Man Teaching CPR Went Into Cardiac Arrest and Was Saved by Students

Karl Arps was demonstrating the signs of a heart attack during a training course when he really had one, and went into cardiac arrest. Realizing that something was amiss, students at Fox Valley Technical College in Appleton, Wisc., immediately sprung into action. The last thing the 72-year-old remembers is feeling dizzy and hearing a student say that he didn't look right. The next thing he remembers is waking up in an ambulance. Student Logan Lehrer, a firefighter training as an EMT, remembers the moment he realized something was off. Arps' hand had curled outward, his face was contorted and he began snoring. For a second, Lehrer says he thought it might be a joke or a test, but he felt a pit in his stomach. The students called over another instructor, Traci Blondeau, who tried to "snap him out of it," and soon realized Arps wasn't acting. Lehrer called 911, while the others attended to Arps. Under the guidance of their instructor, they took turns administering CPR and a defibrillator until first responders arrived on the scene. Arps wound up undergoing a triple bypass and is now on the mend. Lehrer says the experience has taught him a lot about staying cool while responding to emergency situations.

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Roomba Pioneer Aims to Crack the Household Market Again With An Ai-Powered Pet Robot

The robotics pioneer who helped unleash the Roomba vacuum is now betting that you might one day replace your beloved dog or cat with a plush robot that follows you around your home and adapts to your daily habits. Colin Angle unveiled a 4-legged prototype of that artificial pet, called the Familiar, on Monday. Imagine a creature the size of a bulldog with doe-like eyes and bear cub ears and paws, extending itself into a greeting stretch that invites you to pat its touch-sensitive fake fur. “We chose a form factor that’s not a human, not a dog, not a cat, because we wanted to steer away from all of those preconceptions,” said Angle. This kind of lifelike machine — powered by the latest artificial intelligence technology — would not have been possible when Angle co-founded iRobot in 1990 or launched the first Roomba in 2002. Angle said the robot will make emotive, animal-like sounds but won’t talk. Mimicking a real pet, it has audio input “ears” and an AI system that can understand and learn from what you say to it. It benefits from the advances in generative AI sparked by chatbots like ChatGPT and can gradually adapt its behavior as it learns from the people around it. It could take a while before Angle starts selling the machines, but one target demographic is retired people who are past the peak age of pet ownership.

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Costco Quietly Launches New Bakery Rules After Years of Customer Complaints

Costco is making a small change to one of its bakery staples, and members are divided. When buying bagels from the bakery, shoppers used to be required to buy two 6-packs for $5.99, whether they wanted 12 bagels or not. Now, locations are selling one bag of 8 bagels for $4.99. Members have complained about the old packaging style for years, not wanting to commit to buying a dozen bagels, and because of Costco’s preservative-free recipe, their bagels are known to grow mold quickly. The new setup seems to be more feasible for shoppers and might help to reduce food waste. Shoppers will be able to buy an amount they’ll actually eat, rather than overbuying and either freezing or tossing the extras. However, some people are disappointed, arguing that the change is ultimately a price increase. “So before, you got 12 for $5.99; now you get 8 for $4.99. They raised prices without raising prices,” one commenter noted. Pushing back against this argument, others say that it’s actually cheaper in the long run if you use the food or forget about it in the freezer. The rollout of the bakery switch isn’t at all locations yet, and availability can vary by location.

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When the Air Force Delivered a Heart

The Air Force FB-111A Aardvark was designed to fly low and fast over enemy territory and drop nuclear or conventional bombs deep behind the lines. However, on Valentine’s Day in 1986 the bomber — also called the "Dark Vark" because of its dark paint scheme — was used for a much less destructive mission. Instead of raining down ordnance, an FB-111A ferried a heart from Oklahoma to Hartford, Connecticut, in order to save the life of 46-year-old Richard Reinhardt of Pine Plains, New York. A heart can only survive outside the body for 4 hours, and it would have taken 3½ hours for a private yet to fly the organ to Hartford for transplant. That's when hospital officials decided to contact Pease AFB in New Hampshire, which dispatched two FB-111As and a refueling tanker to Tinker AFB in Oklahoma. Because the two jets were already scheduled for a training flight to Virginia, the Oklahoma trip actually cost less and used less fuel. It’s not uncommon for military aircraft to be used to help civilians. Any time there are natural disasters, stranded hikers, or injured seafarers, military helicopters and transport planes are often dispatched to help find survivors, ferry them to hospitals and deliver supplies. As it turns out, Reinhardt had the transplant surgery and is doing well, all thanks to the Air Force.

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