Results tagged “medicine” from 60 Second Science
Josh Braun on March 27, 2008 8:05 PM
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Well, sort of. Fans of classic science fiction and/or campy Disney films will recall that squid and humans have a score to settle. But Captain Nemo will be happy to hear that our cephalopod friends may have finally repaid their debt to humankind.
Researchers at UC Santa Barbara, my alma mater, have discovered a property of squid beaks that may lead to breakthroughs in the design of medical devices. They've answered a long-standing, deceptively simple conundrum: "Why don't squid hurt themselves?"
See, squid beaks are nasty, hard, sharp little things. Or, as UCSB biologist Herbert Waite so eloquently put it to the Associated Press:
"A dozen of them could eat you, or really hurt you a lot."
Squid, on the other hand, are soft, pulpy, boneless little creatures. How is it that they can clamp down on their prey with these knifelike little things and not hurt themselves at the same time? It'd be sort of like you or me trying to cut up a piece of cardboard using a pair of scissors that was missing a handle. The sharp part may be aimed at the box, but the ragged end that digs into your hand still hurts like hell.
The back end of that sharp beak, figured biologists, must be like ragged scissor handle on squishy squid body. But squid don't seem to mind, and so scientists asked that most fundamental question: "What's up with that?"
Continue reading 'Squid to Serve Humans' >
Ted Alvarez on February 8, 2008 11:09 AM
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If you've ever gotten a horrible tattoo in the past (I'm looking at you as I type, misbegotten Tasmanian Devil), you may soon have the best excuse for it ever: "I didn't know what to get, and it was time for my flu shot."
Soon tribal bands, tramp stamps and ubiquitous flaming skulls could serve as delivery mechanisms for vaccines, as researchers in Germany discovered that tattooing mice with vaccines produced 16 times more antibodies than conventional muscle injections. The scientists think that since a a vibrating tattoo needle produces greater tissue damage than a single needle, it provokes a stronger and faster immune response.
In the near future, tattoos could provide an excellent delivery method for therapeutic vaccines designed to prevent against all types of diseases, including specific types of cancer. Also, you can get that totally rad Ratt tattoo you've always been too shy to splurge on.
Continue reading 'Get some ink done, boost your immune system' >
Ted Alvarez on February 5, 2008 4:50 PM
I always used to pretend my Kraft Macaroni and Cheese was made of worms — it made dinner time twice as fun and drove my sister nuts. But the massive conglomerate Kraft Foods has taken my childhood clowning in the opposite direction: They're working on a food product that kills intestinal worms while being cheesy and delicious.
Kraft Foods hasn't announced what form the the food will take, but they confirmed that it contains deworming chemicals developed by TyraTech, a company that develops "safe pesticides." The chemicals are derived from plant oils, and though TyraTech's CEO wouldn't say which plants they came from, he compared the chemical's power to citronella oil's ability to repel mosquitos.
It won't be sold in the U.S., but instead will be marketed to rural Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where parasitic worms often "leave millions of children lethargic, dangerously anemic and, sometimes, passing blood."
The oils work by overstimulating three olfactory and central nervous system receptors present only in invertebrates; this overstimulation leads to wave after wave of unstoppable impulses, which eventually overwhelms the parasites and repels or kills them. Vertebrates lack these receptors and are safe from the effects.
Continue reading 'Kraft Mac n' Cheese — now with 100% more worm-killing power!' >
Ted Alvarez on February 5, 2008 3:24 PM
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"Not to tonight, honey — I have a headache." Is there a more dreaded phrase in common parlance? I think not. But the wifey is either going to have to get more creative or buy a chastity belt, because recent research points to the idea that sex might actually cure migraine headaches, especially in women.
Oklahoma Health Sciences Center neurology professor James Couch first thought sex might cure headaches back in 1988, based on the context clues of a perhaps particularly randy patient.
"This lady said 'I really don't need a pill, I need a guy's phone number," [he said]. [...] The patient told Couch she had trouble curing her headaches since her husband had divorced her and she'd signed up for a pain treatment study.
Couch thought this was interesting, in a scientific way, of course. "A physiologic process — the climax — is turning off another physiologic process," said Couch.
The inquisitive Couch soldiered on, asking 84 female migraine patients what happened when they had sex during migraines. 61 percent reported some relief, which means for them, sex was comparable to modern migraine medications called triptans, which are thought to ease 60 to 80 percent of migraines. Even more impressively, 20 percent of women reported that sex cured their migraines completely, while triptans may cure migraines 30 percent of the time.
"Four women said it literally stopped the headache, period," said Couch. "No matter when the headache occurred, it stopped the headache cold."
Score one for...scoring! But there is some bad news, especially for men.
Continue reading 'Sex can sometimes cure headaches; world's housewives still 'not in the mood'' >
Ted Alvarez on January 30, 2008 4:00 PM
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Someone once called me "cute as a mole-rat," and I thanked them for the complement. Then I found out what mole-rats looked like, and I cried in the shower for a few days.
But I shouldn't have been so hasty to dismiss my homely likeness: The African naked mole-rat is immune to certain types of pain.They respond to mechanical pain like pinching, but don't respond to pain caused by capsaicin (the hot element in chili peppers), hot objects, and even burns from acid.
Thomas Park of the University of Illinois at Chicago, Gary Lewin at the Max-Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin, Germany, and their colleagues discovered that mole-rats lack substance P, a compound that transmits information relating to chronic pain in between nerve cells. The team hopes to apply this discovery in gene therapy to help humans who suffer from chronic pain.
“Instead of going to the pain region of the spinal cord as we would expect, the nerves that lead from acid and capsaicin sensors go to the touch region,” says Park. “And their nerve fibres do not respond to acid at all.”
Did you hear that? At all.
Continue reading 'Mole-rats can't feel certain types of pain, still 'pretty on the inside'' >
Ted Alvarez on January 23, 2008 5:00 AM
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Ted Alvarez on December 27, 2007 2:17 AM
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Anne and Anna on December 10, 2007 10:40 AM
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Brought to you by the loverly nerdy ladies over at Inky Circus, hosted at Inkling magazine.
We over here at Inky Circus know science and song go together like a horse and carriage (Related: "Math, for children. And adults who want to laugh at James Blunt making fun of himself" October 19, 2007 and "Some great science ear candy" August 01, 2007. Not to mention Kate Fink's fabulous list of the Top Ten Science Songs for petri dish slaves)
But this story takes that relationship to a whole new level of awesomeness.
EMI is the parent company of The Beatles’ two record labels, Capitol Records and Apple Records. And it had its fingers in several pies at the time (they gave the BBC its first television transmitter), one of which included R&D in medical imaging technology. So they took the heaps and heaps of money they made off of the sales of some 200 million Beatles singles and used it to fund Sir Godfrey Hounsfield's work on his CT scanner prototype at EMI Central Research Laboratories in Hayes, England. As a result he spent four years tinkering on it. Lo and behold the first EMI-Scanner was installed in a hospital in Wimbledon, England in 1972.
Continue reading 'The Fab Four’s hit singles funded development of CT scanner!' >
Ted Alvarez on December 10, 2007 5:40 AM
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John Pavlus on November 20, 2007 11:37 AM
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He's a snappy dresser. He doesn't talk much. And while Fuat Sarieminli may not fly through the air clutching double-barreled IV bags, but he IS one of the unsung badasses of Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn. He is a patient transporter: the guy who gets your gurney from "the door to the floor" before you die on it.
Science, medicine and health all have their invisible-but-essential professionals, and I love seeing their exploits brought out of the shadows. Read on for an account of logistical derring-do exciting enough to double as a Luc Besson cold-open.
Continue reading '"Patient Transporters": The Jason Stathams of the ER' >
Ted Alvarez on November 16, 2007 3:36 PM
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When it comes to homeopathic medicine, I'm a pretty solid skeptic. They've never really worked for me, other than when my grandma told me moonshine cures a cold. It's true, I felt better pretty quickly, but now I'm blind. Anyhow, doctor and writer Ben Goldacre launches into an impassioned dissection of homeopathic medicine at The Guardian, and does a convincing job of skewering the science behind it.
Continue reading 'Should you buy into homeopathic medicine?' >
