It's my life, you're just along for the ride!

Remember that spinal implant that helped a paraplegic man walk (albeit in a harness) back in 2011? It’s now been tested on three more partially paralyzed patients — and it’s working. The original device was a 16-electrode array that emitted small pulses of electricity to the spine, simulating the brain’s natural impulses. With intensive therapy and training patients have been able to regain limited control over their paralyzed extremities.

Nobody is walking just yet, but the recent study’s success (published in Brain, a neurology journal) proves that the treatment works on a wider range of patients. It also demonstrates that the results of the original experiment can be replicated. It’s still a long way from a cure for paralysis, but the paper’s authors are optimistic about its future application, stating that “we can now envision a day where epidural stimulation might be part of a cocktail of therapies used to treat paralysis.” Read the study for yourself in Brain, or skip past the break to see the patients trying out their new implants.

via Implant shocks patient’s spines, restores partial use of paralyzed limbs.

When George Laurer goes to the grocery store, he doesn’t tell the check-out people that he invented the barcode, but his wife used to point it out. “My husband here’s the one who invented that barcode,” she’d occasionally say. And the check-out people would look at him like, “you mean there was a time when we didn’t have barcodes?”

A time without barcodes is hard to imagine now. But it wasn’t that long ago, and the story doesn’t start with George Laurer. It starts with an engineer named Joseph Woodland. In 1948 Woodland was trying to come up with simple symbol that, when scanned, would translate to a number that a computer could use to identify a product.

via The Untold History of Where Barcodes Come From.

Back in 1966 a woman in North Phoenix, Arizona sealed a time capsule in the wall of her home. Betty Klug, then 33, didn’t tell her husband nor her two kids about the capsule. It remained a secret until contractors working on the home recently discovered the time-traveling treasure. Fair warning: If you’re not a robot, you should probably get some tissues handy.

The contractors were able to track down Betty’s husband Bruce, who’s now 79 years old and lives in Scottsdale. They handed Bruce the time capsule and he explained that Betty died tragically in a car crash 10 years after the capsule was sealed.

Bruce goes through the time capsule letter (written so many years ago on his birthday: September 27th) and we can see a man transported back through time. Even the most banal details in the letter elicit an amazing moment of recollection in his eyes.

Click below to see video…

via The First Real Time Capsule Tearjerker of 2014.