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Spray-painted bandages and pharma sings ‘Dough Canada!’
He’s not quite dead yet!
In 2015, Benjamin Schreiber, an Iowa man convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole, developed a case of septic poisoning because of large, untreated kidney stones. While at the hospital, his heart stopped several times, requiring resuscitation. After being stabilized, he underwent surgery to remove the kidney stones and was then released back to his prison cell.
Fast forward to 2018. Mr. Schreiber filed for relief from his conviction, arguing that, because he technically died, his life sentence had been served and he should be released. While the logic is impeccable, an Iowa district court didn’t buy it, noting that the fact that Mr. Schreiber was able to submit a petition for his release “confirms the petitioner’s current status as living.”
Sadly for Mr. Schreiber, the Iowa Court of Appeals agreed with the lower court’s decision. In a wonderfully pithy summation of the case, Judge Amanda Potterfield wrote: “Schreiber is either still alive, in which case he must remain in prison, or he is actually dead, in which case this appeal is moot.”
While the Livin’ on the MDedge team is glad that a convicted murderer will not be released back into the public, we salute his devotion to the art of technicality. The judges may not have been convinced, but you’re dead to us, Mr. Schreiber.
Breaking news: Drug companies gouge consumers
Canada. It’s home to many things: Trees, glaciers, beavers, and several people. But we Americans also know it as the home of cheap drugs. It may be borderline illegal, but that’s never stopped America from taking things that don’t belong to us before.
You’d think then that it’d be great being sick in Canada. But it turns out that many of those poor, desperate souls living in the frozen tundra of the north are actually overpaying for drugs just like the rest of us, according to research published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
It all comes down to those strange items called drug discount cards. They’re coupons offered by brand-name drug manufacturers to keep patients from switching to cheap generics.
Sounds great, right? Well, while a few patients saw savings, the average cost to patients with public insurance increased by 1.3% over generics. And if you were unfortunate enough to have private insurance, you’d be paying 46% more using the cards rather than generics. In some instances, patients were paying a whole $10 more for a prescription of the name brand, compared with the generic. And we thought Tim Hortons was our northern neighbor’s only company making a lot of dough. Ten loonies more per Rx ain’t Timbits.
So, Canada, how does it feel to have your health care made fun of? U-S-A! U-S-A! Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’re off to pay $1,000 a pill to cure us some hepatitis C. That’s some real red-blooded American price gouging right there.
This looks like a job for vacuum science
The LOTME staff, of course, scans a veritable buffet of sources to come up with the tasty tidbits we present each week to our deliciously wonderful and highly scrumptious readers each week.
One of our favorite sauces … umm, we mean sources, and the home of a tantalizing medical morsel (can you tell it’s almost lunch time?), is the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology B. That’s B, not A. Anyone, at least anyone who’s serious about vacuum science, will tell you that the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology A is pretty much a bottomless pit of trolling, political bickering, and popular nonsense. But B, now that’s a different story.
B is where we meet the EStAD (electrostatic and air driven) device. EStAD is a portable device that may someday offer physicians and first responders a way to treat wounds in rural areas where immediate care may not be available, the investigators said.
EStAD, using a process called electrospinning along with a confined electric field, works like a can of spray paint to deposit a fiber mat, which could be a bandage or a drug, onto a wound.
The device is still under development, but the research team reports that it has been successfully tested on a porcine skin incision and a gloved human hand.
The next step in EStAD development is to bring it to Washington, where the investigators will see if spray-on bandages can stand up to the hot air coming out of politicians’ mouths. We’re hoping that they sell tickets.
He’s not quite dead yet!
In 2015, Benjamin Schreiber, an Iowa man convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole, developed a case of septic poisoning because of large, untreated kidney stones. While at the hospital, his heart stopped several times, requiring resuscitation. After being stabilized, he underwent surgery to remove the kidney stones and was then released back to his prison cell.
Fast forward to 2018. Mr. Schreiber filed for relief from his conviction, arguing that, because he technically died, his life sentence had been served and he should be released. While the logic is impeccable, an Iowa district court didn’t buy it, noting that the fact that Mr. Schreiber was able to submit a petition for his release “confirms the petitioner’s current status as living.”
Sadly for Mr. Schreiber, the Iowa Court of Appeals agreed with the lower court’s decision. In a wonderfully pithy summation of the case, Judge Amanda Potterfield wrote: “Schreiber is either still alive, in which case he must remain in prison, or he is actually dead, in which case this appeal is moot.”
While the Livin’ on the MDedge team is glad that a convicted murderer will not be released back into the public, we salute his devotion to the art of technicality. The judges may not have been convinced, but you’re dead to us, Mr. Schreiber.
Breaking news: Drug companies gouge consumers
Canada. It’s home to many things: Trees, glaciers, beavers, and several people. But we Americans also know it as the home of cheap drugs. It may be borderline illegal, but that’s never stopped America from taking things that don’t belong to us before.
You’d think then that it’d be great being sick in Canada. But it turns out that many of those poor, desperate souls living in the frozen tundra of the north are actually overpaying for drugs just like the rest of us, according to research published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
It all comes down to those strange items called drug discount cards. They’re coupons offered by brand-name drug manufacturers to keep patients from switching to cheap generics.
Sounds great, right? Well, while a few patients saw savings, the average cost to patients with public insurance increased by 1.3% over generics. And if you were unfortunate enough to have private insurance, you’d be paying 46% more using the cards rather than generics. In some instances, patients were paying a whole $10 more for a prescription of the name brand, compared with the generic. And we thought Tim Hortons was our northern neighbor’s only company making a lot of dough. Ten loonies more per Rx ain’t Timbits.
So, Canada, how does it feel to have your health care made fun of? U-S-A! U-S-A! Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’re off to pay $1,000 a pill to cure us some hepatitis C. That’s some real red-blooded American price gouging right there.
This looks like a job for vacuum science
The LOTME staff, of course, scans a veritable buffet of sources to come up with the tasty tidbits we present each week to our deliciously wonderful and highly scrumptious readers each week.
One of our favorite sauces … umm, we mean sources, and the home of a tantalizing medical morsel (can you tell it’s almost lunch time?), is the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology B. That’s B, not A. Anyone, at least anyone who’s serious about vacuum science, will tell you that the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology A is pretty much a bottomless pit of trolling, political bickering, and popular nonsense. But B, now that’s a different story.
B is where we meet the EStAD (electrostatic and air driven) device. EStAD is a portable device that may someday offer physicians and first responders a way to treat wounds in rural areas where immediate care may not be available, the investigators said.
EStAD, using a process called electrospinning along with a confined electric field, works like a can of spray paint to deposit a fiber mat, which could be a bandage or a drug, onto a wound.
The device is still under development, but the research team reports that it has been successfully tested on a porcine skin incision and a gloved human hand.
The next step in EStAD development is to bring it to Washington, where the investigators will see if spray-on bandages can stand up to the hot air coming out of politicians’ mouths. We’re hoping that they sell tickets.
He’s not quite dead yet!
In 2015, Benjamin Schreiber, an Iowa man convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole, developed a case of septic poisoning because of large, untreated kidney stones. While at the hospital, his heart stopped several times, requiring resuscitation. After being stabilized, he underwent surgery to remove the kidney stones and was then released back to his prison cell.
Fast forward to 2018. Mr. Schreiber filed for relief from his conviction, arguing that, because he technically died, his life sentence had been served and he should be released. While the logic is impeccable, an Iowa district court didn’t buy it, noting that the fact that Mr. Schreiber was able to submit a petition for his release “confirms the petitioner’s current status as living.”
Sadly for Mr. Schreiber, the Iowa Court of Appeals agreed with the lower court’s decision. In a wonderfully pithy summation of the case, Judge Amanda Potterfield wrote: “Schreiber is either still alive, in which case he must remain in prison, or he is actually dead, in which case this appeal is moot.”
While the Livin’ on the MDedge team is glad that a convicted murderer will not be released back into the public, we salute his devotion to the art of technicality. The judges may not have been convinced, but you’re dead to us, Mr. Schreiber.
Breaking news: Drug companies gouge consumers
Canada. It’s home to many things: Trees, glaciers, beavers, and several people. But we Americans also know it as the home of cheap drugs. It may be borderline illegal, but that’s never stopped America from taking things that don’t belong to us before.
You’d think then that it’d be great being sick in Canada. But it turns out that many of those poor, desperate souls living in the frozen tundra of the north are actually overpaying for drugs just like the rest of us, according to research published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
It all comes down to those strange items called drug discount cards. They’re coupons offered by brand-name drug manufacturers to keep patients from switching to cheap generics.
Sounds great, right? Well, while a few patients saw savings, the average cost to patients with public insurance increased by 1.3% over generics. And if you were unfortunate enough to have private insurance, you’d be paying 46% more using the cards rather than generics. In some instances, patients were paying a whole $10 more for a prescription of the name brand, compared with the generic. And we thought Tim Hortons was our northern neighbor’s only company making a lot of dough. Ten loonies more per Rx ain’t Timbits.
So, Canada, how does it feel to have your health care made fun of? U-S-A! U-S-A! Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’re off to pay $1,000 a pill to cure us some hepatitis C. That’s some real red-blooded American price gouging right there.
This looks like a job for vacuum science
The LOTME staff, of course, scans a veritable buffet of sources to come up with the tasty tidbits we present each week to our deliciously wonderful and highly scrumptious readers each week.
One of our favorite sauces … umm, we mean sources, and the home of a tantalizing medical morsel (can you tell it’s almost lunch time?), is the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology B. That’s B, not A. Anyone, at least anyone who’s serious about vacuum science, will tell you that the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology A is pretty much a bottomless pit of trolling, political bickering, and popular nonsense. But B, now that’s a different story.
B is where we meet the EStAD (electrostatic and air driven) device. EStAD is a portable device that may someday offer physicians and first responders a way to treat wounds in rural areas where immediate care may not be available, the investigators said.
EStAD, using a process called electrospinning along with a confined electric field, works like a can of spray paint to deposit a fiber mat, which could be a bandage or a drug, onto a wound.
The device is still under development, but the research team reports that it has been successfully tested on a porcine skin incision and a gloved human hand.
The next step in EStAD development is to bring it to Washington, where the investigators will see if spray-on bandages can stand up to the hot air coming out of politicians’ mouths. We’re hoping that they sell tickets.
Sleep vs. Netflix, and grape juice BPAP
Sleep vs. Netflix: the eternal struggle
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Livin’ on the MDedge World Championship Boxing! Tonight, we bring you a classic match-up in the endless battle for your valuable time.
In the red corner, weighing in at a muscular 8 hours, is the defending champion: a good night’s sleep! And now for the challenger in the blue corner, coming in at a strong “just one more episode, I promise,” it’s binge watching!
Oh, sleep opens the match strong: According to a survey from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, U.S. adults rank sleep as their second-most important priority, with only family beating it out. My goodness, that is a strong opening offensive.
But wait, binge watching is countering! According to the very same survey, 88% of Americans have admitted that they’d lost sleep because they’d stayed up late to watch extra episodes of a TV show or streaming series, a rate that rises to 95% in people aged 18-44 years. Oh dear, sleep looks like it’s in trouble.
Hang on, what’s binge watching doing? It’s unleashing a quick barrage of attacks: 72% of men aged 18-34 reported delaying sleep for video games, two-thirds of U.S. adults reported losing sleep to read a book, and nearly 60% of adults delayed sleep to watch sports. We feel slightly conflicted about our metaphor choice now.
And with a final haymaker from “guess I’ll watch ‘The Office’ for a sixth time,” binge watching has defeated the defending champion! Be sure to tune in next week, when alcohol takes on common sense. A true fight for the ages there.
Lead us not into temptation
Can anyone resist the temptation of binge watching? Can no one swim against the sleep-depriving, show-streaming current? Is resistance to an “Orange Is the New Black” bender futile?
University of Wyoming researchers say there’s hope. Those who would sleep svelte and sound in a world of streaming services and Krispy Kreme must plan ahead to tame temptation.
Proactive temptation management begins long before those chocolate iced glazed with sprinkles appear at the nurses’ station. Planning your response ahead of time increases the odds that the first episode of “Stranger Things” is also the evening’s last episode.
Using psychology’s human lab mice – undergraduate students – the researchers tested five temptation-proofing self-control strategies.
The first strategy: situation selection. If “Game of Thrones” is on in the den, avoid the room as if it were an unmucked House Lannister horse stall. Second: situation modification. Is your spouse hotboxing GoT on an iPad next to you in the bed? Politely suggest that GoT is even better when viewed on the living room sofa.
The third strategy: distraction. Enjoy the wholesome snap of a Finn Crisp while your coworkers destroy those Krispy Kremes like Daenerys leveling King’s Landing. Fourth: reappraisal. Tell yourself that season 2 of “Ozark” can’t surpass season 1, and will simply swindle you of your precious time. And fifth, the Nancy-Reagan, temptation-resistance classic: response inhibition. When offered the narcotic that is “Breaking Bad,” just say no!
Which temptation strategies worked best?
Planning ahead with one through four led fewer Cowboy State undergrads into temptation.
As for responding in the moment? Well, the Krispy Kremes would’ve never lasted past season 2 of “The Great British Baking Show.”
Stuck between a tongue and a hard place
There once was a 7-year-old boy who loved grape juice. He loved grape juice so much that he didn’t want to waste any after drinking a bottle of the stuff.
To get every last drop, he tried to use his tongue to lick the inside of a grape juice bottle. One particular bottle, however, was evil and had other plans. It grabbed his tongue and wouldn’t let go, even after his mother tried to help him.
She took him to the great healing wizards at Auf der Bult Children’s Hospital in Hannover, Germany – which is quite surprising, because they live in New Jersey. [Just kidding, they’re from Hannover – just checking to see if you’re paying attention.]
When their magic wands didn’t work, doctors at the hospital mildly sedated the boy with midazolam and esketamine and then advanced a 70-mm plastic button cannula between the neck of the bottle and his tongue, hoping to release the presumed vacuum. No such luck.
It was at that point that the greatest of all the wizards, Dr. Christoph Eich, a pediatric anesthesiologist at the hospital, remembered having a similar problem with a particularly villainous bottle of “grape juice” during his magical training days some 20 years earlier.
The solution then, he discovered, was to connect the cannula to a syringe and inject air into the bottle to produce positive pressure and force out the foreign object.
Dr. Eich’s reinvention of BPAP (bottle positive airway pressure) worked on the child, who, once the purple discoloration of his tongue faded after 3 days, was none the worse for wear and lived happily ever after.
We’re just wondering if the good doctor told the child’s mother that the original situation involved a bottle of wine that couldn’t be opened because no one had a corkscrew. Well, maybe she reads the European Journal of Anaesthesiology.
Sleep vs. Netflix: the eternal struggle
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Livin’ on the MDedge World Championship Boxing! Tonight, we bring you a classic match-up in the endless battle for your valuable time.
In the red corner, weighing in at a muscular 8 hours, is the defending champion: a good night’s sleep! And now for the challenger in the blue corner, coming in at a strong “just one more episode, I promise,” it’s binge watching!
Oh, sleep opens the match strong: According to a survey from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, U.S. adults rank sleep as their second-most important priority, with only family beating it out. My goodness, that is a strong opening offensive.
But wait, binge watching is countering! According to the very same survey, 88% of Americans have admitted that they’d lost sleep because they’d stayed up late to watch extra episodes of a TV show or streaming series, a rate that rises to 95% in people aged 18-44 years. Oh dear, sleep looks like it’s in trouble.
Hang on, what’s binge watching doing? It’s unleashing a quick barrage of attacks: 72% of men aged 18-34 reported delaying sleep for video games, two-thirds of U.S. adults reported losing sleep to read a book, and nearly 60% of adults delayed sleep to watch sports. We feel slightly conflicted about our metaphor choice now.
And with a final haymaker from “guess I’ll watch ‘The Office’ for a sixth time,” binge watching has defeated the defending champion! Be sure to tune in next week, when alcohol takes on common sense. A true fight for the ages there.
Lead us not into temptation
Can anyone resist the temptation of binge watching? Can no one swim against the sleep-depriving, show-streaming current? Is resistance to an “Orange Is the New Black” bender futile?
University of Wyoming researchers say there’s hope. Those who would sleep svelte and sound in a world of streaming services and Krispy Kreme must plan ahead to tame temptation.
Proactive temptation management begins long before those chocolate iced glazed with sprinkles appear at the nurses’ station. Planning your response ahead of time increases the odds that the first episode of “Stranger Things” is also the evening’s last episode.
Using psychology’s human lab mice – undergraduate students – the researchers tested five temptation-proofing self-control strategies.
The first strategy: situation selection. If “Game of Thrones” is on in the den, avoid the room as if it were an unmucked House Lannister horse stall. Second: situation modification. Is your spouse hotboxing GoT on an iPad next to you in the bed? Politely suggest that GoT is even better when viewed on the living room sofa.
The third strategy: distraction. Enjoy the wholesome snap of a Finn Crisp while your coworkers destroy those Krispy Kremes like Daenerys leveling King’s Landing. Fourth: reappraisal. Tell yourself that season 2 of “Ozark” can’t surpass season 1, and will simply swindle you of your precious time. And fifth, the Nancy-Reagan, temptation-resistance classic: response inhibition. When offered the narcotic that is “Breaking Bad,” just say no!
Which temptation strategies worked best?
Planning ahead with one through four led fewer Cowboy State undergrads into temptation.
As for responding in the moment? Well, the Krispy Kremes would’ve never lasted past season 2 of “The Great British Baking Show.”
Stuck between a tongue and a hard place
There once was a 7-year-old boy who loved grape juice. He loved grape juice so much that he didn’t want to waste any after drinking a bottle of the stuff.
To get every last drop, he tried to use his tongue to lick the inside of a grape juice bottle. One particular bottle, however, was evil and had other plans. It grabbed his tongue and wouldn’t let go, even after his mother tried to help him.
She took him to the great healing wizards at Auf der Bult Children’s Hospital in Hannover, Germany – which is quite surprising, because they live in New Jersey. [Just kidding, they’re from Hannover – just checking to see if you’re paying attention.]
When their magic wands didn’t work, doctors at the hospital mildly sedated the boy with midazolam and esketamine and then advanced a 70-mm plastic button cannula between the neck of the bottle and his tongue, hoping to release the presumed vacuum. No such luck.
It was at that point that the greatest of all the wizards, Dr. Christoph Eich, a pediatric anesthesiologist at the hospital, remembered having a similar problem with a particularly villainous bottle of “grape juice” during his magical training days some 20 years earlier.
The solution then, he discovered, was to connect the cannula to a syringe and inject air into the bottle to produce positive pressure and force out the foreign object.
Dr. Eich’s reinvention of BPAP (bottle positive airway pressure) worked on the child, who, once the purple discoloration of his tongue faded after 3 days, was none the worse for wear and lived happily ever after.
We’re just wondering if the good doctor told the child’s mother that the original situation involved a bottle of wine that couldn’t be opened because no one had a corkscrew. Well, maybe she reads the European Journal of Anaesthesiology.
Sleep vs. Netflix: the eternal struggle
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Livin’ on the MDedge World Championship Boxing! Tonight, we bring you a classic match-up in the endless battle for your valuable time.
In the red corner, weighing in at a muscular 8 hours, is the defending champion: a good night’s sleep! And now for the challenger in the blue corner, coming in at a strong “just one more episode, I promise,” it’s binge watching!
Oh, sleep opens the match strong: According to a survey from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, U.S. adults rank sleep as their second-most important priority, with only family beating it out. My goodness, that is a strong opening offensive.
But wait, binge watching is countering! According to the very same survey, 88% of Americans have admitted that they’d lost sleep because they’d stayed up late to watch extra episodes of a TV show or streaming series, a rate that rises to 95% in people aged 18-44 years. Oh dear, sleep looks like it’s in trouble.
Hang on, what’s binge watching doing? It’s unleashing a quick barrage of attacks: 72% of men aged 18-34 reported delaying sleep for video games, two-thirds of U.S. adults reported losing sleep to read a book, and nearly 60% of adults delayed sleep to watch sports. We feel slightly conflicted about our metaphor choice now.
And with a final haymaker from “guess I’ll watch ‘The Office’ for a sixth time,” binge watching has defeated the defending champion! Be sure to tune in next week, when alcohol takes on common sense. A true fight for the ages there.
Lead us not into temptation
Can anyone resist the temptation of binge watching? Can no one swim against the sleep-depriving, show-streaming current? Is resistance to an “Orange Is the New Black” bender futile?
University of Wyoming researchers say there’s hope. Those who would sleep svelte and sound in a world of streaming services and Krispy Kreme must plan ahead to tame temptation.
Proactive temptation management begins long before those chocolate iced glazed with sprinkles appear at the nurses’ station. Planning your response ahead of time increases the odds that the first episode of “Stranger Things” is also the evening’s last episode.
Using psychology’s human lab mice – undergraduate students – the researchers tested five temptation-proofing self-control strategies.
The first strategy: situation selection. If “Game of Thrones” is on in the den, avoid the room as if it were an unmucked House Lannister horse stall. Second: situation modification. Is your spouse hotboxing GoT on an iPad next to you in the bed? Politely suggest that GoT is even better when viewed on the living room sofa.
The third strategy: distraction. Enjoy the wholesome snap of a Finn Crisp while your coworkers destroy those Krispy Kremes like Daenerys leveling King’s Landing. Fourth: reappraisal. Tell yourself that season 2 of “Ozark” can’t surpass season 1, and will simply swindle you of your precious time. And fifth, the Nancy-Reagan, temptation-resistance classic: response inhibition. When offered the narcotic that is “Breaking Bad,” just say no!
Which temptation strategies worked best?
Planning ahead with one through four led fewer Cowboy State undergrads into temptation.
As for responding in the moment? Well, the Krispy Kremes would’ve never lasted past season 2 of “The Great British Baking Show.”
Stuck between a tongue and a hard place
There once was a 7-year-old boy who loved grape juice. He loved grape juice so much that he didn’t want to waste any after drinking a bottle of the stuff.
To get every last drop, he tried to use his tongue to lick the inside of a grape juice bottle. One particular bottle, however, was evil and had other plans. It grabbed his tongue and wouldn’t let go, even after his mother tried to help him.
She took him to the great healing wizards at Auf der Bult Children’s Hospital in Hannover, Germany – which is quite surprising, because they live in New Jersey. [Just kidding, they’re from Hannover – just checking to see if you’re paying attention.]
When their magic wands didn’t work, doctors at the hospital mildly sedated the boy with midazolam and esketamine and then advanced a 70-mm plastic button cannula between the neck of the bottle and his tongue, hoping to release the presumed vacuum. No such luck.
It was at that point that the greatest of all the wizards, Dr. Christoph Eich, a pediatric anesthesiologist at the hospital, remembered having a similar problem with a particularly villainous bottle of “grape juice” during his magical training days some 20 years earlier.
The solution then, he discovered, was to connect the cannula to a syringe and inject air into the bottle to produce positive pressure and force out the foreign object.
Dr. Eich’s reinvention of BPAP (bottle positive airway pressure) worked on the child, who, once the purple discoloration of his tongue faded after 3 days, was none the worse for wear and lived happily ever after.
We’re just wondering if the good doctor told the child’s mother that the original situation involved a bottle of wine that couldn’t be opened because no one had a corkscrew. Well, maybe she reads the European Journal of Anaesthesiology.
Werewolves of Vallejo and a haunted-house doctor’s note
A crappy excuse of a database
Have you ever been so impressed with your bowel movement that you’ve been compelled to record the incident for posterity? No? Just us? Well, you may want to reconsider, because a pair of AI tech companies are looking for a few good poop pictures.
It’s all part of the “Give a S--t” (you can probably guess what we’ve censored out) campaign, a joint venture from Auggi, a gut health start-up, and Seed Health. The companies hope to use photos sent in by regular people to build an app that would help people with chronic gut problems automatically track their own bowel movements. In addition, the photo library could also be used for research into gut-related diseases such as irritable bowl syndrome.
The two companies hope to collect 100,000 photos for their library, which is an absolutely prodigious amount of poop to sort through. But hey, that’s what the AI is for. They already know the AI works, as Auggi created a proof-of-concept library of 36,000 images of faux feces made from blue Play-Doh. The AI was able to recognize consistency according to the Bristol scale basically 100% of the time.
If you’ve been inspired, you can submit your lovely poop pictures here. Seed and Auggi expect contributers to send only one image each, but multiple submissions are welcome. They’ve already received a dozen from LOTME world headquarters. We love a good bowel movement here.
Criminal moon
“The Wolf Man.” “An American Werewolf in London.” “The Howling.” “Teen Wolf.” All terrifying Hollywood tales of bloodthirsty behavior and sanguinary slaughter. (Michael J. Fox as a hirsute homicidal lycan? Okay, maybe not “Teen Wolf.”)
And the propellant igniting all that criminal lycanthropy? The full moon.
Any teacher will swear a full moon portends the kind of student behavior that an entire pot of teachers’ lounge coffee can’t counter. And every cop knows it’s going to be a “Training Day” shift when the lunar light shines brightest.
But is the Thin Blue Line truly stretched to snapping during a full moon? New York University’s BetaGov research team looked at the purported “lunar effect” linking crime and the full moon. A lit review revealed mixed findings for and against a criminal lunar effect. The team then collaborated with the Vallejo, Calif., police department to match the moon’s phases with the city’s crime events. They did the same with departments in Canada and Mexico.
The results? A full moon had no effect on Vallejo’s crime rate, or anywhere else in North America.
While the finding eviscerates the moon-induced mayhem hypothesis, cops walking a full-moonlit beat can at least take comfort in this fact: Unlike London, Vallejo is clearly free of American werewolves.
A doctor’s note … of terror
With Halloween upon us, here’s a veddy scary riddle: When is a sports physical not a sports physical?
When it’s a haunted house physical.
Specifically, when the haunted house is McKamey Manor in Summertown, Tenn. … and in Huntsville, Ala. That’s right, it can be in two places at the same time. Terrifying.
McKamey Manor is considered by many to be the most terrifying haunted house in the United States, and by some to be a “torture chamber under disguise.”
The “Surivial [we think they misspelled it on purpose to make it even scarier] Horror Challenge” is so terrifying that management requires all participants to have a “completed ‘sports physical’ and doctor’s letter stating you are physically and mentally cleared,” as well as proof of medical insurance. Each paying customer also has to “pass a portable drug test on the day of the show,” according to the McKamey Manor website.
The manor also happens to be the subject of a petition, which currently has over 58,000 signatures, asking state officials in Alabama and Tennessee to shut it down because “some people have had to seek professional psychiatric help and medical care for extensive injuries.”
Ironically, we hear that some of the most traumatized customers have been actual physicians who succumbed to the horrors of Prior Approval Asylum, the EHR Torment Room, and the River of the Damned Maintenance of Certification.
A crappy excuse of a database
Have you ever been so impressed with your bowel movement that you’ve been compelled to record the incident for posterity? No? Just us? Well, you may want to reconsider, because a pair of AI tech companies are looking for a few good poop pictures.
It’s all part of the “Give a S--t” (you can probably guess what we’ve censored out) campaign, a joint venture from Auggi, a gut health start-up, and Seed Health. The companies hope to use photos sent in by regular people to build an app that would help people with chronic gut problems automatically track their own bowel movements. In addition, the photo library could also be used for research into gut-related diseases such as irritable bowl syndrome.
The two companies hope to collect 100,000 photos for their library, which is an absolutely prodigious amount of poop to sort through. But hey, that’s what the AI is for. They already know the AI works, as Auggi created a proof-of-concept library of 36,000 images of faux feces made from blue Play-Doh. The AI was able to recognize consistency according to the Bristol scale basically 100% of the time.
If you’ve been inspired, you can submit your lovely poop pictures here. Seed and Auggi expect contributers to send only one image each, but multiple submissions are welcome. They’ve already received a dozen from LOTME world headquarters. We love a good bowel movement here.
Criminal moon
“The Wolf Man.” “An American Werewolf in London.” “The Howling.” “Teen Wolf.” All terrifying Hollywood tales of bloodthirsty behavior and sanguinary slaughter. (Michael J. Fox as a hirsute homicidal lycan? Okay, maybe not “Teen Wolf.”)
And the propellant igniting all that criminal lycanthropy? The full moon.
Any teacher will swear a full moon portends the kind of student behavior that an entire pot of teachers’ lounge coffee can’t counter. And every cop knows it’s going to be a “Training Day” shift when the lunar light shines brightest.
But is the Thin Blue Line truly stretched to snapping during a full moon? New York University’s BetaGov research team looked at the purported “lunar effect” linking crime and the full moon. A lit review revealed mixed findings for and against a criminal lunar effect. The team then collaborated with the Vallejo, Calif., police department to match the moon’s phases with the city’s crime events. They did the same with departments in Canada and Mexico.
The results? A full moon had no effect on Vallejo’s crime rate, or anywhere else in North America.
While the finding eviscerates the moon-induced mayhem hypothesis, cops walking a full-moonlit beat can at least take comfort in this fact: Unlike London, Vallejo is clearly free of American werewolves.
A doctor’s note … of terror
With Halloween upon us, here’s a veddy scary riddle: When is a sports physical not a sports physical?
When it’s a haunted house physical.
Specifically, when the haunted house is McKamey Manor in Summertown, Tenn. … and in Huntsville, Ala. That’s right, it can be in two places at the same time. Terrifying.
McKamey Manor is considered by many to be the most terrifying haunted house in the United States, and by some to be a “torture chamber under disguise.”
The “Surivial [we think they misspelled it on purpose to make it even scarier] Horror Challenge” is so terrifying that management requires all participants to have a “completed ‘sports physical’ and doctor’s letter stating you are physically and mentally cleared,” as well as proof of medical insurance. Each paying customer also has to “pass a portable drug test on the day of the show,” according to the McKamey Manor website.
The manor also happens to be the subject of a petition, which currently has over 58,000 signatures, asking state officials in Alabama and Tennessee to shut it down because “some people have had to seek professional psychiatric help and medical care for extensive injuries.”
Ironically, we hear that some of the most traumatized customers have been actual physicians who succumbed to the horrors of Prior Approval Asylum, the EHR Torment Room, and the River of the Damned Maintenance of Certification.
A crappy excuse of a database
Have you ever been so impressed with your bowel movement that you’ve been compelled to record the incident for posterity? No? Just us? Well, you may want to reconsider, because a pair of AI tech companies are looking for a few good poop pictures.
It’s all part of the “Give a S--t” (you can probably guess what we’ve censored out) campaign, a joint venture from Auggi, a gut health start-up, and Seed Health. The companies hope to use photos sent in by regular people to build an app that would help people with chronic gut problems automatically track their own bowel movements. In addition, the photo library could also be used for research into gut-related diseases such as irritable bowl syndrome.
The two companies hope to collect 100,000 photos for their library, which is an absolutely prodigious amount of poop to sort through. But hey, that’s what the AI is for. They already know the AI works, as Auggi created a proof-of-concept library of 36,000 images of faux feces made from blue Play-Doh. The AI was able to recognize consistency according to the Bristol scale basically 100% of the time.
If you’ve been inspired, you can submit your lovely poop pictures here. Seed and Auggi expect contributers to send only one image each, but multiple submissions are welcome. They’ve already received a dozen from LOTME world headquarters. We love a good bowel movement here.
Criminal moon
“The Wolf Man.” “An American Werewolf in London.” “The Howling.” “Teen Wolf.” All terrifying Hollywood tales of bloodthirsty behavior and sanguinary slaughter. (Michael J. Fox as a hirsute homicidal lycan? Okay, maybe not “Teen Wolf.”)
And the propellant igniting all that criminal lycanthropy? The full moon.
Any teacher will swear a full moon portends the kind of student behavior that an entire pot of teachers’ lounge coffee can’t counter. And every cop knows it’s going to be a “Training Day” shift when the lunar light shines brightest.
But is the Thin Blue Line truly stretched to snapping during a full moon? New York University’s BetaGov research team looked at the purported “lunar effect” linking crime and the full moon. A lit review revealed mixed findings for and against a criminal lunar effect. The team then collaborated with the Vallejo, Calif., police department to match the moon’s phases with the city’s crime events. They did the same with departments in Canada and Mexico.
The results? A full moon had no effect on Vallejo’s crime rate, or anywhere else in North America.
While the finding eviscerates the moon-induced mayhem hypothesis, cops walking a full-moonlit beat can at least take comfort in this fact: Unlike London, Vallejo is clearly free of American werewolves.
A doctor’s note … of terror
With Halloween upon us, here’s a veddy scary riddle: When is a sports physical not a sports physical?
When it’s a haunted house physical.
Specifically, when the haunted house is McKamey Manor in Summertown, Tenn. … and in Huntsville, Ala. That’s right, it can be in two places at the same time. Terrifying.
McKamey Manor is considered by many to be the most terrifying haunted house in the United States, and by some to be a “torture chamber under disguise.”
The “Surivial [we think they misspelled it on purpose to make it even scarier] Horror Challenge” is so terrifying that management requires all participants to have a “completed ‘sports physical’ and doctor’s letter stating you are physically and mentally cleared,” as well as proof of medical insurance. Each paying customer also has to “pass a portable drug test on the day of the show,” according to the McKamey Manor website.
The manor also happens to be the subject of a petition, which currently has over 58,000 signatures, asking state officials in Alabama and Tennessee to shut it down because “some people have had to seek professional psychiatric help and medical care for extensive injuries.”
Ironically, we hear that some of the most traumatized customers have been actual physicians who succumbed to the horrors of Prior Approval Asylum, the EHR Torment Room, and the River of the Damned Maintenance of Certification.
Electrified pathogens and urbanized mosquitoes
Microbes won’t believe this shocking truth!
Pathogens can be tough little critters. Always getting into places they don’t belong, and when they get there, they can be difficult to get rid of, what with their ability to quickly evolve resistance to our best medications. If only there was some shocking new way to tackle those nasty and annoying infections.
Thanks to some engineers and researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, if you’ve got an infection centered on a metal implant, that shocking new treatment won’t be just a figure of speech. They ran a weak electrical current through metal dental implants infected with recurring Candida albicans infection, which damaged the cell membranes of the offending fungal pathogens but left the healthy tissue around the infection alone. That damage increased the pathogen's permeability, making it more susceptible to antimicrobial treatment.
The treatment, also known as electrochemical therapy, is great if you’ve got a recurrent infection. The dormant pathogens responsible for the recurrence, not normally susceptible to treatment, are affected by antifungals or antibiotics after the shock wakes them up. Even bacteria that have evolved drug resistance become vulnerable again after a session with Dr. Electricity.
Unfortunately, while the therapy could certainly be expanded beyond dental implants, shocking yourself when you’ve got a regular old infection probably won’t work. We know – Watt a disappointment.
Blast from the brewing past
What separates a rich Belgian ale from its paler, mass-produced American competitors? Is it the sudsy je ne sais quoi produced by squabbling Walloons and Flemings debating the fine points of the brewing arts over open tanks? Perhaps it’s the signature warm-fermented ways of Trappist monks? Is it possible les Belges have hired the unemployed Artesians who once made Olympia Beer a household name across the American West?
Wrong, wrong, and faux. In fact, Belgium’s finest brews are driven by hybrids. Yeast hybrids. Specifically, rare and unusual forms of hybrid yeasts.
Or, as Belgian researcher and world beer hero Dr. Jan Steensels of VIB-KU Leuven Center for Microbiology explains, “Think of lions and tigers making a super-baby.”
Fearlessly, Dr. Steensels and his intrepid colleagues went hunting for these exotic creatures. They found that the yeasts behind many of Belgium’s finest brews combine the DNA of the traditional, domesticated ale yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, with genetic material from wild yeasts such as Saccharomyces kudriavzevii.
The result? The mighty fermentation strengths of normal beer yeasts are paired with the stress resistance and alluring aromas of feral yeasts that survived mankind’s Medieval brewing endeavors and somehow stumbled into the modern brewery for a drink.
Dr. Steensels’ team is now using its knowledge to craft more yeasty lion-tiger super-babies. We at the Bureau of LOTME look forward to hoisting a pint of this “liger” elixir. We’re certain the brew will bear the name of ligers’ greatest cinematic fan, Napoleon Dynamite, and feature the subtle undertones of tater tots.
How can mosquitoes be even more fun?
If you’re anything like the gang at LOTME, you’ve spent quite a bit of time wondering which cliché is the best fit for a less-affluent Baltimore neighborhood.
The answer? When it rains, it pours.
We’ll explain. By definition, a less-affluent neighborhood is, well, less affluent, and that lack of affluence has many health consequences for the people who live in those neighborhoods. Today we’re focusing on everyone’s favorite winged disease vector, the mosquito.
It was already known that low-income urban neighborhoods have more mosquitoes than other neighborhoods, and now the Journal of Medical Entomology has published a survey of 13 residential blocks in Baltimore that shows low-income neighborhoods have larger mosquitoes as well.
Trapping took place in five socioeconomically diverse Baltimore neighborhoods during June and July of 2015-2017. (In case you were wondering, the researchers used BG-Sentinel traps baited with CO2 and a 2.0-mL Octenol Lure, which would have been our choice, too). It confirmed that lower affluence correlated with larger mosquito wing size. Wing size, the investigators said in a written statement, “is an accurate proxy for body size in mosquitoes, and body size influences traits that are important to disease transmission.”
So, it seems that larger mosquitoes are more efficient at transmitting diseases, which means more dengue fever, more Zika, more chikungunya, more eastern equine encephalitis, and more West Nile virus. To extend the original cliché a bit, when it rains in Baltimore, the poor neighborhoods get the wettest.
* Correction, 10/24/19: An earlier version of this story misstated the fungal target of the electrical therapy experiment.
Microbes won’t believe this shocking truth!
Pathogens can be tough little critters. Always getting into places they don’t belong, and when they get there, they can be difficult to get rid of, what with their ability to quickly evolve resistance to our best medications. If only there was some shocking new way to tackle those nasty and annoying infections.
Thanks to some engineers and researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, if you’ve got an infection centered on a metal implant, that shocking new treatment won’t be just a figure of speech. They ran a weak electrical current through metal dental implants infected with recurring Candida albicans infection, which damaged the cell membranes of the offending fungal pathogens but left the healthy tissue around the infection alone. That damage increased the pathogen's permeability, making it more susceptible to antimicrobial treatment.
The treatment, also known as electrochemical therapy, is great if you’ve got a recurrent infection. The dormant pathogens responsible for the recurrence, not normally susceptible to treatment, are affected by antifungals or antibiotics after the shock wakes them up. Even bacteria that have evolved drug resistance become vulnerable again after a session with Dr. Electricity.
Unfortunately, while the therapy could certainly be expanded beyond dental implants, shocking yourself when you’ve got a regular old infection probably won’t work. We know – Watt a disappointment.
Blast from the brewing past
What separates a rich Belgian ale from its paler, mass-produced American competitors? Is it the sudsy je ne sais quoi produced by squabbling Walloons and Flemings debating the fine points of the brewing arts over open tanks? Perhaps it’s the signature warm-fermented ways of Trappist monks? Is it possible les Belges have hired the unemployed Artesians who once made Olympia Beer a household name across the American West?
Wrong, wrong, and faux. In fact, Belgium’s finest brews are driven by hybrids. Yeast hybrids. Specifically, rare and unusual forms of hybrid yeasts.
Or, as Belgian researcher and world beer hero Dr. Jan Steensels of VIB-KU Leuven Center for Microbiology explains, “Think of lions and tigers making a super-baby.”
Fearlessly, Dr. Steensels and his intrepid colleagues went hunting for these exotic creatures. They found that the yeasts behind many of Belgium’s finest brews combine the DNA of the traditional, domesticated ale yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, with genetic material from wild yeasts such as Saccharomyces kudriavzevii.
The result? The mighty fermentation strengths of normal beer yeasts are paired with the stress resistance and alluring aromas of feral yeasts that survived mankind’s Medieval brewing endeavors and somehow stumbled into the modern brewery for a drink.
Dr. Steensels’ team is now using its knowledge to craft more yeasty lion-tiger super-babies. We at the Bureau of LOTME look forward to hoisting a pint of this “liger” elixir. We’re certain the brew will bear the name of ligers’ greatest cinematic fan, Napoleon Dynamite, and feature the subtle undertones of tater tots.
How can mosquitoes be even more fun?
If you’re anything like the gang at LOTME, you’ve spent quite a bit of time wondering which cliché is the best fit for a less-affluent Baltimore neighborhood.
The answer? When it rains, it pours.
We’ll explain. By definition, a less-affluent neighborhood is, well, less affluent, and that lack of affluence has many health consequences for the people who live in those neighborhoods. Today we’re focusing on everyone’s favorite winged disease vector, the mosquito.
It was already known that low-income urban neighborhoods have more mosquitoes than other neighborhoods, and now the Journal of Medical Entomology has published a survey of 13 residential blocks in Baltimore that shows low-income neighborhoods have larger mosquitoes as well.
Trapping took place in five socioeconomically diverse Baltimore neighborhoods during June and July of 2015-2017. (In case you were wondering, the researchers used BG-Sentinel traps baited with CO2 and a 2.0-mL Octenol Lure, which would have been our choice, too). It confirmed that lower affluence correlated with larger mosquito wing size. Wing size, the investigators said in a written statement, “is an accurate proxy for body size in mosquitoes, and body size influences traits that are important to disease transmission.”
So, it seems that larger mosquitoes are more efficient at transmitting diseases, which means more dengue fever, more Zika, more chikungunya, more eastern equine encephalitis, and more West Nile virus. To extend the original cliché a bit, when it rains in Baltimore, the poor neighborhoods get the wettest.
* Correction, 10/24/19: An earlier version of this story misstated the fungal target of the electrical therapy experiment.
Microbes won’t believe this shocking truth!
Pathogens can be tough little critters. Always getting into places they don’t belong, and when they get there, they can be difficult to get rid of, what with their ability to quickly evolve resistance to our best medications. If only there was some shocking new way to tackle those nasty and annoying infections.
Thanks to some engineers and researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, if you’ve got an infection centered on a metal implant, that shocking new treatment won’t be just a figure of speech. They ran a weak electrical current through metal dental implants infected with recurring Candida albicans infection, which damaged the cell membranes of the offending fungal pathogens but left the healthy tissue around the infection alone. That damage increased the pathogen's permeability, making it more susceptible to antimicrobial treatment.
The treatment, also known as electrochemical therapy, is great if you’ve got a recurrent infection. The dormant pathogens responsible for the recurrence, not normally susceptible to treatment, are affected by antifungals or antibiotics after the shock wakes them up. Even bacteria that have evolved drug resistance become vulnerable again after a session with Dr. Electricity.
Unfortunately, while the therapy could certainly be expanded beyond dental implants, shocking yourself when you’ve got a regular old infection probably won’t work. We know – Watt a disappointment.
Blast from the brewing past
What separates a rich Belgian ale from its paler, mass-produced American competitors? Is it the sudsy je ne sais quoi produced by squabbling Walloons and Flemings debating the fine points of the brewing arts over open tanks? Perhaps it’s the signature warm-fermented ways of Trappist monks? Is it possible les Belges have hired the unemployed Artesians who once made Olympia Beer a household name across the American West?
Wrong, wrong, and faux. In fact, Belgium’s finest brews are driven by hybrids. Yeast hybrids. Specifically, rare and unusual forms of hybrid yeasts.
Or, as Belgian researcher and world beer hero Dr. Jan Steensels of VIB-KU Leuven Center for Microbiology explains, “Think of lions and tigers making a super-baby.”
Fearlessly, Dr. Steensels and his intrepid colleagues went hunting for these exotic creatures. They found that the yeasts behind many of Belgium’s finest brews combine the DNA of the traditional, domesticated ale yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, with genetic material from wild yeasts such as Saccharomyces kudriavzevii.
The result? The mighty fermentation strengths of normal beer yeasts are paired with the stress resistance and alluring aromas of feral yeasts that survived mankind’s Medieval brewing endeavors and somehow stumbled into the modern brewery for a drink.
Dr. Steensels’ team is now using its knowledge to craft more yeasty lion-tiger super-babies. We at the Bureau of LOTME look forward to hoisting a pint of this “liger” elixir. We’re certain the brew will bear the name of ligers’ greatest cinematic fan, Napoleon Dynamite, and feature the subtle undertones of tater tots.
How can mosquitoes be even more fun?
If you’re anything like the gang at LOTME, you’ve spent quite a bit of time wondering which cliché is the best fit for a less-affluent Baltimore neighborhood.
The answer? When it rains, it pours.
We’ll explain. By definition, a less-affluent neighborhood is, well, less affluent, and that lack of affluence has many health consequences for the people who live in those neighborhoods. Today we’re focusing on everyone’s favorite winged disease vector, the mosquito.
It was already known that low-income urban neighborhoods have more mosquitoes than other neighborhoods, and now the Journal of Medical Entomology has published a survey of 13 residential blocks in Baltimore that shows low-income neighborhoods have larger mosquitoes as well.
Trapping took place in five socioeconomically diverse Baltimore neighborhoods during June and July of 2015-2017. (In case you were wondering, the researchers used BG-Sentinel traps baited with CO2 and a 2.0-mL Octenol Lure, which would have been our choice, too). It confirmed that lower affluence correlated with larger mosquito wing size. Wing size, the investigators said in a written statement, “is an accurate proxy for body size in mosquitoes, and body size influences traits that are important to disease transmission.”
So, it seems that larger mosquitoes are more efficient at transmitting diseases, which means more dengue fever, more Zika, more chikungunya, more eastern equine encephalitis, and more West Nile virus. To extend the original cliché a bit, when it rains in Baltimore, the poor neighborhoods get the wettest.
* Correction, 10/24/19: An earlier version of this story misstated the fungal target of the electrical therapy experiment.
America’s peas problem and freshly grated tattoos
Hold the peas, pass the spiders
There’s an old saying – and by “old,” we mean that we just made it up – in the medical-humor business: When in doubt, find a survey.
Some group is always surveying somebody about something and coming up with a wacky assumption or misguided opinion held by a minority of the respondents. It’s a classic go-to move for the desperate writer.
And look, here’s one now. According to a recent survey conducted by OnePoll for VeggieTracker.com, 83% of Americans like – and this makes us feel oogie just thinking about it – peas. Blecch. Even more amazing? About a quarter of the 2,000 respondents said that they had never even eaten a vegetable. That might explain a good bit of the country’s obesity problem.
And then there’s the survey that OnePoll did for Mattress Advisor, which questioned 2,000 Americans about sleep science and myth. Among the results: 23% believe that an hour of sleep before midnight is worth more than two after, 25% think that sleeping on your left side helps digestion, and 15% said that circadian rhythm was the proper term for the body’s blood flow.
Our favorite, though, was the myth that you swallow eight spiders a year while you sleep. We’ve never heard that one, but 20% of respondents thought it was true.
We’re glad that it’s just a myth, but even spiders would be better than peas.
The politics of pretty
It’s an age-old political question: Did a majority of U.S. voters back Martin Van Buren in the 1836 presidential election because he pushed the popular policies of his boss, fellow Democrat Andrew Jackson? Or was it the suave sideburns of Jackson’s stylish vice president that trumped (see what we did there?) the clean-shaven Whig William Henry Harrison?
The evidence-backed answer: Probably both.
Researchers at the University of Freiburg in Germany conducted two style-or-substance studies to determine how much political advantage a pretty face confers. The first study examined the impact attractive looks and the ability to appear competent riding atop an Abrams tank (ooooh, sorry, Dukakis fans), er, the ability to look competent in photos had in Germany’s 2017 Bundestag elections.
The study’s precise answer: 3.8 percentage points. That’s the polling advantage candidates gained by being judged more attractive than their competitors. Admittedly, the researchers also found it helped to be more than just a pretty face – the unaesthetic quality of relative competence also played a positive role.
The second study took the same approach to U.S. House of Representatives races. In that research beauty contest, America’s aesthetically attuned voters delivered up to an 11-point advantage to the prettiest person.
Now, as anyone will tell you who’s watched congressional TMZ – a.k.a. C-SPAN – beauty in politics is a relative matter. As one of our colleagues noted after visiting the Bureau of LOTME’s Washington hometown and seeing several political stars up close and personal: “Washington is Hollywood for the not so good lookin’.”
Grate idea, or greatest idea?
Tattoo removal is a big part of business for quite a few dermatologists out there. In 2011, more than 100,000 tattoo removal procedures were performed, according to the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery.
But dermatologists beware, because an Argentinian man may have found a far cheaper method for getting rid of unwanted tattoos, one that would make all those fancy lasers obsolete.
And it all hinges on a humble kitchen utensil: the cheese grater.
The story began when our intrepid hero found out that he wouldn’t be able to work as airport police with a visible tattoo. Simultaneously, he decided that the detail on the week-old tattoo was not up to his standard. So, the man took to the Internet, searching for a cheap way to remove the offending mark. He tried a pumice stone but had no luck. So, next came the cheese grater.
And credit where credit’s due – he did get rid of the tattoo. He washed the wound, applied disinfectant, and everything was good.
Okay, he MAY have required a trip to his local emergency department because he needed a tetanus shot. And while the man isn’t sorry that he did what he did, he wouldn’t recommend the procedure to anyone else.
But consider yourselves on notice, dermatologists. There are always new ways to innovate.
Hold the peas, pass the spiders
There’s an old saying – and by “old,” we mean that we just made it up – in the medical-humor business: When in doubt, find a survey.
Some group is always surveying somebody about something and coming up with a wacky assumption or misguided opinion held by a minority of the respondents. It’s a classic go-to move for the desperate writer.
And look, here’s one now. According to a recent survey conducted by OnePoll for VeggieTracker.com, 83% of Americans like – and this makes us feel oogie just thinking about it – peas. Blecch. Even more amazing? About a quarter of the 2,000 respondents said that they had never even eaten a vegetable. That might explain a good bit of the country’s obesity problem.
And then there’s the survey that OnePoll did for Mattress Advisor, which questioned 2,000 Americans about sleep science and myth. Among the results: 23% believe that an hour of sleep before midnight is worth more than two after, 25% think that sleeping on your left side helps digestion, and 15% said that circadian rhythm was the proper term for the body’s blood flow.
Our favorite, though, was the myth that you swallow eight spiders a year while you sleep. We’ve never heard that one, but 20% of respondents thought it was true.
We’re glad that it’s just a myth, but even spiders would be better than peas.
The politics of pretty
It’s an age-old political question: Did a majority of U.S. voters back Martin Van Buren in the 1836 presidential election because he pushed the popular policies of his boss, fellow Democrat Andrew Jackson? Or was it the suave sideburns of Jackson’s stylish vice president that trumped (see what we did there?) the clean-shaven Whig William Henry Harrison?
The evidence-backed answer: Probably both.
Researchers at the University of Freiburg in Germany conducted two style-or-substance studies to determine how much political advantage a pretty face confers. The first study examined the impact attractive looks and the ability to appear competent riding atop an Abrams tank (ooooh, sorry, Dukakis fans), er, the ability to look competent in photos had in Germany’s 2017 Bundestag elections.
The study’s precise answer: 3.8 percentage points. That’s the polling advantage candidates gained by being judged more attractive than their competitors. Admittedly, the researchers also found it helped to be more than just a pretty face – the unaesthetic quality of relative competence also played a positive role.
The second study took the same approach to U.S. House of Representatives races. In that research beauty contest, America’s aesthetically attuned voters delivered up to an 11-point advantage to the prettiest person.
Now, as anyone will tell you who’s watched congressional TMZ – a.k.a. C-SPAN – beauty in politics is a relative matter. As one of our colleagues noted after visiting the Bureau of LOTME’s Washington hometown and seeing several political stars up close and personal: “Washington is Hollywood for the not so good lookin’.”
Grate idea, or greatest idea?
Tattoo removal is a big part of business for quite a few dermatologists out there. In 2011, more than 100,000 tattoo removal procedures were performed, according to the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery.
But dermatologists beware, because an Argentinian man may have found a far cheaper method for getting rid of unwanted tattoos, one that would make all those fancy lasers obsolete.
And it all hinges on a humble kitchen utensil: the cheese grater.
The story began when our intrepid hero found out that he wouldn’t be able to work as airport police with a visible tattoo. Simultaneously, he decided that the detail on the week-old tattoo was not up to his standard. So, the man took to the Internet, searching for a cheap way to remove the offending mark. He tried a pumice stone but had no luck. So, next came the cheese grater.
And credit where credit’s due – he did get rid of the tattoo. He washed the wound, applied disinfectant, and everything was good.
Okay, he MAY have required a trip to his local emergency department because he needed a tetanus shot. And while the man isn’t sorry that he did what he did, he wouldn’t recommend the procedure to anyone else.
But consider yourselves on notice, dermatologists. There are always new ways to innovate.
Hold the peas, pass the spiders
There’s an old saying – and by “old,” we mean that we just made it up – in the medical-humor business: When in doubt, find a survey.
Some group is always surveying somebody about something and coming up with a wacky assumption or misguided opinion held by a minority of the respondents. It’s a classic go-to move for the desperate writer.
And look, here’s one now. According to a recent survey conducted by OnePoll for VeggieTracker.com, 83% of Americans like – and this makes us feel oogie just thinking about it – peas. Blecch. Even more amazing? About a quarter of the 2,000 respondents said that they had never even eaten a vegetable. That might explain a good bit of the country’s obesity problem.
And then there’s the survey that OnePoll did for Mattress Advisor, which questioned 2,000 Americans about sleep science and myth. Among the results: 23% believe that an hour of sleep before midnight is worth more than two after, 25% think that sleeping on your left side helps digestion, and 15% said that circadian rhythm was the proper term for the body’s blood flow.
Our favorite, though, was the myth that you swallow eight spiders a year while you sleep. We’ve never heard that one, but 20% of respondents thought it was true.
We’re glad that it’s just a myth, but even spiders would be better than peas.
The politics of pretty
It’s an age-old political question: Did a majority of U.S. voters back Martin Van Buren in the 1836 presidential election because he pushed the popular policies of his boss, fellow Democrat Andrew Jackson? Or was it the suave sideburns of Jackson’s stylish vice president that trumped (see what we did there?) the clean-shaven Whig William Henry Harrison?
The evidence-backed answer: Probably both.
Researchers at the University of Freiburg in Germany conducted two style-or-substance studies to determine how much political advantage a pretty face confers. The first study examined the impact attractive looks and the ability to appear competent riding atop an Abrams tank (ooooh, sorry, Dukakis fans), er, the ability to look competent in photos had in Germany’s 2017 Bundestag elections.
The study’s precise answer: 3.8 percentage points. That’s the polling advantage candidates gained by being judged more attractive than their competitors. Admittedly, the researchers also found it helped to be more than just a pretty face – the unaesthetic quality of relative competence also played a positive role.
The second study took the same approach to U.S. House of Representatives races. In that research beauty contest, America’s aesthetically attuned voters delivered up to an 11-point advantage to the prettiest person.
Now, as anyone will tell you who’s watched congressional TMZ – a.k.a. C-SPAN – beauty in politics is a relative matter. As one of our colleagues noted after visiting the Bureau of LOTME’s Washington hometown and seeing several political stars up close and personal: “Washington is Hollywood for the not so good lookin’.”
Grate idea, or greatest idea?
Tattoo removal is a big part of business for quite a few dermatologists out there. In 2011, more than 100,000 tattoo removal procedures were performed, according to the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery.
But dermatologists beware, because an Argentinian man may have found a far cheaper method for getting rid of unwanted tattoos, one that would make all those fancy lasers obsolete.
And it all hinges on a humble kitchen utensil: the cheese grater.
The story began when our intrepid hero found out that he wouldn’t be able to work as airport police with a visible tattoo. Simultaneously, he decided that the detail on the week-old tattoo was not up to his standard. So, the man took to the Internet, searching for a cheap way to remove the offending mark. He tried a pumice stone but had no luck. So, next came the cheese grater.
And credit where credit’s due – he did get rid of the tattoo. He washed the wound, applied disinfectant, and everything was good.
Okay, he MAY have required a trip to his local emergency department because he needed a tetanus shot. And while the man isn’t sorry that he did what he did, he wouldn’t recommend the procedure to anyone else.
But consider yourselves on notice, dermatologists. There are always new ways to innovate.
Printed meat in space and diesel-pattern baldness
If at first you don’t succeed …
Dozens of new drugs are approved every year, but for every promising new medication, there are far more that fail to get past the clinical trial stage. The causes can vary: The drug didn’t do enough, it caused too many adverse events, and so on.
DNA topoisomerase inhibitors have been extensively researched as an anticancer agent, but many examples failed their clinical trials. These molecules are flat and made up of neatly stacked columns of electrically conductive rings, and operate by inserting themselves into DNA to stop replication.
That molecular structure is what interested a team of researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In research published in Nature Communications, the researchers noted that DNA topoisomerase inhibitors are structured much like organic semiconductors, but with a bonus. Those columns that make up the molecule are linked by hydrogen bonds, which allow bridges to form across the entire molecule, transforming the entire thing into a semiconductor.
That property, along with their easy printability and their high-specificity interactions with biological material, make the inhibitors an excellent candidate for use in biosensors or biotransistors.
A word to the manufacturer of those topoisomerase inhibitors, though, now that we’ve gotten you all excited again: We doubt you’ll be able to charge as much for the molecule. Semiconductors are hardly as glamorous as treating cancer.
Houston, we have a cultivated meat product
The Delmonico brothers didn’t do it. Ronald McDonald didn’t do it. Neil Armstrong never even tried. Same goes for Julia Child.
None of these culinary giants or astronauts ever grew beef in space. That honor belongs to Aleph Farms of Rehovot, Israel. The company, a self-proclaimed “global leader in the cultivated meat industry,” collaborated with 3D Bioprinting Solutions of Moscow and others to produce slaughter-free beef in the Russian segment of the International Space Station in September.
The actual process of growing a steak mimics natural “muscle-tissue regeneration occurring inside the cow’s body” and somehow uses a 3-D bioprinter to assemble “a small-scale muscle tissue.” We don’t really understand it, but the scientists and engineers here at LOTME Co. assure us it makes sense.
But why, you may ask, did they do it on the space station? Think of it as a stand-in for New York City. You know … if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. We’ll let Didier Toubia, cofounder and CEO of Aleph Farms, explain: “In space, we don’t have 10,000 or 15,000 liter (3962.58 gallon) of water available to produce 1 kilogram (2.205 pounds) of beef.” It’s all about sustainable food production.
The next phase of the project, we think, is going to be even more interesting. For a proper fine dining experience in space, they’re going to grow a snooty French waiter to serve cultivated steak to the astronauts.
Pollution Hair Club for Men
By now, most people are well aware that air pollution is linked with cancer. And chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. And asthma. And cardiovascular disease. And Germanic automotive emissions system cheating. Yawn.
But there’s a newly revealed association sure to make even the most jaded health news consumer’s hair stand on end: Exposure to pollution’s particulate matter is linked to ... hair loss.
Researchers from the Future Science Research Center in South Korea exposed cells from the base of human hair follicles to assorted concentrations of diesel and dust particulates. After 24 hours, the pollutants had suppressed production of beta-catenin, the primary protein crucial to the maintenance of George Clooney’s luxurious mane. And three other proteins supporting hair growth and hair retention also went AWOL in the presence of pollutants. Plus more particulate matter meant fewer hair-restoring proteins.
Diesel particulates and baldness? It all makes so much more sense now. Given the pollutant-rich Big Apple air in which lollipop-loving TV detective Theo Kojak’s smooth pate was steeped, is it any wonder he was famously so follicularly challenged? The Clean Air Act – who loves ya, baby?
If at first you don’t succeed …
Dozens of new drugs are approved every year, but for every promising new medication, there are far more that fail to get past the clinical trial stage. The causes can vary: The drug didn’t do enough, it caused too many adverse events, and so on.
DNA topoisomerase inhibitors have been extensively researched as an anticancer agent, but many examples failed their clinical trials. These molecules are flat and made up of neatly stacked columns of electrically conductive rings, and operate by inserting themselves into DNA to stop replication.
That molecular structure is what interested a team of researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In research published in Nature Communications, the researchers noted that DNA topoisomerase inhibitors are structured much like organic semiconductors, but with a bonus. Those columns that make up the molecule are linked by hydrogen bonds, which allow bridges to form across the entire molecule, transforming the entire thing into a semiconductor.
That property, along with their easy printability and their high-specificity interactions with biological material, make the inhibitors an excellent candidate for use in biosensors or biotransistors.
A word to the manufacturer of those topoisomerase inhibitors, though, now that we’ve gotten you all excited again: We doubt you’ll be able to charge as much for the molecule. Semiconductors are hardly as glamorous as treating cancer.
Houston, we have a cultivated meat product
The Delmonico brothers didn’t do it. Ronald McDonald didn’t do it. Neil Armstrong never even tried. Same goes for Julia Child.
None of these culinary giants or astronauts ever grew beef in space. That honor belongs to Aleph Farms of Rehovot, Israel. The company, a self-proclaimed “global leader in the cultivated meat industry,” collaborated with 3D Bioprinting Solutions of Moscow and others to produce slaughter-free beef in the Russian segment of the International Space Station in September.
The actual process of growing a steak mimics natural “muscle-tissue regeneration occurring inside the cow’s body” and somehow uses a 3-D bioprinter to assemble “a small-scale muscle tissue.” We don’t really understand it, but the scientists and engineers here at LOTME Co. assure us it makes sense.
But why, you may ask, did they do it on the space station? Think of it as a stand-in for New York City. You know … if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. We’ll let Didier Toubia, cofounder and CEO of Aleph Farms, explain: “In space, we don’t have 10,000 or 15,000 liter (3962.58 gallon) of water available to produce 1 kilogram (2.205 pounds) of beef.” It’s all about sustainable food production.
The next phase of the project, we think, is going to be even more interesting. For a proper fine dining experience in space, they’re going to grow a snooty French waiter to serve cultivated steak to the astronauts.
Pollution Hair Club for Men
By now, most people are well aware that air pollution is linked with cancer. And chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. And asthma. And cardiovascular disease. And Germanic automotive emissions system cheating. Yawn.
But there’s a newly revealed association sure to make even the most jaded health news consumer’s hair stand on end: Exposure to pollution’s particulate matter is linked to ... hair loss.
Researchers from the Future Science Research Center in South Korea exposed cells from the base of human hair follicles to assorted concentrations of diesel and dust particulates. After 24 hours, the pollutants had suppressed production of beta-catenin, the primary protein crucial to the maintenance of George Clooney’s luxurious mane. And three other proteins supporting hair growth and hair retention also went AWOL in the presence of pollutants. Plus more particulate matter meant fewer hair-restoring proteins.
Diesel particulates and baldness? It all makes so much more sense now. Given the pollutant-rich Big Apple air in which lollipop-loving TV detective Theo Kojak’s smooth pate was steeped, is it any wonder he was famously so follicularly challenged? The Clean Air Act – who loves ya, baby?
If at first you don’t succeed …
Dozens of new drugs are approved every year, but for every promising new medication, there are far more that fail to get past the clinical trial stage. The causes can vary: The drug didn’t do enough, it caused too many adverse events, and so on.
DNA topoisomerase inhibitors have been extensively researched as an anticancer agent, but many examples failed their clinical trials. These molecules are flat and made up of neatly stacked columns of electrically conductive rings, and operate by inserting themselves into DNA to stop replication.
That molecular structure is what interested a team of researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In research published in Nature Communications, the researchers noted that DNA topoisomerase inhibitors are structured much like organic semiconductors, but with a bonus. Those columns that make up the molecule are linked by hydrogen bonds, which allow bridges to form across the entire molecule, transforming the entire thing into a semiconductor.
That property, along with their easy printability and their high-specificity interactions with biological material, make the inhibitors an excellent candidate for use in biosensors or biotransistors.
A word to the manufacturer of those topoisomerase inhibitors, though, now that we’ve gotten you all excited again: We doubt you’ll be able to charge as much for the molecule. Semiconductors are hardly as glamorous as treating cancer.
Houston, we have a cultivated meat product
The Delmonico brothers didn’t do it. Ronald McDonald didn’t do it. Neil Armstrong never even tried. Same goes for Julia Child.
None of these culinary giants or astronauts ever grew beef in space. That honor belongs to Aleph Farms of Rehovot, Israel. The company, a self-proclaimed “global leader in the cultivated meat industry,” collaborated with 3D Bioprinting Solutions of Moscow and others to produce slaughter-free beef in the Russian segment of the International Space Station in September.
The actual process of growing a steak mimics natural “muscle-tissue regeneration occurring inside the cow’s body” and somehow uses a 3-D bioprinter to assemble “a small-scale muscle tissue.” We don’t really understand it, but the scientists and engineers here at LOTME Co. assure us it makes sense.
But why, you may ask, did they do it on the space station? Think of it as a stand-in for New York City. You know … if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. We’ll let Didier Toubia, cofounder and CEO of Aleph Farms, explain: “In space, we don’t have 10,000 or 15,000 liter (3962.58 gallon) of water available to produce 1 kilogram (2.205 pounds) of beef.” It’s all about sustainable food production.
The next phase of the project, we think, is going to be even more interesting. For a proper fine dining experience in space, they’re going to grow a snooty French waiter to serve cultivated steak to the astronauts.
Pollution Hair Club for Men
By now, most people are well aware that air pollution is linked with cancer. And chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. And asthma. And cardiovascular disease. And Germanic automotive emissions system cheating. Yawn.
But there’s a newly revealed association sure to make even the most jaded health news consumer’s hair stand on end: Exposure to pollution’s particulate matter is linked to ... hair loss.
Researchers from the Future Science Research Center in South Korea exposed cells from the base of human hair follicles to assorted concentrations of diesel and dust particulates. After 24 hours, the pollutants had suppressed production of beta-catenin, the primary protein crucial to the maintenance of George Clooney’s luxurious mane. And three other proteins supporting hair growth and hair retention also went AWOL in the presence of pollutants. Plus more particulate matter meant fewer hair-restoring proteins.
Diesel particulates and baldness? It all makes so much more sense now. Given the pollutant-rich Big Apple air in which lollipop-loving TV detective Theo Kojak’s smooth pate was steeped, is it any wonder he was famously so follicularly challenged? The Clean Air Act – who loves ya, baby?
Neanderthal otitis media and why you can’t chillax
Dude, just chill out and relax ... or not
It’s been a tough week. You’ve struggled to get all your work done on time, you’ve had to put in long hours, you’re exhausted and stressed out, and you know that next week will be just as tough. But for now, it’s the weekend. Time to relax, right?
According to research from Penn State University published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, if you have anxiety disorder, not only will you have difficulty relaxing (hence the anxiety disorder), you may actually actively resist it, experiencing something called “relaxation-induced anxiety.”
The researchers recruited a group of students, some with anxiety disorder, some with major depressive disorder, and a control group, and administered a series of relaxation exercises both before and after watching a series of potentially upsetting videos. The people with anxiety disorders were more likely to experience spikes of negative emotion after the second relaxation exercise than the other two groups; these spikes were linked to a feeling of anxiety during relaxation exercise.
The researchers theorized that people with anxiety disorder were attempting to avoid large jumps in their stress level by remaining stressed at all times. But the investigators also noted that experiencing a range of emotions is natural and far healthier.
So, as annoying as it is to suffer through constant “stop worrying, just live in the moment” speeches from that one dudebro acquaintance who spends all his free time partying, he does have a point. We don’t recommend participating in the Edward Fortyhands game, though. Leave that to your “friend.” He’s used to it.
A salty surgeon general’s warning
Grab a pack of Marlboro Reds at the corner convenience store, and you’ll find the iconic red and white box adorned with dire warnings from the surgeon general.
Grab a salt shaker at the corner diner, and you’ll find ... salt. In a shaker. Perhaps adorned with the red residue from a prior diner’s ketchup addiction.
The World Hypertension League would like to make that salt shaker look a lot more like those Marlboros.
In a position statement in the Journal of Clinical Hypertension, the league outlined the case for giving sodium chloride the cancer-stick treatment. Exhibit A: “Unhealthy diets are a leading cause of death globally, and excess salt consumption is the biggest culprit, estimated to cause over 3 million deaths globally in 2017.”
Despite that tobacco-rivaling body count, the league says no country has demanded that salt containers wear warning labels.
But isn’t it enough to list sodium levels on food labels? Well, when’s the last time you studied the salty facts before binging on that entire party-size bag of Cheetos, Chester? (You’ll be hotboxing 4,500 mg of sodium, by the way.) The league rests its case.
What’s needed is a message that stops you mid fistful. It’s time to add warning labels to all salt packaging, implores the league. Even to that communal salt shaker. Helpfully, the league’s offering suggested wording for that harbinger-of-doom missive: “Excess sodium can cause high blood pressure and promote stomach cancer. Limit your use.”
Catchy, right? But we at the Bureau of LOTME believe a picture is worth a thousand words of warning. Which is why we’ve taped a simple biohazard logo to our office Cheetos stash. Because of the sodium, you ask? Hardly. But just imagine that much optic-orange food coloring finding its way into the groundwater.
The anatomy of extinction
Barely a day goes by without a new theory about What Killed the Dinosaurs. A meteor killed the dinosaurs. Volcanoes killed the dinosaurs. Donald Trump asked the Ukrainians to kill the dinosaurs. Hilary Clinton’s emails killed the dinosaurs. Donald Trump asked the Australians to say that Robert Mueller killed the dinosaurs. The liberal media are covering up the existence of dinosaurs.
Enough already. What about the primates? We humans are still around – at least for the time being. But when was the last time you heard a good theory about what killed the Neanderthals?
Well, hang on to your earmuffs, because here comes one now.
Researchers have reconstructed the Neanderthal Eustachian tubes and determined that those early rivals of Homo sapiens were done in by … chronic ear infections.
The Neanderthal Eustachian tubes were very similar to those of human infants, and “middle ear infections are nearly ubiquitous among infants because the flat angle of an infant’s Eustachian tubes is prone to retain the otitis media bacteria that cause these infections – the same flat angle we found in Neanderthals,” coauthor Samuel Márquez, PhD, of the State University of New York said in a statement.
Unlike modern humans, however, the Neanderthal eustachian tube did not change with age, so middle ear infections were a lifelong threat.
“It’s not just the threat of dying of an infection,” said Dr. Márquez. “If you are constantly ill, you would not be as fit and effective in competing with your Homo sapiens cousins for food and other resources. In a world of survival of the fittest, it is no wonder that modern man, not Neanderthal, prevailed.”
In other words, it wasn’t brains that beat the big, bad Neanderthals; it was their own baby ears.
H. sapiens, raise a glass: Ears to you, Charles Darwin.
Dude, just chill out and relax ... or not
It’s been a tough week. You’ve struggled to get all your work done on time, you’ve had to put in long hours, you’re exhausted and stressed out, and you know that next week will be just as tough. But for now, it’s the weekend. Time to relax, right?
According to research from Penn State University published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, if you have anxiety disorder, not only will you have difficulty relaxing (hence the anxiety disorder), you may actually actively resist it, experiencing something called “relaxation-induced anxiety.”
The researchers recruited a group of students, some with anxiety disorder, some with major depressive disorder, and a control group, and administered a series of relaxation exercises both before and after watching a series of potentially upsetting videos. The people with anxiety disorders were more likely to experience spikes of negative emotion after the second relaxation exercise than the other two groups; these spikes were linked to a feeling of anxiety during relaxation exercise.
The researchers theorized that people with anxiety disorder were attempting to avoid large jumps in their stress level by remaining stressed at all times. But the investigators also noted that experiencing a range of emotions is natural and far healthier.
So, as annoying as it is to suffer through constant “stop worrying, just live in the moment” speeches from that one dudebro acquaintance who spends all his free time partying, he does have a point. We don’t recommend participating in the Edward Fortyhands game, though. Leave that to your “friend.” He’s used to it.
A salty surgeon general’s warning
Grab a pack of Marlboro Reds at the corner convenience store, and you’ll find the iconic red and white box adorned with dire warnings from the surgeon general.
Grab a salt shaker at the corner diner, and you’ll find ... salt. In a shaker. Perhaps adorned with the red residue from a prior diner’s ketchup addiction.
The World Hypertension League would like to make that salt shaker look a lot more like those Marlboros.
In a position statement in the Journal of Clinical Hypertension, the league outlined the case for giving sodium chloride the cancer-stick treatment. Exhibit A: “Unhealthy diets are a leading cause of death globally, and excess salt consumption is the biggest culprit, estimated to cause over 3 million deaths globally in 2017.”
Despite that tobacco-rivaling body count, the league says no country has demanded that salt containers wear warning labels.
But isn’t it enough to list sodium levels on food labels? Well, when’s the last time you studied the salty facts before binging on that entire party-size bag of Cheetos, Chester? (You’ll be hotboxing 4,500 mg of sodium, by the way.) The league rests its case.
What’s needed is a message that stops you mid fistful. It’s time to add warning labels to all salt packaging, implores the league. Even to that communal salt shaker. Helpfully, the league’s offering suggested wording for that harbinger-of-doom missive: “Excess sodium can cause high blood pressure and promote stomach cancer. Limit your use.”
Catchy, right? But we at the Bureau of LOTME believe a picture is worth a thousand words of warning. Which is why we’ve taped a simple biohazard logo to our office Cheetos stash. Because of the sodium, you ask? Hardly. But just imagine that much optic-orange food coloring finding its way into the groundwater.
The anatomy of extinction
Barely a day goes by without a new theory about What Killed the Dinosaurs. A meteor killed the dinosaurs. Volcanoes killed the dinosaurs. Donald Trump asked the Ukrainians to kill the dinosaurs. Hilary Clinton’s emails killed the dinosaurs. Donald Trump asked the Australians to say that Robert Mueller killed the dinosaurs. The liberal media are covering up the existence of dinosaurs.
Enough already. What about the primates? We humans are still around – at least for the time being. But when was the last time you heard a good theory about what killed the Neanderthals?
Well, hang on to your earmuffs, because here comes one now.
Researchers have reconstructed the Neanderthal Eustachian tubes and determined that those early rivals of Homo sapiens were done in by … chronic ear infections.
The Neanderthal Eustachian tubes were very similar to those of human infants, and “middle ear infections are nearly ubiquitous among infants because the flat angle of an infant’s Eustachian tubes is prone to retain the otitis media bacteria that cause these infections – the same flat angle we found in Neanderthals,” coauthor Samuel Márquez, PhD, of the State University of New York said in a statement.
Unlike modern humans, however, the Neanderthal eustachian tube did not change with age, so middle ear infections were a lifelong threat.
“It’s not just the threat of dying of an infection,” said Dr. Márquez. “If you are constantly ill, you would not be as fit and effective in competing with your Homo sapiens cousins for food and other resources. In a world of survival of the fittest, it is no wonder that modern man, not Neanderthal, prevailed.”
In other words, it wasn’t brains that beat the big, bad Neanderthals; it was their own baby ears.
H. sapiens, raise a glass: Ears to you, Charles Darwin.
Dude, just chill out and relax ... or not
It’s been a tough week. You’ve struggled to get all your work done on time, you’ve had to put in long hours, you’re exhausted and stressed out, and you know that next week will be just as tough. But for now, it’s the weekend. Time to relax, right?
According to research from Penn State University published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, if you have anxiety disorder, not only will you have difficulty relaxing (hence the anxiety disorder), you may actually actively resist it, experiencing something called “relaxation-induced anxiety.”
The researchers recruited a group of students, some with anxiety disorder, some with major depressive disorder, and a control group, and administered a series of relaxation exercises both before and after watching a series of potentially upsetting videos. The people with anxiety disorders were more likely to experience spikes of negative emotion after the second relaxation exercise than the other two groups; these spikes were linked to a feeling of anxiety during relaxation exercise.
The researchers theorized that people with anxiety disorder were attempting to avoid large jumps in their stress level by remaining stressed at all times. But the investigators also noted that experiencing a range of emotions is natural and far healthier.
So, as annoying as it is to suffer through constant “stop worrying, just live in the moment” speeches from that one dudebro acquaintance who spends all his free time partying, he does have a point. We don’t recommend participating in the Edward Fortyhands game, though. Leave that to your “friend.” He’s used to it.
A salty surgeon general’s warning
Grab a pack of Marlboro Reds at the corner convenience store, and you’ll find the iconic red and white box adorned with dire warnings from the surgeon general.
Grab a salt shaker at the corner diner, and you’ll find ... salt. In a shaker. Perhaps adorned with the red residue from a prior diner’s ketchup addiction.
The World Hypertension League would like to make that salt shaker look a lot more like those Marlboros.
In a position statement in the Journal of Clinical Hypertension, the league outlined the case for giving sodium chloride the cancer-stick treatment. Exhibit A: “Unhealthy diets are a leading cause of death globally, and excess salt consumption is the biggest culprit, estimated to cause over 3 million deaths globally in 2017.”
Despite that tobacco-rivaling body count, the league says no country has demanded that salt containers wear warning labels.
But isn’t it enough to list sodium levels on food labels? Well, when’s the last time you studied the salty facts before binging on that entire party-size bag of Cheetos, Chester? (You’ll be hotboxing 4,500 mg of sodium, by the way.) The league rests its case.
What’s needed is a message that stops you mid fistful. It’s time to add warning labels to all salt packaging, implores the league. Even to that communal salt shaker. Helpfully, the league’s offering suggested wording for that harbinger-of-doom missive: “Excess sodium can cause high blood pressure and promote stomach cancer. Limit your use.”
Catchy, right? But we at the Bureau of LOTME believe a picture is worth a thousand words of warning. Which is why we’ve taped a simple biohazard logo to our office Cheetos stash. Because of the sodium, you ask? Hardly. But just imagine that much optic-orange food coloring finding its way into the groundwater.
The anatomy of extinction
Barely a day goes by without a new theory about What Killed the Dinosaurs. A meteor killed the dinosaurs. Volcanoes killed the dinosaurs. Donald Trump asked the Ukrainians to kill the dinosaurs. Hilary Clinton’s emails killed the dinosaurs. Donald Trump asked the Australians to say that Robert Mueller killed the dinosaurs. The liberal media are covering up the existence of dinosaurs.
Enough already. What about the primates? We humans are still around – at least for the time being. But when was the last time you heard a good theory about what killed the Neanderthals?
Well, hang on to your earmuffs, because here comes one now.
Researchers have reconstructed the Neanderthal Eustachian tubes and determined that those early rivals of Homo sapiens were done in by … chronic ear infections.
The Neanderthal Eustachian tubes were very similar to those of human infants, and “middle ear infections are nearly ubiquitous among infants because the flat angle of an infant’s Eustachian tubes is prone to retain the otitis media bacteria that cause these infections – the same flat angle we found in Neanderthals,” coauthor Samuel Márquez, PhD, of the State University of New York said in a statement.
Unlike modern humans, however, the Neanderthal eustachian tube did not change with age, so middle ear infections were a lifelong threat.
“It’s not just the threat of dying of an infection,” said Dr. Márquez. “If you are constantly ill, you would not be as fit and effective in competing with your Homo sapiens cousins for food and other resources. In a world of survival of the fittest, it is no wonder that modern man, not Neanderthal, prevailed.”
In other words, it wasn’t brains that beat the big, bad Neanderthals; it was their own baby ears.
H. sapiens, raise a glass: Ears to you, Charles Darwin.
Auto-brewery syndrome and hangovers as ‘illnesses’
Food for thought/fermentation
The earliest known alcoholic beverage in the world was a fermented drink of rice, honey, and hawthorn fruit and/or grape that was brewed about 9,000 years ago in China’s Yellow River Valley.
Now there’s another candidate. Meet Klebsiella pneumonia, a common type of gut bacteria that just happens to make its own alcohol and appears to be the cause of a rare condition known as auto-brewery syndrome, which causes those affected to become drunk after eating alcohol-free and high-sugar food.
A group of Chinese investigators had a patient with auto-brewery syndrome and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and found he had several strains of K. pneumonia in his gut that produced high levels of alcohol. Then they sampled the gut microbiota from 43 NAFLD patients and 48 healthy people: 60% of the NAFLD patients had high- and medium-alcohol–producing K. pneumonia in their gut, compared with 6% of the controls.
When the team gave mice with NAFLD that had the alcohol-producing bacteria an antibiotic that killed K. pneumonia, their condition was reversed.
“These bacteria damage your liver just like alcohol, except you don’t have a choice,” lead author Jing Yuan said in a written statement.
That got us wondering: What if you do have a choice? Would a diet high in Cabernet and Merlot grapes give K. pneumonia the makings of Château Lafite Rothschild? Would you get Grey Goose if you ate enough French wheat? Would consumption of Optic or Belgravia malts give you Glenfiddich?
Why Ah-nold is more pumped than you
If you’ve watched “Pumping Iron” or “The Terminator,” you know the star of those films, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is driven to achieve his goals. Such as remorselessly squeezing the bodybuilding dreams of fellow “Pumping Iron” star Lou Ferrigno like a tube of toothpaste. Or finding Sarah Connor.
Given that quality, it probably shouldn’t be surprising that the seven-time Mr. Olympia with the 50-pound Austrian accent would somehow become California’s governator.
But why? Because Ah-nold is clearly a human bursting at his cyborglike biceps with “planfulness.”
Planfulness is the personality trait possessed by those who develop a clear plan when they have a goal that’s important to them. To find out how planfulness interacts with achieving long-term goals, University of Oregon researchers looked at the gym attendance of 282 people looking to get pumped up at a campus rec center.
Using a Planfulness Scale, the investigators tracked their study participants’ progress toward pumpitude. The ones who rated themselves as strong on planfulness were more likely to hit the gym consistently than were those with scrawny scores. In fact, a one-point increase on the five-point Planfulness Scale meant more than 14 extra gym visits over the course of two semesters.
Perhaps Ms. Connor should blame Hollywood’s planfulness for box-office profit, not Ah-nold’s, for the relentless pursuit of her in multiple “Terminator” movies.
A six-pack of illness juice, please
College students, rejoice: Your flimsy excuse to your professor that you’re sick and can’t go to class (when in reality you were out drinking – fruit juice for those with auto-brewery syndrome – all night and have a raging hangover) just got a lot stronger. That hangover is now classified as an illness.
Well, in Germany at least.
A court in Frankfurt has recently ruled against the manufacturer of a supposed “antihangover” cure, a product that contained antioxidants, electrolytes, and vitamins meant to combat the headaches, nausea, and tiredness associated with hangovers.
According to the German court, this is false advertising. Hangovers, by their definition, represent a small (clearly they’ve never dealt with a big hangover headache) and temporary change to the body’s normal state that is cured over time, which falls under the classification of an illness. And, in Germany, it is illegal for food and drink products to claim that they can cure illnesses.
Of course, the Germans have nailed the timing of this groundbreaking decision perfectly, as Oktoberfest is underway in Munich.
We still doubt your professor will believe your “Oh, I’m very sick today, I can’t come in” email, but at least you’ll be technically correct. And that’s the best sort of correct.
Food for thought/fermentation
The earliest known alcoholic beverage in the world was a fermented drink of rice, honey, and hawthorn fruit and/or grape that was brewed about 9,000 years ago in China’s Yellow River Valley.
Now there’s another candidate. Meet Klebsiella pneumonia, a common type of gut bacteria that just happens to make its own alcohol and appears to be the cause of a rare condition known as auto-brewery syndrome, which causes those affected to become drunk after eating alcohol-free and high-sugar food.
A group of Chinese investigators had a patient with auto-brewery syndrome and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and found he had several strains of K. pneumonia in his gut that produced high levels of alcohol. Then they sampled the gut microbiota from 43 NAFLD patients and 48 healthy people: 60% of the NAFLD patients had high- and medium-alcohol–producing K. pneumonia in their gut, compared with 6% of the controls.
When the team gave mice with NAFLD that had the alcohol-producing bacteria an antibiotic that killed K. pneumonia, their condition was reversed.
“These bacteria damage your liver just like alcohol, except you don’t have a choice,” lead author Jing Yuan said in a written statement.
That got us wondering: What if you do have a choice? Would a diet high in Cabernet and Merlot grapes give K. pneumonia the makings of Château Lafite Rothschild? Would you get Grey Goose if you ate enough French wheat? Would consumption of Optic or Belgravia malts give you Glenfiddich?
Why Ah-nold is more pumped than you
If you’ve watched “Pumping Iron” or “The Terminator,” you know the star of those films, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is driven to achieve his goals. Such as remorselessly squeezing the bodybuilding dreams of fellow “Pumping Iron” star Lou Ferrigno like a tube of toothpaste. Or finding Sarah Connor.
Given that quality, it probably shouldn’t be surprising that the seven-time Mr. Olympia with the 50-pound Austrian accent would somehow become California’s governator.
But why? Because Ah-nold is clearly a human bursting at his cyborglike biceps with “planfulness.”
Planfulness is the personality trait possessed by those who develop a clear plan when they have a goal that’s important to them. To find out how planfulness interacts with achieving long-term goals, University of Oregon researchers looked at the gym attendance of 282 people looking to get pumped up at a campus rec center.
Using a Planfulness Scale, the investigators tracked their study participants’ progress toward pumpitude. The ones who rated themselves as strong on planfulness were more likely to hit the gym consistently than were those with scrawny scores. In fact, a one-point increase on the five-point Planfulness Scale meant more than 14 extra gym visits over the course of two semesters.
Perhaps Ms. Connor should blame Hollywood’s planfulness for box-office profit, not Ah-nold’s, for the relentless pursuit of her in multiple “Terminator” movies.
A six-pack of illness juice, please
College students, rejoice: Your flimsy excuse to your professor that you’re sick and can’t go to class (when in reality you were out drinking – fruit juice for those with auto-brewery syndrome – all night and have a raging hangover) just got a lot stronger. That hangover is now classified as an illness.
Well, in Germany at least.
A court in Frankfurt has recently ruled against the manufacturer of a supposed “antihangover” cure, a product that contained antioxidants, electrolytes, and vitamins meant to combat the headaches, nausea, and tiredness associated with hangovers.
According to the German court, this is false advertising. Hangovers, by their definition, represent a small (clearly they’ve never dealt with a big hangover headache) and temporary change to the body’s normal state that is cured over time, which falls under the classification of an illness. And, in Germany, it is illegal for food and drink products to claim that they can cure illnesses.
Of course, the Germans have nailed the timing of this groundbreaking decision perfectly, as Oktoberfest is underway in Munich.
We still doubt your professor will believe your “Oh, I’m very sick today, I can’t come in” email, but at least you’ll be technically correct. And that’s the best sort of correct.
Food for thought/fermentation
The earliest known alcoholic beverage in the world was a fermented drink of rice, honey, and hawthorn fruit and/or grape that was brewed about 9,000 years ago in China’s Yellow River Valley.
Now there’s another candidate. Meet Klebsiella pneumonia, a common type of gut bacteria that just happens to make its own alcohol and appears to be the cause of a rare condition known as auto-brewery syndrome, which causes those affected to become drunk after eating alcohol-free and high-sugar food.
A group of Chinese investigators had a patient with auto-brewery syndrome and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and found he had several strains of K. pneumonia in his gut that produced high levels of alcohol. Then they sampled the gut microbiota from 43 NAFLD patients and 48 healthy people: 60% of the NAFLD patients had high- and medium-alcohol–producing K. pneumonia in their gut, compared with 6% of the controls.
When the team gave mice with NAFLD that had the alcohol-producing bacteria an antibiotic that killed K. pneumonia, their condition was reversed.
“These bacteria damage your liver just like alcohol, except you don’t have a choice,” lead author Jing Yuan said in a written statement.
That got us wondering: What if you do have a choice? Would a diet high in Cabernet and Merlot grapes give K. pneumonia the makings of Château Lafite Rothschild? Would you get Grey Goose if you ate enough French wheat? Would consumption of Optic or Belgravia malts give you Glenfiddich?
Why Ah-nold is more pumped than you
If you’ve watched “Pumping Iron” or “The Terminator,” you know the star of those films, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is driven to achieve his goals. Such as remorselessly squeezing the bodybuilding dreams of fellow “Pumping Iron” star Lou Ferrigno like a tube of toothpaste. Or finding Sarah Connor.
Given that quality, it probably shouldn’t be surprising that the seven-time Mr. Olympia with the 50-pound Austrian accent would somehow become California’s governator.
But why? Because Ah-nold is clearly a human bursting at his cyborglike biceps with “planfulness.”
Planfulness is the personality trait possessed by those who develop a clear plan when they have a goal that’s important to them. To find out how planfulness interacts with achieving long-term goals, University of Oregon researchers looked at the gym attendance of 282 people looking to get pumped up at a campus rec center.
Using a Planfulness Scale, the investigators tracked their study participants’ progress toward pumpitude. The ones who rated themselves as strong on planfulness were more likely to hit the gym consistently than were those with scrawny scores. In fact, a one-point increase on the five-point Planfulness Scale meant more than 14 extra gym visits over the course of two semesters.
Perhaps Ms. Connor should blame Hollywood’s planfulness for box-office profit, not Ah-nold’s, for the relentless pursuit of her in multiple “Terminator” movies.
A six-pack of illness juice, please
College students, rejoice: Your flimsy excuse to your professor that you’re sick and can’t go to class (when in reality you were out drinking – fruit juice for those with auto-brewery syndrome – all night and have a raging hangover) just got a lot stronger. That hangover is now classified as an illness.
Well, in Germany at least.
A court in Frankfurt has recently ruled against the manufacturer of a supposed “antihangover” cure, a product that contained antioxidants, electrolytes, and vitamins meant to combat the headaches, nausea, and tiredness associated with hangovers.
According to the German court, this is false advertising. Hangovers, by their definition, represent a small (clearly they’ve never dealt with a big hangover headache) and temporary change to the body’s normal state that is cured over time, which falls under the classification of an illness. And, in Germany, it is illegal for food and drink products to claim that they can cure illnesses.
Of course, the Germans have nailed the timing of this groundbreaking decision perfectly, as Oktoberfest is underway in Munich.
We still doubt your professor will believe your “Oh, I’m very sick today, I can’t come in” email, but at least you’ll be technically correct. And that’s the best sort of correct.
Cancer with meatballs and the unkindest frozen cut
Two great tastes that cause cancer together
Spaghetti and meatballs. They go together like chocolate and peanut butter. It almost feels wrong to eat one without the other; but if you’re worried about cancer, you may have to go meatless.
The latest blow to an enjoyable meal comes courtesy of a study published in Molecular Nutrition & Food Research, which tested how lycopene – a carotenoid found in tomatoes that has notable anticancer properties – is absorbed by the body when in the presence of iron, which meat contains plenty of. When the study subjects drank a tomato-based shake infused with iron, lycopene was far less present in the blood and digestive system than in subjects who drank an iron-free tomato shake.
The study authors claim that either the iron is oxidizing with the lycopene or that the iron turns the mix of tomato and fat into something like separated salad dressing, preventing everything from mixing together when it enters the body.
Tastes like chicken
It’s an enduring oncologic mystery: How can some cancer cells endure what should be a lethal therapeutic beating, only to bounce off the canvas after an eight-count to deliver a devastating relapse-counterpunch of their own?
A new study offers an unsavory answer: cannibalism.
Turns out that dining on one’s weaker cancer cell neighbors during a chemotherapy barrage provides just enough energy to rope-a-dope and stage a late-round comeback.
Breast cancer cells with wild-type TP53 genes are particularly prone to revival after taking a beating at the hands of doxorubicin or other chemotherapy drugs. Like many of their cancerous compatriots, they retreat to a corner of the therapy ring during chemo and go gloves up in a state of senescence.
But researchers at Tulane University noticed that, in the midst of that pharmaceutical pummeling, those senescent wild-type TP53 cells start doing something that their other senescent, cancerous neighbors don’t: They engulf other cancer cells. Why? Seems those breast cancer cells with the wild-type TP53 gloves are equipped with gene expression programs similar to macrophages.
What’s more, the cannibals’ appetite for fellow cells appears to confer a survival advantage when the chemo rounds end.
We at the Bureau of LOTME will resist the impulse to ring out this item with a tasteless Donner Party punchline. Instead, we’ll indulge our high-brow inner child by retooling an elementary school comedy classic.
Why don’t cancer-cell cannibals eat cancer-cell comedians? They taste funny.
Poop, what is it good for?
One thing you can cross off the list: Cutting meat.
That might seem pretty obvious, but there’s actually a bit of history here. In a book published in 1998, anthropologist Wade Davis shared an account of an elderly Inuit man trapped alone in a storm. He had no tools and no food, so he made a knife out of his own frozen stool and used it to kill and butcher a dog.
That story, which has since become something of an urban legend, directly inspired the career of another anthropologist, Metin Eren, PhD, of Kent State University in Ohio. As director of the school’s laboratory of experimental archaeology, Dr. Eren decided that the time had come to prove or disprove the poop-knife hypothesis.
First, he and his team had to make such a knife. To produce the needed raw materials, Dr. Eren went on an 8-day “Arctic diet” that included lots of beef, turkey, and salmon, with some applesauce and butternut squash risotto thrown in, while a colleague stuck to a more Western diet. Their samples were then frozen to –58° F and sharpened with metal files.
“I was surprised at how hard human feces could get when frozen,” Dr. Eren told Live Science. “I started to think, ‘Oh my gosh, this might actually work!’ ”
The team’s attempts to cut refrigerated pig hide, however, were not successful. “Like a crayon, it just left brown streaks on the meat – no slices at all,” he said.
Today’s lesson? Don’t meat your heroes or their poop knives; they’re sure to disappoint you.
Two great tastes that cause cancer together
Spaghetti and meatballs. They go together like chocolate and peanut butter. It almost feels wrong to eat one without the other; but if you’re worried about cancer, you may have to go meatless.
The latest blow to an enjoyable meal comes courtesy of a study published in Molecular Nutrition & Food Research, which tested how lycopene – a carotenoid found in tomatoes that has notable anticancer properties – is absorbed by the body when in the presence of iron, which meat contains plenty of. When the study subjects drank a tomato-based shake infused with iron, lycopene was far less present in the blood and digestive system than in subjects who drank an iron-free tomato shake.
The study authors claim that either the iron is oxidizing with the lycopene or that the iron turns the mix of tomato and fat into something like separated salad dressing, preventing everything from mixing together when it enters the body.
Tastes like chicken
It’s an enduring oncologic mystery: How can some cancer cells endure what should be a lethal therapeutic beating, only to bounce off the canvas after an eight-count to deliver a devastating relapse-counterpunch of their own?
A new study offers an unsavory answer: cannibalism.
Turns out that dining on one’s weaker cancer cell neighbors during a chemotherapy barrage provides just enough energy to rope-a-dope and stage a late-round comeback.
Breast cancer cells with wild-type TP53 genes are particularly prone to revival after taking a beating at the hands of doxorubicin or other chemotherapy drugs. Like many of their cancerous compatriots, they retreat to a corner of the therapy ring during chemo and go gloves up in a state of senescence.
But researchers at Tulane University noticed that, in the midst of that pharmaceutical pummeling, those senescent wild-type TP53 cells start doing something that their other senescent, cancerous neighbors don’t: They engulf other cancer cells. Why? Seems those breast cancer cells with the wild-type TP53 gloves are equipped with gene expression programs similar to macrophages.
What’s more, the cannibals’ appetite for fellow cells appears to confer a survival advantage when the chemo rounds end.
We at the Bureau of LOTME will resist the impulse to ring out this item with a tasteless Donner Party punchline. Instead, we’ll indulge our high-brow inner child by retooling an elementary school comedy classic.
Why don’t cancer-cell cannibals eat cancer-cell comedians? They taste funny.
Poop, what is it good for?
One thing you can cross off the list: Cutting meat.
That might seem pretty obvious, but there’s actually a bit of history here. In a book published in 1998, anthropologist Wade Davis shared an account of an elderly Inuit man trapped alone in a storm. He had no tools and no food, so he made a knife out of his own frozen stool and used it to kill and butcher a dog.
That story, which has since become something of an urban legend, directly inspired the career of another anthropologist, Metin Eren, PhD, of Kent State University in Ohio. As director of the school’s laboratory of experimental archaeology, Dr. Eren decided that the time had come to prove or disprove the poop-knife hypothesis.
First, he and his team had to make such a knife. To produce the needed raw materials, Dr. Eren went on an 8-day “Arctic diet” that included lots of beef, turkey, and salmon, with some applesauce and butternut squash risotto thrown in, while a colleague stuck to a more Western diet. Their samples were then frozen to –58° F and sharpened with metal files.
“I was surprised at how hard human feces could get when frozen,” Dr. Eren told Live Science. “I started to think, ‘Oh my gosh, this might actually work!’ ”
The team’s attempts to cut refrigerated pig hide, however, were not successful. “Like a crayon, it just left brown streaks on the meat – no slices at all,” he said.
Today’s lesson? Don’t meat your heroes or their poop knives; they’re sure to disappoint you.
Two great tastes that cause cancer together
Spaghetti and meatballs. They go together like chocolate and peanut butter. It almost feels wrong to eat one without the other; but if you’re worried about cancer, you may have to go meatless.
The latest blow to an enjoyable meal comes courtesy of a study published in Molecular Nutrition & Food Research, which tested how lycopene – a carotenoid found in tomatoes that has notable anticancer properties – is absorbed by the body when in the presence of iron, which meat contains plenty of. When the study subjects drank a tomato-based shake infused with iron, lycopene was far less present in the blood and digestive system than in subjects who drank an iron-free tomato shake.
The study authors claim that either the iron is oxidizing with the lycopene or that the iron turns the mix of tomato and fat into something like separated salad dressing, preventing everything from mixing together when it enters the body.
Tastes like chicken
It’s an enduring oncologic mystery: How can some cancer cells endure what should be a lethal therapeutic beating, only to bounce off the canvas after an eight-count to deliver a devastating relapse-counterpunch of their own?
A new study offers an unsavory answer: cannibalism.
Turns out that dining on one’s weaker cancer cell neighbors during a chemotherapy barrage provides just enough energy to rope-a-dope and stage a late-round comeback.
Breast cancer cells with wild-type TP53 genes are particularly prone to revival after taking a beating at the hands of doxorubicin or other chemotherapy drugs. Like many of their cancerous compatriots, they retreat to a corner of the therapy ring during chemo and go gloves up in a state of senescence.
But researchers at Tulane University noticed that, in the midst of that pharmaceutical pummeling, those senescent wild-type TP53 cells start doing something that their other senescent, cancerous neighbors don’t: They engulf other cancer cells. Why? Seems those breast cancer cells with the wild-type TP53 gloves are equipped with gene expression programs similar to macrophages.
What’s more, the cannibals’ appetite for fellow cells appears to confer a survival advantage when the chemo rounds end.
We at the Bureau of LOTME will resist the impulse to ring out this item with a tasteless Donner Party punchline. Instead, we’ll indulge our high-brow inner child by retooling an elementary school comedy classic.
Why don’t cancer-cell cannibals eat cancer-cell comedians? They taste funny.
Poop, what is it good for?
One thing you can cross off the list: Cutting meat.
That might seem pretty obvious, but there’s actually a bit of history here. In a book published in 1998, anthropologist Wade Davis shared an account of an elderly Inuit man trapped alone in a storm. He had no tools and no food, so he made a knife out of his own frozen stool and used it to kill and butcher a dog.
That story, which has since become something of an urban legend, directly inspired the career of another anthropologist, Metin Eren, PhD, of Kent State University in Ohio. As director of the school’s laboratory of experimental archaeology, Dr. Eren decided that the time had come to prove or disprove the poop-knife hypothesis.
First, he and his team had to make such a knife. To produce the needed raw materials, Dr. Eren went on an 8-day “Arctic diet” that included lots of beef, turkey, and salmon, with some applesauce and butternut squash risotto thrown in, while a colleague stuck to a more Western diet. Their samples were then frozen to –58° F and sharpened with metal files.
“I was surprised at how hard human feces could get when frozen,” Dr. Eren told Live Science. “I started to think, ‘Oh my gosh, this might actually work!’ ”
The team’s attempts to cut refrigerated pig hide, however, were not successful. “Like a crayon, it just left brown streaks on the meat – no slices at all,” he said.
Today’s lesson? Don’t meat your heroes or their poop knives; they’re sure to disappoint you.
iPhone trypophobia and chicken kissin’
Please, no photos
What does the new iPhone have in common with honeycombs and lotus flowers? They all strike terror and nausea in the hearts of trypophobics everywhere.
Trypophobia, in case you haven’t heard, is the fear of irregular patterns of holes or bumps clustered together. It sounds weird, until you look at photos like this and your skin starts to crawl. Now, we can add the iPhone 11 to the list of fear-inducing everyday objects. The new phone design includes three camera lenses, and it’s giving people … issues. Sure, amateur photographers are ecstatic, but social media users collectively shuddered over their keyboards when the tri-camera was revealed.
Trypophobia is not widely studied, but it’s been theorized that the revulsion is a biological instinct against things that look unsafe or diseased. Safe to say this might lead to Apple losing that core demographic – the trypophobe population. They’ll be switching to Androids en masse.
Don’t kiss your chickens after they hatch
All in all, it’s pretty easy to avoid getting salmonella. Refrigerate your food properly. Don’t eat undercooked ground meats. Oh, and don’t kiss the chickens you’ve been raising in your backyard.
Okay, that’s not the only takeaway from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention update on the 2019 salmonella outbreak that has so far affected just over a thousand people in 49 states. Because the outbreak has been linked to the increased prevalence of backyard poultry, with 67% of patients interviewed reporting contact with chicks and/or ducklings, the CDC has issued a slew of recommendations on how to avoid salmonella.
Some of them are common sense: Don’t let small children handle livestock, and wash your hands after contact. Some are a bit bizarre: Don’t let poultry wander through your house, and don’t eat or drink where livestock roam and live (eww).
Then there’s the gem: Don’t kiss your chickens, or snuggle them and then touch your face and/or mouth.
We know baby chickens or ducks are adorable. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with loving your livestock like a cat or dog. Just don’t, um, love your livestock.
Dept. of unintended consequences
This week’s case report is brought to you by the entomologists of Texas Medical Center in Houston.
The original problem: Large numbers of birds, such as grackles and pigeons, which may carry diseases and make a mess with their droppings, were gathering in large numbers in Texas Medical Center’s live oak trees. The campus is visited by 10 million people seeking health care each year.
The solution: Cover the trees with nets to prevent the birds from gathering.
The new problem: The lack of predatory birds has “created a haven for a flourishing population of Megalopyge opercularis, commonly referred to as asps,” according to investigators at Rice University. The asp in question happens to be one of North America’s most toxic caterpillars, and they are 7,300% more abundant in the netted trees, compared with nonnetted trees nearby.
The discussion: “I’ve been stung by a lot of things, and an asp sting definitely ranks high up there,” said Mattheau Comerford, one of the investigators. “It feels like a broken bone, and the pain lasts for hours. I was stung on the wrist, and the pain traveled up my arm, into my arm pit, and my jaw started to feel pain.”
The LOTME recommendation: In this case, the rats with wings … er, we mean pigeons, seem to be the lesser of two evils. Of course, compared with poisonous caterpillars, even kissing a chicken would be the lesser of two evils.
Please, no photos
What does the new iPhone have in common with honeycombs and lotus flowers? They all strike terror and nausea in the hearts of trypophobics everywhere.
Trypophobia, in case you haven’t heard, is the fear of irregular patterns of holes or bumps clustered together. It sounds weird, until you look at photos like this and your skin starts to crawl. Now, we can add the iPhone 11 to the list of fear-inducing everyday objects. The new phone design includes three camera lenses, and it’s giving people … issues. Sure, amateur photographers are ecstatic, but social media users collectively shuddered over their keyboards when the tri-camera was revealed.
Trypophobia is not widely studied, but it’s been theorized that the revulsion is a biological instinct against things that look unsafe or diseased. Safe to say this might lead to Apple losing that core demographic – the trypophobe population. They’ll be switching to Androids en masse.
Don’t kiss your chickens after they hatch
All in all, it’s pretty easy to avoid getting salmonella. Refrigerate your food properly. Don’t eat undercooked ground meats. Oh, and don’t kiss the chickens you’ve been raising in your backyard.
Okay, that’s not the only takeaway from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention update on the 2019 salmonella outbreak that has so far affected just over a thousand people in 49 states. Because the outbreak has been linked to the increased prevalence of backyard poultry, with 67% of patients interviewed reporting contact with chicks and/or ducklings, the CDC has issued a slew of recommendations on how to avoid salmonella.
Some of them are common sense: Don’t let small children handle livestock, and wash your hands after contact. Some are a bit bizarre: Don’t let poultry wander through your house, and don’t eat or drink where livestock roam and live (eww).
Then there’s the gem: Don’t kiss your chickens, or snuggle them and then touch your face and/or mouth.
We know baby chickens or ducks are adorable. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with loving your livestock like a cat or dog. Just don’t, um, love your livestock.
Dept. of unintended consequences
This week’s case report is brought to you by the entomologists of Texas Medical Center in Houston.
The original problem: Large numbers of birds, such as grackles and pigeons, which may carry diseases and make a mess with their droppings, were gathering in large numbers in Texas Medical Center’s live oak trees. The campus is visited by 10 million people seeking health care each year.
The solution: Cover the trees with nets to prevent the birds from gathering.
The new problem: The lack of predatory birds has “created a haven for a flourishing population of Megalopyge opercularis, commonly referred to as asps,” according to investigators at Rice University. The asp in question happens to be one of North America’s most toxic caterpillars, and they are 7,300% more abundant in the netted trees, compared with nonnetted trees nearby.
The discussion: “I’ve been stung by a lot of things, and an asp sting definitely ranks high up there,” said Mattheau Comerford, one of the investigators. “It feels like a broken bone, and the pain lasts for hours. I was stung on the wrist, and the pain traveled up my arm, into my arm pit, and my jaw started to feel pain.”
The LOTME recommendation: In this case, the rats with wings … er, we mean pigeons, seem to be the lesser of two evils. Of course, compared with poisonous caterpillars, even kissing a chicken would be the lesser of two evils.
Please, no photos
What does the new iPhone have in common with honeycombs and lotus flowers? They all strike terror and nausea in the hearts of trypophobics everywhere.
Trypophobia, in case you haven’t heard, is the fear of irregular patterns of holes or bumps clustered together. It sounds weird, until you look at photos like this and your skin starts to crawl. Now, we can add the iPhone 11 to the list of fear-inducing everyday objects. The new phone design includes three camera lenses, and it’s giving people … issues. Sure, amateur photographers are ecstatic, but social media users collectively shuddered over their keyboards when the tri-camera was revealed.
Trypophobia is not widely studied, but it’s been theorized that the revulsion is a biological instinct against things that look unsafe or diseased. Safe to say this might lead to Apple losing that core demographic – the trypophobe population. They’ll be switching to Androids en masse.
Don’t kiss your chickens after they hatch
All in all, it’s pretty easy to avoid getting salmonella. Refrigerate your food properly. Don’t eat undercooked ground meats. Oh, and don’t kiss the chickens you’ve been raising in your backyard.
Okay, that’s not the only takeaway from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention update on the 2019 salmonella outbreak that has so far affected just over a thousand people in 49 states. Because the outbreak has been linked to the increased prevalence of backyard poultry, with 67% of patients interviewed reporting contact with chicks and/or ducklings, the CDC has issued a slew of recommendations on how to avoid salmonella.
Some of them are common sense: Don’t let small children handle livestock, and wash your hands after contact. Some are a bit bizarre: Don’t let poultry wander through your house, and don’t eat or drink where livestock roam and live (eww).
Then there’s the gem: Don’t kiss your chickens, or snuggle them and then touch your face and/or mouth.
We know baby chickens or ducks are adorable. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with loving your livestock like a cat or dog. Just don’t, um, love your livestock.
Dept. of unintended consequences
This week’s case report is brought to you by the entomologists of Texas Medical Center in Houston.
The original problem: Large numbers of birds, such as grackles and pigeons, which may carry diseases and make a mess with their droppings, were gathering in large numbers in Texas Medical Center’s live oak trees. The campus is visited by 10 million people seeking health care each year.
The solution: Cover the trees with nets to prevent the birds from gathering.
The new problem: The lack of predatory birds has “created a haven for a flourishing population of Megalopyge opercularis, commonly referred to as asps,” according to investigators at Rice University. The asp in question happens to be one of North America’s most toxic caterpillars, and they are 7,300% more abundant in the netted trees, compared with nonnetted trees nearby.
The discussion: “I’ve been stung by a lot of things, and an asp sting definitely ranks high up there,” said Mattheau Comerford, one of the investigators. “It feels like a broken bone, and the pain lasts for hours. I was stung on the wrist, and the pain traveled up my arm, into my arm pit, and my jaw started to feel pain.”
The LOTME recommendation: In this case, the rats with wings … er, we mean pigeons, seem to be the lesser of two evils. Of course, compared with poisonous caterpillars, even kissing a chicken would be the lesser of two evils.