Author: mike

via Dilbert
Dilbert 2016-11-28

All too often we hear the question “Why not just shoot them in the leg?” This graphic video of a fatal officer-involved shooting of a bank robber is the answer.

An Iranian bank robber armed with a knife is boxed in by a crowd that won’t let him leave, but leery of getting stabbed with his hunting knife, they won’t tackle him, either. A plainclothes police officer shows up armed with a pistol and tries to take the man into custody, but the robber runs around a car. He finally turns towards the officer with a dirt median strip behind him. The officer sees an opportunity to fire a debilitating shot that will impact with relatively safety in the soil of the median instead of of ricocheting off the pavement into the crowd.

He takes the shot at 1:40 into the video.

The round penetrates the man’s leg, striking the femoral artery and either tears or severs it completely. The man takes several steps, then collapses to the ground from blood loss within 15 seconds, woozy but still upright and conscious. A 2:19, approximately 40 seconds after being shot in the leg, the man has lost so much blood that he falls over unconscious.

No one in the crowd—including the Iranian police officer—has any idea what to do. One man finally steps forward and pulls off his belt to make an improvised tourniquet, but it is far too little, far too late.

The bank robber is dead just as fast from a shot to the leg as he would have been from a shot to the heart, and for the same reason; when a major artery or the heart itself is shot, blood doesn’t get pumped to the brain. When the brain can’t get oxygenated blood because either the pump (the heart) or the delivery system (major arteries) are destroyed, a person will quickly die.

So, shoot him in the arm/shoulder instead?

The same thing might have occurred if the officer had fired a bullet into the robber’s upper arm or shoulder, striking the subclavian, axillary, or brachial arteries. The only real difference is that it might have taken a few seconds longer for the robber to lose consciousness and die if those arteries were struck.

Would it have made any difference if the man in the crowd had pulled off his belt and tried to make a tourniquet sooner? Unlikely. A belt alone is unlikely to exert enough pressure on the femoral artery to close it, and it’s unlikely that they (or you) know how to improvise a windlass out of nearby objects in time.

Improvised tourniquets fail far more often than they are successful.

There is a reason I consider a SOFTT-W tourniquet in a PHLSter Flatpack carrier as the most critical part of my everyday carrier gear, every bit as important as my handgun. Despite the conventional wisdom of internet “experts,” you’re not likely to be able to improvise a tourniquet in time to save lives in the event of a shooting, an accident at home or at a job site, or on the road after a collision. As this graphic video makes abundantly clear, you have just seconds to get a tourniquet in place and stop the bleed.

Please consider getting a quality, combat-proven tourniquet (either the SOFTT-W preferred by my Green Beret Medic and trauma management instructor Mike Voytko, or the CAT tourniquet from North American Rescue) and make it part of your every-day-carry.

Tourniquets can save lives when nothing else can.

The post This Is Why You Don’t Shoot Them In The Leg appeared first on Bearing Arms.

via Bearing Arms
This Is Why You Don’t Shoot Them In The Leg

IEEE Spectrum reports on a "radical new weapon" against brain tumors — only available since 2015. They profile a typical patient who "wears electrodes on her head all day and night to send an electric field through her brain, trying to prevent any leftover tumor cells from multiplying [and] goes about her business with a shaved head plastered with electrodes, which are connected by wires to a bulky generator she carries in a shoulder bag."
the_newsbeagle writes:
The Optune system, which bathes the brain tumor in an AC electric field, is the first new treatment to come along that seems to extend some patients’ lives. New data on survival rates from a major clinical trial showed that 43% of patients who used Optune were still alive at the 2-year mark, compared to 30% of patients on the standard treatment regimen. At the 4-year mark, the survival rates were 17% for Optune patients and 10% for the others. Patients have to re-shave their heads every few days and re-apply all the electrodes, but that’s never been a problem, according to one patient. "If you have a condition which has no cure, it’s a great motivator."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Brain Cancer Patients Live Longer By Sending Electric Fields Through Their Heads

Have you been enjoying Columbus Underground’s Holiday Shopping Guide? This weekend, take advantage of Black Friday and Small Business Saturday deals in the Short North and more! Thanks once again to Elm & Iron for being the presenting sponsor of our shopping guide. Make plans to stop by their Holiday Open House in Clintonville for […]
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Holiday Shopping Guide 2016 – Week Two

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Don’t Leave Your Expensive Camera in the Path of a High-Powered Water Jet

Winx is an innovative medical device for treating obstructive sleep apnea, a common sleep-related breathing disorder. The system operates by applying a gentle negative pressure through a novel mouthpiece to urge airway-obstructing tissues (soft palate and tongue) forward, thereby keeping the airway open during sleep. Winx consists of a quiet bedside console connected to a fitted mouthpiece with small flexible tubing. The console generates the negative pressure, collects excess saliva, and provides operation and usage feedback. Winx is simple to use, comfortable, quiet, compact, and travel friendly, offering many advantages over the current standard of care (CPAP) by eliminating the need for a facemask, headgear, humidifier and pressurized air. Winx solves a serious problem in a brand new way, representing a good combination of disruptive technology, appropriately simple design, and highly effective clinically proven performance.

View the full content here
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Sleep Well With Winx Sleep Therapy System

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Give Thanks For Dozens of Promo Codes on Your Favorite Anker Gear

via Lifehacker
How to Stream the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

We know you’re looking for the best Black Friday tool deals and Cyber Monday deals on electronics and parts for your next project, so we did the hard work for you and put together a massive cheat sheet.

Read more on MAKE

The post The Best Black Friday Deals on Tools and Electronics appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.

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The Best Black Friday Deals on Tools and Electronics

Aspartame—the artificial sweetener found in drinks like Diet Coke—is not good for you. If you believe otherwise, I admire your commitment to self-delusion. A new study published by a team of investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital found a possible reason aspartame doesn’t help you lose weight—oh sorry, haven’t you heard? Like most things in society, diet soda is probably a giant scam.

Richard Hodin, a surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital and the study’s senior author, explained, “Sugar substitutes like aspartame are designed to promote weight loss and decrease the incidence of metabolic syndrome, but a number of clinical and epidemiologic studies have suggested that these products don’t work very well and may actually make things worse.”

Dr. Hodin and his team found that the artificial sweetener intestinal alkaline phosphatase (IAP), which is a gut enzyme that researchers believe prevents obesity. So even though there’s no sugar in your diet beverage, it might not aid you in your weight loss journey.

To test out aspartame’s effect on IAP, researchers examined four groups of mice over a four-week period. Scientists fed two groups a high-fat diet—one received drinking water spiked with aspartame, while the other had plain water. The remaining two groups were fed normal diets—one with aspartame water, the other with plain. Mice drinking aspartame-spiked water consumed the equivalent of three and a half cans of diet soda per day.

Researchers found “while there was little difference between the weights of the two groups fed a normal diet, mice on a high-fat diet that received aspartame gained more weight than did those on the same diet that received plain water.” Furthermore, mice who received aspartame water had higher blood pressure and higher blood sugar levels, which researchers believe is evidence of a glucose intolerance. “Both aspartame-receiving groups had higher levels of the inflammatory protein TNF-alpha in their blood, which suggests the kind of systemic inflammation associated with metabolic syndrome,” Science Daily reported.

Dr. Hodin said, “While we can’t rule out other contributing mechanisms, our experiments clearly show that aspartame blocks IAP activity, independent of other effects.”

Does this mean I’ll finally stop drinking Diet Coke? No way. But at least now I know what will likely contribute to my premature death.

[Science Daily]

via Gizmodo
Scientists Discover Why Diet Coke Is Probably Undermining You