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Looking for a healthy meat substitute? Consider the potato
Boil ‘em, mash ‘em, include ‘em in a balanced diet
It’s kind of funny that, even though potatoes are vegetables and vegetables are generally considered to be healthy foods, not many people think of potatoes as being particularly good for you. And that’s hardly surprising since we usually either consume them in the form of French fries or potato chips, neither of which are known for their healthiness.
In fact, some previous research shows that potatoes are a food to avoid, particularly for people with insulin resistance. However, a new study from England goes against the grain and asserts that the potato is perfectly fine for insulin-resistant individuals and filled with valuable nutrients and health benefits. Which is great news for the state of Idaho and the potato organization funding the research. Of course there’s a potato organization.
For the study, a group of obese, overweight, or insulin-resistant individuals received a diet of either beans, peas, and meat or fish or white potatoes with meat or fish for 8 weeks; both diets were heavy in fruits and vegetables and both diets replaced about 40% of typical meat consumption with either beans and peas or potatoes. By the end of the study, those on the potato diet experienced health benefits equivalent to those on the bean and pea diet, including losing roughly equivalent amounts of weight and similarly reducing the body’s insulin response.
The researchers noted that, because people tend to eat the same amount of food no matter what, replacing something like meat with dense, low-calorie potatoes meant study participants could eat normally yet consume much fewer calories. So you could make a delicious, healthy stew without the brace of conies and the nice fish, which would make Smeagol very happy.
You won’t have ‘monkeypox’ to kick around anymore
It’s true. No more monkeypox. It’s gone. It’s history. Adios. The World Health Organization said that the disease formerly known as monkeypox will now be called mpox. What? You didn’t think it had been cured, did you? You did? Really? Silly readers.
“Mpox will become a preferred term, replacing monkeypox, after a transition period of 1 year. This serves to mitigate the concerns raised by experts about confusion caused by a name change in the midst of a global outbreak,” WHO said in a statement announcing the change.
The stigma attached to the name was the main problem. New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan had sent a letter to WHO earlier this year, according to CNN, saying that there was “growing concern for the potentially devastating and stigmatizing effects that the messaging around the ‘monkeypox’ virus can have on … vulnerable communities.”
We here at LOTME applaud the fight against stigmas of any sort, but we sensed there was more to this name change business, so our dedicated team of investigative journalists went into action. Sure enough, while rooting through WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’s garbage, we found a list of the names that had been rejected in favor of mpox:
- K-pop (already taken)
- Keeping up with the Kardashi-pox
- Trumpox
- Pox the magic dragon
- Monkey plague (didn’t really solve the problem)
- Hockey pox
- Mission mpoxible
- Jurassic Pox
- The pox that refreshes
- Debbie
Feet catch what the ears miss
The spectrum of frequencies that can be heard by human ears varies from person to person. Then there’s the matter of personal taste in music and volume level. But what really gets people moving? A new study shows that it’s more about the frequency of the sound than the volume.
For the study, participants at a concert by electronic music duo Orphx at LIVELab – a research performance center on the McMaster University campus in Hamilton, Ont., that was specifically designed to study music and dance – filled out questionnaires before and after the show. They also wore motion-capture headbands to detect their movement throughout the concert. During the show the researchers turned very-low-frequency (VLF) sounds (8-37 Hz) on and off every 2.5 minutes. Movement speed was calculated during on and off periods.
Although the effects of subliminal messaging aren’t new, past studies have shown that participants were mostly aware of the messaging. In this study, the researchers found that the subjects’ movements increased by 11.8% when the VLF sounds were on, but without their awareness. The researchers and the participants attributed movement to the bass, as lower pitches tend to elicit stronger neural responses and thus movement, compared with higher pitches.
“Our whole sense of the beat is mediated by the vestibular system but nobody’s really, I think, effectively confirmed that,” Jonathan Cannon, an assistant professor of psychology, neuroscience, and behavior at McMaster who not involved in the study, told Live Science.
Not to say this study didn’t have its limitations, such as the effect of the surrounding crowd or vibrations of the floor influencing the need to dance. But it definitely makes you wonder about what’s actually playing in your favorite song.
Uncle Leonid wants you
Do you like to travel? Are you a bit of a thrill seeker? Do you have any extra socks? If you’re a physician who answered yes to those three questions, then we’ve got an opportunity for you.
Leonid Slutsky, leader of Russia’s populist Liberal Democratic Party and chairman of the foreign relations committee in the lower house of Russia’s parliament – yes, that Leonid Slutsky – recently made a bit of a recruiting pitch, although that’s not how ABC News described it.
Mr. Slutsky, a strong supporter of his country’s war against Ukraine, recently told the mothers of Russian soldiers “that the whole world is watching us. We are the largest state and when we do not have socks, shorts, doctors, intelligence, communications, or simply care for our children, questions arise that will be very difficult to answer.”
It’s probably not what he meant, but the lack of intelligence is pretty clear.
Boil ‘em, mash ‘em, include ‘em in a balanced diet
It’s kind of funny that, even though potatoes are vegetables and vegetables are generally considered to be healthy foods, not many people think of potatoes as being particularly good for you. And that’s hardly surprising since we usually either consume them in the form of French fries or potato chips, neither of which are known for their healthiness.
In fact, some previous research shows that potatoes are a food to avoid, particularly for people with insulin resistance. However, a new study from England goes against the grain and asserts that the potato is perfectly fine for insulin-resistant individuals and filled with valuable nutrients and health benefits. Which is great news for the state of Idaho and the potato organization funding the research. Of course there’s a potato organization.
For the study, a group of obese, overweight, or insulin-resistant individuals received a diet of either beans, peas, and meat or fish or white potatoes with meat or fish for 8 weeks; both diets were heavy in fruits and vegetables and both diets replaced about 40% of typical meat consumption with either beans and peas or potatoes. By the end of the study, those on the potato diet experienced health benefits equivalent to those on the bean and pea diet, including losing roughly equivalent amounts of weight and similarly reducing the body’s insulin response.
The researchers noted that, because people tend to eat the same amount of food no matter what, replacing something like meat with dense, low-calorie potatoes meant study participants could eat normally yet consume much fewer calories. So you could make a delicious, healthy stew without the brace of conies and the nice fish, which would make Smeagol very happy.
You won’t have ‘monkeypox’ to kick around anymore
It’s true. No more monkeypox. It’s gone. It’s history. Adios. The World Health Organization said that the disease formerly known as monkeypox will now be called mpox. What? You didn’t think it had been cured, did you? You did? Really? Silly readers.
“Mpox will become a preferred term, replacing monkeypox, after a transition period of 1 year. This serves to mitigate the concerns raised by experts about confusion caused by a name change in the midst of a global outbreak,” WHO said in a statement announcing the change.
The stigma attached to the name was the main problem. New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan had sent a letter to WHO earlier this year, according to CNN, saying that there was “growing concern for the potentially devastating and stigmatizing effects that the messaging around the ‘monkeypox’ virus can have on … vulnerable communities.”
We here at LOTME applaud the fight against stigmas of any sort, but we sensed there was more to this name change business, so our dedicated team of investigative journalists went into action. Sure enough, while rooting through WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’s garbage, we found a list of the names that had been rejected in favor of mpox:
- K-pop (already taken)
- Keeping up with the Kardashi-pox
- Trumpox
- Pox the magic dragon
- Monkey plague (didn’t really solve the problem)
- Hockey pox
- Mission mpoxible
- Jurassic Pox
- The pox that refreshes
- Debbie
Feet catch what the ears miss
The spectrum of frequencies that can be heard by human ears varies from person to person. Then there’s the matter of personal taste in music and volume level. But what really gets people moving? A new study shows that it’s more about the frequency of the sound than the volume.
For the study, participants at a concert by electronic music duo Orphx at LIVELab – a research performance center on the McMaster University campus in Hamilton, Ont., that was specifically designed to study music and dance – filled out questionnaires before and after the show. They also wore motion-capture headbands to detect their movement throughout the concert. During the show the researchers turned very-low-frequency (VLF) sounds (8-37 Hz) on and off every 2.5 minutes. Movement speed was calculated during on and off periods.
Although the effects of subliminal messaging aren’t new, past studies have shown that participants were mostly aware of the messaging. In this study, the researchers found that the subjects’ movements increased by 11.8% when the VLF sounds were on, but without their awareness. The researchers and the participants attributed movement to the bass, as lower pitches tend to elicit stronger neural responses and thus movement, compared with higher pitches.
“Our whole sense of the beat is mediated by the vestibular system but nobody’s really, I think, effectively confirmed that,” Jonathan Cannon, an assistant professor of psychology, neuroscience, and behavior at McMaster who not involved in the study, told Live Science.
Not to say this study didn’t have its limitations, such as the effect of the surrounding crowd or vibrations of the floor influencing the need to dance. But it definitely makes you wonder about what’s actually playing in your favorite song.
Uncle Leonid wants you
Do you like to travel? Are you a bit of a thrill seeker? Do you have any extra socks? If you’re a physician who answered yes to those three questions, then we’ve got an opportunity for you.
Leonid Slutsky, leader of Russia’s populist Liberal Democratic Party and chairman of the foreign relations committee in the lower house of Russia’s parliament – yes, that Leonid Slutsky – recently made a bit of a recruiting pitch, although that’s not how ABC News described it.
Mr. Slutsky, a strong supporter of his country’s war against Ukraine, recently told the mothers of Russian soldiers “that the whole world is watching us. We are the largest state and when we do not have socks, shorts, doctors, intelligence, communications, or simply care for our children, questions arise that will be very difficult to answer.”
It’s probably not what he meant, but the lack of intelligence is pretty clear.
Boil ‘em, mash ‘em, include ‘em in a balanced diet
It’s kind of funny that, even though potatoes are vegetables and vegetables are generally considered to be healthy foods, not many people think of potatoes as being particularly good for you. And that’s hardly surprising since we usually either consume them in the form of French fries or potato chips, neither of which are known for their healthiness.
In fact, some previous research shows that potatoes are a food to avoid, particularly for people with insulin resistance. However, a new study from England goes against the grain and asserts that the potato is perfectly fine for insulin-resistant individuals and filled with valuable nutrients and health benefits. Which is great news for the state of Idaho and the potato organization funding the research. Of course there’s a potato organization.
For the study, a group of obese, overweight, or insulin-resistant individuals received a diet of either beans, peas, and meat or fish or white potatoes with meat or fish for 8 weeks; both diets were heavy in fruits and vegetables and both diets replaced about 40% of typical meat consumption with either beans and peas or potatoes. By the end of the study, those on the potato diet experienced health benefits equivalent to those on the bean and pea diet, including losing roughly equivalent amounts of weight and similarly reducing the body’s insulin response.
The researchers noted that, because people tend to eat the same amount of food no matter what, replacing something like meat with dense, low-calorie potatoes meant study participants could eat normally yet consume much fewer calories. So you could make a delicious, healthy stew without the brace of conies and the nice fish, which would make Smeagol very happy.
You won’t have ‘monkeypox’ to kick around anymore
It’s true. No more monkeypox. It’s gone. It’s history. Adios. The World Health Organization said that the disease formerly known as monkeypox will now be called mpox. What? You didn’t think it had been cured, did you? You did? Really? Silly readers.
“Mpox will become a preferred term, replacing monkeypox, after a transition period of 1 year. This serves to mitigate the concerns raised by experts about confusion caused by a name change in the midst of a global outbreak,” WHO said in a statement announcing the change.
The stigma attached to the name was the main problem. New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan had sent a letter to WHO earlier this year, according to CNN, saying that there was “growing concern for the potentially devastating and stigmatizing effects that the messaging around the ‘monkeypox’ virus can have on … vulnerable communities.”
We here at LOTME applaud the fight against stigmas of any sort, but we sensed there was more to this name change business, so our dedicated team of investigative journalists went into action. Sure enough, while rooting through WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’s garbage, we found a list of the names that had been rejected in favor of mpox:
- K-pop (already taken)
- Keeping up with the Kardashi-pox
- Trumpox
- Pox the magic dragon
- Monkey plague (didn’t really solve the problem)
- Hockey pox
- Mission mpoxible
- Jurassic Pox
- The pox that refreshes
- Debbie
Feet catch what the ears miss
The spectrum of frequencies that can be heard by human ears varies from person to person. Then there’s the matter of personal taste in music and volume level. But what really gets people moving? A new study shows that it’s more about the frequency of the sound than the volume.
For the study, participants at a concert by electronic music duo Orphx at LIVELab – a research performance center on the McMaster University campus in Hamilton, Ont., that was specifically designed to study music and dance – filled out questionnaires before and after the show. They also wore motion-capture headbands to detect their movement throughout the concert. During the show the researchers turned very-low-frequency (VLF) sounds (8-37 Hz) on and off every 2.5 minutes. Movement speed was calculated during on and off periods.
Although the effects of subliminal messaging aren’t new, past studies have shown that participants were mostly aware of the messaging. In this study, the researchers found that the subjects’ movements increased by 11.8% when the VLF sounds were on, but without their awareness. The researchers and the participants attributed movement to the bass, as lower pitches tend to elicit stronger neural responses and thus movement, compared with higher pitches.
“Our whole sense of the beat is mediated by the vestibular system but nobody’s really, I think, effectively confirmed that,” Jonathan Cannon, an assistant professor of psychology, neuroscience, and behavior at McMaster who not involved in the study, told Live Science.
Not to say this study didn’t have its limitations, such as the effect of the surrounding crowd or vibrations of the floor influencing the need to dance. But it definitely makes you wonder about what’s actually playing in your favorite song.
Uncle Leonid wants you
Do you like to travel? Are you a bit of a thrill seeker? Do you have any extra socks? If you’re a physician who answered yes to those three questions, then we’ve got an opportunity for you.
Leonid Slutsky, leader of Russia’s populist Liberal Democratic Party and chairman of the foreign relations committee in the lower house of Russia’s parliament – yes, that Leonid Slutsky – recently made a bit of a recruiting pitch, although that’s not how ABC News described it.
Mr. Slutsky, a strong supporter of his country’s war against Ukraine, recently told the mothers of Russian soldiers “that the whole world is watching us. We are the largest state and when we do not have socks, shorts, doctors, intelligence, communications, or simply care for our children, questions arise that will be very difficult to answer.”
It’s probably not what he meant, but the lack of intelligence is pretty clear.
Give bacterial diversity a chance: The antibiotic dichotomy
What’s the opposite of an antibiotic?
Everyone knows that LOTME loves a good dichotomy: yin/yang, good/evil, heads/tails, particle/wave, peanut butter/jelly. They’re all great. We’re also big fans of microbiomes, particularly the gut microbiome. But what if we could combine the two? A healthy and nutritious story about the gut microbiome, with a dash of added dichotomy for flavor. Is such a thing even possible? Let’s find out.
First, we need an antibiotic, a drug designed to fight bacterial infections. If you’ve got strep throat, otitis media, or bubonic plague, there’s a good chance you will receive an antibiotic. That antibiotic will kill the bad bacteria that are making you sick, but it will also kill a lot of the good bacteria that inhabit your gut microbiome, which results in side effects like bloating and diarrhea.
It comes down to diversity, explained Elisa Marroquin, PhD, of Texas Christian University (Go Horned Frogs!): “In a human community, we need people that have different professions because we don’t all know how to do every single job. And so the same happens with bacteria. We need lots of different gut bacteria that know how to do different things.”
She and her colleagues reviewed 29 studies published over the last 7 years and found a way to preserve the diversity of a human gut microbiome that’s dealing with an antibiotic. Their solution? Prescribe a probiotic.
The way to fight the effects of stopping a bacterial infection is to provide food for what are, basically, other bacterial infections. Antibiotic/probiotic is a prescription for dichotomy, and it means we managed to combine gut microbiomes with a dichotomy. And you didn’t think we could do it.
The earphone of hearing aids
It’s estimated that up to 75% of people who need hearing aids don’t wear them. Why? Well, there’s the social stigma about not wanting to appear too old, and then there’s the cost factor.
Is there a cheaper, less stigmatizing option to amplify hearing? The answer, according to otolaryngologist Yen-fu Cheng, MD, of Taipei Veterans General Hospital and associates, is wireless earphones. AirPods, if you want to be brand specific.
Airpods can be on the more expensive side – running about $129 for AirPods 2 and $249 for AirPods Pro – but when compared with premium hearing aids ($10,000), or even basic aids (about $1,500), the Apple products come off inexpensive after all.
The team tested the premium and basic hearing aids against the AirPods 2 and the AirPod Pro using Apple’s Live Listen feature, which helps amplify sound through the company’s wireless earphones and iPhones and was initially designed to assist people with normal hearing in situations such as birdwatching.
The AirPods Pro worked just as well as the basic hearing aid but not quite as well as the premium hearing aid in a quiet setting, while the AirPods 2 performed the worst. When tested in a noisy setting, the AirPods Pro was pretty comparable to the premium hearing aid, as long as the noise came from a lateral direction. Neither of the AirPod models did as well as the hearing aids with head-on noises.
Wireless earbuds may not be the perfect solution from a clinical standpoint, but they’re a good start for people who don’t have access to hearing aids, Dr. Cheng noted.
So who says headphones damage your hearing? They might actually help.
Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the computer my soul to keep
Radiation is the boring hazard of space travel. No one dies in a space horror movie because they’ve been slowly exposed to too much cosmic radiation. It’s always “thrown out the airlock” this and “eaten by a xenomorph” that.
Radiation, however, is not something that can be ignored, but it turns out that a potential solution is another science fiction staple: artificial hibernation. Generally in sci-fi, hibernation is a plot convenience to get people from point A to point B in a ship that doesn’t break the laws of physics. Here on Earth, though, it is well known that animals naturally entering a state of torpor during hibernation gain significant resistance to radiation.
The problem, of course, is that humans don’t hibernate, and no matter how hard people who work 100-hour weeks for Elon Musk try, sleeping for months on end is simply something we can’t do. However, a new study shows that it’s possible to induce this torpor state in animals that don’t naturally hibernate. By injecting rats with adenosine 5’-monophosphate monohydrate and keeping them in a room held at 16° C, an international team of scientists successfully induced a synthetic torpor state.
That’s not all they did: The scientists also exposed the hibernating rats to a large dose of radiation approximating that found in deep space. Which isn’t something we’d like to explain to our significant other when we got home from work. “So how was your day?” “Oh, I irradiated a bunch of sleeping rats. … Don’t worry they’re fine!” Which they were. Thanks to the hypoxic and hypothermic state, the tissue was spared damage from the high-energy ion radiation.
Obviously, there’s a big difference between a rat and a human and a lot of work to be done, but the study does show that artificial hibernation is possible. Perhaps one day we’ll be able to fall asleep and wake up light-years away under an alien sky, and we won’t be horrifically mutated or riddled with cancer. If, however, you find yourself in hibernation on your way to Jupiter (or Saturn) to investigate a mysterious black monolith, we suggest sleeping with one eye open and gripping your pillow tight.
What’s the opposite of an antibiotic?
Everyone knows that LOTME loves a good dichotomy: yin/yang, good/evil, heads/tails, particle/wave, peanut butter/jelly. They’re all great. We’re also big fans of microbiomes, particularly the gut microbiome. But what if we could combine the two? A healthy and nutritious story about the gut microbiome, with a dash of added dichotomy for flavor. Is such a thing even possible? Let’s find out.
First, we need an antibiotic, a drug designed to fight bacterial infections. If you’ve got strep throat, otitis media, or bubonic plague, there’s a good chance you will receive an antibiotic. That antibiotic will kill the bad bacteria that are making you sick, but it will also kill a lot of the good bacteria that inhabit your gut microbiome, which results in side effects like bloating and diarrhea.
It comes down to diversity, explained Elisa Marroquin, PhD, of Texas Christian University (Go Horned Frogs!): “In a human community, we need people that have different professions because we don’t all know how to do every single job. And so the same happens with bacteria. We need lots of different gut bacteria that know how to do different things.”
She and her colleagues reviewed 29 studies published over the last 7 years and found a way to preserve the diversity of a human gut microbiome that’s dealing with an antibiotic. Their solution? Prescribe a probiotic.
The way to fight the effects of stopping a bacterial infection is to provide food for what are, basically, other bacterial infections. Antibiotic/probiotic is a prescription for dichotomy, and it means we managed to combine gut microbiomes with a dichotomy. And you didn’t think we could do it.
The earphone of hearing aids
It’s estimated that up to 75% of people who need hearing aids don’t wear them. Why? Well, there’s the social stigma about not wanting to appear too old, and then there’s the cost factor.
Is there a cheaper, less stigmatizing option to amplify hearing? The answer, according to otolaryngologist Yen-fu Cheng, MD, of Taipei Veterans General Hospital and associates, is wireless earphones. AirPods, if you want to be brand specific.
Airpods can be on the more expensive side – running about $129 for AirPods 2 and $249 for AirPods Pro – but when compared with premium hearing aids ($10,000), or even basic aids (about $1,500), the Apple products come off inexpensive after all.
The team tested the premium and basic hearing aids against the AirPods 2 and the AirPod Pro using Apple’s Live Listen feature, which helps amplify sound through the company’s wireless earphones and iPhones and was initially designed to assist people with normal hearing in situations such as birdwatching.
The AirPods Pro worked just as well as the basic hearing aid but not quite as well as the premium hearing aid in a quiet setting, while the AirPods 2 performed the worst. When tested in a noisy setting, the AirPods Pro was pretty comparable to the premium hearing aid, as long as the noise came from a lateral direction. Neither of the AirPod models did as well as the hearing aids with head-on noises.
Wireless earbuds may not be the perfect solution from a clinical standpoint, but they’re a good start for people who don’t have access to hearing aids, Dr. Cheng noted.
So who says headphones damage your hearing? They might actually help.
Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the computer my soul to keep
Radiation is the boring hazard of space travel. No one dies in a space horror movie because they’ve been slowly exposed to too much cosmic radiation. It’s always “thrown out the airlock” this and “eaten by a xenomorph” that.
Radiation, however, is not something that can be ignored, but it turns out that a potential solution is another science fiction staple: artificial hibernation. Generally in sci-fi, hibernation is a plot convenience to get people from point A to point B in a ship that doesn’t break the laws of physics. Here on Earth, though, it is well known that animals naturally entering a state of torpor during hibernation gain significant resistance to radiation.
The problem, of course, is that humans don’t hibernate, and no matter how hard people who work 100-hour weeks for Elon Musk try, sleeping for months on end is simply something we can’t do. However, a new study shows that it’s possible to induce this torpor state in animals that don’t naturally hibernate. By injecting rats with adenosine 5’-monophosphate monohydrate and keeping them in a room held at 16° C, an international team of scientists successfully induced a synthetic torpor state.
That’s not all they did: The scientists also exposed the hibernating rats to a large dose of radiation approximating that found in deep space. Which isn’t something we’d like to explain to our significant other when we got home from work. “So how was your day?” “Oh, I irradiated a bunch of sleeping rats. … Don’t worry they’re fine!” Which they were. Thanks to the hypoxic and hypothermic state, the tissue was spared damage from the high-energy ion radiation.
Obviously, there’s a big difference between a rat and a human and a lot of work to be done, but the study does show that artificial hibernation is possible. Perhaps one day we’ll be able to fall asleep and wake up light-years away under an alien sky, and we won’t be horrifically mutated or riddled with cancer. If, however, you find yourself in hibernation on your way to Jupiter (or Saturn) to investigate a mysterious black monolith, we suggest sleeping with one eye open and gripping your pillow tight.
What’s the opposite of an antibiotic?
Everyone knows that LOTME loves a good dichotomy: yin/yang, good/evil, heads/tails, particle/wave, peanut butter/jelly. They’re all great. We’re also big fans of microbiomes, particularly the gut microbiome. But what if we could combine the two? A healthy and nutritious story about the gut microbiome, with a dash of added dichotomy for flavor. Is such a thing even possible? Let’s find out.
First, we need an antibiotic, a drug designed to fight bacterial infections. If you’ve got strep throat, otitis media, or bubonic plague, there’s a good chance you will receive an antibiotic. That antibiotic will kill the bad bacteria that are making you sick, but it will also kill a lot of the good bacteria that inhabit your gut microbiome, which results in side effects like bloating and diarrhea.
It comes down to diversity, explained Elisa Marroquin, PhD, of Texas Christian University (Go Horned Frogs!): “In a human community, we need people that have different professions because we don’t all know how to do every single job. And so the same happens with bacteria. We need lots of different gut bacteria that know how to do different things.”
She and her colleagues reviewed 29 studies published over the last 7 years and found a way to preserve the diversity of a human gut microbiome that’s dealing with an antibiotic. Their solution? Prescribe a probiotic.
The way to fight the effects of stopping a bacterial infection is to provide food for what are, basically, other bacterial infections. Antibiotic/probiotic is a prescription for dichotomy, and it means we managed to combine gut microbiomes with a dichotomy. And you didn’t think we could do it.
The earphone of hearing aids
It’s estimated that up to 75% of people who need hearing aids don’t wear them. Why? Well, there’s the social stigma about not wanting to appear too old, and then there’s the cost factor.
Is there a cheaper, less stigmatizing option to amplify hearing? The answer, according to otolaryngologist Yen-fu Cheng, MD, of Taipei Veterans General Hospital and associates, is wireless earphones. AirPods, if you want to be brand specific.
Airpods can be on the more expensive side – running about $129 for AirPods 2 and $249 for AirPods Pro – but when compared with premium hearing aids ($10,000), or even basic aids (about $1,500), the Apple products come off inexpensive after all.
The team tested the premium and basic hearing aids against the AirPods 2 and the AirPod Pro using Apple’s Live Listen feature, which helps amplify sound through the company’s wireless earphones and iPhones and was initially designed to assist people with normal hearing in situations such as birdwatching.
The AirPods Pro worked just as well as the basic hearing aid but not quite as well as the premium hearing aid in a quiet setting, while the AirPods 2 performed the worst. When tested in a noisy setting, the AirPods Pro was pretty comparable to the premium hearing aid, as long as the noise came from a lateral direction. Neither of the AirPod models did as well as the hearing aids with head-on noises.
Wireless earbuds may not be the perfect solution from a clinical standpoint, but they’re a good start for people who don’t have access to hearing aids, Dr. Cheng noted.
So who says headphones damage your hearing? They might actually help.
Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the computer my soul to keep
Radiation is the boring hazard of space travel. No one dies in a space horror movie because they’ve been slowly exposed to too much cosmic radiation. It’s always “thrown out the airlock” this and “eaten by a xenomorph” that.
Radiation, however, is not something that can be ignored, but it turns out that a potential solution is another science fiction staple: artificial hibernation. Generally in sci-fi, hibernation is a plot convenience to get people from point A to point B in a ship that doesn’t break the laws of physics. Here on Earth, though, it is well known that animals naturally entering a state of torpor during hibernation gain significant resistance to radiation.
The problem, of course, is that humans don’t hibernate, and no matter how hard people who work 100-hour weeks for Elon Musk try, sleeping for months on end is simply something we can’t do. However, a new study shows that it’s possible to induce this torpor state in animals that don’t naturally hibernate. By injecting rats with adenosine 5’-monophosphate monohydrate and keeping them in a room held at 16° C, an international team of scientists successfully induced a synthetic torpor state.
That’s not all they did: The scientists also exposed the hibernating rats to a large dose of radiation approximating that found in deep space. Which isn’t something we’d like to explain to our significant other when we got home from work. “So how was your day?” “Oh, I irradiated a bunch of sleeping rats. … Don’t worry they’re fine!” Which they were. Thanks to the hypoxic and hypothermic state, the tissue was spared damage from the high-energy ion radiation.
Obviously, there’s a big difference between a rat and a human and a lot of work to be done, but the study does show that artificial hibernation is possible. Perhaps one day we’ll be able to fall asleep and wake up light-years away under an alien sky, and we won’t be horrifically mutated or riddled with cancer. If, however, you find yourself in hibernation on your way to Jupiter (or Saturn) to investigate a mysterious black monolith, we suggest sleeping with one eye open and gripping your pillow tight.
Have you heard the one about the emergency dept. that called 911?
Who watches the ED staff?
We heard a really great joke recently, one we simply have to share.
A man in Seattle went to a therapist. “I’m depressed,” he says. “Depressed, overworked, and lonely.”
“Oh dear, that sounds quite serious,” the therapist replies. “Tell me all about it.”
“Life just seems so harsh and cruel,” the man explains. “The pandemic has caused 300,000 health care workers across the country to leave the industry.”
“Such as the doctor typically filling this role in the joke,” the therapist, who is not licensed to prescribe medicine, nods.
“Exactly! And with so many respiratory viruses circulating and COVID still hanging around, emergency departments all over the country are facing massive backups. People are waiting outside the hospital for hours, hoping a bed will open up. Things got so bad at a hospital near Seattle in October that a nurse called 911 on her own ED. Told the 911 operator to send the fire department to help out, since they were ‘drowning’ and ‘in dire straits.’ They had 45 patients waiting and only five nurses to take care of them.”
“That is quite serious,” the therapist says, scribbling down unseen notes.
“The fire chief did send a crew out, and they cleaned rooms, changed beds, and took vitals for 90 minutes until the crisis passed,” the man says. “But it’s only a matter of time before it happens again. The hospital president said they have 300 open positions, and literally no one has applied to work in the emergency department. Not one person.”
“And how does all this make you feel?” the therapist asks.
“I feel all alone,” the man says. “This world feels so threatening, like no one cares, and I have no idea what will come next. It’s so vague and uncertain.”
“Ah, I think I have a solution for you,” the therapist says. “Go to the emergency department at St. Michael Medical Center in Silverdale, near Seattle. They’ll get your bad mood all settled, and they’ll prescribe you the medicine you need to relax.”
The man bursts into tears. “You don’t understand,” he says. “I am the emergency department at St. Michael Medical Center.”
Good joke. Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum. Curtains.
Myth buster: Supplements for cholesterol lowering
When it comes to that nasty low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, some people swear by supplements over statins as a holistic approach. Well, we’re busting the myth that those heart-healthy supplements are even effective in comparison.
Which supplements are we talking about? These six are always on sale at the pharmacy: fish oil, cinnamon, garlic, turmeric, plant sterols, and red yeast rice.
In a study presented at the recent American Heart Association scientific sessions, researchers compared these supplements’ effectiveness in lowering LDL cholesterol with low-dose rosuvastatin or placebo among 199 adults aged 40-75 years who didn’t have a personal history of cardiovascular disease.
Participants who took the statin for 28 days had an average of 24% decrease in total cholesterol and a 38% reduction in LDL cholesterol, while 28 days’ worth of the supplements did no better than the placebo in either measure. Compared with placebo, the plant sterols supplement notably lowered HDL cholesterol and the garlic supplement notably increased LDL cholesterol.
Even though there are other studies showing the validity of plant sterols and red yeast rice to lower LDL cholesterol, author Luke J. Laffin, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic noted that this study shows how supplement results can vary and that more research is needed to see the effect they truly have on cholesterol over time.
So, should you stop taking or recommending supplements for heart health or healthy cholesterol levels? Well, we’re not going to come to your house and raid your medicine cabinet, but the authors of this study are definitely not saying that you should rely on them.
Consider this myth mostly busted.
COVID dept. of unintended consequences, part 2
The surveillance testing programs conducted in the first year of the pandemic were, in theory, meant to keep everyone safer. Someone, apparently, forgot to explain that to the students of the University of Wyoming and the University of Idaho.
We’re all familiar with the drill: Students at the two schools had to undergo frequent COVID screening to keep the virus from spreading, thereby making everyone safer. Duck your head now, because here comes the unintended consequence.
The students who didn’t get COVID eventually, and perhaps not so surprisingly, “perceived that the mandatory testing policy decreased their risk of contracting COVID-19, and … this perception led to higher participation in COVID-risky events,” Chian Jones Ritten, PhD, and associates said in PNAS Nexus.
They surveyed 757 students from the Univ. of Washington and 517 from the Univ. of Idaho and found that those who were tested more frequently perceived that they were less likely to contract the virus. Those respondents also more frequently attended indoor gatherings, both small and large, and spent more time in restaurants and bars.
The investigators did not mince words: “From a public health standpoint, such behavior is problematic.”
Current parents/participants in the workforce might have other ideas about an appropriate response to COVID.
At this point, we probably should mention that appropriation is the second-most sincere form of flattery.
Who watches the ED staff?
We heard a really great joke recently, one we simply have to share.
A man in Seattle went to a therapist. “I’m depressed,” he says. “Depressed, overworked, and lonely.”
“Oh dear, that sounds quite serious,” the therapist replies. “Tell me all about it.”
“Life just seems so harsh and cruel,” the man explains. “The pandemic has caused 300,000 health care workers across the country to leave the industry.”
“Such as the doctor typically filling this role in the joke,” the therapist, who is not licensed to prescribe medicine, nods.
“Exactly! And with so many respiratory viruses circulating and COVID still hanging around, emergency departments all over the country are facing massive backups. People are waiting outside the hospital for hours, hoping a bed will open up. Things got so bad at a hospital near Seattle in October that a nurse called 911 on her own ED. Told the 911 operator to send the fire department to help out, since they were ‘drowning’ and ‘in dire straits.’ They had 45 patients waiting and only five nurses to take care of them.”
“That is quite serious,” the therapist says, scribbling down unseen notes.
“The fire chief did send a crew out, and they cleaned rooms, changed beds, and took vitals for 90 minutes until the crisis passed,” the man says. “But it’s only a matter of time before it happens again. The hospital president said they have 300 open positions, and literally no one has applied to work in the emergency department. Not one person.”
“And how does all this make you feel?” the therapist asks.
“I feel all alone,” the man says. “This world feels so threatening, like no one cares, and I have no idea what will come next. It’s so vague and uncertain.”
“Ah, I think I have a solution for you,” the therapist says. “Go to the emergency department at St. Michael Medical Center in Silverdale, near Seattle. They’ll get your bad mood all settled, and they’ll prescribe you the medicine you need to relax.”
The man bursts into tears. “You don’t understand,” he says. “I am the emergency department at St. Michael Medical Center.”
Good joke. Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum. Curtains.
Myth buster: Supplements for cholesterol lowering
When it comes to that nasty low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, some people swear by supplements over statins as a holistic approach. Well, we’re busting the myth that those heart-healthy supplements are even effective in comparison.
Which supplements are we talking about? These six are always on sale at the pharmacy: fish oil, cinnamon, garlic, turmeric, plant sterols, and red yeast rice.
In a study presented at the recent American Heart Association scientific sessions, researchers compared these supplements’ effectiveness in lowering LDL cholesterol with low-dose rosuvastatin or placebo among 199 adults aged 40-75 years who didn’t have a personal history of cardiovascular disease.
Participants who took the statin for 28 days had an average of 24% decrease in total cholesterol and a 38% reduction in LDL cholesterol, while 28 days’ worth of the supplements did no better than the placebo in either measure. Compared with placebo, the plant sterols supplement notably lowered HDL cholesterol and the garlic supplement notably increased LDL cholesterol.
Even though there are other studies showing the validity of plant sterols and red yeast rice to lower LDL cholesterol, author Luke J. Laffin, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic noted that this study shows how supplement results can vary and that more research is needed to see the effect they truly have on cholesterol over time.
So, should you stop taking or recommending supplements for heart health or healthy cholesterol levels? Well, we’re not going to come to your house and raid your medicine cabinet, but the authors of this study are definitely not saying that you should rely on them.
Consider this myth mostly busted.
COVID dept. of unintended consequences, part 2
The surveillance testing programs conducted in the first year of the pandemic were, in theory, meant to keep everyone safer. Someone, apparently, forgot to explain that to the students of the University of Wyoming and the University of Idaho.
We’re all familiar with the drill: Students at the two schools had to undergo frequent COVID screening to keep the virus from spreading, thereby making everyone safer. Duck your head now, because here comes the unintended consequence.
The students who didn’t get COVID eventually, and perhaps not so surprisingly, “perceived that the mandatory testing policy decreased their risk of contracting COVID-19, and … this perception led to higher participation in COVID-risky events,” Chian Jones Ritten, PhD, and associates said in PNAS Nexus.
They surveyed 757 students from the Univ. of Washington and 517 from the Univ. of Idaho and found that those who were tested more frequently perceived that they were less likely to contract the virus. Those respondents also more frequently attended indoor gatherings, both small and large, and spent more time in restaurants and bars.
The investigators did not mince words: “From a public health standpoint, such behavior is problematic.”
Current parents/participants in the workforce might have other ideas about an appropriate response to COVID.
At this point, we probably should mention that appropriation is the second-most sincere form of flattery.
Who watches the ED staff?
We heard a really great joke recently, one we simply have to share.
A man in Seattle went to a therapist. “I’m depressed,” he says. “Depressed, overworked, and lonely.”
“Oh dear, that sounds quite serious,” the therapist replies. “Tell me all about it.”
“Life just seems so harsh and cruel,” the man explains. “The pandemic has caused 300,000 health care workers across the country to leave the industry.”
“Such as the doctor typically filling this role in the joke,” the therapist, who is not licensed to prescribe medicine, nods.
“Exactly! And with so many respiratory viruses circulating and COVID still hanging around, emergency departments all over the country are facing massive backups. People are waiting outside the hospital for hours, hoping a bed will open up. Things got so bad at a hospital near Seattle in October that a nurse called 911 on her own ED. Told the 911 operator to send the fire department to help out, since they were ‘drowning’ and ‘in dire straits.’ They had 45 patients waiting and only five nurses to take care of them.”
“That is quite serious,” the therapist says, scribbling down unseen notes.
“The fire chief did send a crew out, and they cleaned rooms, changed beds, and took vitals for 90 minutes until the crisis passed,” the man says. “But it’s only a matter of time before it happens again. The hospital president said they have 300 open positions, and literally no one has applied to work in the emergency department. Not one person.”
“And how does all this make you feel?” the therapist asks.
“I feel all alone,” the man says. “This world feels so threatening, like no one cares, and I have no idea what will come next. It’s so vague and uncertain.”
“Ah, I think I have a solution for you,” the therapist says. “Go to the emergency department at St. Michael Medical Center in Silverdale, near Seattle. They’ll get your bad mood all settled, and they’ll prescribe you the medicine you need to relax.”
The man bursts into tears. “You don’t understand,” he says. “I am the emergency department at St. Michael Medical Center.”
Good joke. Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum. Curtains.
Myth buster: Supplements for cholesterol lowering
When it comes to that nasty low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, some people swear by supplements over statins as a holistic approach. Well, we’re busting the myth that those heart-healthy supplements are even effective in comparison.
Which supplements are we talking about? These six are always on sale at the pharmacy: fish oil, cinnamon, garlic, turmeric, plant sterols, and red yeast rice.
In a study presented at the recent American Heart Association scientific sessions, researchers compared these supplements’ effectiveness in lowering LDL cholesterol with low-dose rosuvastatin or placebo among 199 adults aged 40-75 years who didn’t have a personal history of cardiovascular disease.
Participants who took the statin for 28 days had an average of 24% decrease in total cholesterol and a 38% reduction in LDL cholesterol, while 28 days’ worth of the supplements did no better than the placebo in either measure. Compared with placebo, the plant sterols supplement notably lowered HDL cholesterol and the garlic supplement notably increased LDL cholesterol.
Even though there are other studies showing the validity of plant sterols and red yeast rice to lower LDL cholesterol, author Luke J. Laffin, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic noted that this study shows how supplement results can vary and that more research is needed to see the effect they truly have on cholesterol over time.
So, should you stop taking or recommending supplements for heart health or healthy cholesterol levels? Well, we’re not going to come to your house and raid your medicine cabinet, but the authors of this study are definitely not saying that you should rely on them.
Consider this myth mostly busted.
COVID dept. of unintended consequences, part 2
The surveillance testing programs conducted in the first year of the pandemic were, in theory, meant to keep everyone safer. Someone, apparently, forgot to explain that to the students of the University of Wyoming and the University of Idaho.
We’re all familiar with the drill: Students at the two schools had to undergo frequent COVID screening to keep the virus from spreading, thereby making everyone safer. Duck your head now, because here comes the unintended consequence.
The students who didn’t get COVID eventually, and perhaps not so surprisingly, “perceived that the mandatory testing policy decreased their risk of contracting COVID-19, and … this perception led to higher participation in COVID-risky events,” Chian Jones Ritten, PhD, and associates said in PNAS Nexus.
They surveyed 757 students from the Univ. of Washington and 517 from the Univ. of Idaho and found that those who were tested more frequently perceived that they were less likely to contract the virus. Those respondents also more frequently attended indoor gatherings, both small and large, and spent more time in restaurants and bars.
The investigators did not mince words: “From a public health standpoint, such behavior is problematic.”
Current parents/participants in the workforce might have other ideas about an appropriate response to COVID.
At this point, we probably should mention that appropriation is the second-most sincere form of flattery.
The truth of alcohol consequences
Bad drinking consequence No. 87: Joining the LOTME team
Alcohol and college students go together like peanut butter and jelly. Or peanut butter and chocolate. Or peanut butter and toothpaste. Peanut butter goes with a lot of things.
Naturally, when you combine alcohol and college students, bad decisions are sure to follow. But have you ever wondered just how many bad decisions alcohol causes? A team of researchers from Penn State University, the undisputed champion of poor drinking decisions (trust us, we know), sure has. They’ve even conducted a 4-year study of 1,700 students as they carved a drunken swath through the many fine local drinking establishments, such as East Halls or that one frat house that hosts medieval battle–style ping pong tournaments.
The students were surveyed twice a year throughout the study, and the researchers compiled a list of all the various consequences their subjects experienced. Ultimately, college students will experience an average of 102 consequences from drinking during their 4-year college careers, which is an impressive number. Try thinking up a hundred consequences for anything.
Some consequences are less common than others – we imagine “missing the Renaissance Faire because you felt drunker the morning after than while you were drinking” is pretty low on the list – but more than 96% of students reported that they’d experienced a hangover and that drinking had caused them to say or do embarrassing things. Also, more than 70% said they needed additional alcohol to feel any effect, a potential sign of alcohol use disorder.
Once they had their list, the researchers focused on 12 of the more common and severe consequences, such as blacking out, hangovers, and missing work/class, and asked the study participants how their parents would react to their drinking and those specific consequences. Students who believed their parents would disapprove of alcohol-related consequences actually experienced fewer consequences overall.
College students, it seems, really do care what their parents think, even if they don’t express it, the researchers said. That gives space for parents to offer advice about the consequences of hard drinking, making decisions while drunk, or bringing godawful Fireball whiskey to parties. Seriously, don’t do that. Stuff’s bad, and you should feel bad for bringing it. Your parents raised you better than that.
COVID ‘expert’ discusses data sharing
We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you this special news event. Elon Musk, the world’s second-most annoying human, is holding a press conference to discuss, of all things, COVID-19.
Reporter: Hey, Mr. Musketeer, what qualifies you to talk about a global pandemic?
EM: As the official king of the Twitterverse, I’m pretty much an expert on any topic.
Reporter: Okay then, Mr. Muskmelon, what can you tell us about the new study in Agricultural Economics, which looked at consumers’ knowledge of local COVID infection rates and their willingness to eat at restaurants?
EM: Well, I know that one of the investigators, Rigoberto Lopez, PhD, of the University of Connecticut, said “no news is bad news.” Restaurants located in cities where local regulations required COVID tracking recovered faster than those in areas that did not, according to data from 87 restaurants in 10 Chinese cities that were gathered between Dec. 1, 2019, and March 27, 2020. Having access to local infection rate data made customers more comfortable going out to eat, the investigators explained.
Second reporter: Interesting, Mr. Muskox, but how about this headline from CNN: “Workers flee China’s biggest iPhone factory over Covid outbreak”? Do you agree with analysts, who said that “the chaos at Zhengzhou could jeopardize Apple and Foxconn’s output in the coming weeks,” as CNN put it?
EM: I did see that a manager at Foxconn, which owns the factory and is known to its friends as Hon Hai Precision Industry, told a Chinese media outlet that “workers are panicking over the spread of the virus at the factory and lack of access to official information.” As we’ve already discussed, no news is bad news.
That’s all the time I have to chat with you today. I’m off to fire some more Twitter employees.
In case you hadn’t already guessed, Vlad Putin is officially more annoying than Elon Musk. We now return to this week’s typical LOTME shenanigans, already in progress.
The deadliest month
With climate change making the world hotter, leading to more heat stroke and organ failure, you would think the summer months would be the most deadly. In reality, though, it’s quite the opposite.
There are multiple factors that make January the most deadly month out of the year, as LiveScience discovered in a recent analysis.
Let’s go through them, shall we?
Respiratory viruses: Robert Glatter, MD, of Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, told LiveScence that winter is the time for illnesses like the flu, bacterial pneumonia, and RSV. Millions of people worldwide die from the flu, according to the CDC. And the World Health Organization reported lower respiratory infections as the fourth-leading cause of death worldwide before COVID came along.
Heart disease: Heart conditions are actually more fatal in the winter months, according to a study published in Circulation. The cold puts more stress on the heart to keep the body warm, which can be a challenge for people who already have preexisting heart conditions.
Space heaters: Dr. Glatter also told Live Science that the use of space heaters could be a factor in the cold winter months since they can lead to carbon monoxide poisoning and even fires. Silent killers.
Holiday season: A time for joy and merriment, certainly, but Christmas et al. have their downsides. By January we’re coming off a 3-month food and alcohol binge, which leads to cardiac stress. There’s also the psychological stress that comes with the season. Sometimes the most wonderful time of the year just isn’t.
So even though summer is hot, fall has hurricanes, and spring tends to have the highest suicide rate, winter still ends up being the deadliest season.
Bad drinking consequence No. 87: Joining the LOTME team
Alcohol and college students go together like peanut butter and jelly. Or peanut butter and chocolate. Or peanut butter and toothpaste. Peanut butter goes with a lot of things.
Naturally, when you combine alcohol and college students, bad decisions are sure to follow. But have you ever wondered just how many bad decisions alcohol causes? A team of researchers from Penn State University, the undisputed champion of poor drinking decisions (trust us, we know), sure has. They’ve even conducted a 4-year study of 1,700 students as they carved a drunken swath through the many fine local drinking establishments, such as East Halls or that one frat house that hosts medieval battle–style ping pong tournaments.
The students were surveyed twice a year throughout the study, and the researchers compiled a list of all the various consequences their subjects experienced. Ultimately, college students will experience an average of 102 consequences from drinking during their 4-year college careers, which is an impressive number. Try thinking up a hundred consequences for anything.
Some consequences are less common than others – we imagine “missing the Renaissance Faire because you felt drunker the morning after than while you were drinking” is pretty low on the list – but more than 96% of students reported that they’d experienced a hangover and that drinking had caused them to say or do embarrassing things. Also, more than 70% said they needed additional alcohol to feel any effect, a potential sign of alcohol use disorder.
Once they had their list, the researchers focused on 12 of the more common and severe consequences, such as blacking out, hangovers, and missing work/class, and asked the study participants how their parents would react to their drinking and those specific consequences. Students who believed their parents would disapprove of alcohol-related consequences actually experienced fewer consequences overall.
College students, it seems, really do care what their parents think, even if they don’t express it, the researchers said. That gives space for parents to offer advice about the consequences of hard drinking, making decisions while drunk, or bringing godawful Fireball whiskey to parties. Seriously, don’t do that. Stuff’s bad, and you should feel bad for bringing it. Your parents raised you better than that.
COVID ‘expert’ discusses data sharing
We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you this special news event. Elon Musk, the world’s second-most annoying human, is holding a press conference to discuss, of all things, COVID-19.
Reporter: Hey, Mr. Musketeer, what qualifies you to talk about a global pandemic?
EM: As the official king of the Twitterverse, I’m pretty much an expert on any topic.
Reporter: Okay then, Mr. Muskmelon, what can you tell us about the new study in Agricultural Economics, which looked at consumers’ knowledge of local COVID infection rates and their willingness to eat at restaurants?
EM: Well, I know that one of the investigators, Rigoberto Lopez, PhD, of the University of Connecticut, said “no news is bad news.” Restaurants located in cities where local regulations required COVID tracking recovered faster than those in areas that did not, according to data from 87 restaurants in 10 Chinese cities that were gathered between Dec. 1, 2019, and March 27, 2020. Having access to local infection rate data made customers more comfortable going out to eat, the investigators explained.
Second reporter: Interesting, Mr. Muskox, but how about this headline from CNN: “Workers flee China’s biggest iPhone factory over Covid outbreak”? Do you agree with analysts, who said that “the chaos at Zhengzhou could jeopardize Apple and Foxconn’s output in the coming weeks,” as CNN put it?
EM: I did see that a manager at Foxconn, which owns the factory and is known to its friends as Hon Hai Precision Industry, told a Chinese media outlet that “workers are panicking over the spread of the virus at the factory and lack of access to official information.” As we’ve already discussed, no news is bad news.
That’s all the time I have to chat with you today. I’m off to fire some more Twitter employees.
In case you hadn’t already guessed, Vlad Putin is officially more annoying than Elon Musk. We now return to this week’s typical LOTME shenanigans, already in progress.
The deadliest month
With climate change making the world hotter, leading to more heat stroke and organ failure, you would think the summer months would be the most deadly. In reality, though, it’s quite the opposite.
There are multiple factors that make January the most deadly month out of the year, as LiveScience discovered in a recent analysis.
Let’s go through them, shall we?
Respiratory viruses: Robert Glatter, MD, of Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, told LiveScence that winter is the time for illnesses like the flu, bacterial pneumonia, and RSV. Millions of people worldwide die from the flu, according to the CDC. And the World Health Organization reported lower respiratory infections as the fourth-leading cause of death worldwide before COVID came along.
Heart disease: Heart conditions are actually more fatal in the winter months, according to a study published in Circulation. The cold puts more stress on the heart to keep the body warm, which can be a challenge for people who already have preexisting heart conditions.
Space heaters: Dr. Glatter also told Live Science that the use of space heaters could be a factor in the cold winter months since they can lead to carbon monoxide poisoning and even fires. Silent killers.
Holiday season: A time for joy and merriment, certainly, but Christmas et al. have their downsides. By January we’re coming off a 3-month food and alcohol binge, which leads to cardiac stress. There’s also the psychological stress that comes with the season. Sometimes the most wonderful time of the year just isn’t.
So even though summer is hot, fall has hurricanes, and spring tends to have the highest suicide rate, winter still ends up being the deadliest season.
Bad drinking consequence No. 87: Joining the LOTME team
Alcohol and college students go together like peanut butter and jelly. Or peanut butter and chocolate. Or peanut butter and toothpaste. Peanut butter goes with a lot of things.
Naturally, when you combine alcohol and college students, bad decisions are sure to follow. But have you ever wondered just how many bad decisions alcohol causes? A team of researchers from Penn State University, the undisputed champion of poor drinking decisions (trust us, we know), sure has. They’ve even conducted a 4-year study of 1,700 students as they carved a drunken swath through the many fine local drinking establishments, such as East Halls or that one frat house that hosts medieval battle–style ping pong tournaments.
The students were surveyed twice a year throughout the study, and the researchers compiled a list of all the various consequences their subjects experienced. Ultimately, college students will experience an average of 102 consequences from drinking during their 4-year college careers, which is an impressive number. Try thinking up a hundred consequences for anything.
Some consequences are less common than others – we imagine “missing the Renaissance Faire because you felt drunker the morning after than while you were drinking” is pretty low on the list – but more than 96% of students reported that they’d experienced a hangover and that drinking had caused them to say or do embarrassing things. Also, more than 70% said they needed additional alcohol to feel any effect, a potential sign of alcohol use disorder.
Once they had their list, the researchers focused on 12 of the more common and severe consequences, such as blacking out, hangovers, and missing work/class, and asked the study participants how their parents would react to their drinking and those specific consequences. Students who believed their parents would disapprove of alcohol-related consequences actually experienced fewer consequences overall.
College students, it seems, really do care what their parents think, even if they don’t express it, the researchers said. That gives space for parents to offer advice about the consequences of hard drinking, making decisions while drunk, or bringing godawful Fireball whiskey to parties. Seriously, don’t do that. Stuff’s bad, and you should feel bad for bringing it. Your parents raised you better than that.
COVID ‘expert’ discusses data sharing
We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you this special news event. Elon Musk, the world’s second-most annoying human, is holding a press conference to discuss, of all things, COVID-19.
Reporter: Hey, Mr. Musketeer, what qualifies you to talk about a global pandemic?
EM: As the official king of the Twitterverse, I’m pretty much an expert on any topic.
Reporter: Okay then, Mr. Muskmelon, what can you tell us about the new study in Agricultural Economics, which looked at consumers’ knowledge of local COVID infection rates and their willingness to eat at restaurants?
EM: Well, I know that one of the investigators, Rigoberto Lopez, PhD, of the University of Connecticut, said “no news is bad news.” Restaurants located in cities where local regulations required COVID tracking recovered faster than those in areas that did not, according to data from 87 restaurants in 10 Chinese cities that were gathered between Dec. 1, 2019, and March 27, 2020. Having access to local infection rate data made customers more comfortable going out to eat, the investigators explained.
Second reporter: Interesting, Mr. Muskox, but how about this headline from CNN: “Workers flee China’s biggest iPhone factory over Covid outbreak”? Do you agree with analysts, who said that “the chaos at Zhengzhou could jeopardize Apple and Foxconn’s output in the coming weeks,” as CNN put it?
EM: I did see that a manager at Foxconn, which owns the factory and is known to its friends as Hon Hai Precision Industry, told a Chinese media outlet that “workers are panicking over the spread of the virus at the factory and lack of access to official information.” As we’ve already discussed, no news is bad news.
That’s all the time I have to chat with you today. I’m off to fire some more Twitter employees.
In case you hadn’t already guessed, Vlad Putin is officially more annoying than Elon Musk. We now return to this week’s typical LOTME shenanigans, already in progress.
The deadliest month
With climate change making the world hotter, leading to more heat stroke and organ failure, you would think the summer months would be the most deadly. In reality, though, it’s quite the opposite.
There are multiple factors that make January the most deadly month out of the year, as LiveScience discovered in a recent analysis.
Let’s go through them, shall we?
Respiratory viruses: Robert Glatter, MD, of Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, told LiveScence that winter is the time for illnesses like the flu, bacterial pneumonia, and RSV. Millions of people worldwide die from the flu, according to the CDC. And the World Health Organization reported lower respiratory infections as the fourth-leading cause of death worldwide before COVID came along.
Heart disease: Heart conditions are actually more fatal in the winter months, according to a study published in Circulation. The cold puts more stress on the heart to keep the body warm, which can be a challenge for people who already have preexisting heart conditions.
Space heaters: Dr. Glatter also told Live Science that the use of space heaters could be a factor in the cold winter months since they can lead to carbon monoxide poisoning and even fires. Silent killers.
Holiday season: A time for joy and merriment, certainly, but Christmas et al. have their downsides. By January we’re coming off a 3-month food and alcohol binge, which leads to cardiac stress. There’s also the psychological stress that comes with the season. Sometimes the most wonderful time of the year just isn’t.
So even though summer is hot, fall has hurricanes, and spring tends to have the highest suicide rate, winter still ends up being the deadliest season.
Many specialists are on the wrong side of the patient-jargon relationship
Doctor, doctor, gimme the news. I got a bad case of misidentifying you
There are a lot of medical specialties out there. A lot. Everything from allergists to urologists, with something like 150 subspecialties grouped in among the larger specialties. Can you name every one? Do you know what they do?
The point is, telling a patient or anyone in the general public that you’re an ophthalmologist may not be as helpful as you might think, if a recent study is to be believed. In a survey of 204 adults, conducted at the Minnesota State Fair of all places, researchers asked volunteers to define 14 different specialties, as well as five medical seniority titles.
The results were less than stellar. While more than 90% of people correctly defined what cardiologists and dermatologists do, 6 of the other 12 specialists were correctly identified by less than half of those surveyed. Nephrology was at the bottom, correctly identified by just 20% of the fair-attending public, followed by internists (21%), intensivists (29%), hospitalists (31%), pulmonologists (43%), and neonatologists at 48%. The hospitalists are particularly concerning. They’re doctors, but in hospitals. How hard is that? (Yes, it’s obviously more complicated than that, but still.)
The general public didn’t fare much better when it came to correctly lining up the order of progression from medical student to attending. Just 12% managed to place all five in the correct order of med student, intern, senior resident, fellow, then attending, with senior resident proving especially troublesome. More than 40% put senior resident at the end, compared with 27% for attending. Which does make a certain amount of sense, since it has senior in the name.
While the results speak for themselves – maybe elaborate on what the heck your fancy title actually means – it’s too bad the researchers didn’t throw in something really tricky. If two-thirds of the population can’t identify a hospitalist, just imagine how many people would misidentify an otolaryngologist.
Beach-to-table sand could fight obesity
People are always looking for the new weight loss solution. Whether it’s to just look good in a new pair of jeans or reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, there are millions of diets and exercise routines out here. We’re here to tell you that the next new therapy to reduce fat comes from a very unsuspecting place: Sand.
Like sand from the beach and desert, sand? Well, yes and no.
The research involved engineered porous silica particles made from sand that are designed to have a high surface area. Investigators used a two-step GI model in which gastric digestion was modeled for 30 minutes, followed by a 60-minute intestinal phase, to show that the porous silica particles helped prevent fat and sugar adsorption within the GI tract.
By mimicking the gastrointestinal environment during digestion of a high-fat, high-carb meal, the researchers found that the porous silica created an “anti-obesity effect” by restricting the adsorption of those fats and carbohydrates.
Okay, but how is that on the tummy? Much gentler on the stomach than a drug such as orlistat, said senior researcher Paul Joyce, PhD, of the University of South Australia, Adelaide, who noted the lack of effective therapies without side effects, such as bloating, diarrhea, and abdominal pain, that deter people from treatment.
Obesity affects over 1.9 billion people worldwide, so the researchers think this could be a breakthrough. Reducing obesity may be one of the most preventable ways to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and other weight-related chronic conditions. A treatment solution this simple could be the answer to this global health crisis.
Who would have thought the solution would be as simple as sand? But how would the sand get in our stomachs? Do we sprinkle it on our food? Mix it in during cooking? Or will the sand come in pill form? We sure hope it’s that third one.
I am Reliebo. I am here to help you
Halloween is almost here, and the LOTME staff has been trying to make the office look as scary as possible: Headless vampires, ghost clowns, Ted Cruz, gray tombstones, pink hearts, green clovers, red balloons. Wait a second, those last three are Lucky Charms marshmallows, aren’t they? We’ll use those some other time.
What are we not using to decorate? Well, besides marshmallows from cereal, we’re not using Reliebo. That’s what we’re not using. Reliebo is a cute little fuzzy robot, and is not at all scary. Reliebo was designed to be the opposite of scary. Reliebo “may reduce fear as well as alleviate the perception of pain during medical treatments, including vaccinations,” senior author Fumihide Tanaka, PhD, of the University of Tsukuba (Japan) said in a written statement.
The soft, fur-covered robot contains small airbags that can inflate in response to hand movements. When study participants were subjected to a moderate heat stimulus on one arm, those who held the robot with the other arm experienced less pain than those who did not have a Reliebo.
The results also were encouraging when Dr. Tanaka and associates measured the levels of oxytocin and cortisol (biomarkers for stress) from the subjects’ saliva samples and evaluated their fear of injections and their psychological state before and after the experiments.
After looking at that photo of Reliebo for a while, though, we have to admit that we’re having a bit of a rethink about its cuteness. Is it cute, or weird-looking? An office full of fuzzy little inflating robots just could be seriously creepy. Please don’t tell the rest of the staff about this. We want to surprise them on Monday.
Doctor, doctor, gimme the news. I got a bad case of misidentifying you
There are a lot of medical specialties out there. A lot. Everything from allergists to urologists, with something like 150 subspecialties grouped in among the larger specialties. Can you name every one? Do you know what they do?
The point is, telling a patient or anyone in the general public that you’re an ophthalmologist may not be as helpful as you might think, if a recent study is to be believed. In a survey of 204 adults, conducted at the Minnesota State Fair of all places, researchers asked volunteers to define 14 different specialties, as well as five medical seniority titles.
The results were less than stellar. While more than 90% of people correctly defined what cardiologists and dermatologists do, 6 of the other 12 specialists were correctly identified by less than half of those surveyed. Nephrology was at the bottom, correctly identified by just 20% of the fair-attending public, followed by internists (21%), intensivists (29%), hospitalists (31%), pulmonologists (43%), and neonatologists at 48%. The hospitalists are particularly concerning. They’re doctors, but in hospitals. How hard is that? (Yes, it’s obviously more complicated than that, but still.)
The general public didn’t fare much better when it came to correctly lining up the order of progression from medical student to attending. Just 12% managed to place all five in the correct order of med student, intern, senior resident, fellow, then attending, with senior resident proving especially troublesome. More than 40% put senior resident at the end, compared with 27% for attending. Which does make a certain amount of sense, since it has senior in the name.
While the results speak for themselves – maybe elaborate on what the heck your fancy title actually means – it’s too bad the researchers didn’t throw in something really tricky. If two-thirds of the population can’t identify a hospitalist, just imagine how many people would misidentify an otolaryngologist.
Beach-to-table sand could fight obesity
People are always looking for the new weight loss solution. Whether it’s to just look good in a new pair of jeans or reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, there are millions of diets and exercise routines out here. We’re here to tell you that the next new therapy to reduce fat comes from a very unsuspecting place: Sand.
Like sand from the beach and desert, sand? Well, yes and no.
The research involved engineered porous silica particles made from sand that are designed to have a high surface area. Investigators used a two-step GI model in which gastric digestion was modeled for 30 minutes, followed by a 60-minute intestinal phase, to show that the porous silica particles helped prevent fat and sugar adsorption within the GI tract.
By mimicking the gastrointestinal environment during digestion of a high-fat, high-carb meal, the researchers found that the porous silica created an “anti-obesity effect” by restricting the adsorption of those fats and carbohydrates.
Okay, but how is that on the tummy? Much gentler on the stomach than a drug such as orlistat, said senior researcher Paul Joyce, PhD, of the University of South Australia, Adelaide, who noted the lack of effective therapies without side effects, such as bloating, diarrhea, and abdominal pain, that deter people from treatment.
Obesity affects over 1.9 billion people worldwide, so the researchers think this could be a breakthrough. Reducing obesity may be one of the most preventable ways to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and other weight-related chronic conditions. A treatment solution this simple could be the answer to this global health crisis.
Who would have thought the solution would be as simple as sand? But how would the sand get in our stomachs? Do we sprinkle it on our food? Mix it in during cooking? Or will the sand come in pill form? We sure hope it’s that third one.
I am Reliebo. I am here to help you
Halloween is almost here, and the LOTME staff has been trying to make the office look as scary as possible: Headless vampires, ghost clowns, Ted Cruz, gray tombstones, pink hearts, green clovers, red balloons. Wait a second, those last three are Lucky Charms marshmallows, aren’t they? We’ll use those some other time.
What are we not using to decorate? Well, besides marshmallows from cereal, we’re not using Reliebo. That’s what we’re not using. Reliebo is a cute little fuzzy robot, and is not at all scary. Reliebo was designed to be the opposite of scary. Reliebo “may reduce fear as well as alleviate the perception of pain during medical treatments, including vaccinations,” senior author Fumihide Tanaka, PhD, of the University of Tsukuba (Japan) said in a written statement.
The soft, fur-covered robot contains small airbags that can inflate in response to hand movements. When study participants were subjected to a moderate heat stimulus on one arm, those who held the robot with the other arm experienced less pain than those who did not have a Reliebo.
The results also were encouraging when Dr. Tanaka and associates measured the levels of oxytocin and cortisol (biomarkers for stress) from the subjects’ saliva samples and evaluated their fear of injections and their psychological state before and after the experiments.
After looking at that photo of Reliebo for a while, though, we have to admit that we’re having a bit of a rethink about its cuteness. Is it cute, or weird-looking? An office full of fuzzy little inflating robots just could be seriously creepy. Please don’t tell the rest of the staff about this. We want to surprise them on Monday.
Doctor, doctor, gimme the news. I got a bad case of misidentifying you
There are a lot of medical specialties out there. A lot. Everything from allergists to urologists, with something like 150 subspecialties grouped in among the larger specialties. Can you name every one? Do you know what they do?
The point is, telling a patient or anyone in the general public that you’re an ophthalmologist may not be as helpful as you might think, if a recent study is to be believed. In a survey of 204 adults, conducted at the Minnesota State Fair of all places, researchers asked volunteers to define 14 different specialties, as well as five medical seniority titles.
The results were less than stellar. While more than 90% of people correctly defined what cardiologists and dermatologists do, 6 of the other 12 specialists were correctly identified by less than half of those surveyed. Nephrology was at the bottom, correctly identified by just 20% of the fair-attending public, followed by internists (21%), intensivists (29%), hospitalists (31%), pulmonologists (43%), and neonatologists at 48%. The hospitalists are particularly concerning. They’re doctors, but in hospitals. How hard is that? (Yes, it’s obviously more complicated than that, but still.)
The general public didn’t fare much better when it came to correctly lining up the order of progression from medical student to attending. Just 12% managed to place all five in the correct order of med student, intern, senior resident, fellow, then attending, with senior resident proving especially troublesome. More than 40% put senior resident at the end, compared with 27% for attending. Which does make a certain amount of sense, since it has senior in the name.
While the results speak for themselves – maybe elaborate on what the heck your fancy title actually means – it’s too bad the researchers didn’t throw in something really tricky. If two-thirds of the population can’t identify a hospitalist, just imagine how many people would misidentify an otolaryngologist.
Beach-to-table sand could fight obesity
People are always looking for the new weight loss solution. Whether it’s to just look good in a new pair of jeans or reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, there are millions of diets and exercise routines out here. We’re here to tell you that the next new therapy to reduce fat comes from a very unsuspecting place: Sand.
Like sand from the beach and desert, sand? Well, yes and no.
The research involved engineered porous silica particles made from sand that are designed to have a high surface area. Investigators used a two-step GI model in which gastric digestion was modeled for 30 minutes, followed by a 60-minute intestinal phase, to show that the porous silica particles helped prevent fat and sugar adsorption within the GI tract.
By mimicking the gastrointestinal environment during digestion of a high-fat, high-carb meal, the researchers found that the porous silica created an “anti-obesity effect” by restricting the adsorption of those fats and carbohydrates.
Okay, but how is that on the tummy? Much gentler on the stomach than a drug such as orlistat, said senior researcher Paul Joyce, PhD, of the University of South Australia, Adelaide, who noted the lack of effective therapies without side effects, such as bloating, diarrhea, and abdominal pain, that deter people from treatment.
Obesity affects over 1.9 billion people worldwide, so the researchers think this could be a breakthrough. Reducing obesity may be one of the most preventable ways to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and other weight-related chronic conditions. A treatment solution this simple could be the answer to this global health crisis.
Who would have thought the solution would be as simple as sand? But how would the sand get in our stomachs? Do we sprinkle it on our food? Mix it in during cooking? Or will the sand come in pill form? We sure hope it’s that third one.
I am Reliebo. I am here to help you
Halloween is almost here, and the LOTME staff has been trying to make the office look as scary as possible: Headless vampires, ghost clowns, Ted Cruz, gray tombstones, pink hearts, green clovers, red balloons. Wait a second, those last three are Lucky Charms marshmallows, aren’t they? We’ll use those some other time.
What are we not using to decorate? Well, besides marshmallows from cereal, we’re not using Reliebo. That’s what we’re not using. Reliebo is a cute little fuzzy robot, and is not at all scary. Reliebo was designed to be the opposite of scary. Reliebo “may reduce fear as well as alleviate the perception of pain during medical treatments, including vaccinations,” senior author Fumihide Tanaka, PhD, of the University of Tsukuba (Japan) said in a written statement.
The soft, fur-covered robot contains small airbags that can inflate in response to hand movements. When study participants were subjected to a moderate heat stimulus on one arm, those who held the robot with the other arm experienced less pain than those who did not have a Reliebo.
The results also were encouraging when Dr. Tanaka and associates measured the levels of oxytocin and cortisol (biomarkers for stress) from the subjects’ saliva samples and evaluated their fear of injections and their psychological state before and after the experiments.
After looking at that photo of Reliebo for a while, though, we have to admit that we’re having a bit of a rethink about its cuteness. Is it cute, or weird-looking? An office full of fuzzy little inflating robots just could be seriously creepy. Please don’t tell the rest of the staff about this. We want to surprise them on Monday.
This brain surgery was BYOS: Bring your own saxophone
Tumor vs. saxophone: The surgical grudge match
Brain surgery is a notoriously difficult task. There’s a reason we say, “Well, at least it’s not brain surgery” when we’re trying to convince someone that a task isn’t that tough. Make one wrong incision, cut the wrong neuron, and it’s goodbye higher cognitive function. And most people appreciate thinking. Crazy, right?
One would imagine that the act of brain surgery would become even more difficult when the patient brings his saxophone and plays it randomly throughout the operation. It’s a hospital, after all, not a jazz club. Patients don’t get to play musical instruments during other surgeries. Why should brain surgery patients get special treatment?
As it turns out, the musical performance was actually quite helpful. A man in Italy had a brain tumor in a particularly complex area, and he’s left-handed, which apparently makes the brain’s neural pathways much more complicated. Plus, he insisted that he retain his musical ability after the surgery. So he and his medical team had a crazy thought: Why not play the saxophone throughout the surgery? After all, according to head surgeon Christian Brogna, MD, playing an instrument means you understand music, which tests many higher cognitive functions such as coordination, mathematics, and memory.
And so, at various points throughout the 9-hour surgery, the patient played his saxophone for his doctors. Doing so allowed the surgeons to map the patient’s brain in a more complete and personalized fashion. With that extra knowledge, they were able to successfully remove the tumor while maintaining the patient’s musical ability, and the patient was discharged on Oct. 13, just 3 days after his operation.
While we’re happy the patient recovered, we do have to question his choice of music. During the surgery, he played the theme to the 1970 movie “Love Story” and the Italian national anthem. Perfectly fine pieces, no doubt, but the saxophone solo in “Jungleland” exists. And we could listen to that for 9 hours straight. In fact, we do that every Friday in the LOTME office.
Basketball has the Big Dance. Mosquitoes get the Big Sniff
In this week’s installment of our seemingly never-ending series, “Mosquitoes and the scientists who love them,” we visit The Rockefeller University in New York, where the olfactory capabilities of Aedes Aegypti – the primary vector species for Zika, dengue, yellow fever, and chikungunya – became the subject of a round robin–style tournament.
First things first, though. If you’re going to test mosquito noses, you have to give them something to smell. The researchers enrolled eight humans who were willing to wear nylon stockings on their forearms for 6 hours a day for multiple days. “Over the next few years, the researchers tested the nylons against each other in all possible pairings,” Leslie B. Vosshall, PhD, and associates said in a statement from the university. In other words, mosquito March Madness.
Nylons from different participants were hooked up in pairs to an olfactometer assay consisting of a plexiglass chamber divided into two tubes, each ending in a box that held a stocking. The mosquitoes were placed in the main chamber and observed as they flew down the tubes toward one stocking or the other.
Eventually, the “winner” of the “tournament” was Subject 33. And no, we don’t know why there was a Subject 33 since the study involved only eight participants. We do know that the nylons worn by Subject 33 were “four times more attractive to the mosquitoes than the next most-attractive study participant, and an astonishing 100 times more appealing than the least attractive, Subject 19,” according to the written statement.
Chemical analysis identified 50 molecular compounds that were elevated in the sebum of the high-attracting participants, and eventually the investigators discovered that mosquito magnets produced carboxylic acids at much higher levels than the less-attractive volunteers.
We could go on about the research team genetically engineering mosquitoes without odor receptors, but we have to save something for later. Tune in again next week for another exciting episode of “Mosquitoes and the scientists who love them.”
Are women better with words?
Men vs. Women is probably the oldest argument in the book, but there may now be movement. Researchers have been able not only to shift the advantage toward women, but also to use that knowledge to medical advantage.
When it comes to the matter of words and remembering them, women apparently have men beat. The margin is small, said lead author Marco Hirnstein, PhD, of the University of Bergen, Norway, but, after performing a meta-analysis of 168 published studies and PhD theses involving more than 350,000 participants, it’s pretty clear. The research supports women’s advantage over men in recall, verbal fluency (categorical and phonemic), and recognition.
So how is this information useful from a medical standpoint?
Dr. Hirnstein and colleagues suggested that this information can help in interpreting diagnostic assessment results. The example given was dementia diagnosis. Since women are underdiagnosed because their baseline exceeds average while men are overdiagnosed, taking gender and performance into account could clear up or catch cases that might otherwise slip through the cracks.
Now, let’s just put this part of the debate to rest and take this not only as a win for women but for science as well.
Tumor vs. saxophone: The surgical grudge match
Brain surgery is a notoriously difficult task. There’s a reason we say, “Well, at least it’s not brain surgery” when we’re trying to convince someone that a task isn’t that tough. Make one wrong incision, cut the wrong neuron, and it’s goodbye higher cognitive function. And most people appreciate thinking. Crazy, right?
One would imagine that the act of brain surgery would become even more difficult when the patient brings his saxophone and plays it randomly throughout the operation. It’s a hospital, after all, not a jazz club. Patients don’t get to play musical instruments during other surgeries. Why should brain surgery patients get special treatment?
As it turns out, the musical performance was actually quite helpful. A man in Italy had a brain tumor in a particularly complex area, and he’s left-handed, which apparently makes the brain’s neural pathways much more complicated. Plus, he insisted that he retain his musical ability after the surgery. So he and his medical team had a crazy thought: Why not play the saxophone throughout the surgery? After all, according to head surgeon Christian Brogna, MD, playing an instrument means you understand music, which tests many higher cognitive functions such as coordination, mathematics, and memory.
And so, at various points throughout the 9-hour surgery, the patient played his saxophone for his doctors. Doing so allowed the surgeons to map the patient’s brain in a more complete and personalized fashion. With that extra knowledge, they were able to successfully remove the tumor while maintaining the patient’s musical ability, and the patient was discharged on Oct. 13, just 3 days after his operation.
While we’re happy the patient recovered, we do have to question his choice of music. During the surgery, he played the theme to the 1970 movie “Love Story” and the Italian national anthem. Perfectly fine pieces, no doubt, but the saxophone solo in “Jungleland” exists. And we could listen to that for 9 hours straight. In fact, we do that every Friday in the LOTME office.
Basketball has the Big Dance. Mosquitoes get the Big Sniff
In this week’s installment of our seemingly never-ending series, “Mosquitoes and the scientists who love them,” we visit The Rockefeller University in New York, where the olfactory capabilities of Aedes Aegypti – the primary vector species for Zika, dengue, yellow fever, and chikungunya – became the subject of a round robin–style tournament.
First things first, though. If you’re going to test mosquito noses, you have to give them something to smell. The researchers enrolled eight humans who were willing to wear nylon stockings on their forearms for 6 hours a day for multiple days. “Over the next few years, the researchers tested the nylons against each other in all possible pairings,” Leslie B. Vosshall, PhD, and associates said in a statement from the university. In other words, mosquito March Madness.
Nylons from different participants were hooked up in pairs to an olfactometer assay consisting of a plexiglass chamber divided into two tubes, each ending in a box that held a stocking. The mosquitoes were placed in the main chamber and observed as they flew down the tubes toward one stocking or the other.
Eventually, the “winner” of the “tournament” was Subject 33. And no, we don’t know why there was a Subject 33 since the study involved only eight participants. We do know that the nylons worn by Subject 33 were “four times more attractive to the mosquitoes than the next most-attractive study participant, and an astonishing 100 times more appealing than the least attractive, Subject 19,” according to the written statement.
Chemical analysis identified 50 molecular compounds that were elevated in the sebum of the high-attracting participants, and eventually the investigators discovered that mosquito magnets produced carboxylic acids at much higher levels than the less-attractive volunteers.
We could go on about the research team genetically engineering mosquitoes without odor receptors, but we have to save something for later. Tune in again next week for another exciting episode of “Mosquitoes and the scientists who love them.”
Are women better with words?
Men vs. Women is probably the oldest argument in the book, but there may now be movement. Researchers have been able not only to shift the advantage toward women, but also to use that knowledge to medical advantage.
When it comes to the matter of words and remembering them, women apparently have men beat. The margin is small, said lead author Marco Hirnstein, PhD, of the University of Bergen, Norway, but, after performing a meta-analysis of 168 published studies and PhD theses involving more than 350,000 participants, it’s pretty clear. The research supports women’s advantage over men in recall, verbal fluency (categorical and phonemic), and recognition.
So how is this information useful from a medical standpoint?
Dr. Hirnstein and colleagues suggested that this information can help in interpreting diagnostic assessment results. The example given was dementia diagnosis. Since women are underdiagnosed because their baseline exceeds average while men are overdiagnosed, taking gender and performance into account could clear up or catch cases that might otherwise slip through the cracks.
Now, let’s just put this part of the debate to rest and take this not only as a win for women but for science as well.
Tumor vs. saxophone: The surgical grudge match
Brain surgery is a notoriously difficult task. There’s a reason we say, “Well, at least it’s not brain surgery” when we’re trying to convince someone that a task isn’t that tough. Make one wrong incision, cut the wrong neuron, and it’s goodbye higher cognitive function. And most people appreciate thinking. Crazy, right?
One would imagine that the act of brain surgery would become even more difficult when the patient brings his saxophone and plays it randomly throughout the operation. It’s a hospital, after all, not a jazz club. Patients don’t get to play musical instruments during other surgeries. Why should brain surgery patients get special treatment?
As it turns out, the musical performance was actually quite helpful. A man in Italy had a brain tumor in a particularly complex area, and he’s left-handed, which apparently makes the brain’s neural pathways much more complicated. Plus, he insisted that he retain his musical ability after the surgery. So he and his medical team had a crazy thought: Why not play the saxophone throughout the surgery? After all, according to head surgeon Christian Brogna, MD, playing an instrument means you understand music, which tests many higher cognitive functions such as coordination, mathematics, and memory.
And so, at various points throughout the 9-hour surgery, the patient played his saxophone for his doctors. Doing so allowed the surgeons to map the patient’s brain in a more complete and personalized fashion. With that extra knowledge, they were able to successfully remove the tumor while maintaining the patient’s musical ability, and the patient was discharged on Oct. 13, just 3 days after his operation.
While we’re happy the patient recovered, we do have to question his choice of music. During the surgery, he played the theme to the 1970 movie “Love Story” and the Italian national anthem. Perfectly fine pieces, no doubt, but the saxophone solo in “Jungleland” exists. And we could listen to that for 9 hours straight. In fact, we do that every Friday in the LOTME office.
Basketball has the Big Dance. Mosquitoes get the Big Sniff
In this week’s installment of our seemingly never-ending series, “Mosquitoes and the scientists who love them,” we visit The Rockefeller University in New York, where the olfactory capabilities of Aedes Aegypti – the primary vector species for Zika, dengue, yellow fever, and chikungunya – became the subject of a round robin–style tournament.
First things first, though. If you’re going to test mosquito noses, you have to give them something to smell. The researchers enrolled eight humans who were willing to wear nylon stockings on their forearms for 6 hours a day for multiple days. “Over the next few years, the researchers tested the nylons against each other in all possible pairings,” Leslie B. Vosshall, PhD, and associates said in a statement from the university. In other words, mosquito March Madness.
Nylons from different participants were hooked up in pairs to an olfactometer assay consisting of a plexiglass chamber divided into two tubes, each ending in a box that held a stocking. The mosquitoes were placed in the main chamber and observed as they flew down the tubes toward one stocking or the other.
Eventually, the “winner” of the “tournament” was Subject 33. And no, we don’t know why there was a Subject 33 since the study involved only eight participants. We do know that the nylons worn by Subject 33 were “four times more attractive to the mosquitoes than the next most-attractive study participant, and an astonishing 100 times more appealing than the least attractive, Subject 19,” according to the written statement.
Chemical analysis identified 50 molecular compounds that were elevated in the sebum of the high-attracting participants, and eventually the investigators discovered that mosquito magnets produced carboxylic acids at much higher levels than the less-attractive volunteers.
We could go on about the research team genetically engineering mosquitoes without odor receptors, but we have to save something for later. Tune in again next week for another exciting episode of “Mosquitoes and the scientists who love them.”
Are women better with words?
Men vs. Women is probably the oldest argument in the book, but there may now be movement. Researchers have been able not only to shift the advantage toward women, but also to use that knowledge to medical advantage.
When it comes to the matter of words and remembering them, women apparently have men beat. The margin is small, said lead author Marco Hirnstein, PhD, of the University of Bergen, Norway, but, after performing a meta-analysis of 168 published studies and PhD theses involving more than 350,000 participants, it’s pretty clear. The research supports women’s advantage over men in recall, verbal fluency (categorical and phonemic), and recognition.
So how is this information useful from a medical standpoint?
Dr. Hirnstein and colleagues suggested that this information can help in interpreting diagnostic assessment results. The example given was dementia diagnosis. Since women are underdiagnosed because their baseline exceeds average while men are overdiagnosed, taking gender and performance into account could clear up or catch cases that might otherwise slip through the cracks.
Now, let’s just put this part of the debate to rest and take this not only as a win for women but for science as well.
Keep menstrual cramps away the dietary prevention way
Foods for thought: Menstrual cramp prevention
For those who menstruate, it’s typical for that time of the month to bring cravings for things that may give a serotonin boost that eases the rise in stress hormones. Chocolate and other foods high in sugar fall into that category, but they could actually be adding to the problem.
About 90% of adolescent girls have menstrual pain, and it’s the leading cause of school absences for the demographic. Muscle relaxers and PMS pills are usually the recommended solution to alleviating menstrual cramps, but what if the patient doesn’t want to take any medicine?
Serah Sannoh of Rutgers University wanted to find another way to relieve her menstrual pains. The literature review she presented at the annual meeting of the North American Menopause Society found multiple studies that examined dietary patterns that resulted in menstrual pain.
In Ms. Sannoh’s analysis, she looked at how certain foods have an effect on cramps. Do they contribute to the pain or reduce it? Diets high in processed foods, oils, sugars, salt, and omega-6 fatty acids promote inflammation in the muscles around the uterus. Thus, cramps.
The answer, sometimes, is not to add a medicine but to change our daily practices, she suggested. Foods high in omega-3 fatty acids helped reduce pain, and those who practiced a vegan diet had the lowest muscle inflammation rates. So more salmon and fewer Swedish Fish.
Stage 1 of the robot apocalypse is already upon us
The mere mention of a robot apocalypse is enough to conjure images of terrifying robot soldiers with Austrian accents harvesting and killing humanity while the survivors live blissfully in a simulation and do low-gravity kung fu with high-profile Hollywood actors. They’ll even take over the navy.
Reality is often less exciting than the movies, but rest assured, the robots will not be denied their dominion of Earth. Our future robot overlords are simply taking a more subtle, less dramatic route toward their ultimate subjugation of mankind: They’re making us all sad and burned out.
The research pulls from work conducted in multiple countries to paint a picture of a humanity filled with anxiety about jobs as robotic automation grows more common. In India, a survey of automobile manufacturing works showed that working alongside industrial robots was linked with greater reports of burnout and workplace incivility. In Singapore, a group of college students randomly assigned to read one of three articles – one about the use of robots in business, a generic article about robots, or an article unrelated to robots – were then surveyed about their job security concerns. Three guesses as to which group was most worried.
In addition, the researchers analyzed 185 U.S. metropolitan areas for robot prevalence alongside use of job-recruiting websites and found that the more robots a city used, the more common job searches were. Unemployment rates weren’t affected, suggesting people had job insecurity because of robots. Sure, there could be other, nonrobotic reasons for this, but that’s no fun. We’re here because we fear our future android rulers.
It’s not all doom and gloom, fortunately. In an online experiment, the study authors found that self-affirmation exercises, such as writing down characteristics or values important to us, can overcome the existential fears and lessen concern about robots in the workplace. One of the authors noted that, while some fear is justified, “media reports on new technologies like robots and algorithms tend to be apocalyptic in nature, so people may develop an irrational fear about them.”
Oops. Our bad.
Apocalypse, stage 2: Leaping oral superorganisms
The terms of our secret agreement with the shadowy-but-powerful dental-industrial complex stipulate that LOTME can only cover tooth-related news once a year. This is that once a year.
Since we’ve already dealt with a robot apocalypse, how about a sci-fi horror story? A story with a “cross-kingdom partnership” in which assemblages of bacteria and fungi perform feats greater than either could achieve on its own. A story in which new microscopy technologies allow “scientists to visualize the behavior of living microbes in real time,” according to a statement from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
While looking at saliva samples from toddlers with severe tooth decay, lead author Zhi Ren and associates “noticed the bacteria and fungi forming these assemblages and developing motions we never thought they would possess: a ‘walking-like’ and ‘leaping-like’ mobility. … It’s almost like a new organism – a superorganism – with new functions,” said senior author Hyun Koo, DDS, PhD, of Penn Dental Medicine.
Did he say “mobility”? He did, didn’t he?
To study these alleged superorganisms, they set up a laboratory system “using the bacteria, fungi, and a tooth-like material, all incubated in human saliva,” the university explained.
“Incubated in human saliva.” There’s a phrase you don’t see every day.
It only took a few hours for the investigators to observe the bacterial/fungal assemblages making leaps of more than 100 microns across the tooth-like material. “That is more than 200 times their own body length,” Dr. Ren said, “making them even better than most vertebrates, relative to body size. For example, tree frogs and grasshoppers can leap forward about 50 times and 20 times their own body length, respectively.”
So, will it be the robots or the evil superorganisms? Let us give you a word of advice: Always bet on bacteria.
Foods for thought: Menstrual cramp prevention
For those who menstruate, it’s typical for that time of the month to bring cravings for things that may give a serotonin boost that eases the rise in stress hormones. Chocolate and other foods high in sugar fall into that category, but they could actually be adding to the problem.
About 90% of adolescent girls have menstrual pain, and it’s the leading cause of school absences for the demographic. Muscle relaxers and PMS pills are usually the recommended solution to alleviating menstrual cramps, but what if the patient doesn’t want to take any medicine?
Serah Sannoh of Rutgers University wanted to find another way to relieve her menstrual pains. The literature review she presented at the annual meeting of the North American Menopause Society found multiple studies that examined dietary patterns that resulted in menstrual pain.
In Ms. Sannoh’s analysis, she looked at how certain foods have an effect on cramps. Do they contribute to the pain or reduce it? Diets high in processed foods, oils, sugars, salt, and omega-6 fatty acids promote inflammation in the muscles around the uterus. Thus, cramps.
The answer, sometimes, is not to add a medicine but to change our daily practices, she suggested. Foods high in omega-3 fatty acids helped reduce pain, and those who practiced a vegan diet had the lowest muscle inflammation rates. So more salmon and fewer Swedish Fish.
Stage 1 of the robot apocalypse is already upon us
The mere mention of a robot apocalypse is enough to conjure images of terrifying robot soldiers with Austrian accents harvesting and killing humanity while the survivors live blissfully in a simulation and do low-gravity kung fu with high-profile Hollywood actors. They’ll even take over the navy.
Reality is often less exciting than the movies, but rest assured, the robots will not be denied their dominion of Earth. Our future robot overlords are simply taking a more subtle, less dramatic route toward their ultimate subjugation of mankind: They’re making us all sad and burned out.
The research pulls from work conducted in multiple countries to paint a picture of a humanity filled with anxiety about jobs as robotic automation grows more common. In India, a survey of automobile manufacturing works showed that working alongside industrial robots was linked with greater reports of burnout and workplace incivility. In Singapore, a group of college students randomly assigned to read one of three articles – one about the use of robots in business, a generic article about robots, or an article unrelated to robots – were then surveyed about their job security concerns. Three guesses as to which group was most worried.
In addition, the researchers analyzed 185 U.S. metropolitan areas for robot prevalence alongside use of job-recruiting websites and found that the more robots a city used, the more common job searches were. Unemployment rates weren’t affected, suggesting people had job insecurity because of robots. Sure, there could be other, nonrobotic reasons for this, but that’s no fun. We’re here because we fear our future android rulers.
It’s not all doom and gloom, fortunately. In an online experiment, the study authors found that self-affirmation exercises, such as writing down characteristics or values important to us, can overcome the existential fears and lessen concern about robots in the workplace. One of the authors noted that, while some fear is justified, “media reports on new technologies like robots and algorithms tend to be apocalyptic in nature, so people may develop an irrational fear about them.”
Oops. Our bad.
Apocalypse, stage 2: Leaping oral superorganisms
The terms of our secret agreement with the shadowy-but-powerful dental-industrial complex stipulate that LOTME can only cover tooth-related news once a year. This is that once a year.
Since we’ve already dealt with a robot apocalypse, how about a sci-fi horror story? A story with a “cross-kingdom partnership” in which assemblages of bacteria and fungi perform feats greater than either could achieve on its own. A story in which new microscopy technologies allow “scientists to visualize the behavior of living microbes in real time,” according to a statement from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
While looking at saliva samples from toddlers with severe tooth decay, lead author Zhi Ren and associates “noticed the bacteria and fungi forming these assemblages and developing motions we never thought they would possess: a ‘walking-like’ and ‘leaping-like’ mobility. … It’s almost like a new organism – a superorganism – with new functions,” said senior author Hyun Koo, DDS, PhD, of Penn Dental Medicine.
Did he say “mobility”? He did, didn’t he?
To study these alleged superorganisms, they set up a laboratory system “using the bacteria, fungi, and a tooth-like material, all incubated in human saliva,” the university explained.
“Incubated in human saliva.” There’s a phrase you don’t see every day.
It only took a few hours for the investigators to observe the bacterial/fungal assemblages making leaps of more than 100 microns across the tooth-like material. “That is more than 200 times their own body length,” Dr. Ren said, “making them even better than most vertebrates, relative to body size. For example, tree frogs and grasshoppers can leap forward about 50 times and 20 times their own body length, respectively.”
So, will it be the robots or the evil superorganisms? Let us give you a word of advice: Always bet on bacteria.
Foods for thought: Menstrual cramp prevention
For those who menstruate, it’s typical for that time of the month to bring cravings for things that may give a serotonin boost that eases the rise in stress hormones. Chocolate and other foods high in sugar fall into that category, but they could actually be adding to the problem.
About 90% of adolescent girls have menstrual pain, and it’s the leading cause of school absences for the demographic. Muscle relaxers and PMS pills are usually the recommended solution to alleviating menstrual cramps, but what if the patient doesn’t want to take any medicine?
Serah Sannoh of Rutgers University wanted to find another way to relieve her menstrual pains. The literature review she presented at the annual meeting of the North American Menopause Society found multiple studies that examined dietary patterns that resulted in menstrual pain.
In Ms. Sannoh’s analysis, she looked at how certain foods have an effect on cramps. Do they contribute to the pain or reduce it? Diets high in processed foods, oils, sugars, salt, and omega-6 fatty acids promote inflammation in the muscles around the uterus. Thus, cramps.
The answer, sometimes, is not to add a medicine but to change our daily practices, she suggested. Foods high in omega-3 fatty acids helped reduce pain, and those who practiced a vegan diet had the lowest muscle inflammation rates. So more salmon and fewer Swedish Fish.
Stage 1 of the robot apocalypse is already upon us
The mere mention of a robot apocalypse is enough to conjure images of terrifying robot soldiers with Austrian accents harvesting and killing humanity while the survivors live blissfully in a simulation and do low-gravity kung fu with high-profile Hollywood actors. They’ll even take over the navy.
Reality is often less exciting than the movies, but rest assured, the robots will not be denied their dominion of Earth. Our future robot overlords are simply taking a more subtle, less dramatic route toward their ultimate subjugation of mankind: They’re making us all sad and burned out.
The research pulls from work conducted in multiple countries to paint a picture of a humanity filled with anxiety about jobs as robotic automation grows more common. In India, a survey of automobile manufacturing works showed that working alongside industrial robots was linked with greater reports of burnout and workplace incivility. In Singapore, a group of college students randomly assigned to read one of three articles – one about the use of robots in business, a generic article about robots, or an article unrelated to robots – were then surveyed about their job security concerns. Three guesses as to which group was most worried.
In addition, the researchers analyzed 185 U.S. metropolitan areas for robot prevalence alongside use of job-recruiting websites and found that the more robots a city used, the more common job searches were. Unemployment rates weren’t affected, suggesting people had job insecurity because of robots. Sure, there could be other, nonrobotic reasons for this, but that’s no fun. We’re here because we fear our future android rulers.
It’s not all doom and gloom, fortunately. In an online experiment, the study authors found that self-affirmation exercises, such as writing down characteristics or values important to us, can overcome the existential fears and lessen concern about robots in the workplace. One of the authors noted that, while some fear is justified, “media reports on new technologies like robots and algorithms tend to be apocalyptic in nature, so people may develop an irrational fear about them.”
Oops. Our bad.
Apocalypse, stage 2: Leaping oral superorganisms
The terms of our secret agreement with the shadowy-but-powerful dental-industrial complex stipulate that LOTME can only cover tooth-related news once a year. This is that once a year.
Since we’ve already dealt with a robot apocalypse, how about a sci-fi horror story? A story with a “cross-kingdom partnership” in which assemblages of bacteria and fungi perform feats greater than either could achieve on its own. A story in which new microscopy technologies allow “scientists to visualize the behavior of living microbes in real time,” according to a statement from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
While looking at saliva samples from toddlers with severe tooth decay, lead author Zhi Ren and associates “noticed the bacteria and fungi forming these assemblages and developing motions we never thought they would possess: a ‘walking-like’ and ‘leaping-like’ mobility. … It’s almost like a new organism – a superorganism – with new functions,” said senior author Hyun Koo, DDS, PhD, of Penn Dental Medicine.
Did he say “mobility”? He did, didn’t he?
To study these alleged superorganisms, they set up a laboratory system “using the bacteria, fungi, and a tooth-like material, all incubated in human saliva,” the university explained.
“Incubated in human saliva.” There’s a phrase you don’t see every day.
It only took a few hours for the investigators to observe the bacterial/fungal assemblages making leaps of more than 100 microns across the tooth-like material. “That is more than 200 times their own body length,” Dr. Ren said, “making them even better than most vertebrates, relative to body size. For example, tree frogs and grasshoppers can leap forward about 50 times and 20 times their own body length, respectively.”
So, will it be the robots or the evil superorganisms? Let us give you a word of advice: Always bet on bacteria.
Malaria vaccine gets special delivery by tiny health personnel
Don’t like needles? Have we got a vaccine for you
Here’s a quick question: How do you turn the most annoying thing ever into something positive?
No, we’re not talking about politicians this time. No, not Elon Musk, either. Infomercials? Guess again. Humidity? Nope, even more annoying than that.
Give up? The most annoying thing ever is mosquitoes. This time, however, NPR reports that mosquitoes have been used to deliver a vaccine for the very disease they’ve been transmitting to their human food sources all these years.
In a recent proof-of-concept trial, investigators used CRISPR technology to genetically modify malaria-causing Plasmodium falciparum sporozoites, which just happen to live in the salivary glands of Anopheles mosquitoes. And since the Plasmodium parasites are already in the mosquitoes, it made sense to use the buzzy little critters as the delivery device for the vaccine.
More sense than a syringe, you ask? Have you ever tried to poke a syringe into the salivary gland of a mosquito? No, we thought not. Well, we can tell you from experience that it’s really, really hard. Never mind how we know. We just do.
The 14 study volunteers – who were paid $4,100 for their participation – were first exposed to hundreds of mosquitoes carrying the altered Plasmodium parasites. Then, to test the vaccine, they were exposed to mosquitoes that had actual, malaria-carrying Plasmodium. Half of the subjects got malaria, so the vaccine was only 50% effective, meaning there’s still work to do.
Meanwhile, the scientists here at LOTMEco are all over this mosquito-delivery business, working on a vaccine to prevent Elon Musk. Plan B involves some sort of really big swatter.
Climate change: Sleeping your life away
It’s no secret that climate change is raising the temperature on everything. You may think you’re getting relief when the sun goes down, but in some places it’s still hot. A new survey conducted in central Japan shows how bad it can be and how higher nighttime temperatures can have a serious impact on people’s health.
That online survey, the Sleep Quality Index for Daily Sleep, enabled the investigators to correlate sleep quality with daily temperature for 1,284 adults in 2011 and 2012 who completed the survey over 10 days.
Not only was there a significant difference in sleep disturbance among younger men (higher) versus older men, but the prevalence of sleep disturbance went up when the daytime temperature was above 24.8° C. They also found that disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs), which measure time lost through premature death and time lived in certain conditions that put one’s health at risk, were 81.8 years for the city of Nagoya (population, 2.2 million) in 2012.
The damage to health from sleep disorders caused by daily temperatures higher than 25° C “is comparable to that of heatstroke and must be addressed,” lead author Tomohiko Ihara of the University of Tokyo said in a written statement.
The researchers hope that this information will help sway legislators to consider the impact of higher nighttime temperatures and that it can be used to provide guidance for better sleep. The solution for now? Sleep with the air conditioner on. Your energy bill might increase, but just think about those DALYs. If using the AC lowers DALYs and increases time lived, then we say it’s worth it.
Maybe it would have been a dragon WITH cancer
If you ask a random person on the street to tell you all they know about the country of Wales, they’ll probably mention two things: One, the contorted collection of jumbled-up letters that is the Welsh language (looking at you, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch) and, two, the association with dragons. The Welsh flag even has a dragon on it.
With that in mind, take a guess as to what sort of statue art dealer Simon Wingett wanted to build in the Welsh town of Wrexham. No, not a monument to the second-longest place name in the world. Try again. His dragon would not be some piddly little thing either; he wanted a virtual kaiju overlooking the town, with the whole statue to stand about 60 meters high. That’s taller than the original 1954 Godzilla.
Artistic masterpieces may sell for frankly insane prices, but art dealers themselves are not the wealthiest of individuals, so Mr. Wingett needed money to fund his dragon-based dream. Lucky for him, he also happened to be the manager of a cancer charity – initially set up by Mr. Wingett’s father, who had throat cancer – which nominally aimed to provide equipment and resources to cancer patients in the Wrexham area.
Yes, this is going precisely where you think it’s going. From 2011 to 2018, when the charity closed, Mr. Wingett used the charity’s donations to fund his dragon statue – which never actually got built, by the way – to the tune of over 400,000 pounds. Of course, Mr. Wingett came under scrutiny when people started to notice that his cancer charity hadn’t actually done anything charitable since 2011, and he was recently banned by the Welsh High Court from serving as trustee of any charity for 10 years. Oh no, tragedy and horror! Truly a punishment worse than death itself.
Okay fine, he also has to pay back 117,000 pounds to actual legitimate cancer charities. The astute mathematicians out there may notice that 117,000 is a lot less than 400,000. But it’s just as the old saying goes: One-quarter of crime doesn’t pay. You can keep three-quarters of it, though, that’s completely fine.
Don’t like needles? Have we got a vaccine for you
Here’s a quick question: How do you turn the most annoying thing ever into something positive?
No, we’re not talking about politicians this time. No, not Elon Musk, either. Infomercials? Guess again. Humidity? Nope, even more annoying than that.
Give up? The most annoying thing ever is mosquitoes. This time, however, NPR reports that mosquitoes have been used to deliver a vaccine for the very disease they’ve been transmitting to their human food sources all these years.
In a recent proof-of-concept trial, investigators used CRISPR technology to genetically modify malaria-causing Plasmodium falciparum sporozoites, which just happen to live in the salivary glands of Anopheles mosquitoes. And since the Plasmodium parasites are already in the mosquitoes, it made sense to use the buzzy little critters as the delivery device for the vaccine.
More sense than a syringe, you ask? Have you ever tried to poke a syringe into the salivary gland of a mosquito? No, we thought not. Well, we can tell you from experience that it’s really, really hard. Never mind how we know. We just do.
The 14 study volunteers – who were paid $4,100 for their participation – were first exposed to hundreds of mosquitoes carrying the altered Plasmodium parasites. Then, to test the vaccine, they were exposed to mosquitoes that had actual, malaria-carrying Plasmodium. Half of the subjects got malaria, so the vaccine was only 50% effective, meaning there’s still work to do.
Meanwhile, the scientists here at LOTMEco are all over this mosquito-delivery business, working on a vaccine to prevent Elon Musk. Plan B involves some sort of really big swatter.
Climate change: Sleeping your life away
It’s no secret that climate change is raising the temperature on everything. You may think you’re getting relief when the sun goes down, but in some places it’s still hot. A new survey conducted in central Japan shows how bad it can be and how higher nighttime temperatures can have a serious impact on people’s health.
That online survey, the Sleep Quality Index for Daily Sleep, enabled the investigators to correlate sleep quality with daily temperature for 1,284 adults in 2011 and 2012 who completed the survey over 10 days.
Not only was there a significant difference in sleep disturbance among younger men (higher) versus older men, but the prevalence of sleep disturbance went up when the daytime temperature was above 24.8° C. They also found that disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs), which measure time lost through premature death and time lived in certain conditions that put one’s health at risk, were 81.8 years for the city of Nagoya (population, 2.2 million) in 2012.
The damage to health from sleep disorders caused by daily temperatures higher than 25° C “is comparable to that of heatstroke and must be addressed,” lead author Tomohiko Ihara of the University of Tokyo said in a written statement.
The researchers hope that this information will help sway legislators to consider the impact of higher nighttime temperatures and that it can be used to provide guidance for better sleep. The solution for now? Sleep with the air conditioner on. Your energy bill might increase, but just think about those DALYs. If using the AC lowers DALYs and increases time lived, then we say it’s worth it.
Maybe it would have been a dragon WITH cancer
If you ask a random person on the street to tell you all they know about the country of Wales, they’ll probably mention two things: One, the contorted collection of jumbled-up letters that is the Welsh language (looking at you, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch) and, two, the association with dragons. The Welsh flag even has a dragon on it.
With that in mind, take a guess as to what sort of statue art dealer Simon Wingett wanted to build in the Welsh town of Wrexham. No, not a monument to the second-longest place name in the world. Try again. His dragon would not be some piddly little thing either; he wanted a virtual kaiju overlooking the town, with the whole statue to stand about 60 meters high. That’s taller than the original 1954 Godzilla.
Artistic masterpieces may sell for frankly insane prices, but art dealers themselves are not the wealthiest of individuals, so Mr. Wingett needed money to fund his dragon-based dream. Lucky for him, he also happened to be the manager of a cancer charity – initially set up by Mr. Wingett’s father, who had throat cancer – which nominally aimed to provide equipment and resources to cancer patients in the Wrexham area.
Yes, this is going precisely where you think it’s going. From 2011 to 2018, when the charity closed, Mr. Wingett used the charity’s donations to fund his dragon statue – which never actually got built, by the way – to the tune of over 400,000 pounds. Of course, Mr. Wingett came under scrutiny when people started to notice that his cancer charity hadn’t actually done anything charitable since 2011, and he was recently banned by the Welsh High Court from serving as trustee of any charity for 10 years. Oh no, tragedy and horror! Truly a punishment worse than death itself.
Okay fine, he also has to pay back 117,000 pounds to actual legitimate cancer charities. The astute mathematicians out there may notice that 117,000 is a lot less than 400,000. But it’s just as the old saying goes: One-quarter of crime doesn’t pay. You can keep three-quarters of it, though, that’s completely fine.
Don’t like needles? Have we got a vaccine for you
Here’s a quick question: How do you turn the most annoying thing ever into something positive?
No, we’re not talking about politicians this time. No, not Elon Musk, either. Infomercials? Guess again. Humidity? Nope, even more annoying than that.
Give up? The most annoying thing ever is mosquitoes. This time, however, NPR reports that mosquitoes have been used to deliver a vaccine for the very disease they’ve been transmitting to their human food sources all these years.
In a recent proof-of-concept trial, investigators used CRISPR technology to genetically modify malaria-causing Plasmodium falciparum sporozoites, which just happen to live in the salivary glands of Anopheles mosquitoes. And since the Plasmodium parasites are already in the mosquitoes, it made sense to use the buzzy little critters as the delivery device for the vaccine.
More sense than a syringe, you ask? Have you ever tried to poke a syringe into the salivary gland of a mosquito? No, we thought not. Well, we can tell you from experience that it’s really, really hard. Never mind how we know. We just do.
The 14 study volunteers – who were paid $4,100 for their participation – were first exposed to hundreds of mosquitoes carrying the altered Plasmodium parasites. Then, to test the vaccine, they were exposed to mosquitoes that had actual, malaria-carrying Plasmodium. Half of the subjects got malaria, so the vaccine was only 50% effective, meaning there’s still work to do.
Meanwhile, the scientists here at LOTMEco are all over this mosquito-delivery business, working on a vaccine to prevent Elon Musk. Plan B involves some sort of really big swatter.
Climate change: Sleeping your life away
It’s no secret that climate change is raising the temperature on everything. You may think you’re getting relief when the sun goes down, but in some places it’s still hot. A new survey conducted in central Japan shows how bad it can be and how higher nighttime temperatures can have a serious impact on people’s health.
That online survey, the Sleep Quality Index for Daily Sleep, enabled the investigators to correlate sleep quality with daily temperature for 1,284 adults in 2011 and 2012 who completed the survey over 10 days.
Not only was there a significant difference in sleep disturbance among younger men (higher) versus older men, but the prevalence of sleep disturbance went up when the daytime temperature was above 24.8° C. They also found that disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs), which measure time lost through premature death and time lived in certain conditions that put one’s health at risk, were 81.8 years for the city of Nagoya (population, 2.2 million) in 2012.
The damage to health from sleep disorders caused by daily temperatures higher than 25° C “is comparable to that of heatstroke and must be addressed,” lead author Tomohiko Ihara of the University of Tokyo said in a written statement.
The researchers hope that this information will help sway legislators to consider the impact of higher nighttime temperatures and that it can be used to provide guidance for better sleep. The solution for now? Sleep with the air conditioner on. Your energy bill might increase, but just think about those DALYs. If using the AC lowers DALYs and increases time lived, then we say it’s worth it.
Maybe it would have been a dragon WITH cancer
If you ask a random person on the street to tell you all they know about the country of Wales, they’ll probably mention two things: One, the contorted collection of jumbled-up letters that is the Welsh language (looking at you, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch) and, two, the association with dragons. The Welsh flag even has a dragon on it.
With that in mind, take a guess as to what sort of statue art dealer Simon Wingett wanted to build in the Welsh town of Wrexham. No, not a monument to the second-longest place name in the world. Try again. His dragon would not be some piddly little thing either; he wanted a virtual kaiju overlooking the town, with the whole statue to stand about 60 meters high. That’s taller than the original 1954 Godzilla.
Artistic masterpieces may sell for frankly insane prices, but art dealers themselves are not the wealthiest of individuals, so Mr. Wingett needed money to fund his dragon-based dream. Lucky for him, he also happened to be the manager of a cancer charity – initially set up by Mr. Wingett’s father, who had throat cancer – which nominally aimed to provide equipment and resources to cancer patients in the Wrexham area.
Yes, this is going precisely where you think it’s going. From 2011 to 2018, when the charity closed, Mr. Wingett used the charity’s donations to fund his dragon statue – which never actually got built, by the way – to the tune of over 400,000 pounds. Of course, Mr. Wingett came under scrutiny when people started to notice that his cancer charity hadn’t actually done anything charitable since 2011, and he was recently banned by the Welsh High Court from serving as trustee of any charity for 10 years. Oh no, tragedy and horror! Truly a punishment worse than death itself.
Okay fine, he also has to pay back 117,000 pounds to actual legitimate cancer charities. The astute mathematicians out there may notice that 117,000 is a lot less than 400,000. But it’s just as the old saying goes: One-quarter of crime doesn’t pay. You can keep three-quarters of it, though, that’s completely fine.
Meet our newest genetically engineered frenemy, herpes
Herpes to the rescue
Let’s face it: When people hear the word “herpes,” their first thoughts are not positive. But what if herpes could be a hero?
Scientists have found a way to make a strain of herpes that kills cancer because, hey, it’s 2022, and anything is possible. Trials have been going well and this seems like a safe and effective way to fight cancer.
Viruses may be one of our oldest enemies, but it’s also been said that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. So why not make herpes the enemy of cancer, thereby turning it into our friend? The genetically modified herpes virus is injected directly into tumors, where it destroys cancer cells from within. But wait, there’s more! The patient’s immune system also senses the virus and springs into action against it and the cancer in which it is residing.
During the phase 1 trial, three of the nine patients saw tumor reduction and the therapy proved safe as well. Future trials will be able to more specifically target various cancer types and make the treatment better. For once, we are rooting for you, herpes.
A breath of not-so-fresh air
There’s nothing quite like that first real warm day of spring. You can finally open the windows and clear out the old stuffy air that’s been hanging around all winter long. It’s a ritual that’s now backed up with some science in the form of a new study. Turns out that there’s actually a fair amount of smog in the average home. That’s right, smog’s not just for the big city anymore.
As part of the HOMEChem project, a whole host of scientists gathered together under one roof in a typical suburban house and immediately started doing chores. Cooking, cleaning, the works. No, it wasn’t because they had trashed the place the night before. They had set up instrumentation all around the house to measure the chemical makeup of the air inside. A scientist’s idea of a wild party.
The results are perhaps not all that surprising, but interesting nonetheless. Your homemade smog certainly won’t kill you, but there’s both an increased amount and higher concentration of airborne toxins in indoor air, compared with outdoors. Benzene and formaldehyde were common, as were acrolein (a pulmonary toxicant emitted by lumber and burning fats) and isocyanic acid (which can react with proteins in the human body). The researchers noted that most of these chemicals can be removed with proper ventilation.
Although cleaning is certainly responsible for a fair share of the chemicals, cooking generally produced more toxic compounds, similar to what’s found in wildfire smoke. One of the researchers said this makes sense, since a wildfire can be considered an “extreme form of cooking.” Scientists may not know how to party, but their idea of a barbecue sounds … interesting. We’re looking forward to an upcoming study out of California: Can a 1-million acre wildfire adequately cook a ribeye steak?
We’re dying to try composting ... with humans, that is
We here at LOTME are not really fans of politicians, except as objects of ridicule. That is kind of fun. Whether we’re watching Fox News, listening to NPR, or reading Vladimir Putin’s fashion blog, one thing remains clear: If you want actual information, don’t ask a politician.
There are, of course, always exceptions, and we just found one: California state representative Cristina Garcia. Rep. Garcia sponsored a bill just signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom that legalizes the practice of human composting, the reduction of remains by “placing bodies in individual vessels and fostering gentle transformation into a nutrient-dense soil.”
Since we’ve written about this sort of thing before – Washington was the first state to legalize the process back in 2019 – we’re more interested now in what Rep. Garcia told NBC News while describing her motivation: “I’ve always wanted to be a tree. The idea of having my family sitting under my shade one day – that brings a lot of joy.” How great is that? Tree-hugging is just not enough. Be the tree.
California is the fifth state to provide its residents with the human composting option, the other three being Colorado, Oregon, and Vermont. The process “typically involves putting a body into a steel vessel, then covering it with organic materials like straw, wood chips and alfalfa. Microbes break down the corpse and the plant matter, transforming the various components into nutrient-rich soil in roughly 30 days,” Smithsonian Magazine explained.
We just happen to have some good news for Rep. Garcia about that wanting-to-be-a-tree business. She’s already pretty close. For more on that, we go to our correspondent from beyond the grave, Carl Sagan, who shares a thought about trees. And no, we couldn’t just write out his quote here. You have to hear it in Dr. Sagan’s own voice.
That’ll be one pandemic with extra distress. Hold the goals
When the COVID-19 pandemic first hit it put a lot of stuff on hold for everyone. Couldn’t eat inside at your favorite restaurant, attend that long-awaited concert, or travel out of the country. Those were all pretty bad, but it was the disruption of pursuing long-term goals that seemed to have the most effect on people’s mental health.
Investigators from the University of Waterloo (Ont.) looked at how putting such goals on hold affected people’s mental well-being. The study’s 226 participants were asked about their “COVID-frozen” goals and the degree to which they were able to actively pursue each goal and how committed they were to achieving it.
What they found was that the participants’ COVID-frozen goals were associated with feelings of psychological distress, such as anxiety, depressive symptoms, stress, and lowered life satisfaction. It was only when participants were able to disengage from goal rumination that well-being was impacted positively.
“Goal rumination is compulsive and can aggravate worries and frustrations while also taking away mental resources from other goals,” Candice Hubley, lead author and a PhD candidate in psychology, said in a written statement. So in short, you’re only stressing yourself out more about something that is far off in the distance when you could be focusing more on short-term, tangible goals instead.
Now, no one is saying to give up on your goals. Just take them one at a time. You’ll have better life satisfaction and your COVID-frozen goals will thaw out before you know it.
Herpes to the rescue
Let’s face it: When people hear the word “herpes,” their first thoughts are not positive. But what if herpes could be a hero?
Scientists have found a way to make a strain of herpes that kills cancer because, hey, it’s 2022, and anything is possible. Trials have been going well and this seems like a safe and effective way to fight cancer.
Viruses may be one of our oldest enemies, but it’s also been said that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. So why not make herpes the enemy of cancer, thereby turning it into our friend? The genetically modified herpes virus is injected directly into tumors, where it destroys cancer cells from within. But wait, there’s more! The patient’s immune system also senses the virus and springs into action against it and the cancer in which it is residing.
During the phase 1 trial, three of the nine patients saw tumor reduction and the therapy proved safe as well. Future trials will be able to more specifically target various cancer types and make the treatment better. For once, we are rooting for you, herpes.
A breath of not-so-fresh air
There’s nothing quite like that first real warm day of spring. You can finally open the windows and clear out the old stuffy air that’s been hanging around all winter long. It’s a ritual that’s now backed up with some science in the form of a new study. Turns out that there’s actually a fair amount of smog in the average home. That’s right, smog’s not just for the big city anymore.
As part of the HOMEChem project, a whole host of scientists gathered together under one roof in a typical suburban house and immediately started doing chores. Cooking, cleaning, the works. No, it wasn’t because they had trashed the place the night before. They had set up instrumentation all around the house to measure the chemical makeup of the air inside. A scientist’s idea of a wild party.
The results are perhaps not all that surprising, but interesting nonetheless. Your homemade smog certainly won’t kill you, but there’s both an increased amount and higher concentration of airborne toxins in indoor air, compared with outdoors. Benzene and formaldehyde were common, as were acrolein (a pulmonary toxicant emitted by lumber and burning fats) and isocyanic acid (which can react with proteins in the human body). The researchers noted that most of these chemicals can be removed with proper ventilation.
Although cleaning is certainly responsible for a fair share of the chemicals, cooking generally produced more toxic compounds, similar to what’s found in wildfire smoke. One of the researchers said this makes sense, since a wildfire can be considered an “extreme form of cooking.” Scientists may not know how to party, but their idea of a barbecue sounds … interesting. We’re looking forward to an upcoming study out of California: Can a 1-million acre wildfire adequately cook a ribeye steak?
We’re dying to try composting ... with humans, that is
We here at LOTME are not really fans of politicians, except as objects of ridicule. That is kind of fun. Whether we’re watching Fox News, listening to NPR, or reading Vladimir Putin’s fashion blog, one thing remains clear: If you want actual information, don’t ask a politician.
There are, of course, always exceptions, and we just found one: California state representative Cristina Garcia. Rep. Garcia sponsored a bill just signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom that legalizes the practice of human composting, the reduction of remains by “placing bodies in individual vessels and fostering gentle transformation into a nutrient-dense soil.”
Since we’ve written about this sort of thing before – Washington was the first state to legalize the process back in 2019 – we’re more interested now in what Rep. Garcia told NBC News while describing her motivation: “I’ve always wanted to be a tree. The idea of having my family sitting under my shade one day – that brings a lot of joy.” How great is that? Tree-hugging is just not enough. Be the tree.
California is the fifth state to provide its residents with the human composting option, the other three being Colorado, Oregon, and Vermont. The process “typically involves putting a body into a steel vessel, then covering it with organic materials like straw, wood chips and alfalfa. Microbes break down the corpse and the plant matter, transforming the various components into nutrient-rich soil in roughly 30 days,” Smithsonian Magazine explained.
We just happen to have some good news for Rep. Garcia about that wanting-to-be-a-tree business. She’s already pretty close. For more on that, we go to our correspondent from beyond the grave, Carl Sagan, who shares a thought about trees. And no, we couldn’t just write out his quote here. You have to hear it in Dr. Sagan’s own voice.
That’ll be one pandemic with extra distress. Hold the goals
When the COVID-19 pandemic first hit it put a lot of stuff on hold for everyone. Couldn’t eat inside at your favorite restaurant, attend that long-awaited concert, or travel out of the country. Those were all pretty bad, but it was the disruption of pursuing long-term goals that seemed to have the most effect on people’s mental health.
Investigators from the University of Waterloo (Ont.) looked at how putting such goals on hold affected people’s mental well-being. The study’s 226 participants were asked about their “COVID-frozen” goals and the degree to which they were able to actively pursue each goal and how committed they were to achieving it.
What they found was that the participants’ COVID-frozen goals were associated with feelings of psychological distress, such as anxiety, depressive symptoms, stress, and lowered life satisfaction. It was only when participants were able to disengage from goal rumination that well-being was impacted positively.
“Goal rumination is compulsive and can aggravate worries and frustrations while also taking away mental resources from other goals,” Candice Hubley, lead author and a PhD candidate in psychology, said in a written statement. So in short, you’re only stressing yourself out more about something that is far off in the distance when you could be focusing more on short-term, tangible goals instead.
Now, no one is saying to give up on your goals. Just take them one at a time. You’ll have better life satisfaction and your COVID-frozen goals will thaw out before you know it.
Herpes to the rescue
Let’s face it: When people hear the word “herpes,” their first thoughts are not positive. But what if herpes could be a hero?
Scientists have found a way to make a strain of herpes that kills cancer because, hey, it’s 2022, and anything is possible. Trials have been going well and this seems like a safe and effective way to fight cancer.
Viruses may be one of our oldest enemies, but it’s also been said that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. So why not make herpes the enemy of cancer, thereby turning it into our friend? The genetically modified herpes virus is injected directly into tumors, where it destroys cancer cells from within. But wait, there’s more! The patient’s immune system also senses the virus and springs into action against it and the cancer in which it is residing.
During the phase 1 trial, three of the nine patients saw tumor reduction and the therapy proved safe as well. Future trials will be able to more specifically target various cancer types and make the treatment better. For once, we are rooting for you, herpes.
A breath of not-so-fresh air
There’s nothing quite like that first real warm day of spring. You can finally open the windows and clear out the old stuffy air that’s been hanging around all winter long. It’s a ritual that’s now backed up with some science in the form of a new study. Turns out that there’s actually a fair amount of smog in the average home. That’s right, smog’s not just for the big city anymore.
As part of the HOMEChem project, a whole host of scientists gathered together under one roof in a typical suburban house and immediately started doing chores. Cooking, cleaning, the works. No, it wasn’t because they had trashed the place the night before. They had set up instrumentation all around the house to measure the chemical makeup of the air inside. A scientist’s idea of a wild party.
The results are perhaps not all that surprising, but interesting nonetheless. Your homemade smog certainly won’t kill you, but there’s both an increased amount and higher concentration of airborne toxins in indoor air, compared with outdoors. Benzene and formaldehyde were common, as were acrolein (a pulmonary toxicant emitted by lumber and burning fats) and isocyanic acid (which can react with proteins in the human body). The researchers noted that most of these chemicals can be removed with proper ventilation.
Although cleaning is certainly responsible for a fair share of the chemicals, cooking generally produced more toxic compounds, similar to what’s found in wildfire smoke. One of the researchers said this makes sense, since a wildfire can be considered an “extreme form of cooking.” Scientists may not know how to party, but their idea of a barbecue sounds … interesting. We’re looking forward to an upcoming study out of California: Can a 1-million acre wildfire adequately cook a ribeye steak?
We’re dying to try composting ... with humans, that is
We here at LOTME are not really fans of politicians, except as objects of ridicule. That is kind of fun. Whether we’re watching Fox News, listening to NPR, or reading Vladimir Putin’s fashion blog, one thing remains clear: If you want actual information, don’t ask a politician.
There are, of course, always exceptions, and we just found one: California state representative Cristina Garcia. Rep. Garcia sponsored a bill just signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom that legalizes the practice of human composting, the reduction of remains by “placing bodies in individual vessels and fostering gentle transformation into a nutrient-dense soil.”
Since we’ve written about this sort of thing before – Washington was the first state to legalize the process back in 2019 – we’re more interested now in what Rep. Garcia told NBC News while describing her motivation: “I’ve always wanted to be a tree. The idea of having my family sitting under my shade one day – that brings a lot of joy.” How great is that? Tree-hugging is just not enough. Be the tree.
California is the fifth state to provide its residents with the human composting option, the other three being Colorado, Oregon, and Vermont. The process “typically involves putting a body into a steel vessel, then covering it with organic materials like straw, wood chips and alfalfa. Microbes break down the corpse and the plant matter, transforming the various components into nutrient-rich soil in roughly 30 days,” Smithsonian Magazine explained.
We just happen to have some good news for Rep. Garcia about that wanting-to-be-a-tree business. She’s already pretty close. For more on that, we go to our correspondent from beyond the grave, Carl Sagan, who shares a thought about trees. And no, we couldn’t just write out his quote here. You have to hear it in Dr. Sagan’s own voice.
That’ll be one pandemic with extra distress. Hold the goals
When the COVID-19 pandemic first hit it put a lot of stuff on hold for everyone. Couldn’t eat inside at your favorite restaurant, attend that long-awaited concert, or travel out of the country. Those were all pretty bad, but it was the disruption of pursuing long-term goals that seemed to have the most effect on people’s mental health.
Investigators from the University of Waterloo (Ont.) looked at how putting such goals on hold affected people’s mental well-being. The study’s 226 participants were asked about their “COVID-frozen” goals and the degree to which they were able to actively pursue each goal and how committed they were to achieving it.
What they found was that the participants’ COVID-frozen goals were associated with feelings of psychological distress, such as anxiety, depressive symptoms, stress, and lowered life satisfaction. It was only when participants were able to disengage from goal rumination that well-being was impacted positively.
“Goal rumination is compulsive and can aggravate worries and frustrations while also taking away mental resources from other goals,” Candice Hubley, lead author and a PhD candidate in psychology, said in a written statement. So in short, you’re only stressing yourself out more about something that is far off in the distance when you could be focusing more on short-term, tangible goals instead.
Now, no one is saying to give up on your goals. Just take them one at a time. You’ll have better life satisfaction and your COVID-frozen goals will thaw out before you know it.
Early bird gets the worm, night owl gets the diabetes
Metabolism a player in circadian rhythm section
Are you an early bird, or do you wake up and stare at your phone, wondering why you were up watching “The Crown” until 3 a.m.? Recent research suggests that people who wake up earlier tend to be more active during the day and burn more fat than those who sleep in. Fat builds up in the night owls, putting them at higher risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
The study gives physicians something to think about when assessing a patient’s risk factors. “This could help medical professionals consider another behavioral factor contributing to disease risk,” Steven Malin, PhD, lead author of the study and expert in metabolism at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., said in The Guardian.
For the research, 51 participants were divided into night owls and early birds, depending on their answers to a questionnaire. They were examined, monitored for a week, and assessed while doing various activities. Those who woke up early tended to be more sensitive to insulin and burned off fat faster than those who woke up late, the researchers explained.
“Night owls are reported to have a higher risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease when compared with early birds,” Dr. Malin said. “A potential explanation is they become misaligned with their circadian rhythm for various reasons, but most notably among adults would be work.”
We all know that we may not be at our best when we throw off our internal clocks by going to sleep late and waking up early. Think about that next time you start another episode on Netflix at 2:57 a.m.
Mosquitoes, chemical cocktails, and glass sock beads
We all know that mosquitoes are annoying little disease vectors with a taste for human blood. One of the less-known things about mosquitoes is what attracts them to humans in the first place. It’s so less known that, until now, it was unknown. Oh sure, we knew that odor was involved, and that lactic acid was part of the odor equation, but what are the specific chemicals? Well, there’s carbon dioxide … and ammonia. Those were already known.
Ring Cardé, PhD, an entomologist at the University of California, Riverside, wasn’t convinced. “I suspected there was something undiscovered about the chemistry of odors luring the yellow fever mosquito. I wanted to nail down the exact blend,” he said in a statement from the university.
Dr. Cardé and his associates eventually figured out that the exact chemical cocktail attracting female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes was a combination of carbon dioxide plus two chemicals, 2-ketoglutaric acid and lactic acid. The odor from these chemicals enables mosquitoes to locate and land on their victim and “also encourages probing, the use of piercing mouthparts to find blood,” the university said.
This amazing destination of science is important, but we have to acknowledge the journey as well. To do that we turn to one of Dr. Cardé’s associates, Jan Bello, PhD, formerly of Cal-Riverside and now with insect pest control company Provivi. Turns out that 2-ketoglutaric acid is tricky stuff because the methods typically used to identify chemicals don’t work on it.
Dr. Bello employed a somewhat unorthodox chemical extraction method: He filled his socks with glass beads and walked around with the beads in his socks. 
“Wearing the beads felt almost like a massage, like squeezing stress balls full of sand, but with your feet,” Dr. Bello said. “The most frustrating part of doing it for a long time is that they would get stuck in between your toes, so it would be uncomfortable after a while.”
We hate when science gets stuck between our toes, but we love it when scientists write their own punchlines.
The MS drugs are better down where it’s wetter, take it from me
The myth of the mermaid is one with hundreds, if not thousands, of years of history. The ancient Greeks had the mythological siren, while the Babylonians depicted kulullû (which were mermen – never let the Babylonians be known as noninclusive) in artwork as far back as 1600 BC. Cultures as far flung as Japan, southern Africa, and New Zealand have folkloric figures similar to the mermaid. It is most decidedly not a creation of western Europe, Hans Christian Andersen, or Disney.
With that mild rant out of the way, let’s move to Germany and a group of researchers from the University of Bonn, who have not created a mermaid. They did, however, add human genes to a zebrafish for research purposes, which feels uncomfortably close. Nothing better than unholy animal-human hybrids, right?
Stick with us here, because the researchers did have a good reason for their gene splicing. Zebrafish and humans both have the GPR17 receptor, which is highly active in nerve tissue. When GPR17 is overactivated, diseases such as multiple sclerosis can develop. Because the zebrafish has this receptor, which performs the same function in its body as in ours, it’s a prime candidate for replacement. Also, zebrafish larvae are transparent, which makes it very easy to observe a drug working.
That said, fish and humans are very far apart, genetically speaking. Big shock right there. But by replacing their GPR17 receptor with ours, the scientists have created a fish that we could test drug candidates on and be assured that they would also work on humans. Actually testing drugs for MS on these humanized zebrafish was beyond the scope of the study, but the researchers said that the new genes function normally in the fish larvae, making them a promising new avenue for MS drug development.
Can we all promise not to tell Disney that human DNA can be spliced into a fish without consequence? Otherwise, we’re just going to have to sit through another “Little Mermaid” adaptation in 30 years, this one in super live-action featuring actual, real-life mermaids. And we’re not ready for that level of man-made horror just yet.
Beware of the fly vomit
Picture this: You’re outside at a picnic or barbecue, loading a plate with food. In a brief moment of conversation a fly lands right on top of your sandwich. You shoo it away and think nothing more of it, eating the sandwich anyway. We’ve all been there.
A recent study is making us think again.
John Stoffolano, an entomology professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, claims that too much attention has been focused on pathogen transmission by the biting, blood-feeding flies when really we should be taking note of the nonbiting, or synanthropic, flies we live with, which may have a greater impact on the transmission of pathogens right in our own homes.
Sure, blood-feeding flies can spread pathogens directly, but house flies vomit every time they land on something. Think about that.
The fly that sneakily swooped into your house from a tear in your window screen has just been outside in the neighbor’s garbage or sitting on dog poop and now has who knows what filling its crop, the tank in their body that serves as “a place to store food before it makes its way into the digestive tract where it will get turned into energy for the fly,” Dr. Stoffolano explained in a written statement.
Did that fly land right on the baked potato you were prepping for dinner before you shooed it away? Guess what? Before flying off it emitted excess water that has pathogens from whatever was in its crop. We don’t want to say your potato might have dog poop on it, but you get the idea. The crop doesn’t have a ton of digestive enzymes that would help neutralize pathogens, so whatever that fly regurgitated before buzzing off is still around for you to ingest and there’s not much you can do about it.
More research needs to be done about flies, but at the very least this study should make you think twice before eating that baked potato after a fly has been there.
Metabolism a player in circadian rhythm section
Are you an early bird, or do you wake up and stare at your phone, wondering why you were up watching “The Crown” until 3 a.m.? Recent research suggests that people who wake up earlier tend to be more active during the day and burn more fat than those who sleep in. Fat builds up in the night owls, putting them at higher risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
The study gives physicians something to think about when assessing a patient’s risk factors. “This could help medical professionals consider another behavioral factor contributing to disease risk,” Steven Malin, PhD, lead author of the study and expert in metabolism at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., said in The Guardian.
For the research, 51 participants were divided into night owls and early birds, depending on their answers to a questionnaire. They were examined, monitored for a week, and assessed while doing various activities. Those who woke up early tended to be more sensitive to insulin and burned off fat faster than those who woke up late, the researchers explained.
“Night owls are reported to have a higher risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease when compared with early birds,” Dr. Malin said. “A potential explanation is they become misaligned with their circadian rhythm for various reasons, but most notably among adults would be work.”
We all know that we may not be at our best when we throw off our internal clocks by going to sleep late and waking up early. Think about that next time you start another episode on Netflix at 2:57 a.m.
Mosquitoes, chemical cocktails, and glass sock beads
We all know that mosquitoes are annoying little disease vectors with a taste for human blood. One of the less-known things about mosquitoes is what attracts them to humans in the first place. It’s so less known that, until now, it was unknown. Oh sure, we knew that odor was involved, and that lactic acid was part of the odor equation, but what are the specific chemicals? Well, there’s carbon dioxide … and ammonia. Those were already known.
Ring Cardé, PhD, an entomologist at the University of California, Riverside, wasn’t convinced. “I suspected there was something undiscovered about the chemistry of odors luring the yellow fever mosquito. I wanted to nail down the exact blend,” he said in a statement from the university.
Dr. Cardé and his associates eventually figured out that the exact chemical cocktail attracting female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes was a combination of carbon dioxide plus two chemicals, 2-ketoglutaric acid and lactic acid. The odor from these chemicals enables mosquitoes to locate and land on their victim and “also encourages probing, the use of piercing mouthparts to find blood,” the university said.
This amazing destination of science is important, but we have to acknowledge the journey as well. To do that we turn to one of Dr. Cardé’s associates, Jan Bello, PhD, formerly of Cal-Riverside and now with insect pest control company Provivi. Turns out that 2-ketoglutaric acid is tricky stuff because the methods typically used to identify chemicals don’t work on it.
Dr. Bello employed a somewhat unorthodox chemical extraction method: He filled his socks with glass beads and walked around with the beads in his socks.
“Wearing the beads felt almost like a massage, like squeezing stress balls full of sand, but with your feet,” Dr. Bello said. “The most frustrating part of doing it for a long time is that they would get stuck in between your toes, so it would be uncomfortable after a while.”
We hate when science gets stuck between our toes, but we love it when scientists write their own punchlines.
The MS drugs are better down where it’s wetter, take it from me
The myth of the mermaid is one with hundreds, if not thousands, of years of history. The ancient Greeks had the mythological siren, while the Babylonians depicted kulullû (which were mermen – never let the Babylonians be known as noninclusive) in artwork as far back as 1600 BC. Cultures as far flung as Japan, southern Africa, and New Zealand have folkloric figures similar to the mermaid. It is most decidedly not a creation of western Europe, Hans Christian Andersen, or Disney.
With that mild rant out of the way, let’s move to Germany and a group of researchers from the University of Bonn, who have not created a mermaid. They did, however, add human genes to a zebrafish for research purposes, which feels uncomfortably close. Nothing better than unholy animal-human hybrids, right?
Stick with us here, because the researchers did have a good reason for their gene splicing. Zebrafish and humans both have the GPR17 receptor, which is highly active in nerve tissue. When GPR17 is overactivated, diseases such as multiple sclerosis can develop. Because the zebrafish has this receptor, which performs the same function in its body as in ours, it’s a prime candidate for replacement. Also, zebrafish larvae are transparent, which makes it very easy to observe a drug working.
That said, fish and humans are very far apart, genetically speaking. Big shock right there. But by replacing their GPR17 receptor with ours, the scientists have created a fish that we could test drug candidates on and be assured that they would also work on humans. Actually testing drugs for MS on these humanized zebrafish was beyond the scope of the study, but the researchers said that the new genes function normally in the fish larvae, making them a promising new avenue for MS drug development.
Can we all promise not to tell Disney that human DNA can be spliced into a fish without consequence? Otherwise, we’re just going to have to sit through another “Little Mermaid” adaptation in 30 years, this one in super live-action featuring actual, real-life mermaids. And we’re not ready for that level of man-made horror just yet.
Beware of the fly vomit
Picture this: You’re outside at a picnic or barbecue, loading a plate with food. In a brief moment of conversation a fly lands right on top of your sandwich. You shoo it away and think nothing more of it, eating the sandwich anyway. We’ve all been there.
A recent study is making us think again.
John Stoffolano, an entomology professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, claims that too much attention has been focused on pathogen transmission by the biting, blood-feeding flies when really we should be taking note of the nonbiting, or synanthropic, flies we live with, which may have a greater impact on the transmission of pathogens right in our own homes.
Sure, blood-feeding flies can spread pathogens directly, but house flies vomit every time they land on something. Think about that.
The fly that sneakily swooped into your house from a tear in your window screen has just been outside in the neighbor’s garbage or sitting on dog poop and now has who knows what filling its crop, the tank in their body that serves as “a place to store food before it makes its way into the digestive tract where it will get turned into energy for the fly,” Dr. Stoffolano explained in a written statement.
Did that fly land right on the baked potato you were prepping for dinner before you shooed it away? Guess what? Before flying off it emitted excess water that has pathogens from whatever was in its crop. We don’t want to say your potato might have dog poop on it, but you get the idea. The crop doesn’t have a ton of digestive enzymes that would help neutralize pathogens, so whatever that fly regurgitated before buzzing off is still around for you to ingest and there’s not much you can do about it.
More research needs to be done about flies, but at the very least this study should make you think twice before eating that baked potato after a fly has been there.
Metabolism a player in circadian rhythm section
Are you an early bird, or do you wake up and stare at your phone, wondering why you were up watching “The Crown” until 3 a.m.? Recent research suggests that people who wake up earlier tend to be more active during the day and burn more fat than those who sleep in. Fat builds up in the night owls, putting them at higher risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
The study gives physicians something to think about when assessing a patient’s risk factors. “This could help medical professionals consider another behavioral factor contributing to disease risk,” Steven Malin, PhD, lead author of the study and expert in metabolism at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., said in The Guardian.
For the research, 51 participants were divided into night owls and early birds, depending on their answers to a questionnaire. They were examined, monitored for a week, and assessed while doing various activities. Those who woke up early tended to be more sensitive to insulin and burned off fat faster than those who woke up late, the researchers explained.
“Night owls are reported to have a higher risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease when compared with early birds,” Dr. Malin said. “A potential explanation is they become misaligned with their circadian rhythm for various reasons, but most notably among adults would be work.”
We all know that we may not be at our best when we throw off our internal clocks by going to sleep late and waking up early. Think about that next time you start another episode on Netflix at 2:57 a.m.
Mosquitoes, chemical cocktails, and glass sock beads
We all know that mosquitoes are annoying little disease vectors with a taste for human blood. One of the less-known things about mosquitoes is what attracts them to humans in the first place. It’s so less known that, until now, it was unknown. Oh sure, we knew that odor was involved, and that lactic acid was part of the odor equation, but what are the specific chemicals? Well, there’s carbon dioxide … and ammonia. Those were already known.
Ring Cardé, PhD, an entomologist at the University of California, Riverside, wasn’t convinced. “I suspected there was something undiscovered about the chemistry of odors luring the yellow fever mosquito. I wanted to nail down the exact blend,” he said in a statement from the university.
Dr. Cardé and his associates eventually figured out that the exact chemical cocktail attracting female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes was a combination of carbon dioxide plus two chemicals, 2-ketoglutaric acid and lactic acid. The odor from these chemicals enables mosquitoes to locate and land on their victim and “also encourages probing, the use of piercing mouthparts to find blood,” the university said.
This amazing destination of science is important, but we have to acknowledge the journey as well. To do that we turn to one of Dr. Cardé’s associates, Jan Bello, PhD, formerly of Cal-Riverside and now with insect pest control company Provivi. Turns out that 2-ketoglutaric acid is tricky stuff because the methods typically used to identify chemicals don’t work on it.
Dr. Bello employed a somewhat unorthodox chemical extraction method: He filled his socks with glass beads and walked around with the beads in his socks.
“Wearing the beads felt almost like a massage, like squeezing stress balls full of sand, but with your feet,” Dr. Bello said. “The most frustrating part of doing it for a long time is that they would get stuck in between your toes, so it would be uncomfortable after a while.”
We hate when science gets stuck between our toes, but we love it when scientists write their own punchlines.
The MS drugs are better down where it’s wetter, take it from me
The myth of the mermaid is one with hundreds, if not thousands, of years of history. The ancient Greeks had the mythological siren, while the Babylonians depicted kulullû (which were mermen – never let the Babylonians be known as noninclusive) in artwork as far back as 1600 BC. Cultures as far flung as Japan, southern Africa, and New Zealand have folkloric figures similar to the mermaid. It is most decidedly not a creation of western Europe, Hans Christian Andersen, or Disney.
With that mild rant out of the way, let’s move to Germany and a group of researchers from the University of Bonn, who have not created a mermaid. They did, however, add human genes to a zebrafish for research purposes, which feels uncomfortably close. Nothing better than unholy animal-human hybrids, right?
Stick with us here, because the researchers did have a good reason for their gene splicing. Zebrafish and humans both have the GPR17 receptor, which is highly active in nerve tissue. When GPR17 is overactivated, diseases such as multiple sclerosis can develop. Because the zebrafish has this receptor, which performs the same function in its body as in ours, it’s a prime candidate for replacement. Also, zebrafish larvae are transparent, which makes it very easy to observe a drug working.
That said, fish and humans are very far apart, genetically speaking. Big shock right there. But by replacing their GPR17 receptor with ours, the scientists have created a fish that we could test drug candidates on and be assured that they would also work on humans. Actually testing drugs for MS on these humanized zebrafish was beyond the scope of the study, but the researchers said that the new genes function normally in the fish larvae, making them a promising new avenue for MS drug development.
Can we all promise not to tell Disney that human DNA can be spliced into a fish without consequence? Otherwise, we’re just going to have to sit through another “Little Mermaid” adaptation in 30 years, this one in super live-action featuring actual, real-life mermaids. And we’re not ready for that level of man-made horror just yet.
Beware of the fly vomit
Picture this: You’re outside at a picnic or barbecue, loading a plate with food. In a brief moment of conversation a fly lands right on top of your sandwich. You shoo it away and think nothing more of it, eating the sandwich anyway. We’ve all been there.
A recent study is making us think again.
John Stoffolano, an entomology professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, claims that too much attention has been focused on pathogen transmission by the biting, blood-feeding flies when really we should be taking note of the nonbiting, or synanthropic, flies we live with, which may have a greater impact on the transmission of pathogens right in our own homes.
Sure, blood-feeding flies can spread pathogens directly, but house flies vomit every time they land on something. Think about that.
The fly that sneakily swooped into your house from a tear in your window screen has just been outside in the neighbor’s garbage or sitting on dog poop and now has who knows what filling its crop, the tank in their body that serves as “a place to store food before it makes its way into the digestive tract where it will get turned into energy for the fly,” Dr. Stoffolano explained in a written statement.
Did that fly land right on the baked potato you were prepping for dinner before you shooed it away? Guess what? Before flying off it emitted excess water that has pathogens from whatever was in its crop. We don’t want to say your potato might have dog poop on it, but you get the idea. The crop doesn’t have a ton of digestive enzymes that would help neutralize pathogens, so whatever that fly regurgitated before buzzing off is still around for you to ingest and there’s not much you can do about it.
More research needs to be done about flies, but at the very least this study should make you think twice before eating that baked potato after a fly has been there.