Day: February 19, 2019

5-year-old brings a loaded gun to school

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My preference

❝ A kindergarten student brought a loaded gun to his Pennsylvania elementary school on Monday, school officials confirmed.

The kindergartener entered Pittsburgh Faison K-5 elementary school with a loaded gun in his backpack on Monday and kept the weapon in his locker all day, KDKA reported.

On the bus ride back home, another student alerted the bus driver about the weapon, which prompted the driver to search the boy’s backpack and take the gun…

❝ The district alerted parents about the incident and announced new increased security measures. Beginning on Tuesday, both students and adults will be required to pass through metal detectors, School Spokeswoman Ebony Pugh said.

What, what? You thought we could rely on parents to have enough good sense to keep a 5-year-old from having access to a loaded gun? It is to laugh!

Everyone poops. Cardiologists are counting on it…

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NOT an illustration of the actual device 🙂

❝ Engineers at Rochester Institute of Technology have designed a high-tech toilet seat that effortlessly flushes out data on the state of your cardiovascular system. The tricked-out porcelain throne measures your blood pressure, blood oxygen level, and the volume of blood your heart pumps per beat (stroke volume)—taking readings every time you sit down to catch up on some reading of your own. The engineers, led by David Borkholder, recently published a prototype of the seat in the open-access journal JMIR mHealth and uHealth.

❝ According to the inventors, the seat’s daily data dump could make patients and their doctors privy (har!) to early warning signs of heart failure, potentially helping to prevent further deterioration and avoid costly hospital stays. Moreover, the seat could ease in-home monitoring for heart patients, who often strain to consistently track their tickers with other, non-toilet-based monitors.

Makes great sense to me…if I had any sort of heart concerns. Apple’s HealthKit built into my iPhone made it a piece of cake for me to finally get round to integrating nutrition and exercise with other apps…lose weight, keep it off and get in better shape than a significant chunk of my [old geezer] age group.

Study links artificial sweeteners to strokes, heart attacks, early death in women over 50

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❝ …Drinking two or more of any kind of artificially sweetened drinks a day is linked to an increased risk of clot-based strokes, heart attacks and early death in women over 50, according to a new study by the American Heart Association and American Stroke Association.

The risks were highest for women with no history of heart disease or diabetes and women who were obese or African-American…

❝ “This is another confirmatory study showing a relationship between artificially sweetened beverages and vascular risks. While we cannot show causation, this is a yellow flag to pay attention to these findings,” said American Academy of Neurology President Dr. Ralph Sacco, who was not involved in the latest study.

❝ “What is it about these diet drinks?” asked lead study author Yasmin Mossavar-Rahmani, an associate professor of clinical epidemiology and population health…”Is it something about the sweeteners? Are they doing something to our gut health and metabolism? These are questions we need answered.”

Overdue!