Category: Science

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A Man Finds out His Snakebite “Wasn’t That Bad”…After He Chops off His Finger

There’s a lot of information out there about how to treat a snakebite in order to give yourself the best chance to survive. And if you grow up somewhere with dangerous snakes, you pay attention when you people talk about how to handle a bite.

After being bit on the finger, an unfortunate Chinese man from the Zhejiang province thought he was doing exactly the right thing when he cut off the afflicted appendage – only to find out at the hospital that it was all for naught.

He believed the snake that had bitten him was a “hundred pacer” (Deinagkistrodon acutus), a snake that’s believed to have venom potent enough to kill a man before he can walk 100 steps.

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Venom VS Poison. Venom, in most things… and all snakes (the venomous ones), is made up of proteins, which are large and high molecular weight. It cannot travel through the body freely like many poisons and needs to go into the bloodstream in order to work. In current medical and scientific literature, the word poison is not used to define venom. There is a scientific difference for anyone who cares to read anything published in the last 2-3 decades. Yes there are poisonous snakes, many of them also venomous, but the mechanism of building, altering, and storing the different toxins is very different and so is their purpose and function. Some people might be fine with Websters Dictionary for their definition of venom, and maybe they are ok with their doctor using 1988 Encyclopedia Britannica to learn about heart surgery. Now as far as the sign goes, I think it is out of date, but the general public is not up to speed on the difference and it probably is synonymous and not a confusion for them. In time I hope the general public ever cares enough about snakes to know the difference…but it doesn't matter to most people. People with type 1 diabetes go through a similar frustration with the everyday person's knowledge of the disease and they think two very different illnesses both come from donuts. It takes people caring enough to educate others to change that.. thanks @ronan_m_k for this pic of my very venomous sharp-nosed pit-viper.

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In some parts of China, the same species is known as a five-step snake, which would make it 20x more deadly than this man believed when he took such drastic action.

So, I mean…you kind of get his reasoning (and admire his grit).

He arrived at the hospital 50 miles away, only to be told by one Dr. Yuan Chengda that “the five-step snake is not that toxic.”

It turns out that, while the snake’s venom is dangerous and can cause symptoms like local bleeding, swelling, blistering, necrosis, heart palpitations, and even death, it’s not as rapid as people believe. Also an antivenin is available and, if received in 6 hours or less, usually effective.

If the man had brought his finger, doctors at the hospital said they could even have reattached it.

According to Dr. Yuan, this isn’t even close to the first case he’s seen of someone overreacting and losing a limb.

“Some bite victims used knives to cut their fingers or toes, some used ropes or iron wires to bind the bitten limb tightly, and some even tried to destroy the venom in their body by burning their skin. When they arrive at the hospital, some people’s limbs are already showing signs of gangrene.”

Officially, the advice when dealing with a snakebite is that the “wound should not be tampered with in any way” – i.e. you shouldn’t use tourniquets, you shouldn’t “cut, suck, or scarify the wound or apply chemicals or electric shock,” and most of all, you shouldn’t panic.

Easier said than done, of course, but I’d say allowing a doctor to cut off any limbs that need cutting is probably your best course of action.

And you know, not all of us have an axe at the ready, so it’s hard to say what we might do if we did. No judgement.

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14 Crazy Things That Happened When People Got Blackout Drunk

A lot of us know what it’s like to have a drink or two and start to get slurry, but how many of you have reached that stage where your memory just shuts off?

Because if you have, you remember it. Well, sort of. See, you remember NOT remembering. Because that’s a VERY strange feeling. You could have been walking around, talking, being silly, and your memory just shut off.

That’s what happened to these 14 people and they, thankfully, lived to tell the tales!

1. Jeezus…

Photo Credit: Whisper

2. Almost Whitney Houston’d it…

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3. Well, you’re quite the asshole…

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4. Hahahaha… oh boy…

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5. Yes, sometimes it gets messy AF!

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6. That’s bound to happen…

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7. Well, that’s a win!

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8. How do you know he’s not…?

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9. At least you’re a happy drunk!

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10. Well, sounds like you spent some more time in South America…

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11. Haha, well, you weren’t wrong!

Photo Credit: Whisper

13. Yeah, I’d worry too!

Photo Credit: Whisper

13. Well… that’s one way to do it!

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14. And there ya have it! Our winner!

Photo Credit: Whisper

Do you “remember” a particularly bad blackout situation? Care to share? We totally understand if you don’t, but it is nice to get these things off of our chests.

Share what you can in the comments!

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Italy’s Schools Will Require That Children Learn About Climate Change Starting in 2020

It looks like Italy is taking a big step in the fight against global warming and climate change, and for that, we should be thankful…and we should hope that this kind of curriculum spreads across the globe.

Lorenzo Fioramonti is Italy’s education minister, and he is now requiring that, starting in September 2020, all children in his country will receive education about climate change. All students will be required to have 33 hours of lessons each year dedicated to climate change and environmental sustainability.

Fioramonti also wants to eventually make climate change education part of math and geography curriculum so students will take sustainability into consideration when they study these subjects as well. The lessons will teach students the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and will be formed with help from environmental experts.

Fioramonti said, “The entire ministry is being changed to make sustainability and climate the centre of the education model. I want to make the Italian education system the first education system that puts the environment and society at the core of everything we learn in school.”

Italy’s education minister also believes that older people need to educate themselves and play a role in this movement, so all citizens can work together toward sustainability. Fioramonti said he wants to “build a strong bridge between old and new generations around sustainable development as a social glue.”

An NPR poll found that 80% of American parents are in favor of their kids learning about the issue. Wouldn’t that be nice…?

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A 13-Year-Old Developed a Better Hyperloop for Moving Trains

Caroline Crouchley, a 13-year-old student of Garden City Middle School, is proposing a better, safer hyperloop train, building on an idea pushed by Elon Musk in 2012.

Currently, tech companies are working to get a hyperloop functioning in India, hoping to transport people between Mumbai and Pune in only half an hour. A trip like this would normally take many hours by car.

Companies developing hyperloop transportation are using designs that put people into pods that move inside low-pressure tubes. The hope is that with resistance removed, pods will be able to go very, very fast. In fact, they’re being tested running 700 miles per hour.

Crouchley’s design would not move that fast, but her system is still twice as fast as trains in use now.

Her solution involves pneumatic tubes constructed to run alongside train tracks – and according to the young inventor, it should be less expensive to build and operate than the conventional hyperloop technology. It’ll also be safer, which is a major selling point for a mass transit technology.

She told CNN, “My design can rely on 100% renewable energy, so it eliminates the need for a diesel engine or an electric motor, which makes the train lighter, so it can move faster.”

Crouchley’s innovative idea made her a finalist in the 2019 3M Young Scientist Challenge.

The major challenge with hyperloops, which put pods inside a partial vacuum tube, is the potential for collapse – if the tube breaks, the pods aren’t going to survive. But with Crouchley’s design, the train is operating outside of the tube, eliminating that danger and also making use of existing infrastructure and equipment.

It’ll work like this: a magnetic shuttle system will operate inside the pneumatic tubes. More magnets will attach the train to the shuttle, allowing the shuttle to act like the train’s engine.

How does she envision her idea moving forward? She told Fast Company, “My plans are to open-source my project to teams of engineers, scientists, and universities such as MIT and Harvard to solve the complex mathematical equations and physics required to make the idea a reality.”

Hyperloop has many critics who say it will never be practical to use, but Crouchley sees her solution as an intermediary design that has viability in the near future.

At any rate, technology usually starts with the big picture question. It’s the little steps that make the answer reality.

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This “Revolutionary” New Air Filtering Device Might Be a Big Deal in the Fight Against Climate Change

Are you listening? Good.

A carbon dioxide filtering device that can capture carbon dioxide from the air at just 400 parts per million has been hailed as a “revolutionary” instrument for tackling our climate crisis.

Sahag Voskian and T. Alan Hatton, chemical engineers at MIT, developed the method, which captures CO2 by passing air through special charged plates.

Carbon dioxide from the gas intake reacts with the electrodes in the device. Each electrode is coated with a carbon nanotubes and a polyanthraquinone compound. The device acts sort of like a battery, and as it charges, it absorbs carbon dioxide passing over the electrodes. As it discharges, it releases the greenhouse gas it has collected.

The carbon dioxide it releases during the discharge can be recycled to feed greenhouse plants, or even used in carbonated beverages.

Dr. Voskian said, “All of this is at ambient conditions — there’s no need for thermal, pressure, or chemical input. It’s just these very thin sheets, with both surfaces active, that can be stacked in a box and connected to a source of electricity.”

The biggest advantage to this way of filtering is the low energy cost: one gigajoule of energy for every ton of carbon dioxide captured. Compare that to the 1-10 gigajoules (depending on the concentration of CO2 taken in) used by alternative methods. Plus, if to expand the systems capacity, they only need to add more electrodes!

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

The study describing the new system was published in the journal Energy and Environmental Science.

The scientists have even created a company called Verdox that plans to build a plant to scale the process up for commercial use.

Cleaner air with lower energy. There’s a real future for that.

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Why Is the Sun Hot If Space Is so Cold?

The solar system is pretty extreme as far as temperatures go. At its core, our sun registers at around 27-million degrees Fahrenheit, but its surface is no slouch temperature-wise either: it’s clocks in at about 10,000 degrees.

So is it kind of weird that in outer space, away from the sun and the mild atmosphere of Earth, the temperature measures -455 degrees?

What’s really going on out there?

Let’s go over some basic physics. Heat is actually energy, radiating as an infrared wave (like light, but below the spectrum of what’s visible to human eyes) that moves from its source (ie, the sun) to…everything else. As infrared radiation comes into contact with molecules, it imparts some of its energy, causing them to become excited and heat up. But only the matter in the path of the radiation will heat up –any matter outside of the path will remain cold. Any void the energy travels through will also remain cold because there’s nothing in it to get warmer.

Consider the planet Mercury. As the planet turns and night falls, the newly dark surface plunges in temperature to 1000 degrees colder than the radiation-exposed day side.

Photo Credit: NASA

Earth, in contrast, feels warm even if you’re standing in the shade. Summer nights stay warm too. Even night during the wintertime in Canada is warmer than most other places in our solar system at night (withe some exceptions, notably Venus). This is due to the sun’s radiation causing convection and conduction.

When radiation hits molecules, the molecules pass that energy to others next to them, which then pass their extra energy on to their neighbors. This chain reaction is conduction. Areas outside of the path of radiation are warmed this way – so night stays warm (relatively speaking).

But in empty space there are fewer molecules that are too far apart to transfer energy if they are heated. Conduction, under these circumstances, can’t happen. This is the void issue we touched on earlier.

Convection, the process by which heat moves via a fluid (ie air or water), also can’t happen in low-gravity, molecule-scarce space.

Engineers at NASA takes all this in consideration when they are designing spacecraft for exploration. Out in space, probes and other equipment are exposed to temperatures either boiling hot or icy cold, depending on where they’re traveling in relation to the path of the sun’s radiation.

The closest any spacecraft has gotten to the sun was the Parker Solar Probe, which came within 15 million miles. This was only possible because of the specially designed heat shield that kept the rest of the probe cool.

Photo Credit: NASA

The ability to adjust to the rising and dropping in temperatures to the tune of hundreds of degrees Fahrenheit is a necessity for surviving the extremes of space.

Luckily, our balmy little home planet manages it for us surprisingly well.

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A Research Study Shows That Cats Are Just as Loyal as Dogs

Dog people love that pups are super loyal, always waiting by the door for their arrival, and never leaving their side. While kitty owners may feel the same way about their pets, cats’ loyalty has always been a little bit…questionable.

Not any more!

In a recent study about “secure attachment,” scientists found that dogs and cats are actually very similar.

 

Oregon State University researchers found that cats attach to their humans and affixing a sense of overwhelming security to them. The basis of this study came from a series of experiments exploring bonding between parents and children done in the 1970s. These researchers decided to test cats for similar emotional bonding.

They used 70 kittens, 30 adult cats, and, of course, their owners to test the theory.

Surprisingly, scientists found that 64.3 percent of the cats shows signs of “secure attachment” when left alone in the room for two minutes. When the owners were in the room (for the same duration of time), the cats exhibited a security in exploring the room’s surroundings and appeared more relaxed.

The other 35.7 percent showed “insecure attachment,” meaning they “shunned their owners altogether or exhibited extreme clinginess.” This is, perhaps, a way to punish their owners for leaving them in strange surroundings. Side note: these secure/insecure bonding percentages are actually very similar to the percentages that appear in both human babies and puppies.

The lead author of the study, Dr. Kristyn Vitale said,

“It’s important for owners to think about that. When they’re in a stressful situation, how they’re behaving can actually have a direct impact on their cats’ behavior. Cats that are insecure can be likely to run and hide or seem to act aloof. There’s long been a biased way of thinking that all cats behave in this way. But the majority of cats use their owner as a source of security.”

Just because cats show attachment in different ways than dogs do, that doesn’t mean they love their owners any less.

So yes, dog lovers, cats can love too.

Though they still might eat your corpse.

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A Study Shows There Are Several Reasons to Eat a Banana Every Day

People seem to have firm thoughts on bananas, both for and against, but if you’re not feeling bananas – or you don’t eat them regularly – here’s a reason you might want to start: University of Alabama researchers have recently concluded a study that found eating a banana (or two) every day can help prevent heart attacks and strokes.

They were investigating how potassium affects blood flow and artery health, and quickly found that mice who were given higher levels of potassium showed less artery hardening and reduced stiffness in their aortas.

 

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This study joins previous research that has determined potassium is good for heart health, says cardiologist Ragavendra Baliga.

“One analysis published in the Journal of American College of Cardiology in 2011 included data from 11 studies and 250,000 people. This study reported that an average increase of 1540mg of dietary potassium per day is linked to a 21% reduced risk of stroke.”

This most recent study, though, is the first to investigate and link potassium to artery health specifically, explains preventative cardiology dietician Michelle Routhenstein.

“When potassium is deficient, low levels can cause heart arrhythmias and potentially impair blood flow to the brain, muscles, and organs.”

 

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Scientists think potassium improves your heart’s function by helping to regulate your heartbeat, digest carbohydrates, and build muscle, which could combine to prevent heart disease and strokes into the future.

Though the results are promising, they need to be duplicated and tested in more animals – and humans – before we can say for sure how much help ingesting enough potassium could give us, warns Ali Webster, an associate director at the International Food Information Council.

“It certainly won’t hurt to eat potassium-rich foods every day, unless you’ve been instructed to watch your intake. But we can’t say that one specific food is going to prevent cardiovascular disease. You need to consider the whole diet as well as other risk factors, too.”

 

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If you really hate bananas, there are other foods – sweet potatoes, beans and dark leafy greens, to name a few – that can contribute to both of your potassium intake and a generally healthy diet.

Most people in the U.S. don’t eat as much potassium as experts recommend, so clearly adding a few more bananas – or these other options – to your diet isn’t going to hurt!

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Take a Break and Enjoy These 10 Interesting Facts

Workin’ 9 to 5…or later. No matter what your work schedule entails, sometimes you just need a break.

Am I right or am I right?

Yes, I’m right.

That’s why you need to take a short break, push your work to the side, and enjoy these 10 facts. That way, you’ll at least feel like you did something productive with your day.

Start your break…NOW!

1. Sweden in Japan!

Photo Credit: did you know?

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2. Life inside the crater.

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3. Are you a punny person?

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4. Smooth move, Bill…

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5. This might help out this winter.

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6. She nailed it!

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7. Sounds like paradise.

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8. Just a little late…

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9. That’s a cool fact.

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10. All kinds of keys.

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Okay, you had your fun…now it’s time to get back to work! Now!

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People Share the Life Mysteries They Wish They Could Get Answered

Life is full of mysteries. I’m talking about all kinds of things that we really wish we had the answers to.

They could be big, they could be small. They might have something to do with how the universe works, or they might be specific only to you.

AskReddit users revealed what mysteries and questions they want to know…

1. You’re not alone on this one.

“What’s in the Vatican’s secret library?”

2. Maybe a ghost?

“What the hell happened to make my dog terrified of the bed for 3 days last year.”

3. Outer space…

“I would love to know if we have in some form been contacted. Maybe some higher forces know and didn’t tell us or it just went right by us because we were unable to receive the message due to technology. I think there’s a pretty decent possibility that that has happened.”

4. I’d like to know this one, too.

“Who was the Zodiac Killer and what was his complete story.”

5. That’s a real conundrum.

“What kind of job I could actually get and enjoy and still be able to live my life comfortably. Seems to be the impossible question.”

6. Definitely a weird story.

“What happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370?”

7. Is anybody out there?

“If there is other intelligent life out there somewhere. I know that we probably will never see another intelligent life form, but it would be nice to know. It is neato some of the radio telescope stuff they are able to do now and look for atmosphere contaminants that could signal intelligent life. Would likely be the best we can do.”

8. Who did it?

“Who killed Jon Benet Ramsey? Also Madeline McCann. I really don’t think those cases will ever be solved and it drives me crazy.”

9. The real story.

“I’d like to have a true and factual account of the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth.”

10. Before and after.

“What existed before our universe exploded into existence and how is it going to end??”

11. A true crime mystery.

“Who was Jack the Ripper?”

12. One of the big questions.

“What actually happens after you die?”

13. That’s heavy.

“If there was anything I could have done to save my daughter from being murdered by her ex-boyfriend.”

14. An interesting question.

“How many times has humanity been reset by disaster.”

15. Looking for a partner.

“Who is out there that would be a good husband and want me as much as I want them. I’d move anywhere and change my job and life circumstances to find a partner.”

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