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Local politics, the county, and the world, as viewed by Tammy Maygra Tammy’s views are her own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Bill Eagle, his pastor, Tammy’s neighbors, Wayne Mayo, Betsy Johnson, Joe Corsiglia, President Trump, Henry Heimuller, VP Pence, Pat Robertson, Debi Corsiglia’s dog, or Claudia Eagle’s Cats. This Tammy’s Take (with the exception of this disclaimer) is not paid for or written by, or even reviewed by anyone but Tammy and she refuses to be bullied by anyone. See Standard Disclaimer.
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Oh things we have yet to discover Things that happened or discovered in 2018
After Pvt. Shamika Burrage lost her ear in a near-fatal car accident, Army surgeons stepped up to make her a new one. However, instead of creating a prosthetic, Burrage’s new ear was grown from her own cartilage, under the skin on her right forearm, and was successfully attached. After a dune buggy accident, 13-year-old Alabama native Trenton McKinley was pronounced brain dead. However, after being brain dead for days, just as his parents were preparing to donate his organs, the teen miraculously began moving his extremities. Even more impressive, following three brain surgeries, McKinley is talking, reading, and even walking again, just two months after his near-fatal accident. In early 2018, parts of Europe got a picturesque, if peculiar sight: orange snow falling across the eastern part of the continent. While alarming, the orange snow wasn’t actually the result of some kind of chemical or other potential source of harm, but was caused by a low-pressure area moving over North Africa and into Eastern Europe, causing orange sand to mix with water droplets, causing the strange-looking snow. Approximately 5.7 million people have Alzheimer’s disease in the United States alone. However, 2018 brought some good news to those suffering: researchers at the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco were able to change a protein associated with the condition into a less-detrimental form, reversing damage to the affected brain cells in the process. The NFL just got a little bit more inclusive with the addition of Shaquem Griffin—22-year-old linebacker, born with amniotic band syndrome, which necessitated the amputation of his left hand at age four—to the Seattle Seahawks roster. He was drafted by the Seahawks on April 28, 2018. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has caused headlines for his ripped physique lately, but perhaps an even more surprising development was his $42 million investment in the 10,000 Year Clock. The clock, which will live in a hollowed-out West Texas mountain, will reportedly keep time for the next 10,000 years. 2018 was the year scientists may have just discovered the fountain of youth—at least for our blood vessels. Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder found that antioxidant MitoQ can reduce aging in the blood vessels by up to 20 years, potentially increasing the human lifespan in the process. Our understanding of human development will soon be more advanced than ever, thanks to an upcoming experiment from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany. Researchers at the Institute are creating miniature brains using Neanderthal DNA in a bid to understand how human consciousness has developed. Dictation has just gotten a whole lot more advanced. In April, 2018, researchers at MIT debuted a computer interface that can transcribe words a person is thinking—and as such, giving tiny physical cues to indicate—even if they don’t actually say the words aloud. Arachnophobes, beware: 2018 was the year that researchers at the University of Manchester taught a spider to jump on command. The spider, named Kim, demonstrated skill in 15 different jumping tasks assigned to her, moving up, down, and from side-to-side. Space food just got a whole lot more flavorful in 2018. This year, the International Space Station is now home to a sprouting onion, its green top a renewable source of flavor for future ISS cuisine. No GPS? No problem! 2018 was the year that MIT researchers managed to build a car that not only drives itself, but is capable of navigating previously unmapped country roads. While some people find remnants of their home’s previous residents when they do landscaping projects, a Utah family found something even more impressive: an Ice Age horse. A family in Lehi, Utah, discovered the well-preserved, but not fossilized, horse when landscapers dug up their yard; the skeleton is currently being excavated by paleontologists. Skin has a remarkable ability to heal itself. But in some cases, wounds heal very slowly or not at all, putting a person at risk for chronic pain, infection and scarring. Now, researchers have developed a self-powered bandage that generates an electric field over an injury, dramatically reducing the healing time for skin wounds in rats. New battery-free, easily implantable weight-loss devices developed by engineers could offer a promising new weapon for battling the bulge. An international team of palaeontologists has discovered that the flying reptiles, pterosaurs, actually had four kinds of feathers, and these are shared with dinosaurs -- pushing back the origin of feathers by some 70 million years. More than 85 well-preserved dinosaur footprints -- made by at least seven different species -- have been uncovered in East Sussex, representing the most diverse and detailed collection of these trace fossils from the Cretaceous Period found in the UK to date. Researchers have found a bacteria-killing virus that can listen in on bacterial conversations -- and then they made it attack diseases including salmonella, E. coli and cholera. A distinctive feature of modern humans is our round (globular) skulls and brains. Researchers report that present-day humans who carry particular Neanderthal DNA fragments have heads that are slightly less rounded, revealing genetic clues to the evolution of modern brain shape and function. I hope you enjoyed a few interesting facts.
Merry Christmas, Tammy
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