Category: Science

Posted on

13 Game-Changing Scientific Discoveries Everyone Needs To Know About

I fucking love science. Because science can help us create things that seem like magic, but they’re real and they usually help humanity.

Recently a reddit thread asked the following question: What are some recent scientific breakthroughs/discoveries that aren’t getting enough attention? Of course, reddit users didn’t disappoint with their knowledge of all those things we haven’t heard about, but need to.

So check out these 13 discoveries and have faith in science. Because it’s provable and actually helps us all.

Amen.

1. Carbon Dioxide Flakes?

That we have figured out how to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere and now, very recently, how to turn it into solid flakes of carbon again. And not just under higly specific and expensive lab conditions, this process is apparently scalable.

We still need to curb emissions but this does flip the equation quite a bit regarding global warming, allowing us to put some of the toothpaste back into the tube so to speak.

Coupled with wind and solar energy, I predict this will become a major industry by mid-century, and very pure carbon an abundant material.

2. New killer whales?

Don’t know if anyone has pointed this one out… but pretty certain scientists have discovered a new species of orcas that live in sub-Antarctic waters.

They are calling it the “Type-D Orca”… pretty cool looking animals.

More rounded heads… smaller white eye patches… taller, narrower dorsal fins…

Being a soon to be marine biology grad, this excites me!

3. MDMA helping PTSD?

If the final trials go well (they are predicted to and the previous trials have done), MDMA-assisted psychotherapy will soon be an FDA-approved treatment for PTSD.

It is administered in a couple of doses over a few weeks and has lifelong effects.

The group doing this research got FDA Breakthrough Therapy status for it a few years ago and have been carrying out the phase 3 trials since early last year.

They were doing research into the same thing in Israel and it just got approved for compassionate use for PTSD in Israel this month.

Organization is called MAPS and they do some really interesting work.

4. Gluten-free?

There’s a good chance there will be a cure for celiac disease within the next 10 years.

There’s currently an active and ongoing clinical trial where participants (with diagnosed celiac) are getting infusions that will ultimately reverse the autoimmune response a person with celiac has when they consume gluten. It’s still far from complete, but we are closer than we’ve ever been to curing celiac disease.

**The clinical trial is taking place in Cleveland, Ohio. I was asked to be a part of it but unfortunately I just don’t have the extra time. If anybody local wants more information please message me and I can get you in contact with one of the researchers!

5. Skin guns?

Pretty recently they started doing tests for an extremely mobile skin grafting machine. It uses a kind of hydrogel out of the patient’s own skin, and scans the area of the burn then just prints out the skin.

Also, I saw a video a while ago about a guy who had a solution of skin cells airbrushed on the burn (mostly 2nd degree, IIRC). In 3-4 days he was healed with no scarring. The skin gun: https://youtu.be/eXO_ApjKPaI

6. Chemo that doesn’t poison you?

My job is coming came out with a drug that reduces the damage chemotherapy does to the body and helps regenerate blood cells faster, allowing for stronger doses to be administered and treatment scheduled to be reduced heavily.

This allows doctors to treat cancer more aggressively.

7. Bionic parts?

You can get hands and feet that are pretty close to the actual thing that operate by feeling the muscles that remain.

We will soon be long gone from the days of military style hooks and lumps of solid plastic.

8. Mental health issues caused by inflammation?

One of the more recent theories in psychiatry gaining popularity (although it was acknowledged decades ago) is the role of inflammation and the immune system in mental illness. There are studies showing that in schizophrenia and other psychotic conditions, inflammation attacks the brain. Some of the damage by inflammation might be irreversible, so the hope is that early intervention could prevent chronic schizophrenia. Trials have been attempted with anti-inflammatories like fish oil, with mixed success.

The role of inflammation has been extended to multiple mental illnesses, like depression, with raised inflammatory markers and other evidence being a common finding. Ultimately mental illness is multifactorial, and the causes are often biological, psychological, and/or social. So we can’t reduce something so complex and heterogenous to just an action by the immune system. But it has gained some excitement in the field because there could be people out there, for example, with schizophrenia for whom one of the primary causes is immune system dysregulation, and researchers are racing to find a prevention.

9. Diabetes no more?

They’re getting closer to a cure for type 1 diabetes. There’s already multiple people who have been cured with no need for insulin for years now after a clinical study

Here is the man that’s been cured: https://www.cityofhope.org/breakthroughs/rose-parade-diabetes-patient-roger-sparks

Here is a good breakdown of what they found in 2018: https://www.cityofhope.org/breakthroughs/wanek-project-to-cure-type-1-diabetes-18-months-later

And this is the latest new on the study: https://www.cityofhope.org/breakthroughs/study-by-diabetes-expert-describes-promising-type-1-treatments

10. New physics?!

Astronomer here!

Most of you have heard that the universe is expanding. Astrophysicists believe there is a relationship between the distance to faraway galaxies and how fast they are moving from us, called the Hubble constant.

We use the Hubble constant for… just about everything in cosmology, to be honest. This isn’t crazy and has been accepted for many decades.

What is crazy is, if you are paying attention, it appears the Hubble constant is different depending on what you use to measure it!

Specifically, if you use the “standard candle” stars (Cepheids and Type Ia supernovae) to measure how fast galaxies are speeding away from us, you get ~73 +/- 1 km/s/Mpc.

If you study the earliest radiation from the universe (the Cosmic Microwave Background) using the Planck satellite, you get 67 +/- 1 km/s/Mpc. This is a LOT, and both methods have a lot of confidence in that measurement with no obvious errors.

To date, no one has come up with a satisfactory answer for why this might be, and in the past year or so it’s actually a bit concerning. If they truly disagree, well, it frankly means there is some new, basic physics at play.

Exciting stuff! It’s just so neat that whenever you think you know how the universe works, it can throw these new curveballs at you from the most unexpected places!

11. Glad + Metal = ?!

Earlier this month, scientists were able to successfully weld glass and metal together using ultrafast (on the order of picoseconds, which are such a short unit of time that compared to it, a full second might as well be 30,000 years) laser pulses.

This hasn’t been successfully done before due to the very different thermal properties of glass and metal.

This is actually a pretty big breakthrough in manufacturing and could lead to stronger yet lighter materials.

12. Special K treats depression?

The FDA just approved ketamine as an antidepressant for treatment-resistant depression in the form of esketamine as a nasal spray.

It’s of the few unique and hopeful approaches to treatment-resistant depression that we’ve seen in years—some stats put the rate of recovery as high as 80%.

This doesn’t give you full recovery, but alleviation at least.

13. We’re still discovering lost history?

Göbekli Tepe – ruin discovered in Turkey that dates back to 11000 BCE, or further.

This throws a massive wrench into our understanding of what people were capable of at that time, and hints at advanced civilizations having likely existed long before we thought they did.

It has also only been about 10% excavated.

Also…

I’ve actually read some articles over the past few weeks about archaeologists using LIDAR technology to uncover Mayan ruins, and they’ve found that Mayan civilization was much more extensive than originally assumed.

At its height, its now believed that its population may have numbered near 15 million citizens, and that they engaged in extensive trade with their neighbors to the North and South; these LIDAR scans have revealed evidence of vast cities, farmlands and roadways. And this was all without any pack animals or wheeled carts.

Well, look at what science keeps doing for us!

Believe in science, folks. It always comes through eventually.

The post 13 Game-Changing Scientific Discoveries Everyone Needs To Know About appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

The Incredible Story of Elizebeth Friedman, One of America’s Best Codebreakers

Elizebeth Smith Friedman (spelled that way by her mother, who reportedly disliked the name ‘Eliza’) was born the youngest of 9 children in 1892. From a young age it was clear the girl was bright, displaying an impressive talent for languages. She wanted to go to college, so badly that she borrowed the money from her father at a 6% interest rate when he refused to pay for her schooling outright.

She finished school at Hillsdale College in Michigan, earning a degree in English Literature while also studying German, Greek, and Latin and discovering a love for Shakespeare that would last the rest of her life. It turned out that a career in education wasn’t for Elizebeth, who grew bored and quit her job as a principal before traveling to Chicago in 1916.

Photo Credit: Public Domain

While there, she visited the Newberry Library, where Shakespeare’s First Folio was on display, and she ended up with a job at a nearby research facility, Riverbank. It was run by eccentric George Fabyan and already employed Shakespeare scholar Elizabeth Wells Gallup, who was working to prove that Sir Francis Bacon actually wrote Shakespeare’s plays.

Gallup was in need of a research assistant, and our Elizebeth was happy to take the job. She worked on a cipher that Gallup claimed was hidden in Shakespeare’s sonnets that proved they were written by Bacon, but perhaps more auspiciously, she met, fell in love with, and married geneticist William Friedman while there. A month later, the United States entered World War I.

Riverbank was one of the first institutes in the country to focus on codebreaking, or cryptology, and was essential in the early days of the war. It would transform both of the Friedman’s lives, with William becoming one of the biggest names in cryptanalysis (a word he coined himself) while his equally-as-talented wife was often deliberately kept from the spotlight.

Photo Credit: Public Domain

“So little was known in this country of codes and ciphers when the United States entered World War I, that we ourselves had to be the learners, the workers, and the teachers all at the same time,” wrote Elizebeth in her memoir.

One of their more famous wartime accomplishments actually involved cracking a code for Scotland Yard – a trunk of mysterious, coded messages turned out to contain the secrets behind the Hindu-German Conspiracy, in which Hindu activists living in the United States were shipping weapons to India with German assistance.

The resulting trial was one of the largest in U.S. history (at the time) and ended sensationally as a gunman who believed one of the defendants had snitched opened fire in the courtroom.

After the war, the Friedmans moved to Washington D.C. and continued working for the military full-time. Elizebeth stayed home for a time to focus on raising the couple’s two children, but she returned to work for the Coast Guard in 1925 when they asked for help on Prohibition-related cases. There, she proved to be an invaluable asset, and was called to testify in a 1933 trial following the bust of a million-dollar rum running operation in the Gulf of Mexico and on the West coast.

Photo Credit: Marshall Foundation

During the trial, attorneys asked her to prove how a jumble of letters could possibly be determined to mean “anchored in harbor where and when are you sending fuel?” Elizebeth asked for a chalkboard and proceeded to give the court a lesson on simple cipher charts, mono-alphabetic ciphers, and polysyllabic ciphers, then reviewed how she had spent two years intercepting and deciphering the radio broadcasts of four illicit New Orleans distilleries.

Special Assistant to the Attorney General Colonel Amos W. Woodcock wrote that Elizebeth’s proficiency “made an unusual impression.”

A year later, Elizebeth used her skills to avert a court case between Canada and the United States when her codebreaking abilities proved that a “Canadian” ship sunk by the U.S. Coast Guard was actually a ship owned by an American bootlegger and simply flew the Canadian flag to avert suspicion. The Canadians were so impressed with her that they hired her to help catch a ring of Chinese opium smugglers, and her testimony in that case led to five convictions.

When WWII began, Elizebeth was recruited by the Coordinator of Information, an intelligence service that preceded both the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) and the CIA. While her husband, William, was lauded for leading the team that cracked Japan’s Purple Encryption Machine, Elizebeth’s accomplishments breaking German codes and working closely with British intelligence to disrupt Axis spy rings all across Europe. For years, researchers hit brick wall after brick wall trying to uncover her contributions, largely because J. Edgar Hoover wrote her out of history (or tried to) by classifying her files as top-secret and taking the credit for himself.

Photo Credit: Public Domain

We do know, however, that she was instrumental in solving the “Doll Woman Case” in 1944, in which Velvalee Dickinson, a New York City antique doll dealer, was found guilty of spying on behalf of the Japanese government. Her work helped prove that the letters the woman had written about the condition of antique dolls were actually describing the positions of U.S. ships and other war-related matters. In the newspaper accounts of the day, however, Elizebeth’s name was never mentioned.

She retired in 1946, a year after the war ended, and her husband followed suit a decade later. Their relationship was uniquely bonded by their shared fascination for codes and codebreaking, which they brought into their person life as well – they used ciphers playing family games with their children and would even encode menus at dinner parties, encouraging their guests to solve them in order to earn the next course.

Together, they published The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined, a masterwork that won awards from several Shakespeare research facilities, and believed that they disproved the theory that Sir Francis Bacon was the real author of the plays.

Photo Credit: Public Domain

William passed away in 1969 and Elizebeth spent her remaining years compiling and documenting her husband’s work in cryptology instead of going back over her own extraordinary achievements. Her writings are now part of the George C. Marshall Research Library.

Elizebeth died in 1980 and is buried next to her husband. On their double gravestone is a quote commonly attributed to Sir Francis Bacon, “KNOWLEDGE IS POWER.”

Photo Credit: Find A Grave

The quote is, of course, a cipher that, when decrypted, reads “WFF,” William’s initials.

There’s no doubt that the field of codebreaking wouldn’t have come as far as fast as it did without William’s efforts, but Elizebeth’s deserve equal, if not more, credit.

The post The Incredible Story of Elizebeth Friedman, One of America’s Best Codebreakers appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

Scientists Can Harness Electricity from Your Skin’s Melanin, and Melanated People Are… Uneasy

Scientists are figuring out how to harness electricity from your skin’s melanin, and, as a melanated person, IDK if this is good news or bad news.

A group of Italian scientists recently made a breakthrough that allows them to conduct electricity from eumelanin, the pigment that colors human skin, hair, and eyes. In its natural form, eumelanin conducts electricity, but not very efficiently – these scientists figured out a way to give it a boost.

The process is still very much in its early stages, and there are still challenges to figure out before it becomes applicable IRL. But eventually, this technology could help power bioelectronics, like medical implants, and lower the risk of rejection.

“This is the first [stepping] stone of a long process that now can start,” said Alessandro Pezzella, the University of Naples Federico II chemist who authored the study.

Meanwhile, I and my fellow brown-skinned people are, um, nervous.

Is it just us or does this sound like something from a dystopian sci-fi movie?

Because where are they gonna get all this melanin from, hmm?!

Some folks are already ready for a fight.

“Not if I electric shock they ass first,” one woman wrote.

“I got some electric for they ass,” another agreed.

On the other hand, some people are also thinking ahead about how to use this tech to their advantage.

“But in all seriousness, can I pay my light bill with this?”

Goooood question.

The post Scientists Can Harness Electricity from Your Skin’s Melanin, and Melanated People Are… Uneasy appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

5 Flowers That Are As Deadly As They Are Beautiful

Everybody loves flowers right? They’re pretty, they smell good and they liven up our living spaces.

Well, some of them definitely don’t love us back. In fact, they can be absolutely deadly.

Recently we looked at 5 Flowers That Would Straight up Kill You If They Had a Chance. Guess what? We’ve found five more.

So spend some time learning about this quintet of bad-ass blossoms so they don’t put you in an early grave.

1. Lilies

Photo Credit: iStock

Lilies originated in Japan and are a wildly popular flower across the world. Because of that popularity, they not only come in many different varieties, but some flowers that are called lilies actually aren’t. Like daylily, water lily, and calla lily.

Not all varieties of the lily are poisonous, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be cautious. And while some types can cause symptoms as minor as skin irritation, if you ingest something like the Zigadenus fremontii (star lily; pictured below) it can be fatal.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

In general, lilies are more toxic to house pets like cats, so you’ll want to check before you bring a blossom into your house.

2. Oleander

Photo Credit: iStock

Here’s a weird, wonderful fact about white oleander. It can cause your heart to slow down, but it can also be used to prevent heart failure. And it actually treats a variety of serious conditions like epilepsy and malaria.

But let’s just say you decide to go grab a handful of white oleander, stuff in your mouth and swallow – not a good idea, but let’s say it happens. What you should expect next are stomach pains, fainting, irregular heartbeat, stomach pain and complete disorientation.

So yeah, don’t do that. Because there are more than 300 varieties of oleander out there, and you just don’t need that trouble in your life.

3. Mistletoe

Photo Credit: iStock

So how did kissing underneath a toxic collection of berries become a thing? Blame the Greeks – the ancient Greeks. During the festival of Saturnalia, people kissed under the mistletoe because they believed it helped with fertility. The tradition was later carried into marriage ceremonies and then on to the rest of us.

The good news is that mistletoe is rarely fatal. The bad news is you still need to seek medical attention. Because symptoms like blurred vision, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, stomach pain and extreme drowsiness can and will occur.

4. Wisteria

Photo Credit: iStock

Ahhh Wisteria. It kind of looks like lilac’s evil, sexier cousin. It originated in China, Korea and Japan, slowly made its way to the U.S., and now can be found blooming all over the east coast in pink, purple, white or blue flowers.

So what happens if you eat it? Bad things. Especially if you munch on the super poisonous seeds.

Abdominal pain, diarrhea and vomiting are on the menu for starters. Then comes the depression of the central nervous system. And this is one plant you want to keep far away from cats and dogs, because every plant in the genus will fuck up your furry friends.

5. Belladonna

Photo Credit: iStock

This one originated in Europe, Southwest Asia, and Northwest Africa and goes by many names: Atropa belladonna, deadly nightshade, Devil’s cherries, or, quite simply, belladonna.

Naturally, if it’s on this list, it is not to be messed with because it’s absolutely filled with toxins. Eat just a few of the berries and you’ll start to get really thirsty, experience dry mouth and rashes will begin popping up.

And then the fun really starts.

Delirium sets in, your pupils dilate and your nerve endings will be paralyzed in the involuntary muscles of your body. That’s very bad because the involuntary muscles are the ones that are supposed to just function on their own. Like our stomach and intestines. And our blood vessels. And our heart.

Yikes!

The post 5 Flowers That Are As Deadly As They Are Beautiful appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

The Tragic Tale of Hannelore Schmatz, the First Woman to Die on Mount Everest

Many people attempt to summit Mount Everest, and most of them make it to the top. Unfortunately, due to the myriad hazards of the journey – fatigue, confusion, lack of oxygen, natural disasters, falls, cold – there are more than a few who never make it off the mountain.

One of those unfortunate climbers was a woman named Hannelore Schmatz – not the first woman to summit Everest (though she did make it up), but the first woman (and the first German) to die there.

Hannelore and her husband, Gerhard, were experienced climbers when they decided to try their luck at conquering the world’s tallest mountain in the fall of 1979. The pair celebrated after reaching the summit (Gerhard, 50, was the oldest man to ever do it, at the time), then headed back toward base camp with their group. It contained 8 climbers and 5 sherpas, and while 6 of the climbers and all of the sherpas made it safely down, Hannelore and a Swiss-American man named Ray Genet did not.

Image Credit: Wikipedia

Despite being an experienced climber, Hannelore and Genet were too tired to keep going and, despite warnings from a Sherpa about the dangers of remaining in the mountain’s “Death Zone” overnight, set up a bivouac camp. One Sherpa remained with them. The brutal snowstorm that occurred overnight was too much for Genet, who died from hypothermia before morning.

Schmatz and the Sherpa survived the night, and continued down the mountain. At 27,200 feet, she sat down to rest against her backpack. She fell asleep and never woke up. Her Sherpa companion stayed with her body, costing him most of his fingers and toes. He later reported that her last words were “water, water.”

The fatigue she experienced is a common cause of death on Everest, where the air is so thin that the lack of oxygen can cause poor coordination, confusion, and incoherence that can make even an experienced climber like Hannelore make decisions that they never would have otherwise.

She died from exposure and exhaustion just over 300 feet from Camp IV, the highest camp on one of the primary trekking routes.

Image Credit: YouTube

One attempt was made to recover her body in 1984, but a Sherpa and a Nepalese police inspector on the trek fell to their deaths, and it was decided that perhaps Schmatz wanted to stay where she was. Which she did, frozen in place with her eyes open and her hair fluttering in the wind, as other climbers hiked past on their way to the summit.

In the end, the mountain took her, a gust of wind blowing her body over the side of the Kangshung Face.

A fitting burial, perhaps, for a brave, talented woman who tackled one of the world’s biggest obstacles before succumbing to her own humanity mere feet from safety.

If you want to climb (or to attempt to climb) Mount Everest, you’d better hurry. Her glaciers are quickly disappearing in the face of the warming climates.

The post The Tragic Tale of Hannelore Schmatz, the First Woman to Die on Mount Everest appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

Here’s the Depression Symptom No One Talks About, but Everyone Should Know

Many people still assume that the major symptoms of depression are feeling sad and lying in bed all day, contemplating suicide, and other seemingly obvious hurdles that people face on a daily basis.

This viral Twitter thread, posted by @mollybackes, reminds people that what they think it feels like to live every day with depression might not be quite right. That there are symptoms and barriers to living a “normal” existence that non-depressed people probably don’t realize.

She calls it The Impossible Task.

Her thread explains exactly what that means, how it feels, and the way it can affect people’s lives.

Photo Credit: Twitter/mollybackes

And just like any other mental health condition, it can be tricky to nail down.

Molly offers advice about coping with the Impossible Tasks and how others can help.

Photo Credit: Twitter/mollybackes

She also goes into how people with depression and other mental illnesses can work to be kinder to themselves…

Photo Credit: Twitter/mollybackes

And answers some more common questions. Like treatment strategies:

Photo Credit: Twitter/mollybackes

And what to do if you’re living with somebody who has depression:

Photo Credit: Twitter/mollybackes

Also, what to do if you’re struggling right now:

Photo Credit: Twitter/mollybackes

Ultimately, it helps to be kind to yourself and those around you. And for them to return the favor.

Photo Credit: Twitter/mollybackes

One of the best ways to empathize with someone is to walk in their shoes, and this entire thread is a great way to begin doing just that if you’re trying to understand the people in your life who are suffering.

Oh, and Molly had one last thing to share.

Remember this on the hard days, friends and keep moving forward.

You can do it!

The post Here’s the Depression Symptom No One Talks About, but Everyone Should Know appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

16 Hospital Employees Share Their Most Emotionally Scarring Stories on the Job

The emergency room is a CRAZY place. If you don’t believe me, check out this thread by Redditor FanisPapa, where asked other users this simple but brutal question: “Hospital staff of Reddit, what is an ER moment that has scarred you for life?”

Caution, the following stories are rough to read. You have been warned.

1. Every. Single. Rib.

Ex-wife is an ER nurse and this is the worst story she ever told me.

Guy was driving his Jeep Wrangler with the roof and doors off. He also wasn’t wearing his seatbelt, you can guess where this is going. What should have been a minor MVA ends with the Jeep rolling over. Not wearing his seat belt means the guy is tossed out. The roll bar of the Jeep rolls right over the guy’s sternum. Every rib, EVERY RIB, was broken in multiple places. He made it to the ER, but didn’t live long after.

Worst part: he was a firefighter at the station right next to the hospital. Everyone knew the guy and he was well liked.

2. WEAR EYE PROTECTION PEOPLE!!!

One of my colleagues told me about a guy that came in c/o eye pain and sensitivity.

Turns out he didn’t wear eye protection while doing some DIY home repair with a metal grinder of some sort. He had metal filings embedded in his cornea.

After numbing up his eye, they picked out some of the filings with a needle. My colleague was pretty sure that his coworker pierced through the cornea at some point.

I HATE eye stuff. I nearly puked when he told me this story.

3. Corked

My partner is an ER nurse so I asked her – she said an older lady came in one day and said that she couldn’t get a cork out of her vagina.

They asked how it got up there and she said when she shaved she puts a cork in to stop the shaving cream from getting in, but this time it wouldn’t come back out.

Said she had been doing it for years

4. Broken junk

Years ago we had a guy come into the ER with a broken penis….yep, a broken penis. He and his wife were having sexy time at what he described as “a very rapid pace” when he pulled back to far and came out when he went to shove it back in, he hit a dry spot on the side of her leg and bent his penis 90 degrees.

The problem was that he had ruptured his urethra. Scarred for life is a good way to describe the effect on the entire staff.

5. We all have limits

My mom works in the ER and tells me stories. Some take something out of her. Last year a two-year-old came in with head trauma. The 2-year old’s brother was backing out of the driveway and ran him over. After hours of trying to save him, he was gone. The ER went silent and the mothers scream echoed throughout the hospital. My mom said she couldn’t help but break out into tears when she left.

I have a son that was the same age at the time so it hit her hard. The Dr that was trying to save the child had already lost another patient that day and went on a leave of absence after that.

6. The moment you become an orphan

40-year-old man motor vehicle accident, not the patient’s fault, car swerved into his car on the highway. Patient comes into the trauma room with an EMT still giving chest compressions, patient’s vitals crashed on the way to the hospital. Nurses take over the chest compressions once the patient gets on the hospital stretcher. They continue compressions for 35 minutes with no positive response. Up until this moment, I’ve seen this before so not a big deal. A young 12-year-old girl walks up behind me and sees the compressions going on and stays silent. The ER doctor looked at her and then took over compressions for about 5 minutes. He tired out and a nurse took over. The doctor looked around the room at everyone with the familiar look of “are we all ready to call it”. The room is pure silence except for the noise of chest compressions. 5 more minutes go by. The doctor stops the nurse doing compressions with only his hands. The young girl starts to cry softly behind me. The patient was a single father, that girl became an orphan in an instant. I had to leave the room.

7. Beat down

Not ER worker, but had an internship with a hospital’s IT department and on occasion would have to service equipment in the ER.

One time I was sent into a room to work on something and there was a young woman there who had overdosed. She was dead, but they were waiting for her parents to arrive, which all happened while I was there. The mother begins wailing, understandably, but the father immediately begins BEATING the daughter’s boyfriend, screaming it was all his fault. Beating to the point of skull fractures and blood splattering everywhere.

It took three security guards to subdue him.

8. Ricochet

10-year-old boy shot in the head with a high-powered bb gun by his cousin. Came in fully alert, talking, normal mental state. Just a tiny BB hole between the eyebrows.

By the time he got back from CT his words were slurring and he was a little confused.

By the time Neurosurgery called back his eyes were pointing in 2 different directions.

By the time he was going up to the OR, he was starting to posture (abnormal body positioning due to primitive brain reflexes taking over when higher function shuts down).

This was all over the course of about 20-30 minutes.

The CT showed the BB went straight into the skull and pretty much just ricocheted all over the place. AFAIK the kid lived, but of course he’s never gonna be the same.

9. Cracking good time

ER call one night when I was a medical student. Chief complaint was penile pain. Guy’s mid-forties, seems otherwise normal, no obvious past medical or surgical history. Ask him about when it started and he tells me that it’s been hurting ever since he “cracked it” that morning. I’m assuming I misheard or that he misspoke, so I ask for clarification. He proceeds to explain that, ever since he was a teenager, he started waking up with morning wood, so he would “crack” his penis to make it go away so he could get on with his day. He demonstrates cracking by placing his two closed hands together on top of each other, then quickly bending the top one ninety degrees. He’s completely lost as to why it still hurts today when it’s been thirty years and the pain always went away by mid-morning before.

10. Face hole

FF/EMT turned ER Nurse here. Took care of a person who was attacked by several dogs. Responding officers had to use lethal force so that the medics could get the person into the ambulance. The dogs would end up testing positive for cocaine, steroids and other substances

We weren’t sure which hole in their “face” was the best to put a breathing tube into. I believe it was a 19-hour surgery.

She didn’t live too long after.

11. Cute maggots?!? No such thing.

Nothing scarring just mildly interesting: 1. Buttock infection from self-administering street bought steroids. Right buttock so swollen and raw with underlying tissues macerated creating a tunneling into his rectum. 2. A guy with backpack stuck to his back. Found like that in his apartment. Severely necrotic ulcer and very foul. We scraped like a bag and a half of cute maggots (visible and hidden ones) 3. Homeless guy. Bed bugs and lice. Crawling all over. Like lots. We-all-ran-out-of-the-room lots.

12. Sock foot

I removed a guy’s sock once. “I haven’t taken those socks off in 3 months.” The flesh came off with the socks because over enough time it “soaked” into the sock so the cloth and flesh were one.

It was all muscle and tendons underneath.

13. Karma’s a bitch

A woman I knew from a previous stay in our hospital was admitted. The woman was already about 95, basically tetraplegic from two strokes she had the year before, and “cared” for by her daughter. The daughter said that it’s quite nice that the mom can’t move anymore because she could just put her in a chair or a bed and she couldn’t get up and walk, so the daughter could go and work. People who don’t move spontaneously usually have severe problems with skin breakdown due to pressure ulcers and need to be moved around regularly, so that was kind of a red flag. With social services and our whole team, we were able to put the patient in a nursing home where she was cared for appropriately.

The ER-occurrence happened about three months later. We knew that the daughter wasn’t quite happy about everything because she wanted the mom to change her will in her favor. The mom was in no condition to ever be able to do that, but the daughter just didn’t realize that.

Well, she was sent to the ER from the nursing home with cardiogenic shock (meaning her heart was not working properly, and she was dying). The nursing home wanted to just let her go in her own bed at the home, but the daughter threatened to call her lawyer if she wasn’t moved to the hospital. So we saw her in the night, saw that she was in her last few hours on Earth and she was going to die (see above, she was old and sick and there wasn’t much we could do). The daughter demanded (and I mean with screaming and waving with her lawyer’s card) not to give her anything to lessen her symptoms. We also had to try and put a cannula in to “revive” her. So we had to try really hard, knowing it was basically torture for her mom – but the daughter had a certificate showing that she was the person allowed to decide on medical issues.

Best part is: daughter has a private practice for karma healing.

14. When parents are horrible people

House fire- family of six. One child didn’t make it.

Parent shrugged, laughed, said- “Well I’ve got three more don’t I?”

*To save the armchair psychologists of Reddit some time, this was not an instance of “Dark Humor”

15. The noises drowning people make

In the early 80’s I was a night shift Orderly in a small hospital when an ambulance came in with two drowning victims. They were in an SUV that had rolled into the water and they were unable to escape. They had been under water for a long time so there was no attempt to resuscitate.

The State Police had been called to collect a blood alcohol sample and to maintain the chain of custody someone had to stay with the bodies until the Trooper arrived, and I drew the short straw. For a half hour, I was shut in a small examination room with two people who I knew (small town) waiting, and drowning victims make noises.

It was horrible having to see the parents arrive to identify their daughters and it was bad seeing a cardiac blood draw but the noises stuck with me for a long time. It didn’t help that I had been reading Stephen King’s Night Shift when the ambulance arrived.

16. “I only came out to see him suffer.”

Cousin told me this one. He was doing side work in an acute care nursing facility, and full time as a critical care nurse.

He is standing next to the bed of stroke victim. The guy is twisted into a knot, and suffering every moment of every day. There is no going back.

My cousin says to the man’s wife, “Look, this is as good as it gets. We can keep him alive for a long time, but every day will be a day of suffering. Maybe it is time to let him go.”

Her reply, “F_ck him. He cheated on me our whole marriage. That mother f_cker is getting the full ride. I only came out to see him suffer.”

He was stunned, but he couldn’t do a thing about it.

Well, that was insane.

Have a good night!

The post 16 Hospital Employees Share Their Most Emotionally Scarring Stories on the Job appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

Here’s Why Your Poop is Green Sometimes

Let’s just face it: everybody poops. It’s something we all do just every day, so we may as well talk about it.

Now that we’ve got that settled, let’s take a second to discuss something kinda weird that happens when you poop sometimes: it comes out green.

It’s kind of an alarming situation, and you think to yourself…what the hell is going on here? Am I sick? Dying? What is causing this?

Well, that’s what this whole article is about, so you’re in luck!

Photo Credit: Flickr,U.S. Army CCDC

Good news! It’s actually normal to occasionally have green poop, so you can relax and wipe that sweat from your brow. While it is possible that you might have some gastrointestinal issues going on that cause it to turn green as it ventures through you, the main issue is that the waste moves too fast through your digestive system and doesn’t have time to break down the bile that is naturally secreted from your gallbladder.

That bile is usually a green or yellow color.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

There are some other factors that could cause green poops, too. You might have too much fat in your diet, you might be eating so many green veggies (i.e. kale and spinach) that it’s turning your bowel movements green, or you might be consuming a lot of food and/or drinks that have a lot of green food coloring (think Shamrock Shakes).

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

If you do happen to experience green diarrhea that doesn’t go away quickly, then you might have some kind of infection, and you should get checked out.

Otherwise, just lay off the green beer on St. Patty’s, okay?

The post Here’s Why Your Poop is Green Sometimes appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

15 People Who Definitely Lost the Genetic Lottery

Genetics are a tricky thing. You could live your best life, eat healthy, exercise, avoid drinking and smoking and still end up with some horrible disease.

It’s tragic, but true.

In this AskReddit article, people share how they believe genetics cheated them.

1. Bad knees

“Knees. They just don’t work properly, even after the operations to keep them from dislocating. They always hurt.”

2. Squinting

“My ‘Beautiful’ light green eyes are so bad at denying light that I constantly squint, which leads to headaches.”

3. Damn him!

“Unibrow. My younger brother has thin half-eyebrows. Me (F) has one long, thick and bushy brow that goes from one hairline clear across to the other.

That rat bastard brother is also nearly completely hairless on his arms and legs. And blond.

That f*cker.”

4. Ugh

“My fathers family has early onset dementia, my mother’s family all live to be 100.

So I’m destined to lose my mind at 50, and spend the next half century wondering were I left it.”

5. No fun

“I’m Arab on my mum’s side and Italian on my dad’s.Basically I have to spend a lot of money on hair removal.

I’m a woman, for everyone asking.”

6. That sucks

“Severe acne.

Looking back over old family photos, it seems to be a common feature. At least it’ll clear up at some point.”

7. Rough

“Psoriasis all over my torso/legs/scalp.

It’s kinda weird to bring it up on a first date as well, so I got ghosted an awful lot before finally getting it under control.”

8. Bummer

“My orthodontist legit said I had a monkey face and that my jaw kinda went outwards and she said the surgery wouldnt be so costly, only for my dad to say we couldn’t afford it. Hits hard sometimes.”

9. Take care of yourself

“Both my grandfathers dropped dead at age 59.

Both from cerebral hemorrhages.

I have high blood pressure.

I’ll turn 52 this summer.

Tic, toc.”

10. One way…

“I am 6 ft tall and have the wingspan of someone who is 5’4. Basically a human T-rex.”

11. That’s strange

“My great-grandfather had 3 kidneys. I’ve had kidney problems since I was a baby.”

12. That’s not good

“Absolutely shitty teeth. Some people don’t have to wear braces. It was crucial for me to wear them but my parents weren’t educated enough on the matter to make me wear them. So now, at 28 i’ve had more teeth surgeries than i can count, finally have them straight but the price and the pain i had to endure for them is 20 times more than i would have 20 years ago.”

13. And the other…

“I’m 6’2 and have the wingspan of someone who’s 6’6. I look like fucking slender man.”

14. Luck of the draw

“Twin Gets Nothing, I Get:

•Colour Blindness

•3rd-Generation Acne

•HyperMobility

•Muscle Spasms

•Creaking Bones

•4th-Generation Early Arthritis”

15. Bad news

“I’m a woman. I have a hot mom but came out looking like my dad.”

The post 15 People Who Definitely Lost the Genetic Lottery appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

10 Celebs Who Revealed the Hard Truths About Postpartum Depression

If you’ve ever suffered from Postpartum Depression, you know the effects can be absolutely crushing. Celebrities are no different from me or you, and these 10 shared their stories dealing with the devastating condition.

1. Sharon Osbourne

“I did suffer from it with one of my pregnancies, but I was suffering from depression anyways.
“The depression is so dark, you feel like you’re in a black fog the whole time and you just cannot cope. And you get to a point where you don’t realise what you’ve got with the baby and you’re just so dark and distraught and alone and it’s the loneliest feeling in the world.”

2. Celine Dion

“Some of the first days after I came home, I was a little outside myself. One moment, tremendous happiness; the next, fatigue sets in, and I cried for no reason.” She added: “Some of the first days after I came home, I was a little outside myself. I had no appetite and that bothered me. My mother remarked that she noticed I had moments of lifelessness but reassured me that this was entirely normal. It’s for things like that after having a baby that mothers really need emotional support.”

3. Drew Barrymore

“I didn’t have postpartum the first time so I didn’t understand it because I was like, ‘I feel great.’
The second time, I was like, ‘Oh, whoa, I see what people talk about now. I understand’. It’s a different type of overwhelming with the second. I really got under the cloud. I just got right on the idea of, ‘Where do I need to be the most?’ Fifty-fifty would be ideal but life doesn’t work like that. Life is messy. It was just really challenging and I felt overwhelmed. I made a lot of decisions and I definitely changed my work life to suit my parenthood.”

4. Chrissy Teigen

“…I was different than before. Getting out of bed to get to set on time was painful. My lower back throbbed; my ­shoulders—even my wrists—hurt. I didn’t have an appetite. I would go two days without a bite of food, and you know how big of a deal food is for me. One thing that really got me was just how short I was with people.

I would be in my dressing room, sitting in a robe, getting hair and makeup done, and a crew member would knock on the door and ask: “Chrissy, do you know the lyrics to this song?” And I would lose it. Or “Chrissy, do you like these cat ears, or these panda hands?” And I’d be like: “Whatever you want. I don’t care.” They would leave. My eyes would well up and I would burst into tears. My makeup artist would pat them dry and give me a few minutes.

I couldn’t figure out why I was so unhappy. I blamed it on being tired and possibly growing out of the role: “Maybe I’m just not a goofy person anymore. Maybe I’m just supposed to be a mom.”

5. Brooke Shields

6. Cardi B

“I thought I was going to avoid it. When I gave birth, the doctor told me about postpartum, and I was like, ‘Well, I’m doing good right now, I don’t think that’s going to happen.’ But out of nowhere, the world was heavy on my shoulders.

For some reason, I still don’t feel like my body’s the same. I feel like I don’t have my balance right yet. When it comes to heels, I’m not as good at walking anymore. I feel like I’m holding a weight on me … But there’s an energy I haven’t gotten back yet that I had before I was pregnant.”

It’s just the weirdest thing.”

7. Adele

“My knowledge of postpartum — or post-natal, as we call it in England — is that you don’t want to be with your child; you’re worried you might hurt your child; you’re worried you weren’t doing a good job. But I was obsessed with my child. I felt very inadequate; I felt like I’d made the worst decision of my life. … It can come in many different forms.
“Eventually I just said, I’m going to give myself an afternoon a week, just to do whatever the f**k I want without my baby. A friend of mine said, ‘Really? Don’t you feel bad?’ I said, I do, but not as bad as I’d feel if I didn’t do it. Four of my friends felt the same way I did, and everyone was too embarrassed to talk about it; they thought everyone would think they were a bad mom, and it’s not the case. It makes you a better mom if you give yourself a better time.”

8. Hayden Panettiere

“If you think for one second that a mother wants to feel that way toward her child, you’re outta your mind. It is one of the most debilitating, scary, guilty feelings that you can ever feel. That a mother would not be able to connect with their child, would not be able to get a grip, or would not know what’s going on, for anybody to say that it’s false or created by us, you must have your head examined.”

9. Serena Williams

“Honestly, sometimes I still think I have to deal with it. I think people need to talk about it more because it’s almost like the fourth trimester, it’s part of the pregnancy.”

10. Gwyneth Paltrow

“About four months into it, Chris came to me and said, ‘Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong.’ I kept saying, ‘No, no, I’m fine.’ But Chris identified it, and that sort of burst the bubble.
I thought postpartum depression meant you were sobbing every single day and incapable of looking after a child. But there are different shades of it and depths of it, which is why I think it’s so important for women to talk about it. It was a trying time. I felt like a failure.”

If you think you have postpartum depression, find out more info at Postpartum Support International.

As always, thanks for reading Did You Know. We really appreciate you spending time with us, and we hope you share articles like this with your friends so we can all be part of the conversation.

You rock!

The post 10 Celebs Who Revealed the Hard Truths About Postpartum Depression appeared first on UberFacts.