health
gregladen | December 19, 2010Homeopathy involves the acquisition of a substance often chosen because of its harmful nature (but sometimes for other reasons) followed by the dilution of that substance, or an extract of it, in water numerous times until the substance itself is essentially gone, but the memory of the substance is retained by the water. This water, with the memory, is then considered by homeopathic practitioners to be an effective treatment for various conditions.
The basic principle of using a harmful substance to produce a sort of counter-reaction, or a beneficial reaction, is interesting. And, the idea…
bioephemera | December 17, 2010Google Labs just released a new "experiment" - Body Browser. You have to upgrade to Google Chrome beta if you don't already have it, but when you do, you can play with a 3-D, rotatable reconstruction of a (female) human body. Sliders let you fade the circulatory, skeletal, muscular, and nervous systems in and out over the body organs; you can toggle labels on and off, and you can zoom, spin, and rotate in a way that would only be cooler if it were on a touchscreen iPad. (Yeah, that's what I said, Google. Do it!) Check out this screenshot:
Toggle a few sliders and you can wrap the vessels and…
bioephemera | December 13, 2010This is un freaking real.
My friend John O at Armed With Science has dug up a classic animated film produced for the National Naval Medical Center in 1973. It starts with an awards ceremony for the "Communicable Disease of the Year," hosted by the Grim Reaper (who turns out to know a lot about medical history.)
The top prize is won by the Dracula-esque Count Spirochete (AKA syphilis), over the vociferous objections of a shortlist of other diseases, including smallpox ("I've scarred and disfigured millions of people!") and gonorrhea (who resembles a lavender Tribble with a pitchfork). The…
bioephemera | December 10, 2010Diptheria vaccinations in the 1920s
The town of Leicester was a particular hotbed of anti vaccine activity and the site of many anti-vaccine rallies. The local paper described the details of a rally: "An escort was formed, preceded by a banner, to escort a young mother and two men, all of whom had resolved to give themselves up to the police and undergo imprisonment in preference to having their children vaccinated...The three were attended by a numerous crowd...three hearty cheers were given for them, which were renewed with increased vigor as they entered the doors of the police cells." The…
bioephemera | December 8, 2010This video from the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment is like a conservationist's version of the "Right Here, Right Now" video about social media (although the music isn't as good). It has crisp design, good infographics, and makes a very important point: that nature has massive, unappreciated economic value.
I'm not saying that money should be the main reason for environmental protection; I value nature for purely aesthetic and scientific reasons, over and above economics (although aesthetics and science both have economic value - realized through tourism and R&D).…
bioephemera | November 30, 2010
The BBC is screening a new documentary, "The Joy of Statistics," hosted by Hans Rosling of Gapminder. This is a short clip; you'll probably recognize the data and presentation from a couple of years back, but the Minority Report-style, virtual full-body interface is new. Granted, it starts off a little reminiscent of a local news meteorologist gesturing stiffly at a greenscreen. But within the first minute it starts to seem more natural, and the data (comparative life expectancy, wealth, and population in the developed and developing continents) is always eye-opening. The BBC seems to be…
pronald | November 21, 2010On Monday afternoon, yours truly will appear with Dr. Oz, "America's doctor," (the tag bestowed on him by no less than Oprah Winfrey) before a live audience in New York City. Although I have never seen the show, a New York Times magazine article written by the brilliant Frank Bruni, suggests that the show, and Dr. Oz himself, are both pretty entertaining.
As one of the most accomplished cardiothoracic surgeons of his generation, Mehmet Oz has transplanted lungs and repurposed hearts; implanted mechanical devices to provide the pump and pulse for patients that cannot manage that on their own;…
pronald | November 11, 2010One more day to vote in the , which asks the question "Is Biotechnology compatible with sustainable agriculture?"
PZ Myers answers the question this way: "this is weird: agriculture is biotechnology, and just breaking ground with a sharp stick and throwing some seeds in is an example of an 'unnatural' human practice"
He also publishes the opposition's "top secret email", which has some gobbledy-gook about how farmers are turning against GE crops (um, name one?) and contaminating nature (massive reductions in insecticide use on BT cotton fields and enhanced biodiversity is destruction?). PZ…
bioephemera | November 10, 2010
For health organizations, federal agencies and nonprofits alike, it's a challenge to get anyone to pay attention long enough to hear your prevention messages, much less to actually change their behavior as a result. It's even harder with kids. It's not that they don't care about science; quite the contrary, they love it - especially if it's gross. It's more that they don't want to hear an authority figure talking down to them about the parade of terribles that will befall them if they binge drink, have unprotected sex, etc. Be honest: can you think back to your high school health classes…
bioephemera | November 4, 2010
Hippocampus: Broad Overview
Tamily Weissman, Jeff Lichtman, and Joshua Sanes, 2005
from Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the 21st Century by Carl Schoonover
The first time I created a transgenic neuron, it was in a worm, C. elegans -- a tiny, transparent cousin of the earthworm. I injected DNA into the embryonic worm, let it grow up, and voila: there was one eerie green blotch like a little Pac-Man ghost, its long green axon a lime racing stripe running along the worm's transparent body. The worm wiggled, but I was the one hooked: science is beautiful.
You…
bioephemera | October 24, 2010
Have e-books killed tree-books? I hope not - I love hefting a brand-new book in my hand and letting the pages fan open. It's sensual and anticipation-laden, like opening a bottle of good wine. But perhaps science writer and blogger Carl Zimmer is hedging his bets on the future of paper books: he's released his latest collection, Brain Cuttings, exclusively for Kindle, iPad, and other mobile devices. I clicked over to read an excerpt, and this was the first passage I saw:
Let's say you transfer your mind into a computer--not all at once but gradually, having electrodes inserted into your…
bioephemera | October 20, 2010And now for a completely different type of glass art: this time from sculptor Luke Jerram. His deceptively beautiful glass malaria parasite (see video below) will be auctioned off to benefit Malaria No More.
Via Medical Museion. The "malaria parasite" is also known as Plasmodium falciparum. Read more about Jerram's sculpture here - no, I don't know when the auction will be, but I imagine he'll update his website with the news.
gregladen | September 22, 2010You will recall my post: A genetic cause of rapid degeneration in some Alzheimer's patients. Well, now it (the topic) is a Ted Video. But before you watch it, I need to take down Nicholas Christakis for saying the dumbest thing I've heard all week.
No, Nicholas, it is not true in any way whatsoever that humans did not have complex social networks prior to "emerging" from the "African Savanna" ... nor would the implication that you make that those still living in Africa, or the savanna therein, fail in this way. That's just you being an ignorant racist westerner. Otherwise your talk is…
lborkowski | September 20, 2010If you're working on a major global problem like poverty, it's important to have goals to work towards. Back in 2000, world leaders came together and adopted the United Nations Millennium Declaration, which commits to reducing extreme poverty and sets out a series of goals to be reached by 2015. Each of the eight Millennium Development Goals, as they've come to be known, has between one and five specific targets, many of which involve reducing the proportion (by half, two-thirds, etc.) of people who suffer from a particular condition or lack access to an essential resource like clean drinking…
gregladen | September 16, 2010A new study identifies a likely cause of rapid degeneration in some Alzheimer's patients. The results of this study may lead to improved treatment.
But first, let's look at the method used in this study, because that may be almost as important as a development. And for this, we will use a sports analogy.
Let's say there's an allele (an allele is a variant of a gene) that can boost your ability to play baseball. It really works. It causes an eye-hand coordination thing that improves batting, catching, and also affects your perception of movement in 3D space so you never miscalculate…
aardvarchaeology | September 16, 2010A week ago, the Swedish Research Council's expert panel for the investigation of suspected science fraud delivered its findings regarding Suchitra Holgersson, professor of transplantation biology in the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg. The panel finds Holgersson, who joined the Academy two years ago, guilty of severe science fraud in several cases where she has fabricated data (published i.a. in the Blood journal) and distorted results, and also in that she has forged documents in attempts to mislead the expert panel itself during the investigation.
Professor Holgersson's…
gregladen | September 16, 2010Editor's Selection IconThe other day a friend of mine bumped into some news that concerned her. She could have asked a random person about this to find out more information, but there was a bit of information that came with the news indicating that I might know more than the average person about it. So, she asked me, and as it turns out, I did not know anything. But, having heard the news from her, I noticed a different bit of information that came along with it that told me exactly who would know everything about it, so I sent along a question .... "What's going on with the [deleted]?" I…
sciencepunk | September 14, 2010In September Wired UK published my feature on the health risks of nanotechnology. The article is now online.
Nanotechnology's commercial growth has been accompanied by fears that it could damage human health and the environment. This in turn is stoking pressure on government and regulators to limit -- even ban -- a technology whose promise includes cleaner fuels, improved water filtration, better medicines, faster electronics and healthier foods.
gregladen | September 4, 2010The Vaccine-Autism Link has been ruled non-existent by a federal court. Details.
Homeopathy still doesn't work. Even a little. Very little.
Corexit in Florida water supply?
A health related blog post, Pushing towards acknowledging sex differences in physiology and treatment efficacy by the blogger known as Michelle, has been awarded the PLoS ONE Blog Pick of the Month for August 2010. Here are the details and links to the post and the original OpenAccess article, Differences in Efficacy and Safety of Pharmaceutical Treatments between Men and Women: An Umbrella Review by Gerald…
drorzel | September 1, 2010There's a new medical study of the effects of alcohol consumption that finds a surprising result:
Controlling only for age and gender, compared to moderate drinkers, abstainers had a more than 2 times increased mortality risk, heavy drinkers had 70% increased risk, and light drinkers had 23% increased risk. A model controlling for former problem drinking status, existing health problems, and key sociodemographic and social-behavioral factors, as well as for age and gender, substantially reduced the mortality effect for abstainers compared to moderate drinkers. However, even after adjusting…