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We’ve all felt it, right? You sit in a position that causes extra pressure to your leg or arm. After a while, you lose feeling in that area. Then, when you move your extremity to relieve the pressure, you start to feel the “pin pricks.” What’s up with that? First, the feeling is called paresthesia, and you may be surprised to learn it isn’t caused by blood circulation (a common misunderstanding). Instead, it’s caused by compressing the nerves for too long. Here’s how it works… If you put excess pressure on an extremity, the nerves in that area stop transmitting signals to the brain. For a while, the nerves try to transmit signals, but when they don’t receive any feedback, they simply stop trying. Because those nerves are no longer sending signals to your brain, you perceive the area to be numb. Or you think, "My arm fell asleep." It’s somewhat disturbing because you experience difficulty using those muscles for a while, even to the point where you might fall down if your foot is asleep. When the pressure on the nerves ends, the nerves can sense this, and they initiate a series of tests. They send out signals to all the neurons down the line, to make sure they are still there and are alive. The neurons respond with a jolt of pain… their way of saying, “Yes, I’m still here!” After thirty seconds to two minutes, our brain realizes everything is well, and it shuts off this firing pattern so it can resume its normal operations. You can usually speed up the recovery process by shaking or rubbing your arm or leg. I hate it when my foot falls asleep during the day because that means it’s going to be up all night. 
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A few days ago, while hiking in the forest, I came upon two nine-banded armadillos. The first one I saw, a large adult, scurried off when I got close to it. The second one, a smaller juvenile, seemed almost oblivious to my presence. As I approached, the creature froze a few times, then it went back to snuffling through the leaf litter searching for worms and bugs. When I got close enough to touch it, the critter finally turned around and sniffed at me. PHOTO ONE AND PHOTO TWO. I spoke to it—something ridiculous like "Hey, dude, what's up?" It still didn't seem startled. I won't say that I then had a one-sided conversation with the creature, but I won't say I didn't. By the way... you may have heard that armadillos carry leprosy (Hansen's disease), but the risks are highly exaggerated, and the risk of casual, brief handling of these animals is infinitesimally small. Armadillos have poor eyesight, so I'm not surprised it didn't see me. But they have very sensitive smell and hearing. Part of the reason these creatures often pay little attention is because they have no natural predators in this area—therefore, they aren't fearful. What the heck is an armadillo, anyway? Armadillo is a Spanish word meaning little armored one. This of course refers to the bony, protective plates that cover the creature's body. There are about twenty living species of armadillos, all of them native to the Americas. Only one species, the nine-banded armadillo, lives in the United States. The others are found in Central and South America. Armadillos are the only living mammals that have this type of bony armor (see PHOTO THREE). There is a mammal called a pangolin, with large protective scales, but those scales are attached to the skin and are not actually made of bone. With Armadillos, portions of the armor are bone-like, particularly over the shoulders and hips, as well as several bands that are connected by flexible skin. Below is the skeleton of a nine-banded armadillo. By the way, they don't always have nine bands around their middle. Nine is the average—they can have between seven and eleven. Interestingly, armadillos did not live this far north until recent decades. It wasn't until the late 1800s that these creatures crossed the Rio Grande River from Mexico into the United States. Since then, they have been steadily spreading across the continent. When I was growing up in Kansas, I never once saw an armadillo. Now I see them regularly, both in Kansas and in Missouri, and they have been sighted as far north as Nebraska and Iowa. These critters need to be able to dig in the soil for their prey, so they cannot live in areas where the ground freezes solid for long periods of time. So, climate change is partially responsible for their rapid expansion. Missouri no longer has the really cold winters like we used to. With warmer soil, and the fact that a female armadillo can produce up to 56 babies in her lifetime, and there are no natural armadillo predators here, these fascinating critters are spreading fast. Historically, people have eaten armadillos, but usually they have been considered "last resort" food animals. During the Great Depression (in the U.S.), armadillos were called "poor man's pork" and "Hoover hog" (because many people blamed President Hoover for the Great Depression), and even "possum on the half-shell." Did you know nine-banded armadillos almost always give birth to four genetically identical quadruplets (which explains why we had exactly four babies living under our shed a while back). In humans, identical twins or triplets make up only 0.2% of the population. There are a few animals that frequently have identical twins (ferrets, deer, and polar bears, for example), but only the nine-banded armadillo makes a habit of popping out identical quadruplets. I mentioned there are about twenty armadillo species. Perhaps the coolest of these is the pink fairy armadillo, the smallest armadillo species—about the size of a dollar bill. They live in Argentina, and they are so rare that one researcher worked in this critter's habitat for thirteen years before seeing one. PHOTO FOUR.     Photo Credits: - Nine-banded armadillo - Stan C. Smith - Armadillo skeleton - Ryan Somma, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons - Pink fairy armadillo - Daderot, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons Life's Great Mysteries - What will be the fastest mode of transportation in the near future?2/9/2026 I grew up watching The Jetsons… you know, the flying cars, robot maid, all that cool stuff. Like many people, I thought we’d have flying cars long before now. So, it’s worth digging for a serious answer to this question. First, though, we need to define “near future.” It’s almost impossible to predict technology in the far future (I’m a sci-fi author, so this is often what I try to do… but it’s only a rough guess), so let’s look ahead only a few decades. Say, by the year 2050, or maybe 2060. This makes prediction more manageable. Also, let’s just consider transportation from one point on Earth to another. Forget about travel to other planets for the moment. I don’t think there’s any doubt about what the fastest vehicles will be. You might assume it will be supersonic jets, but I think it will be sub-orbital transports instead. Sub-orbital ships reach space, so they can fly at higher speeds without air resistance, but they do not reach escape velocity. Which is to say, they do not become a satellite and orbit the Earth. Instead, they have an orbital path that takes them to a destination on Earth rather than all the way around the planet. Presumably, the destination would be a distant city. Numerous sub-orbital flights have been performed, of course, but regular passenger flights are still several years away. When commercial use becomes reality (and when it becomes affordable), passengers could fly up to 17,000 mph, traveling from the U.S. to Europe, for example, in less than one hour. Several companies and organizations are planning sub-orbital vehicles that might be used for passengers, including the SpaceLiner (from the German Aerospace Center) and the Starship (from SpaceX). Another exciting mode of fast transportation is called hyperloops. The idea is simple: create a long tube with very low air pressure inside the tube. Then put a mag-lev (magnetic levitation) passenger train inside the tube. The train can travel with low air resistance and minimal friction, moving at up to 760 mph. Faster than traditional airliners, which typically cruise at 500 to 600 mph. Hyperloops are not far in the future—we already have the technology to do this—but we need to build the infrastructure to make it widely available. We need a network of these vacuum tubes connecting major cities, then we can start cutting back on airliner flights, which use far more fuel and are far worse for the environment. But what about flying cars? Well, in the next few decades, these are most likely going to be eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) vehicles, or air taxis. These already exist, and they work. However, we need to figure out all the safety issues. First, I think we’ll see more of these as trained pilots transport goods from one place to another. Then we’ll see air taxis, again with highly trained pilots, carrying passengers from their home to the grocery store (or wherever). After that, will we see thousands of these vehicles buzzing around over cities, with regular citizens flying them to and from work? Yikes! Awesome, but also scary. I predict, by that time, they will be self-flying vehicles, so the owners don’t have to take months or years of flying lessons. And this will be safer for everyone (assuming AI navigation becomes as sophisticated as we hope it will).  |
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