charm, and played with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, among a long list of other accomplishments. She even played for President Harry Truman’s inauguration in 1949.

Viola eventually formed her very own band called Viola and Her Seventeen Drums. After that, she took her talents to Broadway to perform for the original production of Cabaret.

Photo Credit: Billboard

Now 106, Viola was still actively drumming until very recently. She even played in a band in Costa Mesa called Forever Young Band.

So how has she managed to stay active for so long? Well, Viola smoked, but only briefly. She also enjoys some wine, though she says, “I’m a drinker, but definitely always in moderation.”

Really she credits her long, healthy life in large part to her drumming, which helped her stay physically fit.

“It is very healthful; all that exercise…and I had tom-toms up here,” Viola told Syncopated Times, gesturing to above her shoulders.

What an impressive woman!

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A Corpse on a Body Farm Was Caught Moving

This can safely be filed under: Nightmare Fuel.

Apparently, corpses don’t stop moving for up to a year after death, due to the various decomposition processes they go through.

Which makes me wonder how many of those bells rang at Victorian gravesides even though the people in the coffins were, in fact, dead.

Yikes.

The research that brought you this lovely tidbit of macabre information comes from an Australian body farm (a place where scientists study how bodies decompose in order to improve forensic techniques.

In a time-lapse video containing images taken every 30 minutes over a period of 17 months, researchers saw movement for far longer than they expected to – over a year and a half in some cases. In an interview with ABC News Australia, the authors said they believe the movements were mostly the result of drying ligaments.

“What we found was that the arms were significantly moving, so that arms that started off down beside the body ended up out to the side of the body.”

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So from Obesity TV programmes I go straight onto food!!: This is an amazing "5 Stages of Decay Cookie" by Claire Ratcliffe for the special Halloween event I'm holding at Barts Pathology Museum where I work: "Delicious Decay – The Edible Body Farm!!! The event (Friday night 28th and all day Saturday 29th) will feature edibles – savoury and sweet – based only on human decay and decomposition. The point is to raise awareness for the need, in the UK, for a Body Farm (or Taphonomy Research Facility) that actually uses human remains, like the one in Tennessee. We use pigs at the moment and they're consistently unreliable. That's why I'm working with @conjurers_kitchen (amazing food artist) and Dr Anna Williams (Forensic Anthropologist) to make this incredibly realistic. We even have the scents used to train cadaver dogs and a make up artist to make you look "decomposed"! www.deliciousdecay1.eventbrite.co.uk and www.deliciousdecay2.eventbrite.co.uk (I'll talk about the 5 stages in another post ?⚰) #humanremains #decomposition #remains2beseen #ediblebodyfarm #decay #deliciousdecay #taphonomy #bodyfarm #anthroplogy

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They’ve yet to publish their study, but hope their findings will continue to add to a body of research that helps police solve murders, among other things.

“This research is very important to help law enforcement to solve crime and it also assists in disaster investigations. It’s important for victims and victims’ families, and in a lot of cases it gives the victim a voice to tell their last story.”

Just an FYI: Body farms exist all over the world, and they depend on body donations from people looking to assist science after they’ve expired.

I say you might as well be helpful. Either way, you’re just going to be decomposing.

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17 Funny Jokes About the New iPhone Announcement

Apple revealed the new design for their iPhone 11, and people everywhere are ready to fork over (literal) handfuls of cash to get their hands on one.

But…there’s still time for some pretty spot-on, pretty valid, pretty funny jokes about the latest offering from America’s fruit-shaped God, no?

I think so. Here are 17.

17. Just take my money.

16. That looks like a wasp’s nest and I am triggered.

15. But probably still without so many muscles.

14. YOU need a new phone and YOU need a new phone and YOU need a new phone!

13. I’m not even trying to keep up anymore.

12. I just don’t know how much longer I can make it, Sir.

11. IDK honestly the spider is cuter.

10. Are you sure you can’t squeeze out just a little more?

9. I’m such a liar.

8. Yeah, I’m going to need to test that out.

7. Live from Cupertino, California.

6. Yeah yeah find a new argument.

5. So many kidney jokes, so little time.

4. Trying not to yawn.

3. You know you’re gonna do it anyway.

2. It’s called combining two things people love okay?

1. Because purple come on.

I love my Apple products as much as the next person, but not a one of these tweets is wrong.

Are you in line for the iPhone 11? Why or why not?

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A Tree-Planting Search Engine Saw a 1150% Increase in Use After the Amazon Rainforest Fires

Step aside, Google. An eco-friendly search engine saw a 1150% increase in daily downloads in a single day after the Amazon rainforest fires.

Ecosia is a search engine that uses 80 percent of its profits from advertisements to plant millions of trees in Brazil, Ethiopia, and other emerging economies, Business Insider reports. The website claims to have planted 65 million trees to date – an impressive number.

Usually, Ecosia sees about 20,000 downloads per day. But recently, large swaths of the Amazon went up into flames in an urgent environmental disaster. As more people became aware of what was going on, people began using Ecosia en masse in an attempt to help combat the damage.

Photo Credit: iStock

On August 22, the company experienced 250,000 downloads in a single day, but the record-breaking moment was bittersweet for Ecosia.

“We had our team meeting and people were, on the one side, very happy because of the numbers but also very sad because of the forest fires,” Christian Kroll, Ecosia’s chief executive, told Business Insider. “So it’s both exciting and a tragic occurrence.”

The sudden burst in popularity is largely thanks to word-of-mouth. The app is frequently mentioned by Instagram and Twitter users who are spreading the word about the rainforest fires. Ecosia is now the top-ranked iOS app in Brazil.

Photo Credit: iStock

The Amazon rainforest experienced over 72,000 fires this year so far, an 83 percent increase from 2018. This is partly because of dry weather, and party because Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, has walked back a decade’s worth of environmental protections. His actions have given cover to thousands of illegal farmers and ranchers to light fires to burn down forest to create more arable land for them to use. It’s a difficult situation because many of them have no other way to earn income, but the damage they’ve done to the forest – and thus to the world – is enormous.

Christian says he was inspired to start Ecosia after learning about environmental damage during his travels to South America and Nepal.

“In my opinion, planting trees helps people and the environment at the same time,” he said. He’s right.

He founded Ecosia in 2009, but it doesn’t do all that search work on its own. It partners with Microsoft’s search engine Bing to power its search results and display ads.

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