Coring a Bead, Ninja Cat, MRI's Show Signs of Awareness in Vegetative Patients, Fringe or Lost

Coring a Bead

There is a very generous and totally awesome video online showing how to core a bead with metal tubing.

Click here for video tutorial.

Now, speaking of dapping blocks and punches… if you can't yet afford a very high quality set but still want to get started with something, I'd like to pass along what I feel is a really good deal.

25 Piece Doming Block and Punch Set



I would try it myself, but I have to order some silver tubing first. And I think I'll wait for that until I get back from Chicago.


Ninja Cat

I know I've shown you this before, but I love it. :-)

Ninja cat comes closer while not moving!




Vegetative Patients Show Brain Activity, Awareness

Interesting new story in the news this week.

It all started in 2006, when researchers were studying a young woman considered to be in a vegetative state. Using MRI to scan her brain, they asked her to imagine herself playing tennis and touring her own home, and found that her brain behaved in much the way a normally functioning brain does.

The neuroscientists were shocked into action as news of what may have only been an anomaly prompted families to ask that the researchers study their own loved ones, too.

One of the neuroscientists, Adrian Owen at the University of Cambridge, alongside colleagues at the University of Liege in Belgium, have just published the results of their initial research on 54 patients--23 thought to be in vegetative states and 31 to be minimally conscious--in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday.

While the majority of the patients exhibited no brain activity via MRI scans, four considered to be in vegetative states did and one thought to be minimally conscious did. Three of these five patients actually showed signs of awareness during intensive standard bedside tests, while two did not.

Moreover one of the patients, a 29-year-old in Belgium asked to answer questions indicating "yes" by thinking about tennis and "no" by mentally touring his own home, answered every single question about his life--from his father's name to whether he had siblings--correctly.

"He could produce no communication with his body, but he could systematically and repeatedly change his brain activity to indicate 'yes' or 'no' with 100 percent accuracy," Owen says. "These are patients who are totally unable to perform functions with their bodies--even blink an eye or move an eyebrow--but yet are entirely conscious. It's quite distressing, really, to realize this."…


Fringe

Anyone watch this? I've been looking for a new show to add to my MP3 player for those times when I'm away from home and killing time.

A couple years ago I was watching the LOST series this way, but I started getting rather "lost" somewhere around season 5. Then I thought, maybe I could just read the episode recaps and get caught up and have things make sense… but they didn't. Or not enough to interest me, anyway. Sigh.