One of the more horrifying disorders one can experience is locked-in syndrome, in which a person is conscious, but cannot move or cannot communicate. Because of the lack of communication, caregivers often don't know the patient is conscious. Doctors are now more awareness of the possibility that completely paralyzed patients may retain consciousness, so they consult with neurologist Steven Laureys of the University of Lige in Belgium, who has developed testing methods for reaching conscious but uncommunicative patients.

Patients are brought to Lige from all over Europe to undergo testing. How do you determine whether they are conscious?

Well, of course, the physician will say, “Squeeze my hand”—but this time while the patient is in a brain scanner. If the motor cortex is activated, we know that the patient heard and understood and therefore is conscious. We also want to determine the chances of recovery and what the physician or the patient’s family can do. With different brain scanners, I can find out where brain damage is located and which connections are still intact. This information tells family members what the chances of recovery are. If the results show that there is no hope whatsoever, we then discuss difficult topics with the family, such as end-of-life options. Occasionally we see much more brain activity than anticipated, and then we can initiate treatment aimed at rehabilitation.

Once the possibility of consciousness is determined, medical science has ways of stimulating the brain if necessary, and facilitating communication by whatever means the patient has available, for example, a computer that scans eye movement. Read the rest of the interview with Dr. Laureys at Scientific American. -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: HannahDoverty)

(YouTube link)

Zephyr is a four-year-old golden retriever witnessing the "What the Fluff Challenge." We don't know what Zephyr was expecting (he's certainly very attentive), but we were expecting the young man holding the blanket up to disappear. Instead, he changed into Kevin, Zephyr's favorite person, who has been gone for nine months doing Army training at Ft. Bragg. Zephyr was pretty happy with the trick! -via Digg

Unless a band is named after the most prominent member (Bon Jovi) or an obvious fact about them (The Philadelphia Orchestra), there's probably a great story behind how the name was selected. Some of them may even be true.

Check out a pictofacts post that tells the stories of how 25 bands got their unique names at Cracked.

In 1917, a group of 450 bilingual women were sent to the front lines with the U.S. Army Signal Corps as telephone operators for the American Expeditionary Forces in France. Telephone communication was still fairly new, and the women dubbed the "Hello Girls" connected 26 million communications between forces to facilitate U.S. efforts. They deciphered secret codes, checked for wiretapping, and facilitated emergency communications.  

The telephone was this very specialized department that in retrospect seems kind of simple but was at the time a very high paced, high-pressure kind of occupation. You had to multitask. You had someone yelling at you in one ear, you’re writing down notes about where the connection is going, you’re looking for other lines that are flashing because other calls are coming in, you’re trying to see which calls have switched off — and they were doing this all at once. They found that women were better at it. Before the Hello Girls were recruited, the average male Army recruit could connect a call in 60 seconds. It took the average woman ten seconds. In wartime, the difference between 10 and 60 seconds is life and death.   

The Hello Girls had taken military oaths and were told they were in the army, yet when they came home they were treated as civilian contractors. They were given no discharge papers, no military records, and no veterans benefits. It was only in 1977 that their military service was recognized, and just this year, the Hello Girls Congressional Gold Medal Act was introduced in Congress. If the act is passed, 101 years later, all the Congressional Gold Medals will be awarded posthumously. Read about the Hello Girls at Task and Purpose. -via Metafilter

(YouTube link)

Here's a cute and catchy song from Clare and Si Bennett, also known as Planet Custard, about the planets of the solar system. It's set to an animated video that is cute, funny, and artistic at the same time. Each planet gets a verse about what makes it unique, and even Pluto makes a cameo appearance. And now I can't get the tune out of my head. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Students of American history learn that European explorers, conquerors, and settlers brought diseases that ravaged the Americas in the 14th and 15th centuries. However, the absolute devastation those pathogens wrought wasn't fully understood for a long time. The ability of relatively small armies to conquer entire civilizations on their home turf wasn't due to superior force, strategy, or technology as much as it was due to microscopic invaders -and it wasn't limited to smallpox, either.

After 12,000 years of separation, Native Americans met Europeans on unequal terms. Almost all the major species of domesticated livestock were from Eurasia, and the livestock that tend to live closest to humans (cow, sheep, goat, pig, and horse) had been living with Europeans for thousands of years. These provided plentiful opportunities for diseases to pass from animal to human and vice versa, and to spread across Eurasia, from eastern China to western Spain. When Christopher Columbus arrived in the Caribbean for the second time, in 1493, he planned to settle. He arrived with 17 ships, 1,500 people, and hundreds of pigs and other animals. As soon as they landed on December 8, the pigs, which had been isolated in the very bottom of the boat, were released.

The next day, the Europeans began to fall ill, Columbus included. Native Americans began to die. This was probably swine flu, to which Native Americans had no prior exposure. Twenty-three years later, in 1516, the Spanish historian Bartolomé de las Casas wrote of the island that is now Haiti and the Dominican Republic: “Hispaniola is depopulated, robbed and destroyed … because in just four months, one-third of the Indians [the Spaniards] had in their care have died.” Two years later in Memorial on Remedies for the Indies, he wrote that “of the 1,000,000 souls there were in Hispaniola, the Christians have left but 8,000 or 9,000, the rest have died.” But worse was to come.

Without the diseases that drastically reduced the population of the Americas, the world's history and demographic makeup might be quite different today. At the same time, the trade routes between the Old World and the New World suddenly globalized the food we eat. Europeans making their way to the Americas changed everything in a short span of time, bringing together what continental drift took millions of years to separate. Imagine at some distant point in the future, archaeologists (or even paleontologists) who cannot read our written records found evidence of these massive changes taking place suddenly in the physical record. Read about those changes and what they meant at The Atlantic.

(Image credit: Architect of the Capitol)

(YouTube link)

Hobos have been around since the railroad system made traveling across America possible. Itinerant workers rode the rails to where jobs were available, as best they could. Their numbers grew when unemployment did, and they developed a system leave messages for each other. Or did they? Historians know that the "hobo code" we've all read about is not what we've been told before. -via Kottke

Barbara Lamarr as one of the early vamps of Hollywood, with a public life of glamour and gossip, and a real life that is somewhat of a mystery, due to her habit of making up interesting stories. Lamarr came from a vaudeville family, went to California to perform a burlesque act with her sister, then moved to writing screenplays for film, and eventually starred in several movies herself, one in which she convinced Benito Mussolini to appear. Offscreen, there was also a kidnapping, four marriages, and endless partying.    

She was the toast of the town, often sleeping no more than two hours a night to fit in all of her merrymaking. The five years following her big break were filled with a lot of joy, but also a lot of drugs, tapeworm-filled crash diets, and a struggle to prove herself a capable mother. She had to stage the adoption of her own son, Marvin, years after his birth as she’d had him out of wedlock.

Read about the outrageous life of Barbara Lamarr at Messy Nessy Chic.

(YouTube link)

Take a stroll down memory lane with a compilation of snippets from the biggest song of each year from 1940 to last year. That's 78 songs! No problem, it's easy to skip around and find the years you want to hear. But how do you define the biggest song of the year? In this case, it's the song that stayed at the top of Billboard's pop music chart the longest. In some cases, it wasn't the biggest-selling song, but if you were around, you no doubt remember it. Some of those #1 hits may surprise you (see 1974). If you want to see the UK version of the same idea, you'll find that video at Laughing Squid.  

Sunday, August 26, is National Dog Day. It's only appropriate that it would fall in the dog days of summer. With that in mind, give your dog an extra hour in the park today, or an extra game of ball in the back yard. But don't compare your dog to the most notable dogs in history, like Laika or Hachiko or Sergeant Stubby.

The military title in this pit bull mix’s name isn’t just there to be cute; it’s a well-earned honor. During World War I, the former stray served with the 102nd Infantry alongside his owner, John Robert Conroy, who had smuggled him into France when he was deployed. But Stubby’s keen sense of smell and hearing proved to be quite valuable to the unit; he would alert the men to incoming gas attacks and helped rescue many wounded soldiers. But it was by sniffing out a German spy that Stubby earned the rank of sergeant.

Read 12 such stories of honorable dogs at Mental Floss.

(YouTube link)

This 5-year-old is feeling good after her first hair cut, and she tries her best to explain it to us. She's very good at describing the ultimate happiness, as she relates it to her experiences so far in life. No one has felt such joy since Navin Johnson saw his name in the new phone book. -via Digg

In Germany, when highway traffic slows to a walking speed or stops completely, all vehicles are obliged to move to the side to create an open lane in the middle. This free lane, or Rettungsgasse, is for emergency vehicles only, and must be wide enough for a firetruck or snowplow. While regular traffic may be partially off the shoulder, they aren't moving anyway. Meanwhile, ambulances and wreckers can speed along on the pavement. An English translation of German Wikipedia explains how Rettungsgasse works, as well as traffic jam rules for other countries.  -via TYWKIWDBI

(YouTube link)

The Stanley Hotel in in Estes Park, Colorado, is famous for inspiring Stephen King to write his novel The Shining. But the evil spirits from King's imagination are not the only intruders bringing notoriety to the hotel. A black bear wandered into the hotel lobby Wednesday night, possibly looking for a room, while 300 guests slept through the invasion. The bear climbed on the furniture while a desk clerk stayed very still and recorded part of the encounter. After a while, finding the service unacceptably slow, the bear left on its own. -via Boing Boing 

Biddy Mason was born into slavery in Georgia. A Mormon family named Smith took her along when they moved to Salt Lake City, then San Bernardino, then Los Angeles. Mason was technically free when she crossed into California in 1851, but was probably not informed of her rights, and kept working for the Smiths. Five years later, the Smiths intended to move to Texas, where Mason would again be a slave. California law only allowed such a move for adults who volunteered to return to slavery. Mason's free friends came to her rescue.

To keep them safe, Mason and the other Smith “slaves” were taken to the city jail in Los Angeles. In January, 1856, all eyes were on the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Benjamin Hays as the trial began. Smith claimed that Mason and the 14 other people he had kept in the canyon were “members of his family” who voluntarily offered to go with him to Texas. Although Mason was not allowed to testify against a white person in court, Judge Hays invited her into his chambers, where she gave an entirely different account of what had happened.

“I have always done what I have been told to do,” Mason told the judge. “I always feared this trip to Texas since I first heard of it. Mr. Smith told me I would be just as free in Texas as here.” When the judge explained that, due to a state law, her minor children could not be taken to a state where they could become enslaved, Mason replied, “I do not want to be separated from my children, and do not in such case wish to go.”

On January 19, Judge Hays ruled in favor of Mason and confirmed she was free. “All of the said persons of color are entitled to their freedom and are free forever,” he wrote. He hoped they would “become settled and go to work for themselves—in peace and without fear.”

Mason went to work for a doctor as a nurse and midwife, and eventually saved enough money to buy a piece of land. And then another. This was at a time when Los Angeles had around 2,000 people, so she got in on the ground floor of a business that boomed, and Mason eventually became one of the richest women in California, and certainly the richest black woman. But Aunt Biddy was about more than real estate.

Mason’s small wood frame house at 311 Spring Street was not just a family home, it became a “refuge for stranded and needy settlers.” She also apparently ran a daycare on the property for working women and allowed civic meetings to be held there. In 1872, a group of black Angelenos founded the First African Methodist Episcopal Church at her house; the church met at the Mason home until they were able to move to their own building.

Read the story of Biddy Mason, who became "Aunt Biddy" and then "Grandma Mason," and her influence on L. A. at Curbed Los Angeles. -via Strange Company

(YouTube link)

Ever since home video became a thing, kids have wanted to remake Star Wars. This group actually did it. Byron Ruf and friends remade the whole movie on their own, although they skipped a few scenes you really don't need, so it comes in at barely over an hour. The attention to detail meant even having a Stormtrooper knock his head during an entrance. There are a few improvements, such as Luke not looking straight down into a lightsaber, Han shot first, and in the end, Chewie gets his medal. Incidentally, I love that the shortest kid played Chewbacca. It's awesome. (via reddit)