1. Doctors can apparently do a heart transplant without removing the original heart.  So, you have two hearts – the new one, doing the work, and the old one, just hangin’ out.
2. In this girl’s case, the new heart rejected 11 years later.  But, by that time, her original heart was strong enough to come back “online,” so they pulled the new one out and hooked her back up to the original one.

Nearly 11 years after receiving the extra heart, there was more bad news: The immuno-suppression drugs were no longer working. Hannah's body was rejecting the donor heart.

In February 2006, her doctors tried something that had never been done before: They took out the donor heart. Doctors theorized that the donor heart had allowed Hannah's heart to rest, recover and grow back stronger.

[…] The doctors were right. Three years later, Hannah has no need for any drugs and has been given a clean bill of health. The operation was a success.

An average Dutch household consumes 3,400 kWh/year. Listed below is the amount of windmills required, and their total cost, to power a Dutch household entirely using wind energy [results range from 2 windmills to 47]

[…] An average American household consumes almost 3 times more electricity than a Dutch household. Simply multiply the above figures by three.

At first sight, the results seem to indicate that the design of the windmill matters. However, if you combine these figures with the rotor diameter, it becomes clear that the concept of small windmills is fundamentally flawed. The turbines that score best, are simply the largest ones.

They weren’t writing off wind power as a whole, however:

Close to the test site stands a (relatively) large windmill with a rotor diameter of 18 meters. It delivers 143,000 kWh per year, or an average power output of 16,324 watts. It can power 42 Dutch households.

[…] Wind power rules, but small windmills are a swindle. Bigger is, in this case, better.

[…] a “leap second” is added on to our clocks every so often to keep them in synch with the somewhat unpredictable nature of our planet’s rotation, the roughly 24-hour whirl that brings the sun into the sky each morning

My wife and I woke up at about 4 a.m. this morning to the sound of high winds and tree branches hitting the roof. I looked out the back window & saw that a large branch had fallen, so I went out to check to see if there was any damage. Stepping out the back door was like walking into a sauna — hot!

Thankfully, there wasn’t any damage to our house — the large branch had fallen between our house and the neighbor’s garage — but there were small branches everywhere. The wind died down shortly afterward, and I could feel the temperature dropping while I was out there. It was strange; really strange.

Today I went digging around on the Internet to see what I could find out; the local news station had a blurb on their website about it, and Wikipedia has a page on it (even updated with last night’s event; how about that!)

Meteorologists don’t know exactly what causes a heat burst; they theorize that rain hits a pocket of dry air at about 10-20,000 feet and quickly evaporates. The evaporating moisture causes the air to become more dense than the surrounding air, which causes it to descend rapidly, compressing that air mass, and the compression causes the temperature of the air mass to rise. When that mass of air hits the ground, you get high winds and hot, dry air.

How hot? Last night, the air temperature went from 72°F to 101°F in a matter of minutes, then back down just as quickly. According to the Wikipedia entry, a heat burst occurred in Brazil in 1949 causing the temp to jump from 100°F to 158°F in two minutes!

I had never even heard of a heat burst before, much less experienced one, so in a way I’m glad for the large branch laying in my yard; if it weren’t for that I wouldn’t have been outside at 4a.m. to experience the heat; if it weren’t for that I wouldn’t have been curious enough to go looking for the reason behind that and the wind accompanying it.

The mapping alone took a couple of hours. Based on the information entered into a computer during mapping, the “hot spots” or risky areas, were displayed on a monitor. Once mapping was complete, Cohen took a paper list of groups of letters that represented basic brain functions, such as expression and movement.

With a pair of scissors, a nurse cut out the letters that corresponded to Mather-Licht’s “hot spots.” Cohen then placed the lettered pieces of paper directly on Mather-Licht’s brain, distinctly identifying the areas of risk. Once those were marked, he opened the brain’s outer membrane and, layer by layer, removed the tumor. Mather-Licht felt no pain — the brain itself has no pain receptors.

Since they first walked the planet, humans have either buried or burned their dead. Now a new option is generating interest — dissolving bodies in lye and flushing the brownish, syrupy residue down the drain.

[…] The coffee-colored liquid has the consistency of motor oil and a strong ammonia smell. But proponents say it is sterile and can, in most cases, be safely poured down the drain, provided the operation has the necessary permits.

I think it would be weird to not exist like that. With burial, you have a body. With cremation you have ashes. With this, you have…nothing. You get turned into liquid then spread throughout the sewer system.

It was like you never existed. There is no physical record of you left.

[…] they have demonstrated the Perepiteia to a number of labs and universities across North America, including the University of Virginia, Michigan State University, the University of Toronto and Queens University.

“It’s generally always the same reaction,” says Heins. “There’s a bit of a scramble on the part of the observer to put what they’re seeing into some sort of context with what they know. They can’t explain it. They don’t know what it is.”

This happens every now and again — someone swears they’ve created perpetual motion. Eighteen months ago, it was a company from Ireland..

We’ve discussed perpetual motion before and, strangely, how it relates to religion.

U.S. wind power grew 45% in 2007, the sharpest rise since the 1980s, […] The industry installed 5,244 megawatts in 2007, accounting for 30% of all new electricity-generating capacity, […]

I’ve always found windmills to be visually relaxing. Those big blades, turning slowly in the wind. I just love looking at them.

A nasal spray containing a naturally occurring brain hormone called orexin A reversed the effects of sleep deprivation in monkeys, allowing them to perform like well-rested monkeys on cognitive tests.

[…] Both Twery and Siegel noted that it is unclear whether or not treating the brain chemistry behind sleepiness would alleviate the other problems associated with sleep deprivation.

I hate having to sleep so much that I asked my coworkers once if “just a little bit of meth would be so bad.” I was only half-kidding.

A flywheel-based battery, on the other hand, can reach energy densities 3-4 times higher, at around 100-130 watt-hours per kilogram. Unlike the battery, the flywheel can also store and discharge all that energy rapidly without being damaged, meaning it can charge up to full capacity within minutes instead of hours and deliver up to one hundred times more power than a conventional battery. Ancient Egyptian potter’s whee. lWhat’s more, it’s unaffected by extreme temperatures, boasts an efficiency of 85-95%, and has a lifespan measured in decades rather than years.

The thought of having the gallbladder extracted through the mouth or, in women, the vagina, is enough to send some patients fleeing. But by eliminating an external incision, proponents say, the approach promises to reduce pain and speed recovery.

[…] [The doctor] snaked a narrow tube called a flexible endoscope down Masterson’s esophagus and into her stomach. Working with tiny tools inserted through the tube, he cut a hole in her stomach, about a quarter-inch wide, to reach her gallbladder.

Can you image the tolerances those tools are built to? How do you keep something that precise working that well at that distance and with that many twists and turns between both ends?

More importantly, didn’t we see something like this with Arnie in “Total Recall” or Keanu in “The Matrix”? Arnie pulled something lodged in his brain out through his nose, so I suppose that’s the next frontier.

The Reed Research Reactor (RRR) is a research nuclear reactor located on-campus at Reed College in Portland, OR. […] RRR is the only research reactor in the world that is owned and operated by an undergraduate educational institution. It is operated and maintained primarily by undergraduate college students […]

Wait, it gets better:

Since the 1960s, Reed has had a reputation for tolerating open drug use among its students, and the 1998 Princeton Review listed Reed as the number-three school in the “reefer madness” category.

Ever seen a bong glow?

John Ninomiya, who runs the www.clusterballoon.org website, says that same scene was what inspired a lifetime of ballooning for him, and his pioneering work in the field of cluster ballooning. According to Ninomiya, he’s one of six people in the world doing this, and the only guy in North America. And it looks like he’ll be flying at the Great Plains Balloon Race, right here in Sioux Falls, SD, next weekend! (June 8-10) That would be worth getting up at Oh-dark-thirty in the morning to go watch!

From a quick perusal of his site, it looks like the technology of the sport hasn’t advanced much since Larry Walters’ dramatic attempt in 1982. (was it that long ago? Man, I feel old!) Ninomiya uses standard — but very large — vinyl balloons for this, along with a harness designed for paragliders & other gear used by hot air ballonists. Guess a pioneer has to make do with what’s available and custom fabricate the rest.

One major advance over 1982 is that Ninomiya carries an altimeter/rate-of-climb instrument, a GPS and a radio for communicating directly with air traffic controllers; much better than Walters’ CB-radio. He also has a better methods of loosing or popping balloons (and reducing lift) than Walters’ pellet gun!

I’ll freely admit this is a blatant attempt to make up for a recent stupid commenting blunder (I won’t point it out; if you’re curious, it’s not hard to find.) I haven’t had time to post much lately, and figure I ought to compensate, even if only a little, by providing a little something fun to the site!

-5 * 6

— should be -30. It’s because if you add -5 to itself 6 times, you come up with -30.

But, one must wonder, why is the inverse so odd? How do you “add” something to itself a negative number of times? These leads us to the odd situation of -5 * 6 making sense, but 6 * -5 seeming weird.

These leads me to wonder who decided that two negatives reverse polarity and become a positive. Multiplication is a shortcut for addition, right? “Two times three” is the same as “two plus two plus two,” just shorter.

But the “shortcut for addition” theory breaks down with negatives because you can’t add something to itself a negative number of times. So it feels like this one was arbitrary. Someone just decided, apparently, that multipltying two negatives makes a positive. I can’t find a logical truth to it.

Perhaps it just felt right.

While this may sound stupid, I’m looking for a mathematical rule that was arbitrary. I’m looking for a rule that’s not based in mathematics, but is instead rooted solely in a need for consistency.

Is this such a rule?