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Comment Re:More like an hour (Score 1) 82

by epyx (#48268163) Attached to: "Ambulance Drone" Prototype Unveiled In Holland
I will admit that after almost half a century of learning that oxygen deprivation kills cells, it's hard to swallow the new theories that cell death doesn't actually occur until the cells are re-exposed to oxygen. It's true though, and new therapies of cardiac arrest survivors, such as induced hypothermia have greatly improved outcomes. Here are a couple of the easier to understand studies:

http://europepmc.org/abstract/...
http://circ.ahajournals.org/co...

Submission + - Surge in Online Orders Overwhelms UPS Christmas Deliveries

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Reuters reports that the high volume of online orders of holiday packages overwhelmed shipping and logistics company UPS delaying the arrival of Christmas presents around the globe and sending angry consumers to social media to vent. The company projected 132 million deliveries last week "and obviously we exceeded that," said UPS spokeswoman Natalie Black without disclosing how many packages had been sent. "For now, UPS is really focused on delivering the remaining packages. You might not see trucks, but people are working." Asked why the company underestimated the volume of air packages it would receive, Black noted that previous severe weather in the Dallas area had already created a backlog. Then came "excess holiday volume" during a compressed time frame, since the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas was shorter than usual this year. Amazon.com responded with an email to affected customers offering shipping refunds and $20 gift cards to compensate. Packages shipped via UPS for Amazon.com by Prime customers, who pay $79 a year for two-day shipping, may be eligible for additional refunds. Amazon's stated policy for missed deliveries is to offer a free one-month extension of Prime. Frustrated consumers took to social media, with some complaining that gifts purchased for their children would not arrive in time to make it under the tree by Christmas morning. "A lot of these employees keep saying 'It's the weather' or 'It's some kind of a backlog,'" said Barry Tesh. "Well then why, all the way up until the 23rd, were they offering next-day delivery? That guaranteed delivery was 80% of my decision to buy the gift." However others on social media urged shoppers to be more appreciative of the delivery company's work during the holiday season. "While others take vacation and time off in December, remember we aren't allowed ever to be off in December. Ever," said a 20 year veteran UPS driver on the UPS Facebook page. "So when you see your family and complain that your package is held up, everyone who moves your package is working and doesn't get the Xmas experience you get, Be thankful for that."
Patents

Will Patents Make NCAA Football Playoffs Impossible? 177

Posted by timothy from the life-will-go-on dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Mark Cuban recently announced plans to create a college football playoff system, which many people (including President Obama) have been claiming has been needed for years. However, after doing so, Cuban received an odd email, claiming that he'd better watch out, because a college football playoff system is patented and anything he did would likely infringe. The patent wasn't named, but Techdirt believes it has found the patent in question, along with another pending patent application (which has some amusing errors in it — such as an abstract that says it's about a boat fender, rather than a sports playoff system). So is it really true that some random guy in Arizona is the only person who can legally set up such a college football playoff system?"
The Military

Navy Tests Mach 8 Electromagnetic Railgun 440

Posted by timothy from the do-not-look-at-with-remaining-eye dept.
hargrand writes "Wired magazine has a story and publicly released video of the Navy test firing of a 32 megajoule electromagnetic railgun: 'Reporters were invited to watch the test at the Dalghren Naval Surface Warfare Center. A tangle of two-inch thick coaxial cables hooked up to stacks of refrigerator-sized capacitors took five minutes to power juice into a gun the size of a schoolbus built in a warehouse. With a 1.5-million-ampere spark of light and a boom audible in a room 50 feet away, the bullet left the gun at a speed of Mach 8.'"

Comment Re:Ultrasound Aimed at the Testicles (Score 1) 599

by epyx (#32182412) Attached to: Ultrasound As a Male Contraceptive

Actually, this is the first thing they do if there's any suspicion of testicular cancer. I had some aches and pains and a little lump on Rightie, so I was sent off right away to have a scrotal ultrasound.

Does anyone know if/how that sort of diagnostic ultrasound differs from this? They didn't say ANYTHING to me about it affecting fertility.

This is therapeutic ultrasound normally used in sports injuries and such. It sends out the sound waves in frequencies that are way different than in diagnostic ultrasound. Therapeutic ultrasound has a direct effect on cells, whether vibrating them enough to trigger an inflammatory response or vibrating them at a certain wavelength to cause cells to heat up.

Either way, not something I want aimed at my ballsack.

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