When either pilot on an airline flight must leave their seat*, the law requires that another crewmember be seated (with belts fastened) in that chair. It can be another pilot, or one of the flight attendants, but they’re required to put someone into the vacant pilot’s seat until he/she returns.
I don’t know the relevant law, this was told to me by a flight crew this weekend. Apparently the reasoning is that ne’er-do-wells will find it much tougher to wrest control of the plane if the seat is occupied.
*usually, to go to the bathroom
IIRC, and we have enough pilots here to verify this, I’ve heard that on large airliners if one of the pilots steps away, the other pilot has to put on their oxygen mask.
Canaries really are as good as they are purported to be. At 2500 PPM of carbon monoxide, they’ll fall off of their perch in 3-4 minutes. A human being is asymptomatic for about 20 minutes, but after having been exposed that long, you’ll end up with a severe headache and nausea for the next half-day. So the canary could save your life, and also save you from having to take unpaid leave. Tough gig for the bird, though.
Not surprising, but I hadn’t even wondered about this: I read recently that the technology used to send men to the moon was miniscule compared to that in a cell phone today.
But some of the baby’s genetic material can get through and/or become mixed with the mother’s blood during birth. Studies have found Y chromosomes in the blood of mothers who gave birth to their sons more than ten years ago. (Cheaper and easier to screen for the Y than for other chromosomes.)
There is also a trend of pregnant and postpartum women healing better from heart damage. If anyone asks what the use is of splicing genes to make an animal’s cells glow, you can point to this mouse study, which was performed to see if the fetus could be helping.
The mouse mothers were normal. The mouse fathers were glowy. The babies were therefore 50% likely to be glowy. And, yes, they deliberately gave the mother mice heart attacks. I don’t know why that seems wierder, to me, than the fact that, after a recovery period, they sacrificed the mothers and sliced up their hearts to study them.
Some of the cells in the mother’s hearts glowed, suggesting that stem cells from the fetuses they carried had traveled to their hearts and aided healing there. Together with the stastical data, this suggests that the same thing may be happening with humans.
And yet a body in a hearse or transportation van cannot be used as the second person justifying the use of the car pool lane on the freeway. This has been tried and the traffic judge was not amused.
My nephew was shocked to find out that you could still smoke on a domestic US flight as late as 1989 if it were more than 6 hours. (He saw a picture of his father and me doing just that and it totally blew his mind).
Hummingbirds are the yippy dogs of the bird world! Related to hummingbirds, I learned recently that most of their diet comes from insects, they build muscle with the protein and get energy from the sugar in nectar. This from the Discovery Channel.
Crows are as smart as 4 year old children, but have the personality of a rebellious teenager.
This last fall, I drove from California to Arkansas and back (vacation and sightseeing). Drove through Texas, of course. For some unknown reason, noticed that the interstate shields in Texas do not have a state name on them, unlike the shields in all the other states I passed through.
I didn’t learn this recently - I’ve known it for a while - but I like this fact so much I share it whenever I can.
Fruit flies have sperm with mind-controlling capabilities that turn off females’ sex drives. There are proteins secreted into the semen that travel into the female brain and make the female less receptive to future courtship, thus increasing the chance of the first male fathering her children.
If you automatic rain-sensing windshield wipers, you should make sure they’re turned OFF before going into an automatic car wash!!!
Going to church is warping my 3-year old nephew’s mind. In the last month, he has attempted to baptize the cat…twice. =)
and, best of all…
People were often amazed that my mother wasn’t my sister when I was a child/teenager. (She had just turned 20 when she had me and most of my friends had a ‘thing’ for her…I’m still in therapy).
Now that I’m 38 and my salt-and-pepper hair is pretty much all ‘salt’, it’s happening all over again! But this time it’s just because I look so damn old! :smack:
(3) Notwithstanding paragraph (c)(2) of this section, if for any reason at any time it is necessary for one pilot to leave his station at the controls of the airplane when operating at flight altitudes above flight level 250, the remaining pilot at the controls shall put on and use his oxygen mask until the other pilot has returned to his duty station.
