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Heroes

How do you make a young doctor really understand what it's like being 74? Virtual reality.

How can a 24-year-old medical student really understand what a patient 50 years older is experiencing?

The U.S. population is getting older. By 2040, the portion of Americans over 64 is expected to rise from about 15% to nearly 22%.

While there is a growing demand for doctors trained in geriatric care, Johns Hopkins University puts the average medical student at just 24 years old, meaning medical students may not have had any personal experience with what it's like to age.

This can lead to a real disconnect between doctor and patient.

What if we could drop medical students right into the lives of their elderly patients?

A radical new project called "We Are Alfred" from Embodied Labs is trying to use virtual reality technology to do exactly that.

Image used with permission from Embodied Labs.

The idea came from Embodied Labs founder Carrie Shaw's personal experience trying to understand her mother's experience with early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

While caring for her mother, Shaw says she spent a lot of time trying to imagine and understand what her mother was perceiving.

"We Are Alfred" started as Shaw's master's degree project at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and has since become a proof-of-concept prototype.

"We Are Alfred" isn't just a video you can watch — it uses virtual reality (VR) to immerse viewers in a hypothetical patient's life.

When asked why she felt virtual reality was the best way to bring the connection to life, Shaw said: "A video is contained within this box — your desktop computer, your TV screen — but that's not what a human experience is.A human experience is a world."

All GIFs from Embodied Labs/YouTube.

"We Are Alfred" uses a VR headset, headphones, and a hand-tracking device to immerse users in the story of a 74-year-old patient — the titular Alfred.

The simulation takes about seven minutes and runs the viewer through six scenes of Alfred's story — from a birthday party to a minor spill to a visit to the doctor's office.


Throughout the experience, the viewer sees and hears things exactly as Alfred would – including his audio-visual impairments.

A large, dark aberration in the middle of the screen, for instance, is designed to resemble macular degeneration (the most common visual problem in the elderly).

The audio also mimics hearing loss, another condition common to aging.

Shaw and her team are pursuing this because doctors and patients don't always connect the way they should.

For example, in the simulation, Alfred (and the viewer) struggle when the doctor gives Alfred a cognitive test. But it's not because there's anything wrong with Alfred's cognitive abilities — it's because Alfred can't really hear what the doctor asked him to do.


This is, of course, pretty frustrating. Unfortunately, in the simulation, the virtual doctor isn't able to recognize Alfred's audiovisual impairments, and because Alfred struggles with the cognitive test, the doctor draws the erroneous conclusion that Alfred's problems are cognitive.

Teaching a student to take audiovisual impairments into account is important, but it's those shared frustrations and emotions that are the real key to the "We Are Alfred" project.

The most important function of "We Are Alfred" is fostering empathy between caretakers and their patients.

There are other techniques like having students wear vision-limiting glasses that medical schools use to try to replicate what it's like to be an elderly patient but Shaw felt those methods weren't holistic enough.

Part of the beauty of "We Are Alfred" is that it lets prospective doctors experience Alfred's life outside the doctor's office — like his relationship with his family — and feel firsthand what it's like to hear you have an impairment.


"Aging isn't just about pathology — it's not just about not being able to hear, not being able to see," Shaw explained. It's about "what else goes on in someone else's life."

Shaw and her colleagues have taken "We Are Alfred" from a small project to a big mission.

After receiving her master's degree, Shaw and the team of virtual reality experts, communicators, and filmmakers who worked on the project founded a company, Embodied Labs, to continue their work.

Now Embodied Labs is trying expand on the potential of "We Are Alfred." Ideally, they'll be able to create a larger VR experience that can reach not only doctors, but students in other health professions like nurses or physical therapists.

Though empathy may not always be valued the same way raw training in technical skills is, it is one of the most important aspects of being a doctor or medical professional.

Projects like "We Are Alfred" may help ensure that our next generation of doctors is adept at that.

Watch people experience "We Are Alfred" in this video from Embodied Labs:


Modern Families

Mom calls out unfair 'double standard' of boomer grandparents who don't help with childcare

"I love my mom dearly, but I'm surprised at how little effort she puts in."

via Canva/Photos

A stressed mom and her happy, busy parents.

As far as generational stereotypes go, baby boomers (1946 to 1964) have often been accused of being a self-absorbed generation that has had no problem hoarding wealth, disregarding the environment, and prioritizing their own interests over their families. After all, they’re the generation that predominantly raised Gen X (1965 to 1980) and older millennials ('80s babies), also known as Gen Goonie, who were the least parented group of people in decades.

It’s unfair to paint an entire generation with the same brush. Still, the people who were once called the “Me Generation” are developing a reputation for being less involved in their grandchildren’s lives than their parents. The different grandparenting styles have been attributed to the fact that boomers worked longer and therefore want to enjoy their retirement. They also have more money than their parents to enjoy traveling and pursuing their hobbies. Those looking to take shots at boomers claim that they didn’t put a lot of effort into raising their kids, so why would they be any different with their grandkids?

boomers, grandparents, absentee grandparents, milennials, grandpa, grandmaBaby boomer grandparents.via Canva/Photos

A mother of one, who goes by TheCalmQuail on Mumsnet (a UK-based mothers' forum), made a controversial post, calling out a significant double standard when it comes to boomers. They had no problem having their parents help raise their kids, but they don’t want to extend the same courtesy to their children.

“It's come up in a few conversations with other parents recently about how little time their parents spend with their children, especially in comparison to when they were younger and at their grandparents' daily,” CalmQuail wrote. “Myself included, I avoided nursery completely when my mother went back to work because free daily childcare from a relative, and some of my happiest regular memories are spending regular one-on-one time with my Nana.”

“I realise grandparents are entitled to their own lives, but the lack of help does seem like double standards, when a large majority have seemingly had so much help themselves,” she continued.

stressed mom, young mom, stressed millennial, woman hands on her head, woman on couchA stressed mom with her head in her hands.via Canva/Photos

CalmQuail added that her mother lives up the road from her but still finds excuses not to help our child or even spend time with her kid. “It often feels like she's an extra toddler, as I have to suggest stuff to tempt her to do anything together; I manage the logistics, drive her there, etc. She will be there for emergency childcare requests when possible,” she continued. At the end of her post, she asked whether she was being unreasonable for thinking that her parents should put as much effort into raising their grandchildren as they had put into raising their parents.

The verdict: 68% thought she was NOT being unreasonable, and 32% felt that she was being unreasonable. Therefore, a majority of parents on the forum believe that Baby Boomers have the same responsibility to their grandchildren as the Silent Generation (1928 to 1945) did to theirs.

Many parents on the forum have experienced similar situations with their boomer parents and have given them a little grace by acknowledging that their grandparents didn’t have many resources or retirement expectations, so they dedicated their energy to their families.

stressed woman, tired mom, woman doing laundry, woman needs help, crying woman, folding laundryA stressed mom doing laundry.via Canva/Photos

“I know this will turn into a boomer bashing thread but my experience is my parents and their friends are early retirees with a fair bit of cash and feel they’ve earnt a nice easy long comfortable retirement (they have worked hard but only the same as us except we can’t afford a nanny, cleaner etc like they did…).so they’re busy on holidays, golfing, socialising,” a commenter wrote. “My grandparents were typical of their generation—very hard working, modest life, and incredibly family orientated, they had us every holiday.”

“I don’t think my grandparents had much in the way of expectations of retirement,” another commenter added. “They retired relatively early by today’s standards, and lived far longer than they expected. There wasn’t much of a sense of ‘enjoying your retirement’ by jetting off around the world or pursuing personal hobbies - they were always there and available.”

Ultimately, there’s nothing wrong with baby boomers enjoying their retirement, but their children have a right to feel a bit miffed by the shift in grandparenting priorities. As times change, so do expectations, but why does it feel like younger people are always getting the short end of the stick when it comes to life's necessities, such as childcare and the cost of living? Unfortunately, so many younger people feel like they have to go it alone. However, kudos to the boomer grandparents who do help out with childcare, just as their parents did. As they say, it takes a village to raise a child, and these days, our villages need to be growing instead of shrinking.

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Health

Man unexpectedly dies during brain scan. What scientists saw should give everyone comfort.

They may have uncovered the secrets of our final moments.

via Canva

A doctor is analyzing brain scans.

Death remains one of the greatest mysteries of life. It’s impossible to know what happens as a person passes and whether there’s anything afterward because no one has ever been able to report what happens from beyond the grave. Of course, if you ask those with a keen interest in the supernatural, they may say otherwise.

However, in 2021, researcher Dr. Raul Vicente and his colleagues at the University of Tartu, Estonia, became the first people ever to record the brainwaves of someone in the process of dying, and what they’ve come to realize should be very comforting to everyone. “We measured 900 seconds of brain activity around the time of death and set a specific focus to investigate what happened in the 30 seconds before and after the heart stopped beating,” Dr. Ajmal Zemmar, a neurosurgeon at the University of Louisville, US, who organized the study, told Frontiers.


The patient who died while having his brain waves measured was 87 years old and had epilepsy. While researchers were studying his brain to learn more about the condition, they had a heart attack and passed away. “Just before and after the heart stopped working, we saw changes in a specific band of neural oscillations, so-called gamma oscillations, but also in others such as delta, theta, alpha, and beta oscillations,” Zemmar said.

The different types of brain oscillations that occurred in the patient before and after the heart attack were associated with high cognitive functions, including dreaming, concentrating, memory retrieval, and memory flashbacks. Therefore, it’s possible that as the patient was dying, they had their life flash before their eyes. What an amazing and comforting experience right before leaving this mortal coil.

“Through generating oscillations involved in memory retrieval, the brain may be playing a last recall of important life events just before we die, similar to the ones reported in near-death experiences,” Zemmar speculated. “These findings challenge our understanding of when exactly life ends and generate important subsequent questions, such as those related to the timing of organ donation.”


How long are people conscious after they are technically dead?

Science has found that people can remain conscious up to 20 seconds after they are declared dead. Even after the heart and breathing have stopped, the cerebral cortex can hang on for a while without oxygen. So, some people may experience the moment when they hear themselves declared dead, but they aren’t able to move or react to the news. In cases where someone performs CPR on the deceased person, the blood pumped by the compressions can temporarily keep the brain alive as well.

Although the experience of death will probably always remain a mystery, we should take solace in the idea that, in many cases, it may not necessarily be a miserable experience but an ecstatic final burst of consciousness that welcomes us into the great beyond. “Something we may learn from this research is: although our loved ones have their eyes closed and are ready to leave us to rest, their brains may be replaying some of the nicest moments they experienced in their lives,” Zemmar concludes.

This article originally appeared in February

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Fatherhood

Dad and daughter relationships perfectly  explained in 10 paintings

The bond between dads and daughters is amazing.

All illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.

It's hard to truly describe the amazing bond between dads and their daughters.

Being a dad is an amazing job no matter the gender of the tiny humans we're raising. But there's something unique about the bond between fathers and daughters. Most dads know what it's like to struggle with braiding hair, but we also know that bonding time provides immense value to our daughters. In fact, studies have shown that women with actively involved fathers are more confident and more successful in school and business.

You know how a picture is worth a thousand words? I'll just let these images sum up the daddy-daughter bond.

A 37-year-old Ukrainian artist affectionately known as Soosh, recently created some ridiculously heartwarming illustrations of the bond between a dad and his daughter, and put them on her Instagram feed. Sadly, her father wasn't involved in her life when she was a kid. But she wants to be sure her 9-year-old son doesn't follow in those footsteps.

"Part of the education for my kiddo who I want to grow up to be a good man is to understand what it's like to be one," Soosh told Upworthy.

There are so many different ways that fathers demonstrate their love for their little girls, and Soosh pretty much nails all of them.

Get ready to run the full gamut of the feels.

1. Dads can do it all. Including hair.

parenting, dads, daughters, fathers, art, artworkA father does his daughter's hairAll illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.

2. They also make pretty great game opponents.



parenting, dads, daughters, fathers, art, artwork, chessA father plays chess with his daughterAll illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.

3. And the Hula-Hoop skills? Legendary.



parenting, dads, daughters, fathers, art, artwork, hula hoopA dad hula hoops with his daughterAll illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.

4. Dads know there's always time for a tea party regardless of the mountain of work in front of them.



A dad talks to his daughter while working at his deskAll illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.


5. And their puppeteer skills totally belong on Broadway.



A dad performs a puppet show for his daughterAll illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.


6. Dads help us see the world from different views.



A dad walks with his daughter on his backAll illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.


7. So much so that we never want them to leave.



a dad carries a suitcase that his daughter holds ontoAll illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.


8. They can make us feel protected, valued, and loved.



A dad holds his sleeping daughterAll illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.


9. Especially when there are monsters hiding in places they shouldn't.



A superhero dad looks over his daughterAll illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.


10. Seeing the daddy-daughter bond as art perfectly shows how beautiful fatherhood can be.



A dad takes the small corner of the bed with his dauthterAll illustrations are provided by Soosh and used with permission.


This article originally appeared nine years ago.

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Parenting

Yet another school district shifts to 4-day week and parents are sounding off

So... when are we getting the matching 4-day work week?

Unsplash

When talking with other parents I know, it's hard not to sound like a grumpy old man when we get around to discussing school schedules. "Am I the only one who feels like kids have so many days off? I never got that many days off when I was a kid! And I had to go work in the coal mine after, too!" I know what I sound like, but I just can't help it.

In Georgia, where I live, we have a shorter summer break than some other parts of the country. But my kids have the entire week of Thanksgiving off, a week in September, two whole weeks at Christmas, a whole week off in February, and a weeklong spring break. They have asynchronous days (during which they complete assignments at home, which usually takes about 30 minutes) about once a month, and they have two or three half-day weeks throughout the year. Quite honestly, it feels like they're never in school for very long before they get another break, which makes it tough to get in a rhythm with work and career goals. Plus, we're constantly arranging day camps and other childcare options for all the time off. Actually, I just looked it up and I'm not losing my mind: American kids have fewer school days than most other major countries.

So it caught my attention in a major way when I read that Whitney Independent School District in Texas recently decided to enact a 4-day week heading into the 2025 school year. That makes it one of dozens of school districts in Texas to make the change and over 900 nationally.


Giphy

The thought of having the kids home from school EVERY Friday or Monday makes me want to break out in stress hives. But this 4-day school week movement isn't designed to give parents a headache. It's meant to lure teachers back to work.

Yes, teachers are leaving the profession in droves and young graduates don't seem eager to replace them. Why? The pay is bad, for starters, but that's just the beginning. Teachers are burnt out, undermined and criticized relentlessly, held hostage by standardized testing, and more. It can be a grueling, demoralizing, and thankless job. The love and passion they have for shaping the youth of tomorrow can only take you so far when you feel like you're constantly getting the short end of the stick.

School districts want to pay their teachers more, in theory, but their hands are often tied. So they're getting creative to recruit the next generation of teachers into their schools — starting with an extra day off for planning, catch-up, or family time every week.

Teachers in 4-day districts often love the new schedule. Kids love it (obviously). It's the parents who, as a whole, aren't super thrilled.

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

So far, the data shows that the truncated schedule perk is working. In these districts, job applications for teachers are up, retirements are down, and teachers are reporting better mental well-being. That's great news!

But these positive developments may be coming at the price of the working parents in the communities. Most early adopters of the 4-day week have been rural communities with a high prevalence of stay-at-home parents. As the idea starts to take hold in other parts of the country, it's getting more pushback. Discussions on Reddit, Facebook, and other social media are overrun with debate on how this is all going to shake up. Some parents, to be fair, like the idea! If they stay-at-home or have a lot of flexibility, they see it as an opportunity for more family time. But many are feeling anxious. Here's what's got those parents worried:

The effect on students' achievement is still unclear.

The execution of the 4-day week varies from district to district. Some schools extend the length of each of the four days, making the total instructional time the same. That makes for a really long day, and some teachers say the students are tired and more unruly by the late afternoon. Some districts are just going with less instruction time overall, which has parents concerned that their kids might fall behind.

4-day school weeks put parents in a childcare bind.

Having two working parents is becoming more common and necessary with the high cost of living. I know, I know — "school isn't daycare!" But it is the safe, reliable, and educational place we send our kids while we need to work.

Families with money and resources may be able to enroll their kids in more academics, extracurriculars, sports, or childcare, but a lot of normal families won't be able to afford that cost. Some schools running a 4-day week offer a paid childcare option for the day off, but that's an added expense and for families with multiple kids in the school system, it's just not possible.

This will inevitably end with some kids getting way more screentime.

With most parents still working 5-day weeks, and the cost of extra activities or childcare too high, a lot of kids are going to end up sitting around on the couch with their iPad on those days off. I'm no expert, and I'm certainly not against screentime, but adding another several hours of it to a child's week seems less than ideal.

Of course there are other options other than paid childcare and iPads. There are play dates, there's getting help from family and friends. All of these options are an enormous amount of work to arrange for parents who are already at capacity.

Working 4 days is definitely a win for teachers that makes the job more appealing. But it doesn't address the systemic issues that are driving them to quit, retire early, or give up their dreams of teaching all together.

Giphy

A Commissioner of Education from Missouri calls truncated schedules a "band-aid solution with diminishing returns." Having an extra planning day won't stop teachers from getting scapegoated by politicians or held to impossible curriculum standards, it won't keep them from having to buy their own supplies or deal with ever-worsening student behavior.

Some teachers and other experts have suggested having a modified 5-day school week, where one of the days gets set aside as a teacher planning day while students are still on-site participating in clubs, music, art — you know, all the stuff that's been getting cut in recent years. Something like that could work in some places.

As a dad, I don't mind the idea of my busy kids having an extra day off to unwind, pursue hobbies, see friends, catch up on projects, or spend time as a family. And I'm also very much in favor of anything that takes pressure off of overworked teachers. But until we adopt a 4-day work week as the standard, the 4-day school week is always going to feel a little out of place.

This article originally appeared in February

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Democracy

Millennial says boomers have it backward when they talk about wasting money on 'luxuries'

Things couldn't have been more different.

via Canva

A young couple can't handle high prices and their dad says to save money.

One of the big talking points in the great American millennials versus baby boomers debate is whether the younger generation has knee-capped itself by its lavish spending habits that have prevented them from owning homes. If millennials stopped buying $14 avocado toast and $1,000 iPhones, would they be able to save enough for a down payment on a modest home?

Freddie Smith, 36, of Orlando, Florida, recently went viral on TikTok for a video in which he challenged the boomer argument with statistics from the Bureau of Labor, Federal Reserve, and the U.S. Census Bureau. Smith believes that the older generations misunderstand millennial finances because their concept of luxury is based on 1980s economics. Smith says that for baby boomers, essentials such as rent and child care were much more affordable, but items considered luxuries (TVs, CD players, computers) were much more expensive.

How is the economy different for millennials than it was for baby boomers?

"The main shift is that core essentials—housing, education, healthcare, and even food—have become more expensive," Smith said. "Housing and rent, for instance, now outpace wage growth, making homeownership feel unattainable for many. The cost of childcare has also skyrocketed, and food prices have increased.”

"As a result, I think older generations have a different perspective on luxury versus necessity,” Smith continued. “They grew up in a time when hard work typically led to financial stability, whereas today, even with hard work, many people struggle with the high costs of housing, rent and medical expenses. Basic survival used to be far more affordable, allowing people more financial room to build a stable life."

Smith’s numbers don’t lie. For a person in the '80s to own three TVs, a CD player, a cellphone, a microwave, and a computer, it would cost them 3.5 years of rent or a 20% downpayment on the average home. So, it was irresponsible for someone in that period to purchase all of what was known then as luxuries. However, these days, for a Millennial to have the average apartment and the equivalent amount of "luxuries" would only cost a little over one month's rent.

1980s, boomers, millennialsA 1980s computer and television. via Canva

"But if you skip that daily $6 Starbucks drink, you’ll have enough for the downpayment in 29.22 years," Yokahana joked in the comments. "I hate that housing and transportation have become luxuries," Molly added. "Imagine spending 3x your rent on a microwave," Donutdisaster wrote.

Why are luxury goods more affordable now than they were in the '80s?

The price of manufactured goods has steadily fallen over the last few decades due to technological improvements and trade policies that have allowed the U.S. to import goods from places where labor costs are cheaper. "International, global competition lowers prices directly from lower-cost imported goods, and indirectly by forcing U.S. manufacturers to behave more competitively, with lower prices, higher quality, better service, et cetera," Sociologist Joseph Cohen of Queens University said, according to Providence Journal.

Why are housing prices so high?

Housing prices in the US have soared due to the low inventory caused by the Great Recession, mortgage rates, and zoning laws that make building more challenging. Rents have increased considerably since the pandemic due to low inventory, inflation, barriers to home ownership, and the fact that more people want to live alone than with a roommate or romantic partner.

Smith’s breakdown of the economic changes over the past two generations makes a strong case for the idea that millennial financial troubles have more to do with systemic problems than spending habits. The boomers got a bad deal regarding luxury items, and the millennials with necessities. Wouldn’t living in a world where both were affordable in the same era be great?

This article originally appeared in February

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