Free Republic

Alabama may become the first state to execute a prisoner by making him breathe pure nitrogen, a death penalty method that is authorized by three states but has never been used. The office of Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall asked the state Supreme Court in a court filing on Friday to set an execution date for 58-year-old death row inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith. The filing revealed Alabama intends to put him to death by nitrogen hypoxia. Smith was one of two men convicted in the 1988 murder-for-hire killing of a preacher’s wife. “It is a travesty that Kenneth Smith has...

A study of an international chess tournament has revealed that wearing a face mask significantly reduced the average quality of player decisions, impacting the cognitive performance of competitive chess players. Australian chess Grandmaster and University of Queensland Prof. David Smerdon analysed almost three million chess moves played by 8,531 people in 18 countries before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. “The decrease in performance was due to the annoyance caused by the masks rather than a physiological mechanism,” Smerdon said. “The data showed masks were more likely to decrease performance in situations where there was a demanding mental task with a...

Alabama told a federal judge that it could soon be ready to use a new, untried execution method called nitrogen hypoxia to carry out a death sentence. The disclosure came Monday at a court hearing over inmate Alan Miller’s request to block his scheduled Sept. 22 execution by lethal injection. Miller maintains that prison staff lost paperwork he returned in 2018 requesting nitrogen hypoxia, an execution method that the state has authorized but never used. […] Nitrogen hypoxia is a proposed execution method in which death would be caused by forcing the inmate to breathe only nitrogen, thereby depriving him...

As doctors see more and more COVID-19 patients, they are noticing an odd trend: Patients whose blood oxygen saturation levels are exceedingly low but who are hardly gasping for breath. These patients are quite sick, but their disease does not present like typical acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), a type of lung failure known from the 2003 outbreak of the SARS coronavirus and other respiratory diseases. Their lungs are clearly not effectively oxygenating the blood, but these patients are alert and feeling relatively well, even as doctors debate whether to intubate them by placing a breathing tube down the throat....

There is a way we could identify more patients who have Covid pneumonia sooner and treat them more effectively — and it would not require waiting for a coronavirus test at a hospital or doctor’s office. It requires detecting silent hypoxia early through a common medical device that can be purchased without a prescription at most pharmacies: a pulse oximeter. Pulse oximetry is no more complicated than using a thermometer. These small devices turn on with one button and are placed on a fingertip. In a few seconds, two numbers are displayed: oxygen saturation and pulse rate. Pulse oximeters are...

In the last 3–5 days, a mountain of anecdotal evidence has come out of NYC, Italy, Spain, etc. about COVID-19 and characteristics of patients who get seriously ill. It’s not only piling up but now leading to a general field-level consensus backed up by a few previously little-known studies that we’ve had it all wrong the whole time. Well, a few had some things eerily correct (cough Trump cough), especially with Hydroxychloroquine with Azithromicin, but we’ll get to that in a minute. There is no ‘pneumonia’ nor ARDS. At least not the ARDS with established treatment protocols and procedures we’re...

The Pentagon announced Tuesday changes the Air Force will make to mitigate hypoxia-like symptoms experienced by some pilots flying F-22s, and a phased approach to lifting flight restrictions implemented earlier this year. To fix the air supply problem and reduce the incidents of hypoxia-like events, the Air Force has made two changes to the aircraft’s cockpit life support system, Defense Press Secretary George Little said. First, the Air Force will replace a valve in the upper pressure garment vest worn by pilots during high-altitude missions. The valve was causing the vest to inflate, and remain inflated under conditions where it...

Air Force leaders provided an update on the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board study into the F-22 Raptor life support systems and flight operations during a briefing in the Pentagon March 29. Retired Gen. Gregory Martin, an aviator and a former commander of two major commands, chaired the nine member SAB team which studied the aircrafts' on-board oxygen generation systems and briefed its findings and recommendations in trying to determine a root cause for pilots experiencing unexplained physiological events with the F-22 Raptor. "From April 2008 until May 2011, the Air Force experienced 14 physiological incidents with the fleet of...

A US Air Force Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) panel investigating a series of hypoxia-like incidents afflicting pilots flying the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor has not discovered what is causing the problem, but service officials vow they will find the root cause. "I am convinced there is a root cause," says Maj Gen Charles Lyon, Air Combat Command's (ACC) director of operations. "I want everyone to know--particularly those who operate it and their families--we will not rest until we find that root cause." The USAF is continuing to test the F-22's life-support systems to try to determine what is still causing...

The Air Force and the Navy have combined research into a perplexing problem that may have vexed both services in the skies. The U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine and the Naval Medical Research Unit, next door to each other at Wright-Patterson, have linked research for hypoxia — incidents that may have caused a lack of oxygen to reach pilots during some flights in the Air Force’s F-22 Raptor stealth fighter and the Navy’s F-18, military leaders said. “We had what we believe was a common issue,” said Capt. Rita Simmons, executive officer of the Naval Medical Research Unit....

Air Force is replacing handles that engage the F-22 Raptor fighter jet's emergency oxygen system after pilots reported feeling lightheaded and the death of a captain whose $143 million aircraft took a nosedive into a mountain range in Alaska. Capt. Jeffrey Haney was killed in November 2010 during a night mission about 100 miles north of Anchorage. An accident investigation found that the plane's controls and switches contributed to the crash, particularly an emergency oxygen system activation ring on the back edge of the ejection seat. The report found that the two-step process to manually activate the system required the...

The Air Combat Command director of operations visited a detachment at Luke on Monday to recognize the unit for designing an important safety feature for the F-22 Raptor. "This is really an important thing you have done for the Air Force and the F-22 fleet," Maj. Gen. Charles Lyon, ACC director of operations, told leadership at Detachment 1, ACC Training Support Squadron, a tenant unit at Luke. The modification is to the F-22's Emergency Oxygen System handle, which makes it easier for the pilot to access. Det 1 model makers Floyd Slinker and Terry Waugh designed it. Approximately 200 handles,...

The U.S. Air Force is still having problems with the pilot's air supply in its F-22 fighters. Recently, there were three more cases of F-22 pilots apparently experiencing problems. The term "apparently" is appropriate because the pilots did not black out and a thorough check of the air supply system and the aircraft found nothing wrong. There have been nearly 30 of these "dizziness or disorientation" incidents in the last four years. That's about one incident per hundred sorties. Only one F-22 has been lost to an accident so far and, while that did involve an air supply issue, it...