23 Feb 2010

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10 Amazing Child Heroes

A friend sent this compilation to me. Here are 10 amazing stories about children who ended up being heroes during a crisis.

God can work miracles through anyone.

Source: Oddee

_____________________

Nathan Thomson: the nine-year-old boy who saved his mother when an armed intruder tried to stab her to death

The boy was stabbed in the face as he fought to save his mum from a knife maniac. Nathan Thomson jumped on Hugh Clark’s back as the drunken thug tried to kill his mother Ena. Clark turned on the little boy and lashed out with the blade, scarring him for life. But Nathan helped save Ena, who was knifed eight times but survived. The attack happened after the drunk offshore worker broke into the Rosyth’s home in Fife. (Link | Photo)


Alexis Goggin: the seven-year-old girl who used her body as a shield to save her mother’s life

Alexis Goggins, a first-grader at Campbell Elementary School, was hailed as an “angel from heaven” and a hero, for jumping in front of an enraged gunman who pumped six bullets into the child as she used her body as a shield to save her mother’s life. The girl’s mother, Selietha Parker, 30, was shot in the left side of her head and her biceps by a former boyfriend, but before he could fire again, Alexis jumped over the seat between her mother and the gunman and begged him not to shoot her mother. (Link)


Kamal Nepali: the twelve-year-old boy who risked his own life to rescue a baby girl from a 60-foot-deep gorge

A two and half year old toddler, Aradhana Pradhan, was rescued by Kamal Nepali, 12 years, after a team of professional rescuers all gave up having failed to bring the child back up even after repeated attempts. But even after 22 hours of repeated attempts, the rescuers weren’t able to bring the child out. They started fearing the worst and then Kamal arrived at the scene. His elder brother Salum had told him that only a very small and thin person could manage to get through the very narrow gorge to save the girl. “A small girl like our own little sister is trapped in the gorge, would you like to go down to rescue her?” Salum had asked Kamal. Immediately after that Kamal had readied himself to go into the gorge. (Link | Photo)


Isabelle Keeling: the two-year-old girl who called 999 to save her mother’s life

Isabelle Keeling, 2, called the emergency services as her mother Joanne suffered a reaction to latex at their home, and was able to give her name, address and telephone number. She even opened up the front door to let in neighbours and paramedics, who were able to promptly treat her mother. Just the day before, Isabelle had watched an episode of the children’s TV programme Tweenies where she had seen how to call 999. (Link)


Agustin Robinet: the six-year-old boy who helped his mother to give birth

When his mother began to suffer strong contractions, and was forced to give birth at home, Agustin was the only one who was with her, so he attended his mother at giving birth. Also Agustin was encharged to call his father, who arrived home a few minutes later. When the little boy was asked if he was afraid, he answered: “My mom always says that all women are in pain when they go to have a baby”. (Link | Photo)


Cody McNeese: the five-year-old boy who saved his youngest brother from burning mobile home

Cody McNeese fought through flames and smoke to return to his bedroom to make sure his 3-year-old brother, Dustin, got out of their burning mobile home alive. (Link)


Charlie Simpson: the seven-year-old boy who made a cycle ride to raise funds for Haiti earthquake victims

Charlie launched his efforts with a simple message: “My name is Charlie Simpson, I want to do a sponsored bike ride for Haiti because there was a big earthquake and loads of people have lost their lives. I want to make some money to buy food, water and tents for everyone in Haiti.” His efforts have touched the hearts of people around the world with visitors to his JustGiving website page piling on the pounds following his sponsored ride for the charity Unicef in Fulham, south London. Charlie hoped to raise £500 ($772) for the Haiti earthquake relief by cycling five miles around a local park, but he has raised £120,000 ($185,100) in donations and gift aid. (Link)


Michael Bowron: the eight-year-old boy who stripped the radio wires and connected them to call for help as his dad lay trapped in the wreckage of a truck rollover

Michael and his father, Justin, were driving home to the family farm in a truck, when a tyre blew and truck rollover. When Justin regained consciousness minutes later his leg was caught in the mangled truck, trapping him in the vehicle. Michael, who had been sitting in the sleeper cabin, crawled out of the wreck through the windscreen and tried to free his dad with a tyre lever. When that didn’t work, he rummaged for the radio, but it couldn’t work because it wasn’t connected to the truck anymore. Finally, under his father’s guidance, Michael was able to get the radio working and call for help. (Link)


Aidan Turner: the ten-year-old boy who saved his mum from drowning in a bath

Amanda Smith had fainted in the tub and slipped under the water when her 10-year-old son found her. Aidan pulled the plug out of the bath, grabbed his mum by the hair, dragged her out of the water and put her in the recovery position. He then phoned his gran Sheila MacDonald, who works as a domestic worker at Borders General Hospital, to ask for help. An ambulance was called to take Amanda to the hospital, where she spent three days recovering. (Link | Photo)


Maddie McRae: the eleven-year-old girl who saved seven people when their cars ended up in the river

After heavy rains washed out a section of the roadway, two vehicles, including the one Maddie McRae was riding in with her mother and two siblings, ended up in the river. “I thought we were going to die because the water was going over our heads”, she said. But Maddie managed to get out of the vehicle through the broken windshield, crawl across a tree branch to the shore, and then climb an electric fence to reach a nearby farmhouse. She called 9-1-1 and rescuers were able to pull her family to safety using ladders and ropes. (Link | Photo)

4 Sep 2009

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Urinal Protocol Vulnerability

When a guy goes into the bathroom, which urinal does he pick?  Most guys are familiar with the International Choice of Urinal Protocol.  It’s discussed at length elsewhere, but the basic premise is that the first guy picks an end urinal, and every subsequent guy chooses the urinal which puts him furthest from anyone else peeing.  At least one buffer urinal is required between any two guys or Awkwardness ensues.

Let’s take a look at the efficiency of this protocol at slotting everyone into acceptable urinals.  For some numbers of urinals, this protocol leads to efficient placement.  If there are five urinals, they fill up like this:

The first two guys take the end and the third guy takes the middle one.  At this point, the urinals are jammed — no further guys can pee without Awkwardness.  But it’s pretty efficient; over 50% of the urinals are used.

On the other hand, if there are seven urinals, they don’t fill up so efficiently:

There should be room for four guys to pee without Awkwardness, but because the third guy followed the protocol and chose the middle urinal, there are no options left for the fourth guy (he presumably pees in a stall or the sink).

For eight urinals, the protocol works better:

So a row of eight urinals has a better packing efficiency than a row of seven, and a row of five is better than either.

This leads us to a question: what is the general formula for the number of guys who will fill in N urinals if they all come in one at a time and follow the urinal protocol? One could write a simple recursive program to solve it, placing one guy at a time, but there’s also a closed-form expression.  If f(n) is the number of guys who can use n urinals, f(n) for n>2 is given by:

The protocol is vulnerable to producing inefficient results for some urinal counts.  Some numbers of urinals encourage efficient packing, and others encourage sparse packing.  If you graph the packing efficiency (f(n)/n), you get this:

This means that some large numbers of urinals will pack efficiently (50%) and some inefficiently (33%).  The ‘best’ number of urinals, corresponding to the peaks of the graph, are of the form:

The worst, on the other hand, are given by:

So, if you want people to pack efficiently into your urinals, there should be 3, 5, 9, 17, or 33 of them, and if you want to take advantage of the protocol to maximize awkwardness, there should be 4, 7, 13, or 25 of them.

These calculations suggest a few other hacks.  Guys: if you enter a bathroom with an awkward number of vacant urinals in a row, rather than taking one of the end ones, you can take one a third of the way down the line.  This will break the awkward row into two optimal rows, turning a worst-case scenario into a best-case one. On the other hand, say you want to create awkwardness.  If the bathroom has an unawkward number of urinals, you can pick one a third of the way in, transforming an optimal row into two awkward rows.

And, of course, if you want to make things really awkward, I suggest printing out this article and trying to explain it to the guy peeing next to you.

—me

Received from my bff Sarah, stolen from the xkcd blag