Isegoria

From Marriage builds wealth more than being single?:

The study used data from surveys taken over a 15-year period involving 9,055 Americans who were between 21 and 28 years old in 1985.

Those respondents who remained single had a steady, but slow growth in wealth, from less than $2,000 at the start of the surveys up to an average of about $11,000 after 15 years.

However, those who married and stayed that way showed a sharp increase in wealth accumulation after marriage, growing to an average $43,000 by the 10th year of marriage or by about 16 percent a year.

For people who married and then divorced, there was a slow build-up of wealth during the early years of marriage and then a steady decline about four years prior to divorce.

‘Many of these people may have separated before the divorce became official, which would help explain why wealth starts falling so early,’ Zagorsky said. ‘Divorce is often a long and messy process, and you can see this in the four-year decline in wealth.’

The study also cast doubt on a common assumption that divorce is much harder financially on women than on men. In fact, it showed that women suffered financially only slightly more than men.

From Doctors claim suspended animation success:

A surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Hasan Alam, has tested the technique about 200 times on pigs, with a 90 per cent success rate.

First he anaesthetises the animal, then cuts a major vein and artery in its abdomen to simulate multiple gunshots to a person’s chest and abdomen.
As the pig rapidly loses about half its blood and enters a state of shock, Dr Alam drains its blood and stores it before pumping chilled organ preservation fluid into its system.

The animal’s body temperature falls to about 10C until it is in a state of ‘profound hypothermia’ and has no pulse and no electrical activity in its brain.

But after the blood stored earlier is warmed and pumped back into the pig’s body its heart starts beating again and it comes back to life.

‘It is still pretty awe-inspiring,’ Dr Alam said. ‘Once the heart starts beating and the blood starts pumping, voila, you’ve got another animal that’s come back from the other side.

‘Technically, I think we can do it in humans.’

He now wants automatic consent to use the technique on all patients brought to his hospital who have lost blood and would probably die with only standard care.

From Notes on the Denial of Perspective:

Felice Varini paints (lines, concentric circles, triangles) on things (tunnels, castles, groovy interiors). A seemingly random smattering of elements that, viewed from a specific point in space, coalesce into a tangible planar element.

The First Computer Bug was literally a “moth found trapped between points at Relay #70, Panel F, of the Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator while it was being tested at Harvard University,” back in 1945:

The operators affixed the moth to the computer log, with the entry: “First actual case of bug being found”. They put out the word that they had “debugged” the machine, thus introducing the term “debugging a computer program”.

How best to fight off a shark:

Bernie Williams, a 46-year-old Australian scuba-diver, fought off repeated attacks by an 11ft (3.5m) shark by hitting it on the nose with his speargun.

As is most often the case, he didn’t see the shark coming until it bit him.

Mr Williams said: ‘It just came out from my left hand side… chomped on my arm and took me for a ride for about two metres.

‘I stabbed it on the nose with a speargun, but it was just like hitting a lump of steel. It didn’t slow down in the slightest.’

The shark retreated before making another attack on Mr Williams, giving him just enough time to hide in a crevice near the ocean floor until his diving buddies came to the rescue.

Engines of Democracy describes the amazingly effective GE/Durham plant:

Although engines go out the door of this plant at a rate of more than one per day, the air of calm is hardly its most unusual aspect. The plant is General Electric’s aircraft-engine assembly facility in Durham, North Carolina. Even within Jack Welch’s widely admired empire, the Durham facility is in its own league — a quiet corner of a global giant, a place where the radical has become routine. GE/Durham has more than 170 employees but just one boss: the plant manager. Everyone in the place reports to her. Which means that on a day-to-day basis, the people who work here have no boss. They essentially run themselves.