WILTIMS #40: Confidence, Schlemm and gravity

I forgot to mention yesterday that I poked around the hospital for the first time like a total dork. I wanted to try out the Au Bon Pain café in the hospital because I'm hosting an interviewee this Sunday and it's one of the few walkable dinner options I can offer (and I was tired and lazy - don't judge). After eating my surprisingly tasty sandwich, I decided to see how far my student ID badge would get me and explore the hospital a bit. As with any place that you probably shouldn't be, the key to exploring is to do it with blind confidence.

"Yes, I meant to go down this abandoned hallway! I'm inspecting the... uh, light switches. Yep we're all good here!" [walks hastily back the way he came]

Hopefully by the time I actually need to be in this hospital, I will be a smidge less lost than some of my classmates.

TIL: The canal of Schlemm is fun to say. I'm going to put it in the same category as the epiploic foramen of Winslow and the ampulla of Vater. Besides reveling in its euphonious name, I also learned it's location and function (apparently I learned the word euphony as well).

Schlemm's canal is essentially a drainage duct for the aqueous humor (gooey stuff) in the eye. If the eye is damaged and scar tissue ends up in the fluid, that tissue can collect in and block the canal, leading to an elevated intraocular pressure which is the most important precursor for the development of glaucoma. For anyone who's ever been to an optometrist, this is what they are checking for when they blow that puff of air at your eyes.

Our random sports fact for the day: when you see male gymnasts in the Olympics doing the Iron Cross skill (pictured on the right), the one muscle in their amazingly cut torso/upper extremities that they aren't using is the deltoid. The deltoid is used to abduct the arm (move it away from the torso), but gravity is doing all that work for the gymnast. He is in fact using all the muscles that normally oppose the motion of the deltoid (such as the trapezius and latissimus dorsi) while the deltoid, though bunched up from the position of the arms, lazily sits there waiting for gravity to stop stealing its thunder. Stupid gravity.