WTF?

The seventy-year-old female patient had a history of frequent urinary-tract infections. She had a fever and slight back pain, so I ordered a catheterized urine specimen to be sent to the lab. I went on to other patients, but the nurse soon returned and said she had tried to cath the woman but couldn’t find her urethra-the opening to the bladder. She had asked several other nurses to help her cath the lady, but no one could find the urethral opening. I decided to help, and went to the patient’s bedside. I found an elderly, pleasant woman who told me about the history of frequent urinary problems and told me she was childless.
I examined the woman’s perineum and identified the larger orifice of what appeared to be the vaginal vault, and searched above this for the urethral opening. I couldn’t find an opening either, but as I looked, some urine trickled out of the vagina. Suspecting a fistula connecting the bladder to the vagina, or an embedded urethral meatus, I decided to look inside the vagina with a speculum. As I readied to do this, however, I noticed something underneath the vagina, on the perineum, and looked closer. I found the patient’s vagina and intact hymen under what I had assumed was the vagina. I realized that the upper opening she was using as a vagina was in fact the patient’s urethra. I asked the woman if she had any problems with sexual relations with her husband.
“Not really. It hurt the first year or so, but it was fine after that.”
She had been married for fifty-two years.

CHARLES HAGEN, M.D. Auburn, Alabama

simply amazing. when you wear its like wearing nothing. I want a beanie made from this stuff now.

from the guardian

Then, in the early 19th century, along came Jesuit priest Raimondo Maria de Termeyer, who discovered that threads extracted from the spider itself produced a higher-quality silk. An 1807 engraving shows de Termeyer’s extraction device. The spider is clamped by a sheet of wood with a half-moon aperture for its abdomen. A winding machine draws out a continuous strand. In the late 19th century, Madagascar’s French colonial government encouraged spider-silk weaving, and spider-silk bed hangings were exhibited in Paris. But the drapes disappeared, as did the industry.

source for images

really amazing.

The OCS™ HEART, a portable perfusion and monitoring system, delivers warm, oxygenated, nutrient-enriched blood to the donor heart and keeps it in a living state until the organ is ready to be transplanted. The technology allows surgeons to preserve more organs, go farther distances to obtain organs, and monitor the status of the organs from harvest to transplant. With the OCS HEART, surgeons may

read the story here.

this is pretty badass. awesome how the crab just plops out at the end.

if we can get these in the west coast, Imagine how much electricity we could save. No more rolling black outs. just 2 bottles and you have a room full of light. they have to figure out a way to some how trap this beautiful light and then use it for another time. wait thats called solar power….