When a 25-year-old pregnant woman replied to her husband’s text about an appointment with the obstetrician with “every where thinging days nighing,” her husband knew there was something wrong (especially since her phone’s autocorrect was off).
And turns out, he was right — she had suffered a stroke.
The case, which was reported in the Archives of Neurology, details what researchers call “dystextia,” and how it helped to clue doctors in to a woman’s acute ischemic stroke.
LOS ANGELES — Patrick Dempsey says he wants to rescue a coffee house chain and more than 500 jobs.
The “Grey’s Anatomy” star said Wednesday he’s leading a group attempting to buy Tully’s Coffee. The Seattle-based company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October.
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Earlier this week, Skinnygirl founder and Bravo reality star Bethenny Frankel tweeted to more than 1.1 million of her followers that she was “heartbroken” over her recent separation from husband of two-and-a-half years, Jason Hoppy.
Now, with the possibility of divorce looming, people have begun to speculate how the split will affect the estranged couple’s 2½-year-old daughter, Bryn.
In a statement announcing the separation on December 23, Frankel said, “We have love and respect for one another and will continue to amicably co-parent our daughter who is and will always remain our first priority.”
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A few months ago we saw how a smart guy figured out how to make small 3D printed records that could be played on a toy turntable. Instructables employee Amanda Ghassaei has trumped that hack: she figured out how to 3D printed records that can be played on any turntable, just like an ordinary vinyl record.
Whereas the audio on the 3D printed toy records had to be input note by note on a custom software, Amanda was able to write a program that automated the process in a very precise manner: “It works by importing raw audio data, performing some calculations to generate the geometry of a record, and eventually exporting this geometry straight to the STL file format (used by all 3D printers).” Sadly, even the high-end Object Connex 500 printers at the Instructables office were unable to encode the geometry at a resolution high enough to create a high quality record. But the fact that even this is now possible is still nothing less than mind-blowing.
Wow. 3D printing hardware’s only going to improve in time, so I’m sure Amanda can eventually recreate professional grade records should she pursue it. Once again we’re seeing people using current technology to go back to a more physical and tactile interaction with gadgets. 3D printing is the bee’s 3D printed knees. Check out the links below for more details on Amanda’s project.
[via Instructables & Amanda Ghassaei via I Heart Chaos]
Yesterday you got some sweet new gifts. Now it’s time to write thank you notes. Card Lust is an easy, thoughtful way to do that. More »
Detroit doctors report that some area teens are partaking in dangerous trend: a “chemical game of chicken” that can result in permanent damage to their bodies.
In the game, which is called the “salt and ice challenge,” teens burn their skin by applying ice to a layer of salt on their skin and holding it for as long as possible.
CBS News reported that adding salt can drop the freezing point of ice as low as 0 degrees Fahrenheit, resulting in severe injuries to the skin, including frostbite.
Women stereotypicially use the excuse, “Not tonight, I have a headache” to avoid sex.
However, men are more prone than women to getting headaches from sex, according to new research.
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One of the stranger things I came across while in Tokyo last month was a digital artist who built a human camera that requires touch from another person to snap photos.
It is artist Eric Siu’s bit of rebellion against an increasingly technology-dependent world that distances people from real-life interactions. This effect is especially pronounced where Siu lives in Japan, as the Internet has allowed “Hikikomori” and “Otaku” sub-cultures to thrive. In “Hikikomori” culture, teens actually shut themselves in from interaction with the outside world.
As social networking, e-mail and other forms of digital communication replace or squeeze out time for face-to-face meetings, Siu wanted to create a piece of technology that required the opposite — real human touch.
The Touchy Camera, which he built using off-the-shelf parts for a few hundred dollars, is a wearable camera that requires another person to touch the wearer in order for it to work. Otherwise, the wearer is blind because the camera’s shutter doesn’t open without contact from someone else (see the GIF I made below).
If you touch him for 10 seconds or longer, that camera snaps a photo that’s viewable from an LCD screen on the back of the his head.
We walked around with it one morning in the Roppongi Hills area in Tokyo. And to make an understatement, the effect on bystanders was a bit magical. Some people would run away if they saw us come close, while others started asking questions. When some of them touched him and the shutters in front of his eyes opened, they gasped and smiled.
The camera works when human touch completes a simple circuit. Siu hands you something that looks like a lightbulb to hold in one hand, and when you touch him with the other, it completes a basic low-voltage circuit.
Siu only has one version of the Touchy camera, although people have asked him before about buying one as a toy. Since releasing it earlier this year, he’s performed all around mainland China and Asia and actually has gotten a bit of interest in it as a product. He says he would be open to making others if there was demand.
He and his partner, another character named Margaret Toucha, just made a holiday video (above) filled with boxers, pole dancers and some meandering around downtown Tokyo.
Is Cynthia Jorge, a 26-year-old Queens native and New York City restaurant manager, Tom Cruise’s new girlfriend? That’s what the cover of In Touch magazine says. However, friends of Tom’s say after this cover, anything she might have had with Tom, is off.
The pair were spotted dancing at NYC’s Le Baron nightclub on Dec. 18, just two days after Tom met Cynthia after dining at Beauty & Essex, where she works.
“Cynthia used to work at Benjamin Steakhouse in Midtown before she got her job on the Lower East Side. And before that, she was a party promoter,” a friend of Cynthia’s tells The Huffington Post. “She has always liked press attention and wanted to be famous.”
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