Stories tagged health
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled salmonella
Courtesy lucianvenutianBut did anybody listen?
According to a Star and Tribune article MN’s own “Team Diarrhea” figured out jalapeño peppers were to blame for the MN Salmonella cases and told the FDA and CDC to look at jalapeño peppers as the culprit for cases nationwide instead of tomatoes. The DNA of the strains in MN matched the cases elsewhere. To learn more about this story check out a previous Buzz Blog.
I’m happy to report that these super sleuths were advisors and content experts in the development of Disease Detectives which is currently in the Science Museum of Minnesota’s Human Body Gallery. You can learn more about some of these disease detectives here.
So check out today’s Star and Tribune article and give thanks to Kirk Smith and the rest of his team at the Minnesota Department of Health for doing their best to keep us safe!
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Can this be converted to energy savings?
Courtesy size8jeansEager to help the environment? Want to reduce fuel consumption? Well, according to a new study published in the journal Human Ecology, you can do your part by not stuffing so many calories into your face.
On average we Americans just eat too much. We consume about 1200-1500 more calories per day than is recommended. Not only that but most of the 3700 calories we do take in each day comes from junk and processed foods, and animal products, which use up a lot more fuel and resources to produce than simpler foods like potatoes, fruits and vegetables.
Conventional meat and dairy farming require large amounts of energy what with processing, packaging and long-distant distribution, so the study suggests a return to more organic, localized farming methods to help reduce energy usage. Of course, this means the end users – us – will have to reduce our intake of animal fat and processed foods, and shift to simpler, healthier diets, but the impact on fuel consumption would be tremendous.
But wait, there’s more.
The current health trend in the United State is in a rather dismal state. Many of us are overweight , diabetes is on the rise, and now we’ve got doctors recommending cholesterol-lowering drugs for children . A radical shift in our food production methods, and a reduction in our caloric intake such as the study suggests would not only solve some of our current energy woes, but the general health of the US population would benefit, too.
SOURCES AND INFO
ScienceDaily story
NY Times story: Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler
Good news about high gas prices: Highway deaths are going down
High gas prices may be killing our pocketbooks, but they're having a positive effect on highway accident death rates. Full details are here, but boiling it down to the basic fact, the National Safety Council is reporting a 9 percent drop in motor vehicle deaths through the first five months of 2008 compared to the same time period last year.
Lightning strikes again: More electrifying stories from summer storm survivors
Shocking stories of lightning: Read all about these people's encounters with nature's electronic forces.
Courtesy andrewomerknapp.A few weeks ago we posted a link to a story about a guy who got hit in the head with a lightning bolt and lives to tell about it. Here are more lightning strike survivor stories. And the real interesting tidbit of information near the top of the story, 89 percent of people struck by lightning are men. Can you figure out why that would be? Hint: It has nothing to do with the storm scene from the movie "Caddyshack."
Say cheese!: Dental fun could soon be a thing of the past.
Courtesy jfraserIf I had my druthers I’d much rather have my teeth drilled than have them cleaned. There’s always seems to be a lot more blood when the pearly-whites (or in my case pearly-yellows) get scraped and buffed. Last time my dental assistant Meghan was downright sadistic with the scraping tool. She was ticked off with Jason (her current boyfriend) because he had more snake tattoos than she did. Believe me I heard the whole story. And every time I didn’t grunt in agreement, Meg seemed to jam the pick deeper into my gums. Well, those days could soon be gone.
Researchers at the Leeds Dental Institute in England have been developing a method of cleaning teeth using a special mouthwash and ordinary light. It’s called photodynamic therapy. Plaque-causing bacteria in the mouth absorb antibacterial molecules in the mouthwash. When a bright light is shone onto the treated area, those molecules become activated and kill the bacteria. It’s pretty simple really. The same principles have been used in some skin cancer treatments.
Professor Jennifer Kirkham, who is leading the research, believes the practice could be used in homes within the next three years.
The same team is also working on a new way to help the body grow new tooth enamel. The tooth is coated with a special protein that attracts calcium and helps rebuild the damaged area, some of which can be holes etched into the enamel by plaque build-up. That could mean less drilling and filling, and less time going to the dentist. Well, where's the fun in that? All there’d be left to look forward to is bridgework and root canals.
SOURCE
BBC website story
Getting stoned: Here's an array of shapes and sizes of kidney stones. Researchers say global warming will lead to an increase in the production of the little buggers in our bodies.
Courtesy Trevor BlakeIt’s going after polar bears and ice sheets. It’s threatening glaciers and coastal cities. Now, global warming has is setting it’s evil intentions against your kidneys.
That’s the conclusion a group of scientists announced yesterday. Increases in global temperatures could lead to an increase in kidney stones.
Having had more than my share of bouts with those pesky stones, that alone is scaring me straight to reduce my carbon footprint and do my part to reduce global climate change.
A kidney stone forms from salts that crystallize inside the kidney. That process speeds up when bodies become dehydrated. As the stones grow and move through the urinary tract, they can cause enormous (and I mean enormous) pain until it passes out through urination. The bigger the stone gets, the greater the discomfort. About 12 percent of men and seven percent of women in the U.S. will experience a bout of kidney stones in their life.
What the scientists announced this week is that warm states in the southeastern U.S. have a 50 percent higher rate of kidney stone cases than in the northeast.
Warm weather and dehydration are two factors that can accelerate kidney stone production, the researchers said. They’re seeing an unusually high rate of kidney stones among soldiers serving in the heat of Iraq.
On the flip side, drinking lots of water and staying cool can help reduce kidney stone risks, the scientists added. Kidney stone rates have been on the rise in the U.S. since 1976
So what do you think? Is there a connection between hot weather and kidney stones? Do you have a great kidney stone story to share? Ever see the Seinfeld episode where Kramer passes a kidney stone at the circus? Share your thoughts about kidney stones and/or global warming here with other Buzzers.
HealthMap screen capture
Courtesy Art Oglesby
Want a warning about disease outbreaks?
With the internet's new capabilities, new information is highly contagious. The web is increasingly being used to exchange information about public health and disease outbreaks. Now, thanks to HealthMap anyone can track where and when infectious disease outbreaks are occurring.
Web crawlers, automated translation, GIS mapmaking, ISP tracking, and cell phone imagery have created a world where, for good or ill, rumors of outbreaks outpace confirmation. The Journal of Life Sciences
Colored pins point to disease outbreaks
Using what is often referred to as Web 2.0 dynamics, Healthmap.org crawls the internet for disease outbreak information, integrating information from various sources like Google News, ProMED, and World Health Organization disease alerts. Through an automated text processing system, the data is sorted by disease and overlayed by location on top of Google Maps.
Want to learn more about HealthMap?
HealthMap was created by Clark Freifeld and John Brownstein through Children's Hospital Informatics Program (CHIP) at Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences & Technology. Click this link to view a presentation about HealthMap given at a Georeferencing Workshop at Harvard, March 21, 2008 by John Brownstein.
A recently-completed survey in Great Britain shows that, while the number of overweight or obese people has increased, fewer people correctly classify themselves as overweight according to their body-mass index (BMI).
Do you know your BMI, and how you're classified? (Here's how to calculate.) Having a general sense of where you fall along the spectrum might help you make decisions about food and exercise choices before you develop a problem.
Marijuana skin: I guess this explains the thumb sucking.
There's actually not enough there to...: Oh, whatever. Have at it.
Courtesy CayusaMothers! Quick! Smack yer little babies’ thumbs out of their mouths and replace them with something a little more legal, like cigarettes! Now! It’s for their own good!
See, apparently our skin is constantly producing “endocannaboids,” substances not unlike the active ingredients in marijuana.
“Wait,” you say. “My skin is covered in the dank? I need… I need… a carrot peeler!”
No! Chill out! That would be super gross, and I can’t believe you even thought of that! If anything, what you need is a hole-cutting drill bit and a melon baller, because it’s your brain that produces the most endocannaboids.
A new study examines the function of endocannaboids in the skin, and how that might be linked to their presence in the brain.
The skin seems to produce these marijuana-like chemicals as a response to environmental stresses like wind and sun. Endocannaboids help glands in the skin produce the oily substances that protect us from the elements, and which also contribute to pimples and hair loss.
The brain produces similar chemicals in response to stressors and rewards, and they make us feel anxious, or pleased, or whatever. Psychological stress, however, may prompt the skin—as well as the brain—to start producing these chemicals, which lends credence to the thought that stress can cause acne and influence baldness.
As far as getting high from licking your arm goes…well it’s theoretically possible that endocannaboids could do the trick, but even if you were to, say, eat your whole arm, there wouldn’t be enough there to give you any psychological effect. Except whatever psychological effect would come from eating your own arm, I suppose.
Oh, good. Cyborg monkeys.
in Life Science, Scientific Enterprise, and Biological Populations Change Over Time
The scariest of robots: And how do I know there's a monkey brain inside? Look how angry it is.
Courtesy litmuseOh, you’re probably the same way—how often do you find yourself thinking, “I wish monkeys were more terrifying. Sure, they’re all fanged little were-men, with hand-feet and clever brains, but there must be some way that they could be worse.”
Pretty often, huh?
And, when you watch the news, don’t you constantly find yourself musing, “Hmm. The future is looking a little too bright.”
Well, don’t worry, Buzzketeers. The future promises to be just as dark and bewildering as ever, and horrifying cyber-apes are part of it.
“Now, JGordon, it can’t be that bad.”
Hey! Don’t sound so disappointed; it is that bad. Skeptical? Check it out for yourself—Sciencemen and Techladies have trained two macaque monkeys to control huge robotic arms…using their monkey brains!
Macaques have shown their evil little faces on Science Buzz before (murderous enthusiasm and enthusiastic murder), and I don’t think a refresher on robots is at all necessary—because there’s no escaping them.
Robotic limbs are becoming kind of a big deal these days, but even the most advanced of them rely on nerves remaining in a partial limb, or another part of the body entirely; which muscles to activate for a certain function must be relearned, or an operation like gripping with a robotic hand can be linked to a movement like shrugging the shoulders. It’s tricky to do, and it pushes the brain’s flexibility, especially considering that the only feedback the limb gives might be a hot or poking sensation at the connection point (this in place of a real limb’s feedback, like the pressure, friction, or warmth one might feel through their hands or feet).
Wiring a prosthetic (or any robotic device) directly into the brain—as was the case with these monkeys and their robot arms—overcomes some of the problems with existing prosthetic technology, while adding some new challenges.
With electrodes implanted right into the brain, relearning limb function can come much more quickly and naturally (awful little monkeys can do it, after all). A little too quickly, actually—a monkey at Duke University was similarly wired up this winter to make a robot in Japan walk, and the robotic body actually received the signals to walk before the monkey’s actual body did. Limbs wired the same way could be too fast or powerful for the brain to initially cope with. You might, say, run into a wall before your brain has time to create another route for your robo-legs; the speed of the limb action would be faster than the speed of thought.
However, if the prosthetics operated with a “closed neural loop,” that is to say if they could be made to provide natural feedback to the brain (like heat, pressure, strain, etc), scientists think that the brain could adapt much more quickly, and could even learn whole new pathways of motion. So a person wired up in the right way might be able to control a plane, or a nanosized robot directly with their mind. And it wouldn’t be something where you would think about walking forward and the plane would fly forward—you would learn the plane’s movements of flying, feel the flying, and control it as if you were the plane. That sort of things is still a long way off, and unless new technology is invented to sense and input to the brain in another way, it would require having a bunch of electrodes stuck through your skull and into your neurons.
This, of course, is all scientific blah be de blah, and if distracts from the real issue behind the story: cyborg monkeys. Do you know what the monkeys were actually taught to do with their metal limbs? Feed themselves. How horrible. Why not just teach them how to operate guns with their minds, or remove human brains through our nasal passageways?
In time, that too will come to pass. Look forward to it.
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