Learn the machinery behind one of the most complex watches in the world. Plus, gastrointestinal wound care has just gotten better and you aren’t who you think you are.
Welcome to the July 2 edition of The Digest.
Personally, I’ve always found them to be somewhat of a mysterious marvel of machinery. Perpetual calendar watches are some of the most expensive and complex systems in the wrist-watch business. They have impressed enthusiasts for centuries and remain the most mechanically sophisticated calendar watch there is.Take a look behind the careful craftsmanship that goes on behind the watch face. Link.
After surgery on the stomach or intestines, leaks in sutures are the primary concern, as they can permit stomach acid or gut bacteria to leak into the abdomen and cause infection. It’s a life-threatening complication. But a new surgical patch has entered the scene, with a sensor function that can seal wounds in the abdomen and warn of an impending suture leak in the gastrointestinal tract. It’s pretty amazing stuff that will save lives, shorten hospital stays, and save on healthcare costs. Link.
Really, though, your brain has convinced itself that you are in fact you and mistaken who you think you are for who you truly are. Confused? Turns out that each of our brains have created our sense of self, and who we think we are is just made up. I feel this can be either very motivating or completely destructive. Let’s lean toward the former.
From the article: “This may be a difficult point to grasp, chiefly because we have mistaken the process of thinking as a genuine thing for so long… [Your illusory self] narrates the world, determines your beliefs, replays your memories, identifies with your physical body, manufactures your projections of what might happen in the future, and creates your judgments about the past. It is this sense of self that we feel from the moment we open our eyes in the morning to the moment we close them at night. It seems all-important, so it often comes as a shock when I tell people that based on my work as a neuropsychologist, this “I” is simply not there—at least not in the way we think it is. Link.