health
gregladen | February 26, 2008
Angst-ridden teens have different brain structures: study from PhysOrg.com
It turns out your mother was right: angst-ridden teens really do have something wrong with their heads.
[...]
Who benefits from antidepressants? from PhysOrg.com
A new study published today in PLoS Medicine suggests that antidepressants only benefit some, very severely depressed patients.
[...]
A Quick Comparison of the Clinton and Obama Health Care Plans is at The Scientific Activist.
gregladen | February 12, 2008"Disease" is a big word. I'd like to address this question by focusing on the difference, or lack of difference, between a poison, a disease, and a yummy thing to eat. It turns out that they may all be the same. Yet different.
Phenylketonuria (fee-null-keet-o-noo-ria), mercifully also known as "PKU" (pee - kay - you) is a disorder in which the amino acid phenylalanine is not broken down by an enzyme (phenylalanine hydroxylase) and thus accumulates in the body as phenylpyruvic acid.
This is bad because phenylpyruvic acid interferes with normal development of neural tissues.
In western…
gregladen | February 2, 2008That's one way to turn French Onion Dip into Frenched Onion Dip.
A Clemson University Professor has tested George's Conundrum, also known as the Seinfeld Hypothesis of Germ Theory.
You know the story, and in case you don't, watch it here:
Double Dipping? 'Seinfeld' Was Right from PhysOrg.com
(AP) -- Keep an eye on the salsa this SuperBowl Sunday: A researcher inspired by a famous "Seinfeld" episode has concluded that double dipping is just plain gross.
[...]
This is, of course, a critically important topic, with the Superbowl scheduled for tomorrow. Some scientists suspect that the…
gregladen | February 1, 2008Grapes of gnash: Pomace, the residue of red winemaking, may help prevent tooth decay
Red wine has long been known to contain a substance, resveratrol, that is heart-healthy. Now research shows that both red wine grapes and winemaking residue, known as pomace, contain substances that may help prevent tooth decay.
A study published online in November in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry suggests that specific polyphenols -- chemicals present in large amounts in fermented seeds and skins that are cast away after grapes are pressed -- interfere with the ability of bacteria to…
omnibrain | January 31, 2008The Super Bowl is all about chips and dip - so be careful. It could kill you if you're not!
If you're a Seinfeld watcher you probably remember this scene:
TIMMY: What are you doing?
GEORGE: What?
TIMMY: Did...did you just double-dip that chip?
GEORGE: Excuse me?
TIMMY: You double-dipped the chip!
GEORGE: "Double-dipped"? What are you talking about?
TIMMY: You dipped the chip. You took a bite.
And you dipped again.
GEORGE: So...?
TIMMY: That's like putting your whole mouth right in the dip! From now on, when you take a chip - just take one dip and end it!
GEORGE: Well, I'm sorry, Timmy...…
gregladen | January 23, 2008Ebola is a nasty virus that causes an often fatal hemorrhagic fever. It crops up most of the time in The Congo (nee Zaire) but there have been significant outbreaks and isolated cases in The Sudan and South Africa. It is very virulent, passed on via bodily fluids. There may be a cure on the horizon.
From a University of Wisconsin Press Release:
a team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison has figured out a way to genetically disarm the virus, effectively confining it to a set of specialized cells and making the agent safe to study under conditions far less stringent…
gregladen | January 19, 2008"A fundamental difference in the way men and women respond to chronic liver disease at the genetic level helps explain why men are more prone to liver cancer, according to MIT researchers."
"This is the first genome-wide study that helps explain why there is such a gender effect in a cancer of a nonreproductive organ, where you wouldn't expect to see one," said Arlin Rogers, an MIT experimental pathologist and lead author of a paper that appeared last month in the journal Cancer Research.
Men develop liver cancer at twice the rate of women in the United States. In other countries, especially…
gregladen | January 19, 2008Discovery of 'creator' gene for cerebral cortex points to potential stem cell treatments
University of California, Irvine researchers have identified a gene that is specifically responsible for generating the cerebral cortex, a finding that could lead to stem cell therapies to treat brain injuries and diseases such as stroke and Alzheimer's.
Dr. Edwin Monuki, doctoral student Karla Hirokawa and their colleagues in the departments of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine and Developmental & Cell Biology found that a gene called Lhx2 serves as the long-sought cortical "creator" gene that…
gregladen | January 18, 2008They always told you to eat your carrots, to improve your eyesight. Well, a deficiency of vitamin A (found in carrots, and lots of other foods) causes eye disease in a lot of children. In areas where Maize (corn) is a significant staple, there can be a problem because maize varies a great deal in how much vitamin A it can provide via precursor molecules. A new study in Science explores this relationship.
Maize is the dominant subsistence crop in much of sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas, where between 17 and 30% of children under age of 5 are vitamin A-deficient. This results in…
omnibrain | January 18, 2008Don't play any of the embedded videos if you've ever had a seizure.
Now that we're done with the warning...
We've all heard of the Pokemon incident in Japan where nearly 700 school aged children were admitted to the hospital with "convulsions, vomiting, irritated eyes and other symptoms" common to epilepsy. This lead to a number of government investigations and media companies searching their offerings to determine whether any of their shows had similar scenes that might induce photosensitive epilepsy. According to a CNN report of the incidents:
Dr. Yukio Fukuyama, a juvenile epilepsy…
sciencetolife | January 16, 2008
Men develop liver cancer at twice the rate of women in the United States, according to the American Cancer Society. Considering that the liver is a non-reproductive organ, this is quite a difference.
A research team led by Dr. Arlin Rogers, an experimental pathologist at MIT, looked at the gender differences in hepatocellular carcinoma, a male-predominant liver cancer that is associated with chronic hepatitis.
It turns out that:
Male and female livers are inherently different, with most of the differences arising during puberty when male livers are exposed to periodic bursts of growth…
gregladen | January 14, 2008Syphilis is first clearly seen in Europe in 1495, when it appeared as a plague (though it was not "the blague" ... Yersinia pestis) among Charles VIII's troops. When these troops went home shortly after the fall of Naples, they brought this disease with them, staring an epidemic. The level of mortality in Europe was truly devastating. Is it the case that syphilis was brought to Europe by Columbus and his men just prior to the plague-like outbreak of 1495?
The origin of syphilis has been debated for years, really since the actual 1495 event itself. Some researchers have asserted that…
gregladen | January 12, 2008Accepting his 2005 TED Prize, inventor Robert Fischell makes three wishes: redesigning a portable migraine treatment, finding new cures for clinical depression, and reforming the medical malpractice system. He also shares three new inventions that could improve the lives of millions: His Angel Med Guardian System -- a pacemaker-sized device wired into the heart -- detects an elevation in the electric signal of the heart, the first sign of a heart attack. His transcranial magnetic stimulator treats migraines with a magnetic pulse. Finally, the Neuropace prevents epileptic seizures by…
gregladen | January 10, 2008Accepting his 2006 TED Prize, Dr. Larry Brilliant talks about how smallpox was finally eradicated from the planet. In a conversational style that belies the deadly seriousness of his subject, he describes the dangers of pandemic disease, and offers a solution in his dramatic TED Prize wish, a plan to use the Internet to help prevent the next pandemic. (Contains strong images.)
gregladen | January 8, 2008University of California, Irvine infectious disease researchers have shown the effectiveness of a potential alternative to the existing smallpox vaccine that can replace the current biodefense stockpile for this lethal virus.
Philip Felgner and Huw Davies with the Department of Medicine found that the modified vaccinia virus Ankara (MVA) produced the same antiviral response in human and animal studies as the current smallpox vaccine, Dryvax. The study is part of a national effort to develop a replacement for the Dryvax vaccine, which causes serious complications in some people. The results…
gregladen | January 7, 2008A Stanford scientist has spelled out for the first time the direct links between increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and increases in human mortality, using a state-of-the-art computer model of the atmosphere that incorporates scores of physical and chemical environmental processes....
The new findings, to be published in Geophysical Research Letters, come to light just after the Environmental Protection Agency's recent ruling against states setting specific emission standards for this greenhouse gas based in part on the lack of data showing the link between carbon dioxide…
gregladen | January 6, 2008From a Massachusetts Institute of Technology press release:
researchers have uncovered a critical difference between flu viruses that infect birds and humans, a discovery that could help scientists monitor the evolution of avian flu strains and aid in the development of vaccines against a deadly flu pandemic.
A quick word about viruses and receptor sites. I have always found the terminology to be a bit counter-intuitive and possibly misleading. The word "receptor site" almost sounds like a feature that a cell has in order to receive, allow in, provide a reception for a virus, as though…
aardvarchaeology | January 5, 2008Last night I suffered a less than hour-long bout of scintillating scotoma. It's a weird kind of snow crash in your visual cortex where part of your field of vision is replaced by sparkly geometric patterns. It happens to me once every few years and is sometimes associated with a headache, sort of migraine lite. The scotoma is quite disorientating, particularly when the affected bit is at the centre of whatever you're looking at, like last night. I was probably a pitiful sight, squinting out of one corner of my eye at the laptop as I laboured half blindly to download the latest Escape Pod -- I…
sb admin | January 4, 2008"A thrilling documentary covering the origins and troubles surrounding the severe disease, Brain Freeze [a.k.a. Iceberger's Syndrome]." Link.
gregladen | January 3, 2008Piles of research on alcohol; a little research on obesity.
Having just written Alcohol, Sexual Attraction, Sexual Behavior, and Sexual Performance, about excessive alcohol consumption by male fruit flies and its effects on sexual behavior, I am amused to find this in my newsy inbox:
Gene therapy can reduce long-term drinking among rodents from PhysOrg.com
"An 'experiment of nature' is observed in some individuals of East Asian origin, who are 66 to 99 percent protected against alcoholism," explained Yedy Israel, professor of pharmacological and toxicological chemistry at the Universidad…