![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.conversiondiary.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/7_quick_takes_sm1.jpg\" "\\"7_quick_takes_sm\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>\u2014 1 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n I wanted to make sure that if you read only one of my links this week, you saw the story about the nurse at Guantanamo Bay who is refusing to participate in forcefeeding the hunger striking prisoners<\/a>.<\/p>\n Word of the refusal reached the outside world last week in a call from prisoner Abu Wael Dhiab to attorney Cori Crider of the London-based legal defense group Reprieve. Dhiab, a hunger striker, described how a nurse in the Navy medical corps abruptly refused to \u201cforce-feed us\u201d sometime before the Fourth of July \u2014 and disappeared from detention center duty.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/a>\u2014 2 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n There\u2019s another kind of heroism on the march in Memphis, where the police department has been working hard to find a better way for officers to handle confrontations with the mentally ill<\/a>. \u00a0In other departments in United States, an encounter with police is very dangerous for an unstable or delusional person, who may not respond to officer\u2019s demands, and may be beaten or shot when the officers escalate.<\/p>\n Officer Nigel Payne, twenty-seven, a chatty Memphis cop, surveys the bedroom of a garbage-strewn apartment in a rough section of town. Three other officers have just handcuffed a skinny twenty-two-year-old wearing stained sweatpants and a loose T-shirt. The distraught man is weeping and agitated. He insists between sobs that his mother\u2019s boyfriend, who is watching a huge TV in a dim room nearby, attacked him. However, the cops had seen the youth beating up the older man when they responded to a domestic violence call.<\/p>\n Payne, a designated Crisis Intervention Team officer, arrives moments after his colleagues, dispatched specifically to settle people who may be psychologically disturbed. As the other cops retreat into the hall, he speaks softly to the young man, trying to calm him down and draw him out. He places a hand on the kid\u2019s shoulder and inquires if he has been hurt. Then he asks him if he has any history of mental illness. Still crying, the youth mutters something about\u00a0ADHD\u2026<\/p>\n A half-hour later, Payne has the kid in the back seat of his cruiser. \u201cSo, what kind of music do you listen to?\u2009\u201d he asks. There are muffled sobs. \u201cYou with me back there? Talk to me, man. If you black out on me, I don\u2019t know how much I can help.\u201d<\/p>\n The officer cues up Lil Wayne. As we drive through the empty streets toward the county lock-up, he tells me that he puts all sorts of music on his smart phone so he can play whatever his prisoners want to hear. He figures it will soothe them, and he says some even sing along. By the time we reach the facility, where the man will be charged with assault, he has stopped crying and writhing.<\/p>\n Payne is one of 275 Memphis patrol officers\u2014one-fifth of the force\u2014with a\u00a0CITdesignation. They wear a\u00a0CIT\u00a0emblem pin on their uniforms, to tell people (especially those with mental illnesses) that they have the expertise. While all of them volunteered,\u00a0CIT\u00a0officers are chosen for their judgment and communication skills, as well as a demonstrated empathy for those living with mental illness. The work is not for everyone.<\/p>\n CIT\u00a0training involves complex role-playing scenarios; detailed information about psychological conditions, medications, and their side effects; and practice in verbal de-escalation techniques. The trainees meet with people who have emotional disorders. They learn that hollering traditional \u201ccompliance\u201d commands\u2014\u201cPolice! Drop the weapon!\u201d\u2014at someone who is delusional or hearing voices will almost certainly make the situation worse.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/a>\u2014 3 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019ve read before about growing replacement organs outside the body, but I hadn\u2019t thought much about the\u00a0how<\/em> of the process besides setting up a degradable scaffold, seeding it with cells, and nourishing them as they grow. \u00a0This article in\u00a0Nautilus<\/em><\/a> showed me one necessary component that a lot of scientists missed for a long time:<\/p>\n In Langer\u2019s lab, Niklason began work on something that, at the time, few people in the world had considered. She knew that cells in our blood vessels were subject to the push and pull of flowing blood every second of every day. Without feedback from flowing liquid, blood vessels lose their strength and stability and eventually waste away. Therefore, to convince human cells to build a stable, strong, flexible tube, one that could be surgically implanted and would thrive in the body\u2019s tumultuous environment, she would need to design an apparatus to pulse the growing cells like the human body does.<\/p>\n It seemed logical to her. But in the mid-1990s, this was anything but logical. Most biologists who were trying to coax cells into forming tissue attempted to do so through entirely chemical means. Figure out just the right cocktail, the magic blend of ingredients, and feed that to cells to get them to behave the way you wanted.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/a>\u2014 4 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Also from the annals of ingenuity. this little featurette on the world\u2019s roundest object was a delight to watch. \u00a0See if you can guess what it was needed for before you watch \u2014 it wasn\u2019t just an attempt to set a Guinness record!<\/p>\n