Lucas Franki

Beating the allegory of the cave

When Beatriz Flamini spoke with reporters on April 14, she knew nothing of the previous 18 months. The Russian invasion of Ukraine? Nope. The death of Queen Elizabeth? Also no. But before you make fun of her, she has an excuse. She’s been living under a rock.

As part of an experiment to test how social isolation and disorientation affect a person’s mind, sense of time, and sleeping patterns, Ms. Flamini lived in a 70-meter-deep cave in southern Spain for 500 days, starting in November 2021. Alone. No outside communication with the outside world in any way, though she was constantly monitored by a team of researchers. She also had multiple cameras filming her for an upcoming documentary.

woman_cave_web.jpg

This is a massive step up from the previous record for time spent underground for science: A team of 15 spent 50 days underground in 2021 to similar study of isolation and how it affected circadian rhythms. It’s also almost certainly a world record for time spent underground.

All that time alone certainly sounds like some sort of medieval torture, but Ms. Flamini had access to food, water, and a library of books. Which she made liberal use of, reading at least 60 books during her stay. She also had a panic button in case the isolation became too much or an emergency developed, but she never considered using it.

She lost track of time after 2 months, flies invaded the cave on occasion, and maintaining coherence was occasionally a struggle, but she kept things together very well. In fact, she didn’t even want to leave when her team came for her. She wasn’t even finished with her 61st book.

When she spoke with gathered reporters after the ordeal, words were obviously difficult to come by for her, having not spoken in nearly 18 months, but her mind was clearly still sharp and she had a very important question for everyone gathered around her.

Who’s buying the beer?

We approve of this request.
 

Staphylococcus and the speed of evolution

Bacteria, we know, are tough little buggers that are hard to see and even harder to get rid of. So hard, actually, that human bodies eventually gave up on the task and decided to just incorporate them into our organ systems. But why are bacteria so hard to eliminate?

Staphylococcus_aureus_web.jpg

Two words: rapid evolution. How rapid? For the first time, scientists have directly observed adaptive evolution by Staphylococcus aureus in a single person’s skin microbiome. That’s how rapid.

For their study, the researchers collected samples from the nostrils, backs of knees, insides of elbows, and forearms of 23 children with eczema. They eventually cultured almost 1,500 unique colonies of S. aureus cells from those samples and sequenced the cells’ genomes.

All that sampling and culturing and sequencing showed that it was rare for a new S. aureus strain to come in and replace the existing strain. “Despite the stability at the lineage level, we see a lot of dynamics at the whole genome level, where new mutations are constantly arising in these bacteria and then spreading throughout the entire body,” Tami D. Lieberman, PhD, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, said in a written statement from MIT.

One frequent mutation involved a gene called capD, which encodes an enzyme necessary for synthesizing the capsular polysaccharide – a coating that protects S. aureus from recognition by immune cells. In one patient, four different mutations of capD arose independently in different samples before one variant became dominant and spread over the entire microbiome, MIT reported.

The mutation, which actually results in the loss of the polysaccharide capsule, may allow cells to grow faster than those without the mutation because they have more fuel to power their own growth, the researchers suggested. It’s also possible that loss of the capsule allows S. aureus cells to stick to the skin better because proteins that allow them to adhere to the skin are more exposed.

Dr. Lieberman and her associates hope that these variant-containing cells could be a new target for eczema treatments, but we’re never optimistic when it comes to bacteria. That’s because some of us are old enough to remember evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, who wrote in his book “Full House”: “Our planet has always been in the ‘Age of Bacteria,’ ever since the first fossils – bacteria, of course – were entombed in rocks more than 3 billion years ago. On any possible, reasonable or fair criterion, bacteria are – and always have been – the dominant forms of life on Earth.”

In the distant future, long after humans have left the scene, the bacteria will be laughing at the last rats and cockroaches scurrying across the landscape. Wanna bet?
 

The height of genetic prediction

Genetics are practically a DNA Scrabble bag. Traits like eye color and hair texture are chosen in the same fashion, based on what gets pulled from our own genetic bag of letters, but what about height? Researchers may now have a way to predict adult height and make it more than just an educated guess.

How? By looking at the genes in our growth plates. The cartilage on the ends of our bones hardens as we age, eventually deciding an individual’s stature. In a recently published study, a research team looked at 600 million cartilage cells linked to maturation and cell growth in mice. Because everything starts with rodents.

genetics_scrabble_web.jpg

After that search identified 145 genes linked to growth plate maturation and formation of the bones, they compared the mouse genes with data from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of human height to look for hotspots where the height genes exist in human DNA.

The results showed which genes play a role in deciding height, and the GWAS data also suggested that genetic changes affecting cartilage cell maturation may strongly influence adult height, said the investigators, who hope that earlier interventions can improve outcomes in patients with conditions such as skeletal dysplasia.

So, yeah, you may want to be a little taller or shorter, but the outcome of that particular Scrabble game was determined when your parents, you know, dropped the letters in the bag.

Beating the allegory of the cave

When Beatriz Flamini spoke with reporters on April 14, she knew nothing of the previous 18 months. The Russian invasion of Ukraine? Nope. The death of Queen Elizabeth? Also no. But before you make fun of her, she has an excuse. She’s been living under a rock.

As part of an experiment to test how social isolation and disorientation affect a person’s mind, sense of time, and sleeping patterns, Ms. Flamini lived in a 70-meter-deep cave in southern Spain for 500 days, starting in November 2021. Alone. No outside communication with the outside world in any way, though she was constantly monitored by a team of researchers. She also had multiple cameras filming her for an upcoming documentary.

woman_cave_web.jpg

This is a massive step up from the previous record for time spent underground for science: A team of 15 spent 50 days underground in 2021 to similar study of isolation and how it affected circadian rhythms. It’s also almost certainly a world record for time spent underground.

All that time alone certainly sounds like some sort of medieval torture, but Ms. Flamini had access to food, water, and a library of books. Which she made liberal use of, reading at least 60 books during her stay. She also had a panic button in case the isolation became too much or an emergency developed, but she never considered using it.

She lost track of time after 2 months, flies invaded the cave on occasion, and maintaining coherence was occasionally a struggle, but she kept things together very well. In fact, she didn’t even want to leave when her team came for her. She wasn’t even finished with her 61st book.

When she spoke with gathered reporters after the ordeal, words were obviously difficult to come by for her, having not spoken in nearly 18 months, but her mind was clearly still sharp and she had a very important question for everyone gathered around her.

Who’s buying the beer?

We approve of this request.
 

Staphylococcus and the speed of evolution

Bacteria, we know, are tough little buggers that are hard to see and even harder to get rid of. So hard, actually, that human bodies eventually gave up on the task and decided to just incorporate them into our organ systems. But why are bacteria so hard to eliminate?

Staphylococcus_aureus_web.jpg

Two words: rapid evolution. How rapid? For the first time, scientists have directly observed adaptive evolution by Staphylococcus aureus in a single person’s skin microbiome. That’s how rapid.

For their study, the researchers collected samples from the nostrils, backs of knees, insides of elbows, and forearms of 23 children with eczema. They eventually cultured almost 1,500 unique colonies of S. aureus cells from those samples and sequenced the cells’ genomes.

All that sampling and culturing and sequencing showed that it was rare for a new S. aureus strain to come in and replace the existing strain. “Despite the stability at the lineage level, we see a lot of dynamics at the whole genome level, where new mutations are constantly arising in these bacteria and then spreading throughout the entire body,” Tami D. Lieberman, PhD, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, said in a written statement from MIT.

One frequent mutation involved a gene called capD, which encodes an enzyme necessary for synthesizing the capsular polysaccharide – a coating that protects S. aureus from recognition by immune cells. In one patient, four different mutations of capD arose independently in different samples before one variant became dominant and spread over the entire microbiome, MIT reported.

The mutation, which actually results in the loss of the polysaccharide capsule, may allow cells to grow faster than those without the mutation because they have more fuel to power their own growth, the researchers suggested. It’s also possible that loss of the capsule allows S. aureus cells to stick to the skin better because proteins that allow them to adhere to the skin are more exposed.

Dr. Lieberman and her associates hope that these variant-containing cells could be a new target for eczema treatments, but we’re never optimistic when it comes to bacteria. That’s because some of us are old enough to remember evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, who wrote in his book “Full House”: “Our planet has always been in the ‘Age of Bacteria,’ ever since the first fossils – bacteria, of course – were entombed in rocks more than 3 billion years ago. On any possible, reasonable or fair criterion, bacteria are – and always have been – the dominant forms of life on Earth.”

In the distant future, long after humans have left the scene, the bacteria will be laughing at the last rats and cockroaches scurrying across the landscape. Wanna bet?
 

The height of genetic prediction

Genetics are practically a DNA Scrabble bag. Traits like eye color and hair texture are chosen in the same fashion, based on what gets pulled from our own genetic bag of letters, but what about height? Researchers may now have a way to predict adult height and make it more than just an educated guess.

How? By looking at the genes in our growth plates. The cartilage on the ends of our bones hardens as we age, eventually deciding an individual’s stature. In a recently published study, a research team looked at 600 million cartilage cells linked to maturation and cell growth in mice. Because everything starts with rodents.

genetics_scrabble_web.jpg

After that search identified 145 genes linked to growth plate maturation and formation of the bones, they compared the mouse genes with data from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of human height to look for hotspots where the height genes exist in human DNA.

The results showed which genes play a role in deciding height, and the GWAS data also suggested that genetic changes affecting cartilage cell maturation may strongly influence adult height, said the investigators, who hope that earlier interventions can improve outcomes in patients with conditions such as skeletal dysplasia.

So, yeah, you may want to be a little taller or shorter, but the outcome of that particular Scrabble game was determined when your parents, you know, dropped the letters in the bag.

Beating the allegory of the cave

When Beatriz Flamini spoke with reporters on April 14, she knew nothing of the previous 18 months. The Russian invasion of Ukraine? Nope. The death of Queen Elizabeth? Also no. But before you make fun of her, she has an excuse. She’s been living under a rock.

As part of an experiment to test how social isolation and disorientation affect a person’s mind, sense of time, and sleeping patterns, Ms. Flamini lived in a 70-meter-deep cave in southern Spain for 500 days, starting in November 2021. Alone. No outside communication with the outside world in any way, though she was constantly monitored by a team of researchers. She also had multiple cameras filming her for an upcoming documentary.

woman_cave_web.jpg

This is a massive step up from the previous record for time spent underground for science: A team of 15 spent 50 days underground in 2021 to similar study of isolation and how it affected circadian rhythms. It’s also almost certainly a world record for time spent underground.

All that time alone certainly sounds like some sort of medieval torture, but Ms. Flamini had access to food, water, and a library of books. Which she made liberal use of, reading at least 60 books during her stay. She also had a panic button in case the isolation became too much or an emergency developed, but she never considered using it.

She lost track of time after 2 months, flies invaded the cave on occasion, and maintaining coherence was occasionally a struggle, but she kept things together very well. In fact, she didn’t even want to leave when her team came for her. She wasn’t even finished with her 61st book.

When she spoke with gathered reporters after the ordeal, words were obviously difficult to come by for her, having not spoken in nearly 18 months, but her mind was clearly still sharp and she had a very important question for everyone gathered around her.

Who’s buying the beer?

We approve of this request.
 

Staphylococcus and the speed of evolution

Bacteria, we know, are tough little buggers that are hard to see and even harder to get rid of. So hard, actually, that human bodies eventually gave up on the task and decided to just incorporate them into our organ systems. But why are bacteria so hard to eliminate?

Staphylococcus_aureus_web.jpg

Two words: rapid evolution. How rapid? For the first time, scientists have directly observed adaptive evolution by Staphylococcus aureus in a single person’s skin microbiome. That’s how rapid.

For their study, the researchers collected samples from the nostrils, backs of knees, insides of elbows, and forearms of 23 children with eczema. They eventually cultured almost 1,500 unique colonies of S. aureus cells from those samples and sequenced the cells’ genomes.

All that sampling and culturing and sequencing showed that it was rare for a new S. aureus strain to come in and replace the existing strain. “Despite the stability at the lineage level, we see a lot of dynamics at the whole genome level, where new mutations are constantly arising in these bacteria and then spreading throughout the entire body,” Tami D. Lieberman, PhD, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, said in a written statement from MIT.

One frequent mutation involved a gene called capD, which encodes an enzyme necessary for synthesizing the capsular polysaccharide – a coating that protects S. aureus from recognition by immune cells. In one patient, four different mutations of capD arose independently in different samples before one variant became dominant and spread over the entire microbiome, MIT reported.

The mutation, which actually results in the loss of the polysaccharide capsule, may allow cells to grow faster than those without the mutation because they have more fuel to power their own growth, the researchers suggested. It’s also possible that loss of the capsule allows S. aureus cells to stick to the skin better because proteins that allow them to adhere to the skin are more exposed.

Dr. Lieberman and her associates hope that these variant-containing cells could be a new target for eczema treatments, but we’re never optimistic when it comes to bacteria. That’s because some of us are old enough to remember evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, who wrote in his book “Full House”: “Our planet has always been in the ‘Age of Bacteria,’ ever since the first fossils – bacteria, of course – were entombed in rocks more than 3 billion years ago. On any possible, reasonable or fair criterion, bacteria are – and always have been – the dominant forms of life on Earth.”

In the distant future, long after humans have left the scene, the bacteria will be laughing at the last rats and cockroaches scurrying across the landscape. Wanna bet?
 

The height of genetic prediction

Genetics are practically a DNA Scrabble bag. Traits like eye color and hair texture are chosen in the same fashion, based on what gets pulled from our own genetic bag of letters, but what about height? Researchers may now have a way to predict adult height and make it more than just an educated guess.

How? By looking at the genes in our growth plates. The cartilage on the ends of our bones hardens as we age, eventually deciding an individual’s stature. In a recently published study, a research team looked at 600 million cartilage cells linked to maturation and cell growth in mice. Because everything starts with rodents.

genetics_scrabble_web.jpg

After that search identified 145 genes linked to growth plate maturation and formation of the bones, they compared the mouse genes with data from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of human height to look for hotspots where the height genes exist in human DNA.

The results showed which genes play a role in deciding height, and the GWAS data also suggested that genetic changes affecting cartilage cell maturation may strongly influence adult height, said the investigators, who hope that earlier interventions can improve outcomes in patients with conditions such as skeletal dysplasia.

So, yeah, you may want to be a little taller or shorter, but the outcome of that particular Scrabble game was determined when your parents, you know, dropped the letters in the bag.

You and me and baby makes 10,003

If you were a virus hunter, looking for your next big virus discovery, where would you go? The wholesale seafood market in Wuhan? A gathering of unmasked anti-vaxxers in the heartland of America? The frozen snot fields of northwest Siberia?

babies_78455893_web.jpg

How about babies? Well, it’s too late now, because that’s what Dennis Sandris Nielsen, PhD, of the University of Copenhagen, and his associates did, and they hit the mother lode. Actually, it was more like the infant load, if we’re being honest here.

“We found an exceptional number of unknown viruses in the faeces of these babies,” Dr. Nielsen said in a written statement from the university. (The study was published in Nature Microbiology, so we get the English spelling of feces.)

The investigators mapped the gut “viromes” of 647 healthy Danish 1-year-old children over the course of 5 years and found 10,000 species of viruses distributed across 248 different viral families, of which only 16 were already known. Incredible stuff, but then things took a turn for the cute. “The researchers named the remaining 232 unknown viral families after the children whose diapers made the study possible. As a result, new viral families include names like Sylvesterviridae, Rigmorviridae and Tristanviridae,” the university said.

About 90% of the viruses found in the feces are bacterial viruses, aka bacteriophages, which have bacteria as their hosts and don’t attack the children’s cells, so they don’t cause disease. The other 10%, however, are eukaryotic: They use human cells as hosts, so they can be either friend or foe. “It is thought-provoking that all children run around with 10-20 of these virus types that infect human cells. So, there is a constant viral infection taking place, which apparently doesn’t make them sick,” Dr. Nielsen said.

Doesn’t make them sick? Riiiight. The thought that this gives rise to now? People love babies. Everyone wants to pick up the baby. Now we know why. Because the viruses want us to! Well, those cute little faces aren’t fooling us anymore. No more babies for us. Everyone should stay away from babies and their evil little eukaryotic viruses. STOP THE BABIES!

[Editor’s note: After a short timeout, we explained to the staff that the human species actually needs babies for its survival. They calmed down, picked up their crayons, and quietly went back to work.]

Fooled them. _{Stop the babies!}

At least someone out there appreciates hospital food

Life in Alaska is not for the meek. It’s dark half the year. Summer is 3 weeks in July. And somehow, there’s a moose in line ahead of you at the doctor’s office. To make matters worse, it’s arguing about insurance. “What do you mean, you’ve heard the Moo Cross Moo Shield joke before?”

moose_eating_web.jpg

One might expect that Providence Alaska Health Park, located near downtown Anchorage, the largest city in Alaska by a massive margin, might be safe from ungulate invasion. Nope. In recent days, a young moose has taken to hanging around Providence campus, and it just could not find anything to eat. Remember, it may be early April, but this is Alaska. It’s still winter there. The ground’s still covered in snow.

Eventually, the gears in our young moose friend’s mind turned and it settled on a course of action: “Hey, those are some nice-looking plants behind that door over there. …” And that’s how Providence Alaska Health ended up with a moose munching on decorative potted plants in the hospital lobby.

Funnily enough, the moose didn’t even make a big scene. It just walked through the automatic doors and started chowing down. Security only found out because a tenant called them. Naturally though, once security made the announcement that a massive wild animal had been spotted in the building, the lobby was evacuated. … What do you mean, half the hospital came around to see it? Apparently, even though Alaskans have to fight moose herds on their daily commute, a lot of people wanted to see our moose friend do its thing.

“That’s crazy,” a woman in scrubs said in a video as she snapped a photo with her phone.

“This is the best. Like, what’s the code for this?” asked another bystander.

Despite security’s best efforts to shoo the moose out with barricades and offers of tasty branches, our furry friend left of its own volition, presumably irritated that his breakfast had become a spectator sport. But it didn’t go far. It hung around the front drive for a while, then went around the back of the building for a nap. What has four hooves and still doesn’t give a crap? Bob Moose-o! How you doing?
 

That click sounded stressed

How can people tell that you’re stressed? Maybe you get irritable and a little snappy. Some people have an inability to concentrate or focus. Eating that muffin when you weren’t really hungry could be a sign you’re not relaxed.

Woman_Computer_Search_web.jpg

Did you know that your computer can be an indicator of your stress levels?

We tend to be working when we’re using computers, right? That can be a stressor in itself. Well, some researchers at ETH Zürich decided to have a look at the situation. Surprisingly, at least to us, one in three Swiss employees experience workplace stress, which makes us wonder what the percentage is in this country.

The Swiss researchers developed a model that tells how stressed someone is just by the way they use their computer mouse or type. The results of their study showed that those who were stressed clicked and tapped differently than participants who were more relaxed.

Stressed people click “more often and less precisely and cover longer distances on the screen,” while the relaxed take “shorter, more direct routes to reach their destination and take more time doing so,” study author Mara Nägelin explained in a written statement from ETH (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, or Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) Zürich.

Ever find when you’re frustrated and in a rush you end up making more mistakes? Same deal. Coauthor Jasmine Kerr noted that “increased levels of stress negatively impact our brain’s ability to process information.” Which totally is going to affect how we move.

Hopefully, these results can give insight to companies on how stressed their employees are and the effect it has on their work performance, eventually leading to, guess what, more research on how to alleviate workplace stress in general, which can benefit us all.

So if you find yourself in the office working on your computer like it’s a game of Perfection and time is running out, take a beat. Maybe try a stress-relieving breathing technique. Nonstressed people, according to the study, take fewer and longer pauses on their computers. Perfection on the job may mean relaxing first.

You and me and baby makes 10,003

If you were a virus hunter, looking for your next big virus discovery, where would you go? The wholesale seafood market in Wuhan? A gathering of unmasked anti-vaxxers in the heartland of America? The frozen snot fields of northwest Siberia?

babies_78455893_web.jpg

How about babies? Well, it’s too late now, because that’s what Dennis Sandris Nielsen, PhD, of the University of Copenhagen, and his associates did, and they hit the mother lode. Actually, it was more like the infant load, if we’re being honest here.

“We found an exceptional number of unknown viruses in the faeces of these babies,” Dr. Nielsen said in a written statement from the university. (The study was published in Nature Microbiology, so we get the English spelling of feces.)

The investigators mapped the gut “viromes” of 647 healthy Danish 1-year-old children over the course of 5 years and found 10,000 species of viruses distributed across 248 different viral families, of which only 16 were already known. Incredible stuff, but then things took a turn for the cute. “The researchers named the remaining 232 unknown viral families after the children whose diapers made the study possible. As a result, new viral families include names like Sylvesterviridae, Rigmorviridae and Tristanviridae,” the university said.

About 90% of the viruses found in the feces are bacterial viruses, aka bacteriophages, which have bacteria as their hosts and don’t attack the children’s cells, so they don’t cause disease. The other 10%, however, are eukaryotic: They use human cells as hosts, so they can be either friend or foe. “It is thought-provoking that all children run around with 10-20 of these virus types that infect human cells. So, there is a constant viral infection taking place, which apparently doesn’t make them sick,” Dr. Nielsen said.

Doesn’t make them sick? Riiiight. The thought that this gives rise to now? People love babies. Everyone wants to pick up the baby. Now we know why. Because the viruses want us to! Well, those cute little faces aren’t fooling us anymore. No more babies for us. Everyone should stay away from babies and their evil little eukaryotic viruses. STOP THE BABIES!

[Editor’s note: After a short timeout, we explained to the staff that the human species actually needs babies for its survival. They calmed down, picked up their crayons, and quietly went back to work.]

Fooled them. _{Stop the babies!}

At least someone out there appreciates hospital food

Life in Alaska is not for the meek. It’s dark half the year. Summer is 3 weeks in July. And somehow, there’s a moose in line ahead of you at the doctor’s office. To make matters worse, it’s arguing about insurance. “What do you mean, you’ve heard the Moo Cross Moo Shield joke before?”

moose_eating_web.jpg

One might expect that Providence Alaska Health Park, located near downtown Anchorage, the largest city in Alaska by a massive margin, might be safe from ungulate invasion. Nope. In recent days, a young moose has taken to hanging around Providence campus, and it just could not find anything to eat. Remember, it may be early April, but this is Alaska. It’s still winter there. The ground’s still covered in snow.

Eventually, the gears in our young moose friend’s mind turned and it settled on a course of action: “Hey, those are some nice-looking plants behind that door over there. …” And that’s how Providence Alaska Health ended up with a moose munching on decorative potted plants in the hospital lobby.

Funnily enough, the moose didn’t even make a big scene. It just walked through the automatic doors and started chowing down. Security only found out because a tenant called them. Naturally though, once security made the announcement that a massive wild animal had been spotted in the building, the lobby was evacuated. … What do you mean, half the hospital came around to see it? Apparently, even though Alaskans have to fight moose herds on their daily commute, a lot of people wanted to see our moose friend do its thing.

“That’s crazy,” a woman in scrubs said in a video as she snapped a photo with her phone.

“This is the best. Like, what’s the code for this?” asked another bystander.

Despite security’s best efforts to shoo the moose out with barricades and offers of tasty branches, our furry friend left of its own volition, presumably irritated that his breakfast had become a spectator sport. But it didn’t go far. It hung around the front drive for a while, then went around the back of the building for a nap. What has four hooves and still doesn’t give a crap? Bob Moose-o! How you doing?
 

That click sounded stressed

How can people tell that you’re stressed? Maybe you get irritable and a little snappy. Some people have an inability to concentrate or focus. Eating that muffin when you weren’t really hungry could be a sign you’re not relaxed.

Woman_Computer_Search_web.jpg

Did you know that your computer can be an indicator of your stress levels?

We tend to be working when we’re using computers, right? That can be a stressor in itself. Well, some researchers at ETH Zürich decided to have a look at the situation. Surprisingly, at least to us, one in three Swiss employees experience workplace stress, which makes us wonder what the percentage is in this country.

The Swiss researchers developed a model that tells how stressed someone is just by the way they use their computer mouse or type. The results of their study showed that those who were stressed clicked and tapped differently than participants who were more relaxed.

Stressed people click “more often and less precisely and cover longer distances on the screen,” while the relaxed take “shorter, more direct routes to reach their destination and take more time doing so,” study author Mara Nägelin explained in a written statement from ETH (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, or Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) Zürich.

Ever find when you’re frustrated and in a rush you end up making more mistakes? Same deal. Coauthor Jasmine Kerr noted that “increased levels of stress negatively impact our brain’s ability to process information.” Which totally is going to affect how we move.

Hopefully, these results can give insight to companies on how stressed their employees are and the effect it has on their work performance, eventually leading to, guess what, more research on how to alleviate workplace stress in general, which can benefit us all.

So if you find yourself in the office working on your computer like it’s a game of Perfection and time is running out, take a beat. Maybe try a stress-relieving breathing technique. Nonstressed people, according to the study, take fewer and longer pauses on their computers. Perfection on the job may mean relaxing first.

You and me and baby makes 10,003

If you were a virus hunter, looking for your next big virus discovery, where would you go? The wholesale seafood market in Wuhan? A gathering of unmasked anti-vaxxers in the heartland of America? The frozen snot fields of northwest Siberia?

babies_78455893_web.jpg

How about babies? Well, it’s too late now, because that’s what Dennis Sandris Nielsen, PhD, of the University of Copenhagen, and his associates did, and they hit the mother lode. Actually, it was more like the infant load, if we’re being honest here.

“We found an exceptional number of unknown viruses in the faeces of these babies,” Dr. Nielsen said in a written statement from the university. (The study was published in Nature Microbiology, so we get the English spelling of feces.)

The investigators mapped the gut “viromes” of 647 healthy Danish 1-year-old children over the course of 5 years and found 10,000 species of viruses distributed across 248 different viral families, of which only 16 were already known. Incredible stuff, but then things took a turn for the cute. “The researchers named the remaining 232 unknown viral families after the children whose diapers made the study possible. As a result, new viral families include names like Sylvesterviridae, Rigmorviridae and Tristanviridae,” the university said.

About 90% of the viruses found in the feces are bacterial viruses, aka bacteriophages, which have bacteria as their hosts and don’t attack the children’s cells, so they don’t cause disease. The other 10%, however, are eukaryotic: They use human cells as hosts, so they can be either friend or foe. “It is thought-provoking that all children run around with 10-20 of these virus types that infect human cells. So, there is a constant viral infection taking place, which apparently doesn’t make them sick,” Dr. Nielsen said.

Doesn’t make them sick? Riiiight. The thought that this gives rise to now? People love babies. Everyone wants to pick up the baby. Now we know why. Because the viruses want us to! Well, those cute little faces aren’t fooling us anymore. No more babies for us. Everyone should stay away from babies and their evil little eukaryotic viruses. STOP THE BABIES!

[Editor’s note: After a short timeout, we explained to the staff that the human species actually needs babies for its survival. They calmed down, picked up their crayons, and quietly went back to work.]

Fooled them. _{Stop the babies!}

At least someone out there appreciates hospital food

Life in Alaska is not for the meek. It’s dark half the year. Summer is 3 weeks in July. And somehow, there’s a moose in line ahead of you at the doctor’s office. To make matters worse, it’s arguing about insurance. “What do you mean, you’ve heard the Moo Cross Moo Shield joke before?”

moose_eating_web.jpg

One might expect that Providence Alaska Health Park, located near downtown Anchorage, the largest city in Alaska by a massive margin, might be safe from ungulate invasion. Nope. In recent days, a young moose has taken to hanging around Providence campus, and it just could not find anything to eat. Remember, it may be early April, but this is Alaska. It’s still winter there. The ground’s still covered in snow.

Eventually, the gears in our young moose friend’s mind turned and it settled on a course of action: “Hey, those are some nice-looking plants behind that door over there. …” And that’s how Providence Alaska Health ended up with a moose munching on decorative potted plants in the hospital lobby.

Funnily enough, the moose didn’t even make a big scene. It just walked through the automatic doors and started chowing down. Security only found out because a tenant called them. Naturally though, once security made the announcement that a massive wild animal had been spotted in the building, the lobby was evacuated. … What do you mean, half the hospital came around to see it? Apparently, even though Alaskans have to fight moose herds on their daily commute, a lot of people wanted to see our moose friend do its thing.

“That’s crazy,” a woman in scrubs said in a video as she snapped a photo with her phone.

“This is the best. Like, what’s the code for this?” asked another bystander.

Despite security’s best efforts to shoo the moose out with barricades and offers of tasty branches, our furry friend left of its own volition, presumably irritated that his breakfast had become a spectator sport. But it didn’t go far. It hung around the front drive for a while, then went around the back of the building for a nap. What has four hooves and still doesn’t give a crap? Bob Moose-o! How you doing?
 

That click sounded stressed

How can people tell that you’re stressed? Maybe you get irritable and a little snappy. Some people have an inability to concentrate or focus. Eating that muffin when you weren’t really hungry could be a sign you’re not relaxed.

Woman_Computer_Search_web.jpg

Did you know that your computer can be an indicator of your stress levels?

We tend to be working when we’re using computers, right? That can be a stressor in itself. Well, some researchers at ETH Zürich decided to have a look at the situation. Surprisingly, at least to us, one in three Swiss employees experience workplace stress, which makes us wonder what the percentage is in this country.

The Swiss researchers developed a model that tells how stressed someone is just by the way they use their computer mouse or type. The results of their study showed that those who were stressed clicked and tapped differently than participants who were more relaxed.

Stressed people click “more often and less precisely and cover longer distances on the screen,” while the relaxed take “shorter, more direct routes to reach their destination and take more time doing so,” study author Mara Nägelin explained in a written statement from ETH (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, or Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) Zürich.

Ever find when you’re frustrated and in a rush you end up making more mistakes? Same deal. Coauthor Jasmine Kerr noted that “increased levels of stress negatively impact our brain’s ability to process information.” Which totally is going to affect how we move.

Hopefully, these results can give insight to companies on how stressed their employees are and the effect it has on their work performance, eventually leading to, guess what, more research on how to alleviate workplace stress in general, which can benefit us all.

So if you find yourself in the office working on your computer like it’s a game of Perfection and time is running out, take a beat. Maybe try a stress-relieving breathing technique. Nonstressed people, according to the study, take fewer and longer pauses on their computers. Perfection on the job may mean relaxing first.

A whole new, tiny level of hangry

Ever been so hungry that everything just got on your nerves? Maybe you feel a little snappy right now? Like you’ll just lash out unless you get something to eat? Been there. And so have bacteria.

New research shows that some bacteria go into a full-on Hulk smash if they’re not getting the nutrients they need by releasing toxins into the body. Sounds like a bacterial temper tantrum.

bacteria_hangry_web.jpg

Even though two cells may be genetically identical, they don’t always behave the same in a bacterial community. Some do their job and stay in line, but some evil twins rage out and make people sick by releasing toxins into the environment, Adam Rosenthal, PhD, of the University of North Carolina and his colleagues discovered.

To figure out why some cells were all business as usual while others were not, the investigators looked at Clostridium perfringens, a bacterium found in the intestines of humans and other vertebrates. When the C. perfringens cells were fed a little acetate to munch on, the hangry cells calmed down faster than a kid with a bag of fruit snacks, reducing toxin levels. Some cells even disappeared, falling in line with their model-citizen counterparts.

So what does this really mean? More research, duh. Now that we know nutrients play a role in toxicity, it may open the door to finding a way to fight against antibiotic resistance in humans and reduce antibiotic use in the food industry.

So think to yourself. Are you bothered for no reason? Getting a little testy with your friends and coworkers? Maybe you just haven’t eaten in a while. You’re literally not alone. Even a single-cell organism can behave based on its hunger levels.

Now go have a snack. Your bacteria are getting restless.
 

The very hangry iguana?

Imagine yourself on a warm, sunny tropical beach. You are enjoying a piece of cake as you take in the slow beat of the waves lapping against the shore. Life is as good as it could be.

Then you feel a presence nearby. Hostility. Hunger. A set of feral, covetous eyes in the nearby jungle. A reptilian beast stalks you, and its all-encompassing sweet tooth desires your cake.

Wait, hold on, what?

As an unfortunate 3-year-old on vacation in Costa Rica found out, there’s at least one iguana in the world out there with a taste for sugar (better than a taste for blood, we suppose).

iguana_lizard_web.jpg

While out on the beach, the lizard darted out of nowhere, bit the girl on the back of the hand, and stole her cake. Still not the worst party guest ever. The child was taken to a local clinic, where the wound was cleaned and a 5-day antibiotic treatment (lizards carry salmonella) was provided. Things seemed fine, and the girl returned home without incident.

But of course, that’s not the end of the story. Five months later, the girl’s parents noticed a red bump at the wound site. Over the next 3 months, the surrounding skin grew red and painful. A trip to the hospital in California revealed that she had a ganglion cyst and a discharge of pus. Turns out our cake-obsessed lizard friend did give the little girl a gift: the first known human case of Mycobacterium marinum infection following an iguana bite on record.

M. marinum, which causes a disease similar to tuberculosis, typically infects fish but can infect humans if skin wounds are exposed to contaminated water. It’s also resistant to most antibiotics, which is why the first round didn’t clear up the infection. A second round of more-potent antibiotics seems to be working well.

So, to sum up, this poor child got bitten by a lizard, had her cake stolen, and contracted a rare illness in exchange. For a 3-year-old, that’s gotta be in the top-10 worst days ever. Unless, of course, we’re actually living in the Marvel universe (sorry, multiverse at this point). Then we’re totally going to see the emergence of the new superhero Iguana Girl in 15 years or so. Keep your eyes open.
 

No allergies? Let them give up cake

Allergy season is already here – starting earlier every year, it seems – and many people are not happy about it. So unhappy, actually, that there’s a list of things they would be willing to give up for a year to get rid of their of allergies, according to a survey conducted by OnePoll on behalf of Flonase.

Allergy_mask_web.jpg

Nearly 40% of 2,000 respondents with allergies would go a year without eating cake or chocolate or playing video games in exchange for allergy-free status, the survey results show. Almost as many would forgo coffee (38%) or pizza (37%) for a year, while 36% would stay off social media and 31% would take a pay cut or give up their smartphones, the Independent reported.

More than half of the allergic Americans – 54%, to be exact – who were polled this past winter – Feb. 24 to March 1, to be exact – consider allergy symptoms to be the most frustrating part of the spring. Annoying things that were less frustrating to the group included mosquitoes (41%), filing tax returns (38%), and daylight savings time (37%).

The Trump arraignment circus, of course, occurred too late to make the list, as did the big “We’re going back to the office! No wait, we’re closing the office forever!” email extravaganza and emotional roller coaster. That second one, however, did not get nearly as much media coverage.

A whole new, tiny level of hangry

Ever been so hungry that everything just got on your nerves? Maybe you feel a little snappy right now? Like you’ll just lash out unless you get something to eat? Been there. And so have bacteria.

New research shows that some bacteria go into a full-on Hulk smash if they’re not getting the nutrients they need by releasing toxins into the body. Sounds like a bacterial temper tantrum.

bacteria_hangry_web.jpg

Even though two cells may be genetically identical, they don’t always behave the same in a bacterial community. Some do their job and stay in line, but some evil twins rage out and make people sick by releasing toxins into the environment, Adam Rosenthal, PhD, of the University of North Carolina and his colleagues discovered.

To figure out why some cells were all business as usual while others were not, the investigators looked at Clostridium perfringens, a bacterium found in the intestines of humans and other vertebrates. When the C. perfringens cells were fed a little acetate to munch on, the hangry cells calmed down faster than a kid with a bag of fruit snacks, reducing toxin levels. Some cells even disappeared, falling in line with their model-citizen counterparts.

So what does this really mean? More research, duh. Now that we know nutrients play a role in toxicity, it may open the door to finding a way to fight against antibiotic resistance in humans and reduce antibiotic use in the food industry.

So think to yourself. Are you bothered for no reason? Getting a little testy with your friends and coworkers? Maybe you just haven’t eaten in a while. You’re literally not alone. Even a single-cell organism can behave based on its hunger levels.

Now go have a snack. Your bacteria are getting restless.
 

The very hangry iguana?

Imagine yourself on a warm, sunny tropical beach. You are enjoying a piece of cake as you take in the slow beat of the waves lapping against the shore. Life is as good as it could be.

Then you feel a presence nearby. Hostility. Hunger. A set of feral, covetous eyes in the nearby jungle. A reptilian beast stalks you, and its all-encompassing sweet tooth desires your cake.

Wait, hold on, what?

As an unfortunate 3-year-old on vacation in Costa Rica found out, there’s at least one iguana in the world out there with a taste for sugar (better than a taste for blood, we suppose).

iguana_lizard_web.jpg

While out on the beach, the lizard darted out of nowhere, bit the girl on the back of the hand, and stole her cake. Still not the worst party guest ever. The child was taken to a local clinic, where the wound was cleaned and a 5-day antibiotic treatment (lizards carry salmonella) was provided. Things seemed fine, and the girl returned home without incident.

But of course, that’s not the end of the story. Five months later, the girl’s parents noticed a red bump at the wound site. Over the next 3 months, the surrounding skin grew red and painful. A trip to the hospital in California revealed that she had a ganglion cyst and a discharge of pus. Turns out our cake-obsessed lizard friend did give the little girl a gift: the first known human case of Mycobacterium marinum infection following an iguana bite on record.

M. marinum, which causes a disease similar to tuberculosis, typically infects fish but can infect humans if skin wounds are exposed to contaminated water. It’s also resistant to most antibiotics, which is why the first round didn’t clear up the infection. A second round of more-potent antibiotics seems to be working well.

So, to sum up, this poor child got bitten by a lizard, had her cake stolen, and contracted a rare illness in exchange. For a 3-year-old, that’s gotta be in the top-10 worst days ever. Unless, of course, we’re actually living in the Marvel universe (sorry, multiverse at this point). Then we’re totally going to see the emergence of the new superhero Iguana Girl in 15 years or so. Keep your eyes open.
 

No allergies? Let them give up cake

Allergy season is already here – starting earlier every year, it seems – and many people are not happy about it. So unhappy, actually, that there’s a list of things they would be willing to give up for a year to get rid of their of allergies, according to a survey conducted by OnePoll on behalf of Flonase.

Allergy_mask_web.jpg

Nearly 40% of 2,000 respondents with allergies would go a year without eating cake or chocolate or playing video games in exchange for allergy-free status, the survey results show. Almost as many would forgo coffee (38%) or pizza (37%) for a year, while 36% would stay off social media and 31% would take a pay cut or give up their smartphones, the Independent reported.

More than half of the allergic Americans – 54%, to be exact – who were polled this past winter – Feb. 24 to March 1, to be exact – consider allergy symptoms to be the most frustrating part of the spring. Annoying things that were less frustrating to the group included mosquitoes (41%), filing tax returns (38%), and daylight savings time (37%).

The Trump arraignment circus, of course, occurred too late to make the list, as did the big “We’re going back to the office! No wait, we’re closing the office forever!” email extravaganza and emotional roller coaster. That second one, however, did not get nearly as much media coverage.

A whole new, tiny level of hangry

Ever been so hungry that everything just got on your nerves? Maybe you feel a little snappy right now? Like you’ll just lash out unless you get something to eat? Been there. And so have bacteria.

New research shows that some bacteria go into a full-on Hulk smash if they’re not getting the nutrients they need by releasing toxins into the body. Sounds like a bacterial temper tantrum.

bacteria_hangry_web.jpg

Even though two cells may be genetically identical, they don’t always behave the same in a bacterial community. Some do their job and stay in line, but some evil twins rage out and make people sick by releasing toxins into the environment, Adam Rosenthal, PhD, of the University of North Carolina and his colleagues discovered.

To figure out why some cells were all business as usual while others were not, the investigators looked at Clostridium perfringens, a bacterium found in the intestines of humans and other vertebrates. When the C. perfringens cells were fed a little acetate to munch on, the hangry cells calmed down faster than a kid with a bag of fruit snacks, reducing toxin levels. Some cells even disappeared, falling in line with their model-citizen counterparts.

So what does this really mean? More research, duh. Now that we know nutrients play a role in toxicity, it may open the door to finding a way to fight against antibiotic resistance in humans and reduce antibiotic use in the food industry.

So think to yourself. Are you bothered for no reason? Getting a little testy with your friends and coworkers? Maybe you just haven’t eaten in a while. You’re literally not alone. Even a single-cell organism can behave based on its hunger levels.

Now go have a snack. Your bacteria are getting restless.
 

The very hangry iguana?

Imagine yourself on a warm, sunny tropical beach. You are enjoying a piece of cake as you take in the slow beat of the waves lapping against the shore. Life is as good as it could be.

Then you feel a presence nearby. Hostility. Hunger. A set of feral, covetous eyes in the nearby jungle. A reptilian beast stalks you, and its all-encompassing sweet tooth desires your cake.

Wait, hold on, what?

As an unfortunate 3-year-old on vacation in Costa Rica found out, there’s at least one iguana in the world out there with a taste for sugar (better than a taste for blood, we suppose).

iguana_lizard_web.jpg

While out on the beach, the lizard darted out of nowhere, bit the girl on the back of the hand, and stole her cake. Still not the worst party guest ever. The child was taken to a local clinic, where the wound was cleaned and a 5-day antibiotic treatment (lizards carry salmonella) was provided. Things seemed fine, and the girl returned home without incident.

But of course, that’s not the end of the story. Five months later, the girl’s parents noticed a red bump at the wound site. Over the next 3 months, the surrounding skin grew red and painful. A trip to the hospital in California revealed that she had a ganglion cyst and a discharge of pus. Turns out our cake-obsessed lizard friend did give the little girl a gift: the first known human case of Mycobacterium marinum infection following an iguana bite on record.

M. marinum, which causes a disease similar to tuberculosis, typically infects fish but can infect humans if skin wounds are exposed to contaminated water. It’s also resistant to most antibiotics, which is why the first round didn’t clear up the infection. A second round of more-potent antibiotics seems to be working well.

So, to sum up, this poor child got bitten by a lizard, had her cake stolen, and contracted a rare illness in exchange. For a 3-year-old, that’s gotta be in the top-10 worst days ever. Unless, of course, we’re actually living in the Marvel universe (sorry, multiverse at this point). Then we’re totally going to see the emergence of the new superhero Iguana Girl in 15 years or so. Keep your eyes open.
 

No allergies? Let them give up cake

Allergy season is already here – starting earlier every year, it seems – and many people are not happy about it. So unhappy, actually, that there’s a list of things they would be willing to give up for a year to get rid of their of allergies, according to a survey conducted by OnePoll on behalf of Flonase.

Allergy_mask_web.jpg

Nearly 40% of 2,000 respondents with allergies would go a year without eating cake or chocolate or playing video games in exchange for allergy-free status, the survey results show. Almost as many would forgo coffee (38%) or pizza (37%) for a year, while 36% would stay off social media and 31% would take a pay cut or give up their smartphones, the Independent reported.

More than half of the allergic Americans – 54%, to be exact – who were polled this past winter – Feb. 24 to March 1, to be exact – consider allergy symptoms to be the most frustrating part of the spring. Annoying things that were less frustrating to the group included mosquitoes (41%), filing tax returns (38%), and daylight savings time (37%).

The Trump arraignment circus, of course, occurred too late to make the list, as did the big “We’re going back to the office! No wait, we’re closing the office forever!” email extravaganza and emotional roller coaster. That second one, however, did not get nearly as much media coverage.

Getting sweet on sweat

Are you the sort of person who struggles in social situations? Have the past 3 years been a secret respite from the terror and exhaustion of meeting new people? We understand your plight. People kind of suck. And you don’t have to look far to be reminded of it.

Unfortunately, on occasion we all have to interact with other human beings. If you suffer from social anxiety, this is not a fun thing to do. But new research indicates that there may be a way to alleviate the stress for those with social anxiety: armpits.

arms_raised_web.jpg

Specifically, sweat from the armpits of other people. Yes, this means a group of scientists gathered up some volunteers and collected their armpit sweat while the volunteers watched a variety of movies (horror, comedy, romance, etc.). Our condolences to the poor unpaid interns tasked with gathering the sweat.

Once they had their precious new medicine, the researchers took a group of women and administered a round of mindfulness therapy. Some of the participants then received the various sweats, while the rest were forced to smell only clean air. (The horror!) Lo and behold, the sweat groups had their anxiety scores reduced by about 40% after their therapy, compared with just 17% in the control group.

The researchers also found that the source of the sweat didn’t matter. Their study subjects responded the same to sweat excreted during a scary movie as they did to sweat from a comedy, a result that surprised the researchers. They suggested chemosignals in the sweat may affect the treatment response and advised further research. Which means more sweat collection! They plan on testing emotionally neutral movies next time, and if we can make a humble suggestion, they also should try the sweatiest movies.

Before the Food and Drug Administration can approve armpit sweat as a treatment for social anxiety, we have some advice for those shut-in introverts out there. Next time you have to interact with rabid extroverts, instead of shaking their hands, walk up to them and take a deep whiff of their armpits. Establish dominance. Someone will feel awkward, and science has proved it won’t be you.
 

The puff that vaccinates

Ever been shot with a Nerf gun or hit with a foam pool tube? More annoying than painful, right? If we asked if you’d rather get pelted with one of those than receive a traditional vaccine injection, you would choose the former. Maybe someday you actually will.

injector_air_web.jpg

During the boredom of the early pandemic lockdown, Jeremiah Gassensmith, PhD, of the department of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Texas, Dallas, ordered a compressed gas–powered jet injection system to fool around with at home. Hey, who didn’t? Anyway, when it was time to go back to the lab he handed it over to one of his grad students, Yalini Wijesundara, and asked her to see what could be done with it.

In her tinkering she found that the jet injector could deliver metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) that can hold a bunch of different materials, like proteins and nucleic acids, through the skin.

Thus the “MOF-Jet” was born!

Jet injectors are nothing new, but they hurt. The MOF-Jet, however, is practically painless and cheaper than the gene guns that veterinarians use to inject biological cargo attached to the surface of a metal microparticle.

Changing the carrier gas also changes the time needed to break down the MOF and thus alters delivery of the drug inside. “If you shoot it with carbon dioxide, it will release its cargo faster within cells; if you use regular air, it will take 4 or 5 days,” Ms. Wijesundara explained in a written statement. That means the same drug could be released over different timescales without changing its formulation.

While testing on onion cells and mice, Ms. Wijesundara noted that it was as easy as “pointing and shooting” to distribute the puff of gas into the cells. A saving grace to those with needle anxiety. Not that we would know anything about needle anxiety.

More testing needs to be done before bringing this technology to human use, obviously, but we’re looking forward to saying goodbye to that dreaded prick and hello to a puff.
 

Your hippocampus is showing

Brain anatomy is one of the many, many things that’s not really our thing, but we do know a cool picture when we see one. Case in point: The image just below, which happens to be a full-scale, single-cell resolution model of the CA1 region of the hippocampus that “replicates the structure and architecture of the area, along with the position and relative connectivity of the neurons,” according to a statement from the Human Brain Project.

hippocampus_model_web.jpg

“We have performed a data mining operation on high resolution images of the human hippocampus, obtained from the BigBrain database. The position of individual neurons has been derived from a detailed analysis of these images,” said senior author Michele Migliore, PhD, of the Italian National Research Council’s Institute of Biophysics in Palermo.

Yes, he did say BigBrain database. BigBrain is – we checked and it’s definitely not this – a 3D model of a brain that was sectioned into 7,404 slices just 20 micrometers thick and then scanned by MRI. Digital reconstruction of those slices was done by supercomputer and the results are now available for analysis.

Dr. Migliore and his associates developed an image-processing algorithm to obtain neuronal positioning distribution and an algorithm to generate neuronal connectivity by approximating the shapes of dendrites and axons. (Our brains are starting to hurt just trying to write this.) “Some fit into narrow cones, others have a broad complex extension that can be approximated by dedicated geometrical volumes, and the connectivity to nearby neurons changes accordingly,” explained lead author Daniela Gandolfi of the University of Modena (Italy) and Reggio Emilia.

The investigators have made their dataset and the extraction methodology available on the EBRAINS platform and through the Human Brain Project and are moving on to other brain regions. And then, once everyone can find their way in and around the old gray matter, it should bring an end to conversations like this, which no doubt occur between male and female neuroscientists every day:

“Arnold, I think we’re lost.”

“Don’t worry, Bev, I know where I’m going.”

“Stop and ask this lady for directions.”

“I said I can find it.”

“Just ask her.”

“Fine. Excuse me, ma’am, can you tell us how to get to the corpora quadrigemina from here?

Getting sweet on sweat

Are you the sort of person who struggles in social situations? Have the past 3 years been a secret respite from the terror and exhaustion of meeting new people? We understand your plight. People kind of suck. And you don’t have to look far to be reminded of it.

Unfortunately, on occasion we all have to interact with other human beings. If you suffer from social anxiety, this is not a fun thing to do. But new research indicates that there may be a way to alleviate the stress for those with social anxiety: armpits.

arms_raised_web.jpg

Specifically, sweat from the armpits of other people. Yes, this means a group of scientists gathered up some volunteers and collected their armpit sweat while the volunteers watched a variety of movies (horror, comedy, romance, etc.). Our condolences to the poor unpaid interns tasked with gathering the sweat.

Once they had their precious new medicine, the researchers took a group of women and administered a round of mindfulness therapy. Some of the participants then received the various sweats, while the rest were forced to smell only clean air. (The horror!) Lo and behold, the sweat groups had their anxiety scores reduced by about 40% after their therapy, compared with just 17% in the control group.

The researchers also found that the source of the sweat didn’t matter. Their study subjects responded the same to sweat excreted during a scary movie as they did to sweat from a comedy, a result that surprised the researchers. They suggested chemosignals in the sweat may affect the treatment response and advised further research. Which means more sweat collection! They plan on testing emotionally neutral movies next time, and if we can make a humble suggestion, they also should try the sweatiest movies.

Before the Food and Drug Administration can approve armpit sweat as a treatment for social anxiety, we have some advice for those shut-in introverts out there. Next time you have to interact with rabid extroverts, instead of shaking their hands, walk up to them and take a deep whiff of their armpits. Establish dominance. Someone will feel awkward, and science has proved it won’t be you.
 

The puff that vaccinates

Ever been shot with a Nerf gun or hit with a foam pool tube? More annoying than painful, right? If we asked if you’d rather get pelted with one of those than receive a traditional vaccine injection, you would choose the former. Maybe someday you actually will.

injector_air_web.jpg

During the boredom of the early pandemic lockdown, Jeremiah Gassensmith, PhD, of the department of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Texas, Dallas, ordered a compressed gas–powered jet injection system to fool around with at home. Hey, who didn’t? Anyway, when it was time to go back to the lab he handed it over to one of his grad students, Yalini Wijesundara, and asked her to see what could be done with it.

In her tinkering she found that the jet injector could deliver metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) that can hold a bunch of different materials, like proteins and nucleic acids, through the skin.

Thus the “MOF-Jet” was born!

Jet injectors are nothing new, but they hurt. The MOF-Jet, however, is practically painless and cheaper than the gene guns that veterinarians use to inject biological cargo attached to the surface of a metal microparticle.

Changing the carrier gas also changes the time needed to break down the MOF and thus alters delivery of the drug inside. “If you shoot it with carbon dioxide, it will release its cargo faster within cells; if you use regular air, it will take 4 or 5 days,” Ms. Wijesundara explained in a written statement. That means the same drug could be released over different timescales without changing its formulation.

While testing on onion cells and mice, Ms. Wijesundara noted that it was as easy as “pointing and shooting” to distribute the puff of gas into the cells. A saving grace to those with needle anxiety. Not that we would know anything about needle anxiety.

More testing needs to be done before bringing this technology to human use, obviously, but we’re looking forward to saying goodbye to that dreaded prick and hello to a puff.
 

Your hippocampus is showing

Brain anatomy is one of the many, many things that’s not really our thing, but we do know a cool picture when we see one. Case in point: The image just below, which happens to be a full-scale, single-cell resolution model of the CA1 region of the hippocampus that “replicates the structure and architecture of the area, along with the position and relative connectivity of the neurons,” according to a statement from the Human Brain Project.

hippocampus_model_web.jpg

“We have performed a data mining operation on high resolution images of the human hippocampus, obtained from the BigBrain database. The position of individual neurons has been derived from a detailed analysis of these images,” said senior author Michele Migliore, PhD, of the Italian National Research Council’s Institute of Biophysics in Palermo.

Yes, he did say BigBrain database. BigBrain is – we checked and it’s definitely not this – a 3D model of a brain that was sectioned into 7,404 slices just 20 micrometers thick and then scanned by MRI. Digital reconstruction of those slices was done by supercomputer and the results are now available for analysis.

Dr. Migliore and his associates developed an image-processing algorithm to obtain neuronal positioning distribution and an algorithm to generate neuronal connectivity by approximating the shapes of dendrites and axons. (Our brains are starting to hurt just trying to write this.) “Some fit into narrow cones, others have a broad complex extension that can be approximated by dedicated geometrical volumes, and the connectivity to nearby neurons changes accordingly,” explained lead author Daniela Gandolfi of the University of Modena (Italy) and Reggio Emilia.

The investigators have made their dataset and the extraction methodology available on the EBRAINS platform and through the Human Brain Project and are moving on to other brain regions. And then, once everyone can find their way in and around the old gray matter, it should bring an end to conversations like this, which no doubt occur between male and female neuroscientists every day:

“Arnold, I think we’re lost.”

“Don’t worry, Bev, I know where I’m going.”

“Stop and ask this lady for directions.”

“I said I can find it.”

“Just ask her.”

“Fine. Excuse me, ma’am, can you tell us how to get to the corpora quadrigemina from here?

Getting sweet on sweat

Are you the sort of person who struggles in social situations? Have the past 3 years been a secret respite from the terror and exhaustion of meeting new people? We understand your plight. People kind of suck. And you don’t have to look far to be reminded of it.

Unfortunately, on occasion we all have to interact with other human beings. If you suffer from social anxiety, this is not a fun thing to do. But new research indicates that there may be a way to alleviate the stress for those with social anxiety: armpits.

arms_raised_web.jpg

Specifically, sweat from the armpits of other people. Yes, this means a group of scientists gathered up some volunteers and collected their armpit sweat while the volunteers watched a variety of movies (horror, comedy, romance, etc.). Our condolences to the poor unpaid interns tasked with gathering the sweat.

Once they had their precious new medicine, the researchers took a group of women and administered a round of mindfulness therapy. Some of the participants then received the various sweats, while the rest were forced to smell only clean air. (The horror!) Lo and behold, the sweat groups had their anxiety scores reduced by about 40% after their therapy, compared with just 17% in the control group.

The researchers also found that the source of the sweat didn’t matter. Their study subjects responded the same to sweat excreted during a scary movie as they did to sweat from a comedy, a result that surprised the researchers. They suggested chemosignals in the sweat may affect the treatment response and advised further research. Which means more sweat collection! They plan on testing emotionally neutral movies next time, and if we can make a humble suggestion, they also should try the sweatiest movies.

Before the Food and Drug Administration can approve armpit sweat as a treatment for social anxiety, we have some advice for those shut-in introverts out there. Next time you have to interact with rabid extroverts, instead of shaking their hands, walk up to them and take a deep whiff of their armpits. Establish dominance. Someone will feel awkward, and science has proved it won’t be you.
 

The puff that vaccinates

Ever been shot with a Nerf gun or hit with a foam pool tube? More annoying than painful, right? If we asked if you’d rather get pelted with one of those than receive a traditional vaccine injection, you would choose the former. Maybe someday you actually will.

injector_air_web.jpg

During the boredom of the early pandemic lockdown, Jeremiah Gassensmith, PhD, of the department of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Texas, Dallas, ordered a compressed gas–powered jet injection system to fool around with at home. Hey, who didn’t? Anyway, when it was time to go back to the lab he handed it over to one of his grad students, Yalini Wijesundara, and asked her to see what could be done with it.

In her tinkering she found that the jet injector could deliver metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) that can hold a bunch of different materials, like proteins and nucleic acids, through the skin.

Thus the “MOF-Jet” was born!

Jet injectors are nothing new, but they hurt. The MOF-Jet, however, is practically painless and cheaper than the gene guns that veterinarians use to inject biological cargo attached to the surface of a metal microparticle.

Changing the carrier gas also changes the time needed to break down the MOF and thus alters delivery of the drug inside. “If you shoot it with carbon dioxide, it will release its cargo faster within cells; if you use regular air, it will take 4 or 5 days,” Ms. Wijesundara explained in a written statement. That means the same drug could be released over different timescales without changing its formulation.

While testing on onion cells and mice, Ms. Wijesundara noted that it was as easy as “pointing and shooting” to distribute the puff of gas into the cells. A saving grace to those with needle anxiety. Not that we would know anything about needle anxiety.

More testing needs to be done before bringing this technology to human use, obviously, but we’re looking forward to saying goodbye to that dreaded prick and hello to a puff.
 

Your hippocampus is showing

Brain anatomy is one of the many, many things that’s not really our thing, but we do know a cool picture when we see one. Case in point: The image just below, which happens to be a full-scale, single-cell resolution model of the CA1 region of the hippocampus that “replicates the structure and architecture of the area, along with the position and relative connectivity of the neurons,” according to a statement from the Human Brain Project.

hippocampus_model_web.jpg

“We have performed a data mining operation on high resolution images of the human hippocampus, obtained from the BigBrain database. The position of individual neurons has been derived from a detailed analysis of these images,” said senior author Michele Migliore, PhD, of the Italian National Research Council’s Institute of Biophysics in Palermo.

Yes, he did say BigBrain database. BigBrain is – we checked and it’s definitely not this – a 3D model of a brain that was sectioned into 7,404 slices just 20 micrometers thick and then scanned by MRI. Digital reconstruction of those slices was done by supercomputer and the results are now available for analysis.

Dr. Migliore and his associates developed an image-processing algorithm to obtain neuronal positioning distribution and an algorithm to generate neuronal connectivity by approximating the shapes of dendrites and axons. (Our brains are starting to hurt just trying to write this.) “Some fit into narrow cones, others have a broad complex extension that can be approximated by dedicated geometrical volumes, and the connectivity to nearby neurons changes accordingly,” explained lead author Daniela Gandolfi of the University of Modena (Italy) and Reggio Emilia.

The investigators have made their dataset and the extraction methodology available on the EBRAINS platform and through the Human Brain Project and are moving on to other brain regions. And then, once everyone can find their way in and around the old gray matter, it should bring an end to conversations like this, which no doubt occur between male and female neuroscientists every day:

“Arnold, I think we’re lost.”

“Don’t worry, Bev, I know where I’m going.”

“Stop and ask this lady for directions.”

“I said I can find it.”

“Just ask her.”

“Fine. Excuse me, ma’am, can you tell us how to get to the corpora quadrigemina from here?

Into thin, but healthy, air

Human civilization has essentially been built on proximity to water. Ancient civilizations in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, China, and India were all intimately connected to either rivers or the ocean. Even today, with all our technology, about a third of Earth’s 8 billion people live within 100 vertical meters of sea level, and the median person lives at an elevation of just 200 meters.

mountain_village_web.jpg

All things considered, one might imagine life is pretty tough for the 2 million people living at an elevation of 4,500 meters (nearly 15,000 feet). Not too many Wal-Marts or McDonalds up there. Oh, and not much air either. And for most of us not named Spongebob, air is good.

Or is it? That’s the question posed by a new study. After all, the researchers said, people living at high altitudes, where the air has only 11% effective oxygen instead of the 21% we have at low altitude, have significantly lower rates of metabolic disorders such as diabetes and heart diseases. Maybe breathing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

To find out, the researchers placed a group of mice in environments with either 11% oxygen or 8% oxygen. This netted them a bunch of very tired mice. Hey, sudden altitude gain doesn’t go too well for us either, but after 3 weeks, all the mice in the hypoxic environments had regained their normal movement and were behaving as any mouse would.

While the critters seemed normal on the outside, a closer examination found the truth. Their metabolism had been permanently altered, and their blood sugar and weight went down and never bounced back up. Further examination through PET scans showed that the hypoxic mice’s organs showed an increase in glucose metabolism and that brown fat and skeletal muscles reduced the amount of sugar they used.

This goes against the prevailing assumption about hypoxic conditions, the researchers said, since it was previously theorized that the body simply burned more glucose in response to having less oxygen. And while that’s true, our organs also conspicuously use less glucose. Currently, many athletes use hypoxic environments to train, but these new data suggest that people with metabolic disorders also would see benefits from living in low-oxygen environments.

Do you know what this means? All we have to do to stop diabetes is take civilization and push it somewhere else. This can’t possibly end badly.
 

Sleep survey: The restless majority

Newsflash! This just in: Nobody is sleeping well.

When we go to bed, our goal is to get rest, right? Sorry America, but you’re falling short. In a recent survey conducted by OnePoll for Purple Mattress, almost two-thirds of the 2,011 participants considered themselves restless sleepers.

Sleepless_insomnia_woman_web.jpg

Not surprised. So what’s keeping us up?

Snoring partners (20%) and anxiety (26%) made the list, but the award for top complaint goes to body pain. Back pain was most prevalent, reported by 36% of respondents, followed by neck pain (33%) and shoulder pain (24%). No wonder, then, that only 10% of the group reported feeling well rested when they woke up.

Do you ever blame your tiredness on sleeping funny? Well, we all kind of sleep funny, and yet we’re still not sleeping well.

The largest proportion of people like to sleep on their side (48%), compared with 18% on their back and 17% on their stomach. The main reasons to choose certain positions were to ease soreness or sleep better, both at 28%. The largest share of participants (47%) reported sleeping in a “yearner” position, while 40% lay on their stomachs in the “free faller” position, and 39% reported using the “soldier” position.

Regardless of the method people use to get to sleep or the position they’re in, the goal is always the same. We’re all just trying to figure out what’s the right one for us.
 

Seen a UFO recently? Don’t blame COVID

First of all, because we know you’re going to be thinking it in a minute, no, we did not make this up. With COVID-19 still hanging around, there’s no need for fabrication on our part.

ufo_cow_web.jpg

The pandemic, clearly, has caused humans to do some strange things over the last 3 years, but what about some of the more, shall we say … eccentric behavior that people were already exhibiting before COVID found its way into our lives?

If, like R. Chase Cockrell, PhD, of the University of Vermont and associates at the Center for UFO Studies, you were wondering if the pandemic affected UFO reporting, then wonder no more. After all, with all that extra time being spent outdoors back in 2020 and all the additional anxiety, surely somebody must have seen something.

The investigators started with the basics by analyzing data from the National UFO Reporting Center and the Mutual UFO Network. Sightings did increase by about 600 in each database during 2020, compared with 2018 and 2019, but not because of the pandemic.

That’s right, we can’t pin this one on our good friend SARS-CoV-2. Further analysis showed that the launches of SpaceX Starlink satellites – sometimes as many as 60 at a time – probably caused the increase in UFO sightings, which means that our favorite billionaire, Elon Musk, is to blame. Yup, the genial Mr. Muskellunge did something that even a global pandemic couldn’t, and yet we vaccinate for COVID.

Next week on tenuous connections: A new study links the 2020 presidential election to increased emergency department visits for external hemorrhoids.

See? That’s fabrication. We made that up.

This article was updated 5/15/23.

Into thin, but healthy, air

Human civilization has essentially been built on proximity to water. Ancient civilizations in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, China, and India were all intimately connected to either rivers or the ocean. Even today, with all our technology, about a third of Earth’s 8 billion people live within 100 vertical meters of sea level, and the median person lives at an elevation of just 200 meters.

mountain_village_web.jpg

All things considered, one might imagine life is pretty tough for the 2 million people living at an elevation of 4,500 meters (nearly 15,000 feet). Not too many Wal-Marts or McDonalds up there. Oh, and not much air either. And for most of us not named Spongebob, air is good.

Or is it? That’s the question posed by a new study. After all, the researchers said, people living at high altitudes, where the air has only 11% effective oxygen instead of the 21% we have at low altitude, have significantly lower rates of metabolic disorders such as diabetes and heart diseases. Maybe breathing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

To find out, the researchers placed a group of mice in environments with either 11% oxygen or 8% oxygen. This netted them a bunch of very tired mice. Hey, sudden altitude gain doesn’t go too well for us either, but after 3 weeks, all the mice in the hypoxic environments had regained their normal movement and were behaving as any mouse would.

While the critters seemed normal on the outside, a closer examination found the truth. Their metabolism had been permanently altered, and their blood sugar and weight went down and never bounced back up. Further examination through PET scans showed that the hypoxic mice’s organs showed an increase in glucose metabolism and that brown fat and skeletal muscles reduced the amount of sugar they used.

This goes against the prevailing assumption about hypoxic conditions, the researchers said, since it was previously theorized that the body simply burned more glucose in response to having less oxygen. And while that’s true, our organs also conspicuously use less glucose. Currently, many athletes use hypoxic environments to train, but these new data suggest that people with metabolic disorders also would see benefits from living in low-oxygen environments.

Do you know what this means? All we have to do to stop diabetes is take civilization and push it somewhere else. This can’t possibly end badly.
 

Sleep survey: The restless majority

Newsflash! This just in: Nobody is sleeping well.

When we go to bed, our goal is to get rest, right? Sorry America, but you’re falling short. In a recent survey conducted by OnePoll for Purple Mattress, almost two-thirds of the 2,011 participants considered themselves restless sleepers.

Sleepless_insomnia_woman_web.jpg

Not surprised. So what’s keeping us up?

Snoring partners (20%) and anxiety (26%) made the list, but the award for top complaint goes to body pain. Back pain was most prevalent, reported by 36% of respondents, followed by neck pain (33%) and shoulder pain (24%). No wonder, then, that only 10% of the group reported feeling well rested when they woke up.

Do you ever blame your tiredness on sleeping funny? Well, we all kind of sleep funny, and yet we’re still not sleeping well.

The largest proportion of people like to sleep on their side (48%), compared with 18% on their back and 17% on their stomach. The main reasons to choose certain positions were to ease soreness or sleep better, both at 28%. The largest share of participants (47%) reported sleeping in a “yearner” position, while 40% lay on their stomachs in the “free faller” position, and 39% reported using the “soldier” position.

Regardless of the method people use to get to sleep or the position they’re in, the goal is always the same. We’re all just trying to figure out what’s the right one for us.
 

Seen a UFO recently? Don’t blame COVID

First of all, because we know you’re going to be thinking it in a minute, no, we did not make this up. With COVID-19 still hanging around, there’s no need for fabrication on our part.

ufo_cow_web.jpg

The pandemic, clearly, has caused humans to do some strange things over the last 3 years, but what about some of the more, shall we say … eccentric behavior that people were already exhibiting before COVID found its way into our lives?

If, like R. Chase Cockrell, PhD, of the University of Vermont and associates at the Center for UFO Studies, you were wondering if the pandemic affected UFO reporting, then wonder no more. After all, with all that extra time being spent outdoors back in 2020 and all the additional anxiety, surely somebody must have seen something.

The investigators started with the basics by analyzing data from the National UFO Reporting Center and the Mutual UFO Network. Sightings did increase by about 600 in each database during 2020, compared with 2018 and 2019, but not because of the pandemic.

That’s right, we can’t pin this one on our good friend SARS-CoV-2. Further analysis showed that the launches of SpaceX Starlink satellites – sometimes as many as 60 at a time – probably caused the increase in UFO sightings, which means that our favorite billionaire, Elon Musk, is to blame. Yup, the genial Mr. Muskellunge did something that even a global pandemic couldn’t, and yet we vaccinate for COVID.

Next week on tenuous connections: A new study links the 2020 presidential election to increased emergency department visits for external hemorrhoids.

See? That’s fabrication. We made that up.

This article was updated 5/15/23.

Into thin, but healthy, air

Human civilization has essentially been built on proximity to water. Ancient civilizations in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, China, and India were all intimately connected to either rivers or the ocean. Even today, with all our technology, about a third of Earth’s 8 billion people live within 100 vertical meters of sea level, and the median person lives at an elevation of just 200 meters.

mountain_village_web.jpg

All things considered, one might imagine life is pretty tough for the 2 million people living at an elevation of 4,500 meters (nearly 15,000 feet). Not too many Wal-Marts or McDonalds up there. Oh, and not much air either. And for most of us not named Spongebob, air is good.

Or is it? That’s the question posed by a new study. After all, the researchers said, people living at high altitudes, where the air has only 11% effective oxygen instead of the 21% we have at low altitude, have significantly lower rates of metabolic disorders such as diabetes and heart diseases. Maybe breathing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

To find out, the researchers placed a group of mice in environments with either 11% oxygen or 8% oxygen. This netted them a bunch of very tired mice. Hey, sudden altitude gain doesn’t go too well for us either, but after 3 weeks, all the mice in the hypoxic environments had regained their normal movement and were behaving as any mouse would.

While the critters seemed normal on the outside, a closer examination found the truth. Their metabolism had been permanently altered, and their blood sugar and weight went down and never bounced back up. Further examination through PET scans showed that the hypoxic mice’s organs showed an increase in glucose metabolism and that brown fat and skeletal muscles reduced the amount of sugar they used.

This goes against the prevailing assumption about hypoxic conditions, the researchers said, since it was previously theorized that the body simply burned more glucose in response to having less oxygen. And while that’s true, our organs also conspicuously use less glucose. Currently, many athletes use hypoxic environments to train, but these new data suggest that people with metabolic disorders also would see benefits from living in low-oxygen environments.

Do you know what this means? All we have to do to stop diabetes is take civilization and push it somewhere else. This can’t possibly end badly.
 

Sleep survey: The restless majority

Newsflash! This just in: Nobody is sleeping well.

When we go to bed, our goal is to get rest, right? Sorry America, but you’re falling short. In a recent survey conducted by OnePoll for Purple Mattress, almost two-thirds of the 2,011 participants considered themselves restless sleepers.

Sleepless_insomnia_woman_web.jpg

Not surprised. So what’s keeping us up?

Snoring partners (20%) and anxiety (26%) made the list, but the award for top complaint goes to body pain. Back pain was most prevalent, reported by 36% of respondents, followed by neck pain (33%) and shoulder pain (24%). No wonder, then, that only 10% of the group reported feeling well rested when they woke up.

Do you ever blame your tiredness on sleeping funny? Well, we all kind of sleep funny, and yet we’re still not sleeping well.

The largest proportion of people like to sleep on their side (48%), compared with 18% on their back and 17% on their stomach. The main reasons to choose certain positions were to ease soreness or sleep better, both at 28%. The largest share of participants (47%) reported sleeping in a “yearner” position, while 40% lay on their stomachs in the “free faller” position, and 39% reported using the “soldier” position.

Regardless of the method people use to get to sleep or the position they’re in, the goal is always the same. We’re all just trying to figure out what’s the right one for us.
 

Seen a UFO recently? Don’t blame COVID

First of all, because we know you’re going to be thinking it in a minute, no, we did not make this up. With COVID-19 still hanging around, there’s no need for fabrication on our part.

ufo_cow_web.jpg

The pandemic, clearly, has caused humans to do some strange things over the last 3 years, but what about some of the more, shall we say … eccentric behavior that people were already exhibiting before COVID found its way into our lives?

If, like R. Chase Cockrell, PhD, of the University of Vermont and associates at the Center for UFO Studies, you were wondering if the pandemic affected UFO reporting, then wonder no more. After all, with all that extra time being spent outdoors back in 2020 and all the additional anxiety, surely somebody must have seen something.

The investigators started with the basics by analyzing data from the National UFO Reporting Center and the Mutual UFO Network. Sightings did increase by about 600 in each database during 2020, compared with 2018 and 2019, but not because of the pandemic.

That’s right, we can’t pin this one on our good friend SARS-CoV-2. Further analysis showed that the launches of SpaceX Starlink satellites – sometimes as many as 60 at a time – probably caused the increase in UFO sightings, which means that our favorite billionaire, Elon Musk, is to blame. Yup, the genial Mr. Muskellunge did something that even a global pandemic couldn’t, and yet we vaccinate for COVID.

Next week on tenuous connections: A new study links the 2020 presidential election to increased emergency department visits for external hemorrhoids.

See? That’s fabrication. We made that up.

This article was updated 5/15/23.

Do android therapists dream of electric employees?

Robots. It can be tough to remember that, when they’re not dooming humanity to apocalypse or just telling you that you’re doomed, robots have real-world uses. There are actual robots in the world, and they can do things beyond bend girders, sing about science, or run the navy.

robot_coach_web.jpg

Look, we’ll stop with the pop-culture references when pop culture runs out of robots to reference. It may take a while.

Robots are indelibly rooted in the public consciousness, and that plays into our expectations when we encounter a real-life robot. This leads us into a recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Cambridge, who developed a robot-led mental well-being program that a tech company utilized for 4 weeks. Why choose a robot? Well, why spring for a qualified therapist who requires a salary when you could simply get a robot to do the job for free? Get with the capitalist agenda here. Surely it won’t backfire.

The 26 people enrolled in the study received coaching from one of two robots, both programmed identically to act like mental health coaches, based on interviews with human therapists. Both acted identically and had identical expressions. The only difference between the two was their appearance. QTRobot was nearly a meter tall and looked like a human child; Misty II was much smaller and looked like a toy.

People who received coaching from Misty II were better able to connect and had a better experience than those who received coaching from QTRobot. According to those in the QTRobot group, their expectations didn’t match reality. The robots are good coaches, but they don’t act human. This wasn’t a problem for Misty II, since it doesn’t look human, but for QTRobot, the participants were expecting “to hell with our orders,” but received “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do.” When you’ve been programmed to think of robots as metal humans, it can be off-putting to see them act as, well, robots.

That said, all participants found the exercises helpful and were open to receiving more robot-led therapy in the future. And while we’re sure the technology will advance to make robot therapists more empathetic and more human, hopefully scientists won’t go too far. We don’t need depressed robots.

Birthing experience is all in the mindset

Alexa, play Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Op. 46 - I. Morning Mood.

Birth.

Giving birth is a common experience for many, if not most, female mammals, but wanting it to be a pleasurable one seems distinctly human. There are many methods and practices that may make giving birth an easier and enjoyable experience for the mother, but a new study suggests that the key could be in her mind.

newborn with mother_web.jpg

The mindset of the expectant mother during pregnancy, it seems, has some effect on how smooth or intervention-filled delivery is. If the mothers saw their experience as a natural process, they were less likely to need pain medication or a C-section, but mothers who viewed the experience as more of a “medical procedure” were more likely to require more medical supervision and intervention, according to investigators from the University of Bonn (Germany).

Now, the researchers wanted to be super clear in saying that there’s no right or wrong mindset to have. They just focused on the outcomes of those mindsets and whether they actually do have some effect on occurrences.

Apparently, yes.

“Mindsets can be understood as a kind of mental lense that guide our perception of the world around us and can influence our behavior,” Dr. Lisa Hoffmann said in a statement from the university. “The study highlights the importance of psychological factors in childbirth.”

The researchers surveyed 300 women with an online tool before and after delivery and found the effects of the natural process mindset lingered even after giving birth. They had lower rates of depression and posttraumatic stress, which may have a snowballing effect on mother-child bonding after childbirth.

Preparation for the big day, then, should be about more than gathering diapers and shopping for car seats. Women should prepare their minds as well. If it’s going to make giving birth better, why not?

Becoming a parent is going to create a psychological shift, no matter how you slice it.

Giant inflatable colon reported in Utah

Do not be alarmed! Yes, there is a giant inflatable colon currently at large in the Beehive State, but it will not harm you. The giant inflatable colon is in Utah as part of Intermountain Health’s “Let’s get to the bottom of colon cancer tour” and he only wants to help you.

Colon_broken_glass_web.jpg

The giant inflatable colon, whose name happens to be Collin, is 12 feet long and weighs 113 pounds. March is Colon Cancer Awareness Month, so Collin is traveling around Utah and Idaho to raise awareness about colon cancer and the various screening options. He is not going to change local weather patterns, eat small children, or take over local governments and raise your taxes.

Instead, Collin is planning to display “portions of a healthy colon, polyps or bumps on the colon, malignant polyps which look more vascular and have more redness, cancerous cells, advanced cancer cells, and Crohn’s disease,” KSL.com said.

Collin the colon is on loan to Intermountain Health from medical device manufacturer Boston Scientific and will be traveling to Spanish Fork, Provo, and Ogden, among other locations in Utah, as well as Burley and Meridian, Idaho, in the coming days.

Collin the colon’s participation in the tour has created some serious buzz in the Colin/Collin community:

• Colin Powell (four-star general and Secretary of State): “Back then, the second-most important topic among the Joint Chiefs of Staff was colon cancer screening. And the Navy guy – I can’t remember his name – was a huge fan of giant inflatable organs.”
• Colin Jost (comedian and Saturday Night Live “Weekend Update” cohost): “He’s funnier than Tucker Carlson and Pete Davidson combined.”

Do android therapists dream of electric employees?

Robots. It can be tough to remember that, when they’re not dooming humanity to apocalypse or just telling you that you’re doomed, robots have real-world uses. There are actual robots in the world, and they can do things beyond bend girders, sing about science, or run the navy.

robot_coach_web.jpg

Look, we’ll stop with the pop-culture references when pop culture runs out of robots to reference. It may take a while.

Robots are indelibly rooted in the public consciousness, and that plays into our expectations when we encounter a real-life robot. This leads us into a recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Cambridge, who developed a robot-led mental well-being program that a tech company utilized for 4 weeks. Why choose a robot? Well, why spring for a qualified therapist who requires a salary when you could simply get a robot to do the job for free? Get with the capitalist agenda here. Surely it won’t backfire.

The 26 people enrolled in the study received coaching from one of two robots, both programmed identically to act like mental health coaches, based on interviews with human therapists. Both acted identically and had identical expressions. The only difference between the two was their appearance. QTRobot was nearly a meter tall and looked like a human child; Misty II was much smaller and looked like a toy.

People who received coaching from Misty II were better able to connect and had a better experience than those who received coaching from QTRobot. According to those in the QTRobot group, their expectations didn’t match reality. The robots are good coaches, but they don’t act human. This wasn’t a problem for Misty II, since it doesn’t look human, but for QTRobot, the participants were expecting “to hell with our orders,” but received “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do.” When you’ve been programmed to think of robots as metal humans, it can be off-putting to see them act as, well, robots.

That said, all participants found the exercises helpful and were open to receiving more robot-led therapy in the future. And while we’re sure the technology will advance to make robot therapists more empathetic and more human, hopefully scientists won’t go too far. We don’t need depressed robots.

Birthing experience is all in the mindset

Alexa, play Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Op. 46 - I. Morning Mood.

Birth.

Giving birth is a common experience for many, if not most, female mammals, but wanting it to be a pleasurable one seems distinctly human. There are many methods and practices that may make giving birth an easier and enjoyable experience for the mother, but a new study suggests that the key could be in her mind.

newborn with mother_web.jpg

The mindset of the expectant mother during pregnancy, it seems, has some effect on how smooth or intervention-filled delivery is. If the mothers saw their experience as a natural process, they were less likely to need pain medication or a C-section, but mothers who viewed the experience as more of a “medical procedure” were more likely to require more medical supervision and intervention, according to investigators from the University of Bonn (Germany).

Now, the researchers wanted to be super clear in saying that there’s no right or wrong mindset to have. They just focused on the outcomes of those mindsets and whether they actually do have some effect on occurrences.

Apparently, yes.

“Mindsets can be understood as a kind of mental lense that guide our perception of the world around us and can influence our behavior,” Dr. Lisa Hoffmann said in a statement from the university. “The study highlights the importance of psychological factors in childbirth.”

The researchers surveyed 300 women with an online tool before and after delivery and found the effects of the natural process mindset lingered even after giving birth. They had lower rates of depression and posttraumatic stress, which may have a snowballing effect on mother-child bonding after childbirth.

Preparation for the big day, then, should be about more than gathering diapers and shopping for car seats. Women should prepare their minds as well. If it’s going to make giving birth better, why not?

Becoming a parent is going to create a psychological shift, no matter how you slice it.

Giant inflatable colon reported in Utah

Do not be alarmed! Yes, there is a giant inflatable colon currently at large in the Beehive State, but it will not harm you. The giant inflatable colon is in Utah as part of Intermountain Health’s “Let’s get to the bottom of colon cancer tour” and he only wants to help you.

Colon_broken_glass_web.jpg

The giant inflatable colon, whose name happens to be Collin, is 12 feet long and weighs 113 pounds. March is Colon Cancer Awareness Month, so Collin is traveling around Utah and Idaho to raise awareness about colon cancer and the various screening options. He is not going to change local weather patterns, eat small children, or take over local governments and raise your taxes.

Instead, Collin is planning to display “portions of a healthy colon, polyps or bumps on the colon, malignant polyps which look more vascular and have more redness, cancerous cells, advanced cancer cells, and Crohn’s disease,” KSL.com said.

Collin the colon is on loan to Intermountain Health from medical device manufacturer Boston Scientific and will be traveling to Spanish Fork, Provo, and Ogden, among other locations in Utah, as well as Burley and Meridian, Idaho, in the coming days.

Collin the colon’s participation in the tour has created some serious buzz in the Colin/Collin community:

• Colin Powell (four-star general and Secretary of State): “Back then, the second-most important topic among the Joint Chiefs of Staff was colon cancer screening. And the Navy guy – I can’t remember his name – was a huge fan of giant inflatable organs.”
• Colin Jost (comedian and Saturday Night Live “Weekend Update” cohost): “He’s funnier than Tucker Carlson and Pete Davidson combined.”

Do android therapists dream of electric employees?

Robots. It can be tough to remember that, when they’re not dooming humanity to apocalypse or just telling you that you’re doomed, robots have real-world uses. There are actual robots in the world, and they can do things beyond bend girders, sing about science, or run the navy.

robot_coach_web.jpg

Look, we’ll stop with the pop-culture references when pop culture runs out of robots to reference. It may take a while.

Robots are indelibly rooted in the public consciousness, and that plays into our expectations when we encounter a real-life robot. This leads us into a recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Cambridge, who developed a robot-led mental well-being program that a tech company utilized for 4 weeks. Why choose a robot? Well, why spring for a qualified therapist who requires a salary when you could simply get a robot to do the job for free? Get with the capitalist agenda here. Surely it won’t backfire.

The 26 people enrolled in the study received coaching from one of two robots, both programmed identically to act like mental health coaches, based on interviews with human therapists. Both acted identically and had identical expressions. The only difference between the two was their appearance. QTRobot was nearly a meter tall and looked like a human child; Misty II was much smaller and looked like a toy.

People who received coaching from Misty II were better able to connect and had a better experience than those who received coaching from QTRobot. According to those in the QTRobot group, their expectations didn’t match reality. The robots are good coaches, but they don’t act human. This wasn’t a problem for Misty II, since it doesn’t look human, but for QTRobot, the participants were expecting “to hell with our orders,” but received “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do.” When you’ve been programmed to think of robots as metal humans, it can be off-putting to see them act as, well, robots.

That said, all participants found the exercises helpful and were open to receiving more robot-led therapy in the future. And while we’re sure the technology will advance to make robot therapists more empathetic and more human, hopefully scientists won’t go too far. We don’t need depressed robots.

Birthing experience is all in the mindset

Alexa, play Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Op. 46 - I. Morning Mood.

Birth.

Giving birth is a common experience for many, if not most, female mammals, but wanting it to be a pleasurable one seems distinctly human. There are many methods and practices that may make giving birth an easier and enjoyable experience for the mother, but a new study suggests that the key could be in her mind.

newborn with mother_web.jpg

The mindset of the expectant mother during pregnancy, it seems, has some effect on how smooth or intervention-filled delivery is. If the mothers saw their experience as a natural process, they were less likely to need pain medication or a C-section, but mothers who viewed the experience as more of a “medical procedure” were more likely to require more medical supervision and intervention, according to investigators from the University of Bonn (Germany).

Now, the researchers wanted to be super clear in saying that there’s no right or wrong mindset to have. They just focused on the outcomes of those mindsets and whether they actually do have some effect on occurrences.

Apparently, yes.

“Mindsets can be understood as a kind of mental lense that guide our perception of the world around us and can influence our behavior,” Dr. Lisa Hoffmann said in a statement from the university. “The study highlights the importance of psychological factors in childbirth.”

The researchers surveyed 300 women with an online tool before and after delivery and found the effects of the natural process mindset lingered even after giving birth. They had lower rates of depression and posttraumatic stress, which may have a snowballing effect on mother-child bonding after childbirth.

Preparation for the big day, then, should be about more than gathering diapers and shopping for car seats. Women should prepare their minds as well. If it’s going to make giving birth better, why not?

Becoming a parent is going to create a psychological shift, no matter how you slice it.

Giant inflatable colon reported in Utah

Do not be alarmed! Yes, there is a giant inflatable colon currently at large in the Beehive State, but it will not harm you. The giant inflatable colon is in Utah as part of Intermountain Health’s “Let’s get to the bottom of colon cancer tour” and he only wants to help you.

Colon_broken_glass_web.jpg

The giant inflatable colon, whose name happens to be Collin, is 12 feet long and weighs 113 pounds. March is Colon Cancer Awareness Month, so Collin is traveling around Utah and Idaho to raise awareness about colon cancer and the various screening options. He is not going to change local weather patterns, eat small children, or take over local governments and raise your taxes.

Instead, Collin is planning to display “portions of a healthy colon, polyps or bumps on the colon, malignant polyps which look more vascular and have more redness, cancerous cells, advanced cancer cells, and Crohn’s disease,” KSL.com said.

Collin the colon is on loan to Intermountain Health from medical device manufacturer Boston Scientific and will be traveling to Spanish Fork, Provo, and Ogden, among other locations in Utah, as well as Burley and Meridian, Idaho, in the coming days.

Collin the colon’s participation in the tour has created some serious buzz in the Colin/Collin community:

• Colin Powell (four-star general and Secretary of State): “Back then, the second-most important topic among the Joint Chiefs of Staff was colon cancer screening. And the Navy guy – I can’t remember his name – was a huge fan of giant inflatable organs.”
• Colin Jost (comedian and Saturday Night Live “Weekend Update” cohost): “He’s funnier than Tucker Carlson and Pete Davidson combined.”

Get ‘em while they’re hot … for your health

Today on the Eating Channel, it’s a very special episode of “Much Ado About Muffin.”

The muffin. For some of us, it’s a good way to pretend we’re not having dessert for breakfast. A bran muffin can be loaded with calcium and fiber, and our beloved blueberry is full of yummy antioxidants and vitamins. Definitely not dessert.

muffins_new_web.jpg

Well, the muffin denial can stop there because there’s a new flavor on the scene, and research suggests it may actually be healthy. (Disclaimer: Muffin may not be considered healthy in Norway.) This new muffin has a name, Roselle, that comes from the calyx extract used in it, which is found in the Hibiscus sabdariffa plant of the same name.

Now, when it comes to new foods, especially ones that are supposed to be healthy, the No. 1 criteria is the same: It has to taste good. Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and Amity University in India agreed, but they also set out to make it nutritionally valuable and give it a long shelf life without the addition of preservatives.

Sounds like a tall order, but they figured it out.

Not only is it tasty, but the properties of it could rival your morning multivitamin. Hibiscus extract has huge amounts of antioxidants, like phenolics, which are believed to help prevent cell membrane damage. Foods like vegetables, flax seed, and whole grains also have these antioxidants, but why not just have a Roselle muffin instead? You also get a dose of ascorbic acid without the glass of OJ in the morning.

The ascorbic acid, however, is not there just to help you. It also helps to check the researcher’s third box, shelf life. These naturally rosy-colored pastries will stay mold-free for 6 days without refrigeration at room temperature and without added preservatives.

Our guess, though, is they won’t be on the kitchen counter long enough to find out.

A sobering proposition

If Hollywood is to be believed, there’s no amount of drunkenness that can’t be cured with a cup of coffee or a stern slap in the face. Unfortunately, here in the real world the only thing that can make you less drunk is time. Maybe next time you’ll stop after that seventh Manhattan.

mouse_alcohol_web.jpg

But what if we could beat time? What if there’s an actual sobriety drug out there?

Say hello to fibroblast growth factor 21. Although the liver already does good work filtering out what is essentially poison, it then goes the extra mile and produces fibroblast growth factor 21 (or, as her friends call her, FGF21), a hormone that suppresses the desire to drink, makes you desire water, and protects the liver all at the same time.

Now, FGF21 in its current role is great, but if you’ve ever seen or been a drunk person before, you’ve experienced the lack of interest in listening to reason, especially when it comes from within our own bodies. Who are you to tell us what to do, body? You’re not the boss of us! So a group of scientists decided to push the limits of FGF21. Could it do more than it already does?

First off, they genetically altered a group of mice so that they didn’t produce FGF21 on their own. Then they got them drunk. We’re going to assume they built a scale model of the bar from Cheers and had the mice filter in through the front door as they served their subjects beer out of tiny little glasses.

Once the mice were nice and liquored up, some were given a treatment of FGF21 while others were given a placebo. Lo and behold, the mice given FGF21 recovered about 50% faster than those that received the control treatment. Not exactly instant, but 50% is nothing to sniff at.

Before you bring your FGF21 supplement to the bar, though, this research only applies to mice. We don’t know if it works in people. And make sure you stick to booze. If your choice of intoxication is a bit more exotic, FGF21 isn’t going to do anything for you. Yes, the scientists tried. Yes, those mice are living a very interesting life. And yes, we are jealous of drugged-up lab mice.
 

Supersize your imagination, shrink your snacks

Have you ever heard of the meal-recall effect? Did you know that, in England, a biscuit is really a cookie? Did you also know that the magazine Bon Appétit is not the same as the peer-reviewed journal Appetite? We do … now.

cookies_choc_chip_web.jpg

The meal-recall effect is the subsequent reduction in snacking that comes from remembering a recent meal. It was used to great effect in a recent study conducted at the University of Cambridge, which is in England, where they feed their experimental humans cookies but, for some reason, call them biscuits.

For the first part of the study, the participants were invited to dine at Che Laboratory, where they “were given a microwave ready meal of rice and sauce and a cup of water,” according to a statement from the university. As our Uncle Ernie would say, “Gourmet all the way.”

The test subjects were instructed not to eat anything for 3 hours and “then invited back to the lab to perform imagination tasks.” Those who did come back were randomly divided into five different groups, each with a different task:

• Imagine moving their recent lunch at the lab around a plate.
• Recall eating their recent lunch in detail.
• Imagine that the lunch was twice as big and filling as it really was.
• Look at a photograph of spaghetti hoops in tomato sauce and write a description of it before imagining moving the food around a plate.
• Look at a photo of paper clips and rubber bands and imagine moving them around.

Now, at last, we get to the biscuits/cookies, which were the subject of a taste test that “was simply a rouse for covertly assessing snacking,” the investigators explained. As part of that test, participants were told they could eat as many biscuits as they wanted.

When the tables were cleared and the leftovers examined, the group that imagined spaghetti hoops had eaten the most biscuits (75.9 g), followed by the group that imagined paper clips (75.5 g), the moving-their-lunch-around-the-plate group (72.0 g), and the group that relived eating their lunch (70.0 g).

In a victory for the meal-recall effect, the people who imagined their meal being twice as big ate the fewest biscuits (51.1 g). “Your mind can be more powerful than your stomach in dictating how much you eat,” lead author Joanna Szypula, PhD, said in the university statement.

Oh! One more thing. The study appeared in Appetite, which is a peer-reviewed journal, not in Bon Appétit, which is not a peer-reviewed journal. Thanks to the fine folks at both publications for pointing that out to us.
 

Get ‘em while they’re hot … for your health

Today on the Eating Channel, it’s a very special episode of “Much Ado About Muffin.”

The muffin. For some of us, it’s a good way to pretend we’re not having dessert for breakfast. A bran muffin can be loaded with calcium and fiber, and our beloved blueberry is full of yummy antioxidants and vitamins. Definitely not dessert.

muffins_new_web.jpg

Well, the muffin denial can stop there because there’s a new flavor on the scene, and research suggests it may actually be healthy. (Disclaimer: Muffin may not be considered healthy in Norway.) This new muffin has a name, Roselle, that comes from the calyx extract used in it, which is found in the Hibiscus sabdariffa plant of the same name.

Now, when it comes to new foods, especially ones that are supposed to be healthy, the No. 1 criteria is the same: It has to taste good. Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and Amity University in India agreed, but they also set out to make it nutritionally valuable and give it a long shelf life without the addition of preservatives.

Sounds like a tall order, but they figured it out.

Not only is it tasty, but the properties of it could rival your morning multivitamin. Hibiscus extract has huge amounts of antioxidants, like phenolics, which are believed to help prevent cell membrane damage. Foods like vegetables, flax seed, and whole grains also have these antioxidants, but why not just have a Roselle muffin instead? You also get a dose of ascorbic acid without the glass of OJ in the morning.

The ascorbic acid, however, is not there just to help you. It also helps to check the researcher’s third box, shelf life. These naturally rosy-colored pastries will stay mold-free for 6 days without refrigeration at room temperature and without added preservatives.

Our guess, though, is they won’t be on the kitchen counter long enough to find out.

A sobering proposition

If Hollywood is to be believed, there’s no amount of drunkenness that can’t be cured with a cup of coffee or a stern slap in the face. Unfortunately, here in the real world the only thing that can make you less drunk is time. Maybe next time you’ll stop after that seventh Manhattan.

mouse_alcohol_web.jpg

But what if we could beat time? What if there’s an actual sobriety drug out there?

Say hello to fibroblast growth factor 21. Although the liver already does good work filtering out what is essentially poison, it then goes the extra mile and produces fibroblast growth factor 21 (or, as her friends call her, FGF21), a hormone that suppresses the desire to drink, makes you desire water, and protects the liver all at the same time.

Now, FGF21 in its current role is great, but if you’ve ever seen or been a drunk person before, you’ve experienced the lack of interest in listening to reason, especially when it comes from within our own bodies. Who are you to tell us what to do, body? You’re not the boss of us! So a group of scientists decided to push the limits of FGF21. Could it do more than it already does?

First off, they genetically altered a group of mice so that they didn’t produce FGF21 on their own. Then they got them drunk. We’re going to assume they built a scale model of the bar from Cheers and had the mice filter in through the front door as they served their subjects beer out of tiny little glasses.

Once the mice were nice and liquored up, some were given a treatment of FGF21 while others were given a placebo. Lo and behold, the mice given FGF21 recovered about 50% faster than those that received the control treatment. Not exactly instant, but 50% is nothing to sniff at.

Before you bring your FGF21 supplement to the bar, though, this research only applies to mice. We don’t know if it works in people. And make sure you stick to booze. If your choice of intoxication is a bit more exotic, FGF21 isn’t going to do anything for you. Yes, the scientists tried. Yes, those mice are living a very interesting life. And yes, we are jealous of drugged-up lab mice.
 

Supersize your imagination, shrink your snacks

Have you ever heard of the meal-recall effect? Did you know that, in England, a biscuit is really a cookie? Did you also know that the magazine Bon Appétit is not the same as the peer-reviewed journal Appetite? We do … now.

cookies_choc_chip_web.jpg

The meal-recall effect is the subsequent reduction in snacking that comes from remembering a recent meal. It was used to great effect in a recent study conducted at the University of Cambridge, which is in England, where they feed their experimental humans cookies but, for some reason, call them biscuits.

For the first part of the study, the participants were invited to dine at Che Laboratory, where they “were given a microwave ready meal of rice and sauce and a cup of water,” according to a statement from the university. As our Uncle Ernie would say, “Gourmet all the way.”

The test subjects were instructed not to eat anything for 3 hours and “then invited back to the lab to perform imagination tasks.” Those who did come back were randomly divided into five different groups, each with a different task:

• Imagine moving their recent lunch at the lab around a plate.
• Recall eating their recent lunch in detail.
• Imagine that the lunch was twice as big and filling as it really was.
• Look at a photograph of spaghetti hoops in tomato sauce and write a description of it before imagining moving the food around a plate.
• Look at a photo of paper clips and rubber bands and imagine moving them around.

Now, at last, we get to the biscuits/cookies, which were the subject of a taste test that “was simply a rouse for covertly assessing snacking,” the investigators explained. As part of that test, participants were told they could eat as many biscuits as they wanted.

When the tables were cleared and the leftovers examined, the group that imagined spaghetti hoops had eaten the most biscuits (75.9 g), followed by the group that imagined paper clips (75.5 g), the moving-their-lunch-around-the-plate group (72.0 g), and the group that relived eating their lunch (70.0 g).

In a victory for the meal-recall effect, the people who imagined their meal being twice as big ate the fewest biscuits (51.1 g). “Your mind can be more powerful than your stomach in dictating how much you eat,” lead author Joanna Szypula, PhD, said in the university statement.

Oh! One more thing. The study appeared in Appetite, which is a peer-reviewed journal, not in Bon Appétit, which is not a peer-reviewed journal. Thanks to the fine folks at both publications for pointing that out to us.
 

Get ‘em while they’re hot … for your health

Today on the Eating Channel, it’s a very special episode of “Much Ado About Muffin.”

The muffin. For some of us, it’s a good way to pretend we’re not having dessert for breakfast. A bran muffin can be loaded with calcium and fiber, and our beloved blueberry is full of yummy antioxidants and vitamins. Definitely not dessert.

muffins_new_web.jpg

Well, the muffin denial can stop there because there’s a new flavor on the scene, and research suggests it may actually be healthy. (Disclaimer: Muffin may not be considered healthy in Norway.) This new muffin has a name, Roselle, that comes from the calyx extract used in it, which is found in the Hibiscus sabdariffa plant of the same name.

Now, when it comes to new foods, especially ones that are supposed to be healthy, the No. 1 criteria is the same: It has to taste good. Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and Amity University in India agreed, but they also set out to make it nutritionally valuable and give it a long shelf life without the addition of preservatives.

Sounds like a tall order, but they figured it out.

Not only is it tasty, but the properties of it could rival your morning multivitamin. Hibiscus extract has huge amounts of antioxidants, like phenolics, which are believed to help prevent cell membrane damage. Foods like vegetables, flax seed, and whole grains also have these antioxidants, but why not just have a Roselle muffin instead? You also get a dose of ascorbic acid without the glass of OJ in the morning.

The ascorbic acid, however, is not there just to help you. It also helps to check the researcher’s third box, shelf life. These naturally rosy-colored pastries will stay mold-free for 6 days without refrigeration at room temperature and without added preservatives.

Our guess, though, is they won’t be on the kitchen counter long enough to find out.

A sobering proposition

If Hollywood is to be believed, there’s no amount of drunkenness that can’t be cured with a cup of coffee or a stern slap in the face. Unfortunately, here in the real world the only thing that can make you less drunk is time. Maybe next time you’ll stop after that seventh Manhattan.

mouse_alcohol_web.jpg

But what if we could beat time? What if there’s an actual sobriety drug out there?

Say hello to fibroblast growth factor 21. Although the liver already does good work filtering out what is essentially poison, it then goes the extra mile and produces fibroblast growth factor 21 (or, as her friends call her, FGF21), a hormone that suppresses the desire to drink, makes you desire water, and protects the liver all at the same time.

Now, FGF21 in its current role is great, but if you’ve ever seen or been a drunk person before, you’ve experienced the lack of interest in listening to reason, especially when it comes from within our own bodies. Who are you to tell us what to do, body? You’re not the boss of us! So a group of scientists decided to push the limits of FGF21. Could it do more than it already does?

First off, they genetically altered a group of mice so that they didn’t produce FGF21 on their own. Then they got them drunk. We’re going to assume they built a scale model of the bar from Cheers and had the mice filter in through the front door as they served their subjects beer out of tiny little glasses.

Once the mice were nice and liquored up, some were given a treatment of FGF21 while others were given a placebo. Lo and behold, the mice given FGF21 recovered about 50% faster than those that received the control treatment. Not exactly instant, but 50% is nothing to sniff at.

Before you bring your FGF21 supplement to the bar, though, this research only applies to mice. We don’t know if it works in people. And make sure you stick to booze. If your choice of intoxication is a bit more exotic, FGF21 isn’t going to do anything for you. Yes, the scientists tried. Yes, those mice are living a very interesting life. And yes, we are jealous of drugged-up lab mice.
 

Supersize your imagination, shrink your snacks

Have you ever heard of the meal-recall effect? Did you know that, in England, a biscuit is really a cookie? Did you also know that the magazine Bon Appétit is not the same as the peer-reviewed journal Appetite? We do … now.

cookies_choc_chip_web.jpg

The meal-recall effect is the subsequent reduction in snacking that comes from remembering a recent meal. It was used to great effect in a recent study conducted at the University of Cambridge, which is in England, where they feed their experimental humans cookies but, for some reason, call them biscuits.

For the first part of the study, the participants were invited to dine at Che Laboratory, where they “were given a microwave ready meal of rice and sauce and a cup of water,” according to a statement from the university. As our Uncle Ernie would say, “Gourmet all the way.”

The test subjects were instructed not to eat anything for 3 hours and “then invited back to the lab to perform imagination tasks.” Those who did come back were randomly divided into five different groups, each with a different task:

• Imagine moving their recent lunch at the lab around a plate.
• Recall eating their recent lunch in detail.
• Imagine that the lunch was twice as big and filling as it really was.
• Look at a photograph of spaghetti hoops in tomato sauce and write a description of it before imagining moving the food around a plate.
• Look at a photo of paper clips and rubber bands and imagine moving them around.

Now, at last, we get to the biscuits/cookies, which were the subject of a taste test that “was simply a rouse for covertly assessing snacking,” the investigators explained. As part of that test, participants were told they could eat as many biscuits as they wanted.

When the tables were cleared and the leftovers examined, the group that imagined spaghetti hoops had eaten the most biscuits (75.9 g), followed by the group that imagined paper clips (75.5 g), the moving-their-lunch-around-the-plate group (72.0 g), and the group that relived eating their lunch (70.0 g).

In a victory for the meal-recall effect, the people who imagined their meal being twice as big ate the fewest biscuits (51.1 g). “Your mind can be more powerful than your stomach in dictating how much you eat,” lead author Joanna Szypula, PhD, said in the university statement.

Oh! One more thing. The study appeared in Appetite, which is a peer-reviewed journal, not in Bon Appétit, which is not a peer-reviewed journal. Thanks to the fine folks at both publications for pointing that out to us.
 

Surgeon goes the extra half mile for his patient

Sorry medical profession, but it’s Adam Bodzin’s world now. When a donor liver got stuck in the middle of the Philadelphia Half Marathon’s 30,000 participants, Dr. Bodzin, the transplant team’s lead surgeon, took matters into his own hands. And by hands, of course, we mean feet.

runners_marathon_web.jpg

Still wearing his hospital scrubs, Dr. Bodzin ran more than half a mile to where the van carrying the liver was stranded, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. Fortunately, he was able to hitch a ride in a police car for the return trip and didn’t have to run back through the crowd carrying his somewhat unusual package. By package, of course, we mean human liver.

It’s been 3 months since the surgery/marathon and it’s still not clear why the driver had such trouble getting through – he had been trying for more than an hour and half by the time Dr. Bodzin reached him – but the surgery half of the big event was deemed a success and the patient has recovered.

Rick Hasz, president and chief executive officer of the Gift of Life Donor Program, which coordinates organ donation for transplants in the Philadelphia region, told the newspaper that “Dr. Bodzin’s quick action demonstrated his commitment to honoring the selfless generosity of all donors and their families and gives hope to everyone waiting for a second chance at life.”

Should Dr. Bodzin consider a step up from the transplant team to another group that’s fighting for the common good? The recipient of the liver in question seems to think so. “I guess he has a cape on under that white jacket,” 66-year-old Charles Rowe told Fox29. You already know where we’re going with this, right?

Avengers … Assemble.
 

Your spleen’s due for its 5,000-mile oil change

The human body is an incredible biological machine, capable of performing a countless array of tasks automatically and essentially without flaw, but there’s always room for improvement. After all, there are animals that can regrow entire missing limbs or live for up to 500 years. It would be nice if we could get some of that going.

engine_symbol_web.jpg

Rather than any of that cool stuff, a recent survey of 2,000 average Americans revealed that our ambitions for improving the human body are a bit more mundane. The big thing that would make our lives better and easier, according to three-fourths of Americans, would be a built-in “check engine” light in our bodies. Come on guys, starfish can literally be cut in half and not only survive, but become two starfish. Mantis shrimp can punch with a force thousands of times their own weight. If we could punch like they could, we could literally break steel with our fists. Wouldn’t we rather have that?

Apparently not. Fine, we’ll stick with the check engine light.

Maybe it isn’t a huge surprise that we’d like the extra help in figuring out what our body needs. According to the survey, more than 60% of Americans struggle to identify when their body is trying to tell them something important, and only one-third actively checked in with their health every day. Considering about 40% said they feel tired for much of the day and nearly half reported not having a meal with fruits or vegetables in the past 3 days, perhaps a gentle reminder wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

So, if we did have a built-in check engine light, what would we use it for? A majority said they’d like to be reminded to drink a glass of water, with 45% saying they wanted to know when to take a nap. Feeling thirsty or tired isn’t quite enough, it seems.

Of course, the technology certainly exists to make the human check engine light a reality. An implanted microchip could absolutely tell us to drink a glass of water, but that would put our health in the hands of tech companies, and you just know Meta and Elon Muskrat wouldn’t pass up the chance for monetization. “Oh, sorry, we could have notified the hospital that you were about to have a heart attack, but you didn’t pay your life subscription this month.”
 

Sext offenders show more than their, well, you know

As we have become more and more attached to our phones, especially post pandemic, it’s no surprise that sexting – sending sexually explicit images and messages with those phones – has become a fairly common way for people to sexually communicate. And with dating apps just another venture in the dating landscape, regardless of age, sexting is an easy avenue to incite a mood without being physically present.

texting_smoking_photo_web.jpg

A recent study, though, has linked sexting with anxiety, sleep issues, depression, and compulsive sexual behaviors. Yikes.

Although the researchers noted that sexting was primarily reciprocal (sending and receiving), “over 50% of adults report sending a sext, while women are up to four times more likely than men to report having received nonconsensual sexts,” said Brenda K. Wiederhold, PhD, editor-in-chief of Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, which published the study, in which Dr. Wiederhold was not involved.

Among the 2,160 U.S. college students who were involved, participants who had only sent sexts reported more anxiety, depression, and sleep problems than other groups (no sexting, received only, reciprocal). There was also a possible connection between sexting, marijuana use, and compulsive sexual behavior, the investigators said in a written statement.

Considering the study population, these data are perhaps not that surprising. For young adults, to receive or send an elusive nude is as common as it once was to give someone flowers. Not that the two things elicit the same reactions. “Many individuals reveal they enjoy consensual sexting and feel it empowers them and builds self-confidence,” Dr. Wiederhold added.

Receiving a nonconsensual sext, though, is definitely going to result in feeling violated and super awkward. Senders beware: Don’t be surprised if you’re ghosted after that.

Surgeon goes the extra half mile for his patient

Sorry medical profession, but it’s Adam Bodzin’s world now. When a donor liver got stuck in the middle of the Philadelphia Half Marathon’s 30,000 participants, Dr. Bodzin, the transplant team’s lead surgeon, took matters into his own hands. And by hands, of course, we mean feet.

runners_marathon_web.jpg

Still wearing his hospital scrubs, Dr. Bodzin ran more than half a mile to where the van carrying the liver was stranded, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. Fortunately, he was able to hitch a ride in a police car for the return trip and didn’t have to run back through the crowd carrying his somewhat unusual package. By package, of course, we mean human liver.

It’s been 3 months since the surgery/marathon and it’s still not clear why the driver had such trouble getting through – he had been trying for more than an hour and half by the time Dr. Bodzin reached him – but the surgery half of the big event was deemed a success and the patient has recovered.

Rick Hasz, president and chief executive officer of the Gift of Life Donor Program, which coordinates organ donation for transplants in the Philadelphia region, told the newspaper that “Dr. Bodzin’s quick action demonstrated his commitment to honoring the selfless generosity of all donors and their families and gives hope to everyone waiting for a second chance at life.”

Should Dr. Bodzin consider a step up from the transplant team to another group that’s fighting for the common good? The recipient of the liver in question seems to think so. “I guess he has a cape on under that white jacket,” 66-year-old Charles Rowe told Fox29. You already know where we’re going with this, right?

Avengers … Assemble.
 

Your spleen’s due for its 5,000-mile oil change

The human body is an incredible biological machine, capable of performing a countless array of tasks automatically and essentially without flaw, but there’s always room for improvement. After all, there are animals that can regrow entire missing limbs or live for up to 500 years. It would be nice if we could get some of that going.

engine_symbol_web.jpg

Rather than any of that cool stuff, a recent survey of 2,000 average Americans revealed that our ambitions for improving the human body are a bit more mundane. The big thing that would make our lives better and easier, according to three-fourths of Americans, would be a built-in “check engine” light in our bodies. Come on guys, starfish can literally be cut in half and not only survive, but become two starfish. Mantis shrimp can punch with a force thousands of times their own weight. If we could punch like they could, we could literally break steel with our fists. Wouldn’t we rather have that?

Apparently not. Fine, we’ll stick with the check engine light.

Maybe it isn’t a huge surprise that we’d like the extra help in figuring out what our body needs. According to the survey, more than 60% of Americans struggle to identify when their body is trying to tell them something important, and only one-third actively checked in with their health every day. Considering about 40% said they feel tired for much of the day and nearly half reported not having a meal with fruits or vegetables in the past 3 days, perhaps a gentle reminder wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

So, if we did have a built-in check engine light, what would we use it for? A majority said they’d like to be reminded to drink a glass of water, with 45% saying they wanted to know when to take a nap. Feeling thirsty or tired isn’t quite enough, it seems.

Of course, the technology certainly exists to make the human check engine light a reality. An implanted microchip could absolutely tell us to drink a glass of water, but that would put our health in the hands of tech companies, and you just know Meta and Elon Muskrat wouldn’t pass up the chance for monetization. “Oh, sorry, we could have notified the hospital that you were about to have a heart attack, but you didn’t pay your life subscription this month.”
 

Sext offenders show more than their, well, you know

As we have become more and more attached to our phones, especially post pandemic, it’s no surprise that sexting – sending sexually explicit images and messages with those phones – has become a fairly common way for people to sexually communicate. And with dating apps just another venture in the dating landscape, regardless of age, sexting is an easy avenue to incite a mood without being physically present.

texting_smoking_photo_web.jpg

A recent study, though, has linked sexting with anxiety, sleep issues, depression, and compulsive sexual behaviors. Yikes.

Although the researchers noted that sexting was primarily reciprocal (sending and receiving), “over 50% of adults report sending a sext, while women are up to four times more likely than men to report having received nonconsensual sexts,” said Brenda K. Wiederhold, PhD, editor-in-chief of Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, which published the study, in which Dr. Wiederhold was not involved.

Among the 2,160 U.S. college students who were involved, participants who had only sent sexts reported more anxiety, depression, and sleep problems than other groups (no sexting, received only, reciprocal). There was also a possible connection between sexting, marijuana use, and compulsive sexual behavior, the investigators said in a written statement.

Considering the study population, these data are perhaps not that surprising. For young adults, to receive or send an elusive nude is as common as it once was to give someone flowers. Not that the two things elicit the same reactions. “Many individuals reveal they enjoy consensual sexting and feel it empowers them and builds self-confidence,” Dr. Wiederhold added.

Receiving a nonconsensual sext, though, is definitely going to result in feeling violated and super awkward. Senders beware: Don’t be surprised if you’re ghosted after that.

Surgeon goes the extra half mile for his patient

Sorry medical profession, but it’s Adam Bodzin’s world now. When a donor liver got stuck in the middle of the Philadelphia Half Marathon’s 30,000 participants, Dr. Bodzin, the transplant team’s lead surgeon, took matters into his own hands. And by hands, of course, we mean feet.

runners_marathon_web.jpg

Still wearing his hospital scrubs, Dr. Bodzin ran more than half a mile to where the van carrying the liver was stranded, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. Fortunately, he was able to hitch a ride in a police car for the return trip and didn’t have to run back through the crowd carrying his somewhat unusual package. By package, of course, we mean human liver.

It’s been 3 months since the surgery/marathon and it’s still not clear why the driver had such trouble getting through – he had been trying for more than an hour and half by the time Dr. Bodzin reached him – but the surgery half of the big event was deemed a success and the patient has recovered.

Rick Hasz, president and chief executive officer of the Gift of Life Donor Program, which coordinates organ donation for transplants in the Philadelphia region, told the newspaper that “Dr. Bodzin’s quick action demonstrated his commitment to honoring the selfless generosity of all donors and their families and gives hope to everyone waiting for a second chance at life.”

Should Dr. Bodzin consider a step up from the transplant team to another group that’s fighting for the common good? The recipient of the liver in question seems to think so. “I guess he has a cape on under that white jacket,” 66-year-old Charles Rowe told Fox29. You already know where we’re going with this, right?

Avengers … Assemble.
 

Your spleen’s due for its 5,000-mile oil change

The human body is an incredible biological machine, capable of performing a countless array of tasks automatically and essentially without flaw, but there’s always room for improvement. After all, there are animals that can regrow entire missing limbs or live for up to 500 years. It would be nice if we could get some of that going.

engine_symbol_web.jpg

Rather than any of that cool stuff, a recent survey of 2,000 average Americans revealed that our ambitions for improving the human body are a bit more mundane. The big thing that would make our lives better and easier, according to three-fourths of Americans, would be a built-in “check engine” light in our bodies. Come on guys, starfish can literally be cut in half and not only survive, but become two starfish. Mantis shrimp can punch with a force thousands of times their own weight. If we could punch like they could, we could literally break steel with our fists. Wouldn’t we rather have that?

Apparently not. Fine, we’ll stick with the check engine light.

Maybe it isn’t a huge surprise that we’d like the extra help in figuring out what our body needs. According to the survey, more than 60% of Americans struggle to identify when their body is trying to tell them something important, and only one-third actively checked in with their health every day. Considering about 40% said they feel tired for much of the day and nearly half reported not having a meal with fruits or vegetables in the past 3 days, perhaps a gentle reminder wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

So, if we did have a built-in check engine light, what would we use it for? A majority said they’d like to be reminded to drink a glass of water, with 45% saying they wanted to know when to take a nap. Feeling thirsty or tired isn’t quite enough, it seems.

Of course, the technology certainly exists to make the human check engine light a reality. An implanted microchip could absolutely tell us to drink a glass of water, but that would put our health in the hands of tech companies, and you just know Meta and Elon Muskrat wouldn’t pass up the chance for monetization. “Oh, sorry, we could have notified the hospital that you were about to have a heart attack, but you didn’t pay your life subscription this month.”
 

Sext offenders show more than their, well, you know

As we have become more and more attached to our phones, especially post pandemic, it’s no surprise that sexting – sending sexually explicit images and messages with those phones – has become a fairly common way for people to sexually communicate. And with dating apps just another venture in the dating landscape, regardless of age, sexting is an easy avenue to incite a mood without being physically present.

texting_smoking_photo_web.jpg

A recent study, though, has linked sexting with anxiety, sleep issues, depression, and compulsive sexual behaviors. Yikes.

Although the researchers noted that sexting was primarily reciprocal (sending and receiving), “over 50% of adults report sending a sext, while women are up to four times more likely than men to report having received nonconsensual sexts,” said Brenda K. Wiederhold, PhD, editor-in-chief of Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, which published the study, in which Dr. Wiederhold was not involved.

Among the 2,160 U.S. college students who were involved, participants who had only sent sexts reported more anxiety, depression, and sleep problems than other groups (no sexting, received only, reciprocal). There was also a possible connection between sexting, marijuana use, and compulsive sexual behavior, the investigators said in a written statement.

Considering the study population, these data are perhaps not that surprising. For young adults, to receive or send an elusive nude is as common as it once was to give someone flowers. Not that the two things elicit the same reactions. “Many individuals reveal they enjoy consensual sexting and feel it empowers them and builds self-confidence,” Dr. Wiederhold added.

Receiving a nonconsensual sext, though, is definitely going to result in feeling violated and super awkward. Senders beware: Don’t be surprised if you’re ghosted after that.

One-eyed, one-horned, flying purple veggie eater

Big Fruits and Vegetables is at it again. You notice how they’re always like “Oh, vegetables are good for your health,” and “Eating fruits every day makes you live longer,” but come on. It’s a marketing ploy, leading us astray from our personal savior, McDonald’s.

potatoes_purple_web.jpg

Just look at this latest bit of research: According to researchers from Finland, eating purple vegetables can protect against diabetes. Considering nearly 40 million Americans have diabetes (and nearly 100 million have prediabetes), anything to reduce the incidence of diabetes (people with diabetes account for one-fourth of every dollar spent in U.S. health care) would be beneficial. So, let’s humor the fruits and veggies people this time and hear them out.

It all comes down to a chemical called anthocyanin, which is a pigment that gives fruits and vegetables such as blueberries, radishes, and red cabbages their purplish color. Anthocyanin also has probiotic and anti-inflammatory effects, meaning it can help improve intestinal lining health and regulate glucose and lipid metabolic pathways. Obviously, good things if you want to avoid diabetes.

The investigators also found that, while standard anthocyanin was beneficial, acylated anthocyanin (which has an acyl group added to the sugar molecules of anthocyanin) is really what you want to go for. The acylated version, found in abundance in purple potatoes, purple carrots, radishes, and red cabbages, is tougher to digest, but the positive effects it has in the body are enhanced over the standard version.

Now, this all a compelling bit of research, but at the end of the day, you’re still eating fruits and vegetables, and we are red-blooded Americans here. We don’t do healthy foods. Although, if you were to dye our burgers with anthocyanin and make them purple, you’d have our attention. Purple is our favorite color.
 

Manuka honey better as building material than antibiotic

Milk, according to the old saying, builds strong bones, but when it comes to patients with bone loss caused by various medical reasons, researchers found that manuka honey, produced only in New Zealand and some parts of Australia, may also do the job. They soaked collagen scaffolds used for bone implants in various concentrations of the honey and found that 5% led to higher mineral formation and osteoprotegerin production, which suggests increased bone production.

bacteria_pseudomonas_web.jpg

But, and this is a pretty big one, the other half of the study – testing manuka honey’s ability to ward off bacteria – wasn’t so successful. Bone implants, apparently, count for almost half of all hospital-acquired infections, which obviously can put a damper on the healing process. The hope was that a biomaterial would be more effective than something like metal in lessening bacteria formation. Nope.

When the researchers soaked paper disks in honey and added them to cultures of Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus, none of the various concentrations stopped bacterial growth in the scaffolding, even when they added antibiotics.

The sticky conclusion, you could say, is more bitter than sweet.
 

It may sound like Korn, but can it play ‘Freak on a Leash’?

Like all right-thinking Americans, we love corn, corn-based products, and almost corn. Corn on the cob grilled in the husk? Mmm. Plus, we’re big fans of the band Korn. Also, we once had a reporter here named Tim Kirn. And don’t even get us started with Karn. Best Family Feud host ever.

Quorn_chilli_web.jpg

But what about Quorn? Oh sure, the fungi-based meat alternative is full of yummy mycoprotein, but can it prevent colorectal cancer? Can we add Quorn to our favorites list? Let’s see what Science has to say.

Researchers at Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, fed a group of 20 men some meat (240 g/day) for 2 weeks – hopefully, they were allowed to eat some other food as well – and then gave them the same amount of Quorn, excuse us, fungi-derived mycoprotein equivalents, for 2 more weeks, with a 4-week washout period in between.

Levels of cancer-causing chemicals known as genotoxins fell significantly in the mycoprotein phase but rose during the meat phase. The mycoprotein diet also improved gut health “by increasing the abundance of protective bacteria such as Lactobacilli, Roseburia, and Akkermansia, which are associated with offering protection against chemically induced tumours, inflammation and bowel cancer,” they said in a statement from the university.

The meat phase, on the other hand, resulted in an increase in “gut bacteria linked with issues such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases, weight gain and other negative health outcomes,” they noted.

Science, then, seems to approve of Quorn, and that’s good enough for us. We’re adding Quorn to our diet, starting with a fungi-derived mycoproteinburger tonight while we’re watching the Cornell Big Red take the court against their archrivals, the Big Green of Dartmouth College. GO RED!

One-eyed, one-horned, flying purple veggie eater

Big Fruits and Vegetables is at it again. You notice how they’re always like “Oh, vegetables are good for your health,” and “Eating fruits every day makes you live longer,” but come on. It’s a marketing ploy, leading us astray from our personal savior, McDonald’s.

potatoes_purple_web.jpg

Just look at this latest bit of research: According to researchers from Finland, eating purple vegetables can protect against diabetes. Considering nearly 40 million Americans have diabetes (and nearly 100 million have prediabetes), anything to reduce the incidence of diabetes (people with diabetes account for one-fourth of every dollar spent in U.S. health care) would be beneficial. So, let’s humor the fruits and veggies people this time and hear them out.

It all comes down to a chemical called anthocyanin, which is a pigment that gives fruits and vegetables such as blueberries, radishes, and red cabbages their purplish color. Anthocyanin also has probiotic and anti-inflammatory effects, meaning it can help improve intestinal lining health and regulate glucose and lipid metabolic pathways. Obviously, good things if you want to avoid diabetes.

The investigators also found that, while standard anthocyanin was beneficial, acylated anthocyanin (which has an acyl group added to the sugar molecules of anthocyanin) is really what you want to go for. The acylated version, found in abundance in purple potatoes, purple carrots, radishes, and red cabbages, is tougher to digest, but the positive effects it has in the body are enhanced over the standard version.

Now, this all a compelling bit of research, but at the end of the day, you’re still eating fruits and vegetables, and we are red-blooded Americans here. We don’t do healthy foods. Although, if you were to dye our burgers with anthocyanin and make them purple, you’d have our attention. Purple is our favorite color.
 

Manuka honey better as building material than antibiotic

Milk, according to the old saying, builds strong bones, but when it comes to patients with bone loss caused by various medical reasons, researchers found that manuka honey, produced only in New Zealand and some parts of Australia, may also do the job. They soaked collagen scaffolds used for bone implants in various concentrations of the honey and found that 5% led to higher mineral formation and osteoprotegerin production, which suggests increased bone production.

bacteria_pseudomonas_web.jpg

But, and this is a pretty big one, the other half of the study – testing manuka honey’s ability to ward off bacteria – wasn’t so successful. Bone implants, apparently, count for almost half of all hospital-acquired infections, which obviously can put a damper on the healing process. The hope was that a biomaterial would be more effective than something like metal in lessening bacteria formation. Nope.

When the researchers soaked paper disks in honey and added them to cultures of Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus, none of the various concentrations stopped bacterial growth in the scaffolding, even when they added antibiotics.

The sticky conclusion, you could say, is more bitter than sweet.
 

It may sound like Korn, but can it play ‘Freak on a Leash’?

Like all right-thinking Americans, we love corn, corn-based products, and almost corn. Corn on the cob grilled in the husk? Mmm. Plus, we’re big fans of the band Korn. Also, we once had a reporter here named Tim Kirn. And don’t even get us started with Karn. Best Family Feud host ever.

Quorn_chilli_web.jpg

But what about Quorn? Oh sure, the fungi-based meat alternative is full of yummy mycoprotein, but can it prevent colorectal cancer? Can we add Quorn to our favorites list? Let’s see what Science has to say.

Researchers at Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, fed a group of 20 men some meat (240 g/day) for 2 weeks – hopefully, they were allowed to eat some other food as well – and then gave them the same amount of Quorn, excuse us, fungi-derived mycoprotein equivalents, for 2 more weeks, with a 4-week washout period in between.

Levels of cancer-causing chemicals known as genotoxins fell significantly in the mycoprotein phase but rose during the meat phase. The mycoprotein diet also improved gut health “by increasing the abundance of protective bacteria such as Lactobacilli, Roseburia, and Akkermansia, which are associated with offering protection against chemically induced tumours, inflammation and bowel cancer,” they said in a statement from the university.

The meat phase, on the other hand, resulted in an increase in “gut bacteria linked with issues such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases, weight gain and other negative health outcomes,” they noted.

Science, then, seems to approve of Quorn, and that’s good enough for us. We’re adding Quorn to our diet, starting with a fungi-derived mycoproteinburger tonight while we’re watching the Cornell Big Red take the court against their archrivals, the Big Green of Dartmouth College. GO RED!

One-eyed, one-horned, flying purple veggie eater

Big Fruits and Vegetables is at it again. You notice how they’re always like “Oh, vegetables are good for your health,” and “Eating fruits every day makes you live longer,” but come on. It’s a marketing ploy, leading us astray from our personal savior, McDonald’s.

potatoes_purple_web.jpg

Just look at this latest bit of research: According to researchers from Finland, eating purple vegetables can protect against diabetes. Considering nearly 40 million Americans have diabetes (and nearly 100 million have prediabetes), anything to reduce the incidence of diabetes (people with diabetes account for one-fourth of every dollar spent in U.S. health care) would be beneficial. So, let’s humor the fruits and veggies people this time and hear them out.

It all comes down to a chemical called anthocyanin, which is a pigment that gives fruits and vegetables such as blueberries, radishes, and red cabbages their purplish color. Anthocyanin also has probiotic and anti-inflammatory effects, meaning it can help improve intestinal lining health and regulate glucose and lipid metabolic pathways. Obviously, good things if you want to avoid diabetes.

The investigators also found that, while standard anthocyanin was beneficial, acylated anthocyanin (which has an acyl group added to the sugar molecules of anthocyanin) is really what you want to go for. The acylated version, found in abundance in purple potatoes, purple carrots, radishes, and red cabbages, is tougher to digest, but the positive effects it has in the body are enhanced over the standard version.

Now, this all a compelling bit of research, but at the end of the day, you’re still eating fruits and vegetables, and we are red-blooded Americans here. We don’t do healthy foods. Although, if you were to dye our burgers with anthocyanin and make them purple, you’d have our attention. Purple is our favorite color.
 

Manuka honey better as building material than antibiotic

Milk, according to the old saying, builds strong bones, but when it comes to patients with bone loss caused by various medical reasons, researchers found that manuka honey, produced only in New Zealand and some parts of Australia, may also do the job. They soaked collagen scaffolds used for bone implants in various concentrations of the honey and found that 5% led to higher mineral formation and osteoprotegerin production, which suggests increased bone production.

bacteria_pseudomonas_web.jpg

But, and this is a pretty big one, the other half of the study – testing manuka honey’s ability to ward off bacteria – wasn’t so successful. Bone implants, apparently, count for almost half of all hospital-acquired infections, which obviously can put a damper on the healing process. The hope was that a biomaterial would be more effective than something like metal in lessening bacteria formation. Nope.

When the researchers soaked paper disks in honey and added them to cultures of Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus, none of the various concentrations stopped bacterial growth in the scaffolding, even when they added antibiotics.

The sticky conclusion, you could say, is more bitter than sweet.
 

It may sound like Korn, but can it play ‘Freak on a Leash’?

Like all right-thinking Americans, we love corn, corn-based products, and almost corn. Corn on the cob grilled in the husk? Mmm. Plus, we’re big fans of the band Korn. Also, we once had a reporter here named Tim Kirn. And don’t even get us started with Karn. Best Family Feud host ever.

Quorn_chilli_web.jpg

But what about Quorn? Oh sure, the fungi-based meat alternative is full of yummy mycoprotein, but can it prevent colorectal cancer? Can we add Quorn to our favorites list? Let’s see what Science has to say.

Researchers at Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, fed a group of 20 men some meat (240 g/day) for 2 weeks – hopefully, they were allowed to eat some other food as well – and then gave them the same amount of Quorn, excuse us, fungi-derived mycoprotein equivalents, for 2 more weeks, with a 4-week washout period in between.

Levels of cancer-causing chemicals known as genotoxins fell significantly in the mycoprotein phase but rose during the meat phase. The mycoprotein diet also improved gut health “by increasing the abundance of protective bacteria such as Lactobacilli, Roseburia, and Akkermansia, which are associated with offering protection against chemically induced tumours, inflammation and bowel cancer,” they said in a statement from the university.

The meat phase, on the other hand, resulted in an increase in “gut bacteria linked with issues such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases, weight gain and other negative health outcomes,” they noted.

Science, then, seems to approve of Quorn, and that’s good enough for us. We’re adding Quorn to our diet, starting with a fungi-derived mycoproteinburger tonight while we’re watching the Cornell Big Red take the court against their archrivals, the Big Green of Dartmouth College. GO RED!

We’re gonna need a bigger meth lab

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past 15 years, the TV show “Breaking Bad” details the spiraling rise and downfall of a high school chemistry teacher who, after developing a case of terminal lung cancer, starts producing methamphetamine to provide for his family in response to the steep cost of treatment for his cancer.

Medicare_money_web.jpg

Meanwhile, here in 2023 in the real world, we have Paul Davis, a retired physician in Ohio, who’s being forced to choose between an expensive cancer treatment and bankrupting his family, since Medicare’s decided it doesn’t want to cover the cost. Hey, we’ve seen this one before!

A bit of backstory: In November 2019, Dr. Davis was diagnosed with uveal melanoma, a very rare type of cancer that affects eye tissue. The news got worse in 2022 when the cancer spread to his liver, a move which typically proves fatal within a year. However, in a stroke of great news, the Food and Drug Administration approved the drug Kimmtrak earlier that year, which could be used to treat his cancer. Not cure, of course, but it would give him more time.

His initial treatments with the drug went fine and were covered, but when he transferred his care from a hospital in Columbus to one closer to home, big problem. Medicare decided it didn’t like that hospital and abruptly cut off coverage, denying the local hospital’s claims. That leaves Dr. Davis on the hook for his cancer treatment, and it’s what you might call expensive. Expensive to the tune of $50,000.

A week.

Apparently the coding the local hospital submitted was wrong, indicating that Dr. Davis was receiving Kimmtrak for a type of cancer that the FDA hadn’t approved the drug for. So until the government bureaucracy works itself out, his treatment is on hold, leaving all his faith in Medicare working quickly to rectify its mistake. If it can rectify its mistake. We’re not hopeful.

And in case you were wondering, if Dr. Davis wanted to go full Walter White, the average street price of meth is about $20-$60 per gram, so to pay for his treatment, he’d need to make at least a kilogram of meth every week. That’s, uh, quite a lot of illegal drug, or what we here at the LOTME office would call a fun Saturday night.
 

When you give a mouse a movie

Researchers have been successfully testing Alzheimer drugs on mice for years, but none of the drugs has proved successful in humans. Recent work, however, might have found the missing link, and it’s a combination no one ever thought of before: mice and movies.

mouse_laboratory_web.jpg

Turns out that Orson Welles’ 1958 film noir classic “Touch of Evil” tapped a part of the mouse brain that has been overlooked: the hippocampus, which is crucial for learning and memory. Previous researchers thought it was just used as a kind of GPS system, but that’s only partially true.

Not only did the mice choose to pay attention to the movie clip, but the hippocampus responded to the visual stimuli only when the rodents saw the scenes from the clip later in the order that they were presented and not in a scrambled order. These findings represent a “major paradigm shift” in studying mouse recall, Mayank Mehta, PhD, of the University of California, Los Angeles, said in a statement from the school.

This breakthrough could run parallel to Alzheimer’s patients struggling with similar defects. “Selective and episodic activation of the mouse hippocampus using a human movie opens up the possibility of directly testing human episodic memory disorders and therapies using mouse neurons, a major step forward,” said coauthor Chinmay Purandare, PhD, who is now at the University of California, San Francisco.

Who would have thought that a classic film would help advance Alzheimer research?
 

A less human way to study mosquitoes

We here at LOTME have a history with mosquitoes. We know they don’t like us, and they know that we don’t like them. Trust us, they know. So when humans gain a little ground in the war against the buzzy little bloodsuckers, we want to share the joy.

mosquito_chamber_web.jpg

To know the enemy, scientists have to study the enemy, but there is a problem. “Many mosquito experiments still rely on human volunteers and animal subjects,” bioengineering graduate student Kevin Janson, said in a statement from Rice University. Most people don’t like being bitten by mosquitoes, so that kind of testing can be expensive.

Is there a way to automate the collection and processing of mosquito behavior data using inexpensive cameras and machine-learning software? We’re glad you asked, because Mr. Janson and the research team, which includes bioengineers from Rice and tropical medicine experts from Tulane University, have managed to eliminate the need for live volunteers by using patches of synthetic skin made with a 3D printer.

“Each patch of gelatin-like hydrogel comes complete with tiny passageways that can be filled with flowing blood” from a chicken, sheep, or cow, they explained, and proof-of-concept testing showed that mosquitoes would feed on hydrogels without any repellent and stay away from those treated with a repellent.

To conduct the feeding tests, the blood-infused hydrogels are placed in a clear plastic box that is surrounded by cameras.

A bunch of mosquitoes are then tossed in the box and the cameras record all their insect activities: how often they land at each location, how long they stay, whether or not they bite, how long they feed, etc. Humans don’t have to watch and don’t have to be food sources.

Humans don’t have to be food sources, and we just pictured the future of mosquito control. Imagine a dozen Arnold Schwarzenegger–style Terminators, covered in 3D-printed skin, walking through your neighborhood in the summer while wearing sweat-soaked, brightly colored clothing. The mosquitoes wouldn’t be able to stay away, but guess what? They’re feeding off robots with nonhuman skin and nonhuman blood, so we win. It’s good to have a cerebral cortex.
 

Getting medieval on brain surgery

Let’s get one thing clear: The so-called “Dark Ages” were not nearly as dark as they’re made out to be. For one thing, there’s a world beyond Western Europe. The Roman Empire didn’t collapse everywhere. But even in Western Europe, the centuries between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance were hardly lacking in cultural development.

skull_human_web.jpg

That said, we wouldn’t want to be in the position of the seventh-century noblewoman whose remains were recently uncovered in a Byzantine fortress in central Italy with multiple cross-shaped incisions in her skull. Yes, this unfortunate woman underwent at least two brain surgeries.

Then again, maybe not. Nothing like it had been discovered at the site, and while the markings – signs of a procedure called trepanation – can be surgical in nature, there are other explanations. For example, the Avar people practiced ritual trepanation during the same time period, but they were hundreds of miles away in the Carpathian mountains, and there was no evidence to support that a different form of ritualistic trepanation ever took place in Byzantine-era Italy.

The investigators then moved on to a form of judicial punishment called decalvatio, which involves mutilation by scalping. Look, the Dark Ages weren’t dark, but no one said they were fun. Anyway, this was discarded, since decalvatio was only meted out to soldiers who deserted the battlefield.

That brings us back to surgery. While one of the trepanations was fully engraved into her skull, indicating that the woman died soon after the surgery, she also bore indications of a healed trepanation. A 50% success rate isn’t terrible for our medieval surgeon. Sure, the Incas managed 80%, but even during the Civil War brain surgery only had a 50% success rate. And that’s the end of the story, nothing more to say about our medieval Italian woman.

Nope. Nothing at all.

Fine. While a surgical procedure was deemed most likely, the study investigators found no direct evidence of a medical condition. No trauma, no tumor, nothing. Just a couple of suggestions of “a systemic pathological condition,” they said. Okay, we swear, it really wasn’t that bad in the Middle [Editor’s note: Approximately 5,000 more words on medieval culture not included. This is a medical column, thank you very much.]

We’re gonna need a bigger meth lab

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past 15 years, the TV show “Breaking Bad” details the spiraling rise and downfall of a high school chemistry teacher who, after developing a case of terminal lung cancer, starts producing methamphetamine to provide for his family in response to the steep cost of treatment for his cancer.

Medicare_money_web.jpg

Meanwhile, here in 2023 in the real world, we have Paul Davis, a retired physician in Ohio, who’s being forced to choose between an expensive cancer treatment and bankrupting his family, since Medicare’s decided it doesn’t want to cover the cost. Hey, we’ve seen this one before!

A bit of backstory: In November 2019, Dr. Davis was diagnosed with uveal melanoma, a very rare type of cancer that affects eye tissue. The news got worse in 2022 when the cancer spread to his liver, a move which typically proves fatal within a year. However, in a stroke of great news, the Food and Drug Administration approved the drug Kimmtrak earlier that year, which could be used to treat his cancer. Not cure, of course, but it would give him more time.

His initial treatments with the drug went fine and were covered, but when he transferred his care from a hospital in Columbus to one closer to home, big problem. Medicare decided it didn’t like that hospital and abruptly cut off coverage, denying the local hospital’s claims. That leaves Dr. Davis on the hook for his cancer treatment, and it’s what you might call expensive. Expensive to the tune of $50,000.

A week.

Apparently the coding the local hospital submitted was wrong, indicating that Dr. Davis was receiving Kimmtrak for a type of cancer that the FDA hadn’t approved the drug for. So until the government bureaucracy works itself out, his treatment is on hold, leaving all his faith in Medicare working quickly to rectify its mistake. If it can rectify its mistake. We’re not hopeful.

And in case you were wondering, if Dr. Davis wanted to go full Walter White, the average street price of meth is about $20-$60 per gram, so to pay for his treatment, he’d need to make at least a kilogram of meth every week. That’s, uh, quite a lot of illegal drug, or what we here at the LOTME office would call a fun Saturday night.
 

When you give a mouse a movie

Researchers have been successfully testing Alzheimer drugs on mice for years, but none of the drugs has proved successful in humans. Recent work, however, might have found the missing link, and it’s a combination no one ever thought of before: mice and movies.

mouse_laboratory_web.jpg

Turns out that Orson Welles’ 1958 film noir classic “Touch of Evil” tapped a part of the mouse brain that has been overlooked: the hippocampus, which is crucial for learning and memory. Previous researchers thought it was just used as a kind of GPS system, but that’s only partially true.

Not only did the mice choose to pay attention to the movie clip, but the hippocampus responded to the visual stimuli only when the rodents saw the scenes from the clip later in the order that they were presented and not in a scrambled order. These findings represent a “major paradigm shift” in studying mouse recall, Mayank Mehta, PhD, of the University of California, Los Angeles, said in a statement from the school.

This breakthrough could run parallel to Alzheimer’s patients struggling with similar defects. “Selective and episodic activation of the mouse hippocampus using a human movie opens up the possibility of directly testing human episodic memory disorders and therapies using mouse neurons, a major step forward,” said coauthor Chinmay Purandare, PhD, who is now at the University of California, San Francisco.

Who would have thought that a classic film would help advance Alzheimer research?
 

A less human way to study mosquitoes

We here at LOTME have a history with mosquitoes. We know they don’t like us, and they know that we don’t like them. Trust us, they know. So when humans gain a little ground in the war against the buzzy little bloodsuckers, we want to share the joy.

mosquito_chamber_web.jpg

To know the enemy, scientists have to study the enemy, but there is a problem. “Many mosquito experiments still rely on human volunteers and animal subjects,” bioengineering graduate student Kevin Janson, said in a statement from Rice University. Most people don’t like being bitten by mosquitoes, so that kind of testing can be expensive.

Is there a way to automate the collection and processing of mosquito behavior data using inexpensive cameras and machine-learning software? We’re glad you asked, because Mr. Janson and the research team, which includes bioengineers from Rice and tropical medicine experts from Tulane University, have managed to eliminate the need for live volunteers by using patches of synthetic skin made with a 3D printer.

“Each patch of gelatin-like hydrogel comes complete with tiny passageways that can be filled with flowing blood” from a chicken, sheep, or cow, they explained, and proof-of-concept testing showed that mosquitoes would feed on hydrogels without any repellent and stay away from those treated with a repellent.

To conduct the feeding tests, the blood-infused hydrogels are placed in a clear plastic box that is surrounded by cameras.

A bunch of mosquitoes are then tossed in the box and the cameras record all their insect activities: how often they land at each location, how long they stay, whether or not they bite, how long they feed, etc. Humans don’t have to watch and don’t have to be food sources.

Humans don’t have to be food sources, and we just pictured the future of mosquito control. Imagine a dozen Arnold Schwarzenegger–style Terminators, covered in 3D-printed skin, walking through your neighborhood in the summer while wearing sweat-soaked, brightly colored clothing. The mosquitoes wouldn’t be able to stay away, but guess what? They’re feeding off robots with nonhuman skin and nonhuman blood, so we win. It’s good to have a cerebral cortex.
 

Getting medieval on brain surgery

Let’s get one thing clear: The so-called “Dark Ages” were not nearly as dark as they’re made out to be. For one thing, there’s a world beyond Western Europe. The Roman Empire didn’t collapse everywhere. But even in Western Europe, the centuries between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance were hardly lacking in cultural development.

skull_human_web.jpg

That said, we wouldn’t want to be in the position of the seventh-century noblewoman whose remains were recently uncovered in a Byzantine fortress in central Italy with multiple cross-shaped incisions in her skull. Yes, this unfortunate woman underwent at least two brain surgeries.

Then again, maybe not. Nothing like it had been discovered at the site, and while the markings – signs of a procedure called trepanation – can be surgical in nature, there are other explanations. For example, the Avar people practiced ritual trepanation during the same time period, but they were hundreds of miles away in the Carpathian mountains, and there was no evidence to support that a different form of ritualistic trepanation ever took place in Byzantine-era Italy.

The investigators then moved on to a form of judicial punishment called decalvatio, which involves mutilation by scalping. Look, the Dark Ages weren’t dark, but no one said they were fun. Anyway, this was discarded, since decalvatio was only meted out to soldiers who deserted the battlefield.

That brings us back to surgery. While one of the trepanations was fully engraved into her skull, indicating that the woman died soon after the surgery, she also bore indications of a healed trepanation. A 50% success rate isn’t terrible for our medieval surgeon. Sure, the Incas managed 80%, but even during the Civil War brain surgery only had a 50% success rate. And that’s the end of the story, nothing more to say about our medieval Italian woman.

Nope. Nothing at all.

Fine. While a surgical procedure was deemed most likely, the study investigators found no direct evidence of a medical condition. No trauma, no tumor, nothing. Just a couple of suggestions of “a systemic pathological condition,” they said. Okay, we swear, it really wasn’t that bad in the Middle [Editor’s note: Approximately 5,000 more words on medieval culture not included. This is a medical column, thank you very much.]

We’re gonna need a bigger meth lab

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past 15 years, the TV show “Breaking Bad” details the spiraling rise and downfall of a high school chemistry teacher who, after developing a case of terminal lung cancer, starts producing methamphetamine to provide for his family in response to the steep cost of treatment for his cancer.

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Meanwhile, here in 2023 in the real world, we have Paul Davis, a retired physician in Ohio, who’s being forced to choose between an expensive cancer treatment and bankrupting his family, since Medicare’s decided it doesn’t want to cover the cost. Hey, we’ve seen this one before!

A bit of backstory: In November 2019, Dr. Davis was diagnosed with uveal melanoma, a very rare type of cancer that affects eye tissue. The news got worse in 2022 when the cancer spread to his liver, a move which typically proves fatal within a year. However, in a stroke of great news, the Food and Drug Administration approved the drug Kimmtrak earlier that year, which could be used to treat his cancer. Not cure, of course, but it would give him more time.

His initial treatments with the drug went fine and were covered, but when he transferred his care from a hospital in Columbus to one closer to home, big problem. Medicare decided it didn’t like that hospital and abruptly cut off coverage, denying the local hospital’s claims. That leaves Dr. Davis on the hook for his cancer treatment, and it’s what you might call expensive. Expensive to the tune of $50,000.

A week.

Apparently the coding the local hospital submitted was wrong, indicating that Dr. Davis was receiving Kimmtrak for a type of cancer that the FDA hadn’t approved the drug for. So until the government bureaucracy works itself out, his treatment is on hold, leaving all his faith in Medicare working quickly to rectify its mistake. If it can rectify its mistake. We’re not hopeful.

And in case you were wondering, if Dr. Davis wanted to go full Walter White, the average street price of meth is about $20-$60 per gram, so to pay for his treatment, he’d need to make at least a kilogram of meth every week. That’s, uh, quite a lot of illegal drug, or what we here at the LOTME office would call a fun Saturday night.
 

When you give a mouse a movie

Researchers have been successfully testing Alzheimer drugs on mice for years, but none of the drugs has proved successful in humans. Recent work, however, might have found the missing link, and it’s a combination no one ever thought of before: mice and movies.

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Turns out that Orson Welles’ 1958 film noir classic “Touch of Evil” tapped a part of the mouse brain that has been overlooked: the hippocampus, which is crucial for learning and memory. Previous researchers thought it was just used as a kind of GPS system, but that’s only partially true.

Not only did the mice choose to pay attention to the movie clip, but the hippocampus responded to the visual stimuli only when the rodents saw the scenes from the clip later in the order that they were presented and not in a scrambled order. These findings represent a “major paradigm shift” in studying mouse recall, Mayank Mehta, PhD, of the University of California, Los Angeles, said in a statement from the school.

This breakthrough could run parallel to Alzheimer’s patients struggling with similar defects. “Selective and episodic activation of the mouse hippocampus using a human movie opens up the possibility of directly testing human episodic memory disorders and therapies using mouse neurons, a major step forward,” said coauthor Chinmay Purandare, PhD, who is now at the University of California, San Francisco.

Who would have thought that a classic film would help advance Alzheimer research?
 

A less human way to study mosquitoes

We here at LOTME have a history with mosquitoes. We know they don’t like us, and they know that we don’t like them. Trust us, they know. So when humans gain a little ground in the war against the buzzy little bloodsuckers, we want to share the joy.

mosquito_chamber_web.jpg

To know the enemy, scientists have to study the enemy, but there is a problem. “Many mosquito experiments still rely on human volunteers and animal subjects,” bioengineering graduate student Kevin Janson, said in a statement from Rice University. Most people don’t like being bitten by mosquitoes, so that kind of testing can be expensive.

Is there a way to automate the collection and processing of mosquito behavior data using inexpensive cameras and machine-learning software? We’re glad you asked, because Mr. Janson and the research team, which includes bioengineers from Rice and tropical medicine experts from Tulane University, have managed to eliminate the need for live volunteers by using patches of synthetic skin made with a 3D printer.

“Each patch of gelatin-like hydrogel comes complete with tiny passageways that can be filled with flowing blood” from a chicken, sheep, or cow, they explained, and proof-of-concept testing showed that mosquitoes would feed on hydrogels without any repellent and stay away from those treated with a repellent.

To conduct the feeding tests, the blood-infused hydrogels are placed in a clear plastic box that is surrounded by cameras.

A bunch of mosquitoes are then tossed in the box and the cameras record all their insect activities: how often they land at each location, how long they stay, whether or not they bite, how long they feed, etc. Humans don’t have to watch and don’t have to be food sources.

Humans don’t have to be food sources, and we just pictured the future of mosquito control. Imagine a dozen Arnold Schwarzenegger–style Terminators, covered in 3D-printed skin, walking through your neighborhood in the summer while wearing sweat-soaked, brightly colored clothing. The mosquitoes wouldn’t be able to stay away, but guess what? They’re feeding off robots with nonhuman skin and nonhuman blood, so we win. It’s good to have a cerebral cortex.
 

Getting medieval on brain surgery

Let’s get one thing clear: The so-called “Dark Ages” were not nearly as dark as they’re made out to be. For one thing, there’s a world beyond Western Europe. The Roman Empire didn’t collapse everywhere. But even in Western Europe, the centuries between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance were hardly lacking in cultural development.

skull_human_web.jpg

That said, we wouldn’t want to be in the position of the seventh-century noblewoman whose remains were recently uncovered in a Byzantine fortress in central Italy with multiple cross-shaped incisions in her skull. Yes, this unfortunate woman underwent at least two brain surgeries.

Then again, maybe not. Nothing like it had been discovered at the site, and while the markings – signs of a procedure called trepanation – can be surgical in nature, there are other explanations. For example, the Avar people practiced ritual trepanation during the same time period, but they were hundreds of miles away in the Carpathian mountains, and there was no evidence to support that a different form of ritualistic trepanation ever took place in Byzantine-era Italy.

The investigators then moved on to a form of judicial punishment called decalvatio, which involves mutilation by scalping. Look, the Dark Ages weren’t dark, but no one said they were fun. Anyway, this was discarded, since decalvatio was only meted out to soldiers who deserted the battlefield.

That brings us back to surgery. While one of the trepanations was fully engraved into her skull, indicating that the woman died soon after the surgery, she also bore indications of a healed trepanation. A 50% success rate isn’t terrible for our medieval surgeon. Sure, the Incas managed 80%, but even during the Civil War brain surgery only had a 50% success rate. And that’s the end of the story, nothing more to say about our medieval Italian woman.

Nope. Nothing at all.

Fine. While a surgical procedure was deemed most likely, the study investigators found no direct evidence of a medical condition. No trauma, no tumor, nothing. Just a couple of suggestions of “a systemic pathological condition,” they said. Okay, we swear, it really wasn’t that bad in the Middle [Editor’s note: Approximately 5,000 more words on medieval culture not included. This is a medical column, thank you very much.]