Random Thoughts- Do They Have Meaning?: Science

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The Future Is Now- Tech Concepts for 2010

Popular Mechanics has a list of 10 Tech Concepts You Need to Know for 2010. I love reading about this kind of stuff. I am very curious to see what sticks and what doesn't. Is Skynet in the works? Will we see something come from this that revolutionizes an industry, changes our lives, who knows. I'll be watching.

Here is a brief rundown:

Anthropomimetic Machines
Direct Carbon Fuel Cell
Metabolomics
DNA Origami
Piezoelectric Display
Osseointegration
Horizontal Drilling
Kinetic Hydropower
Nanoyarn
Ultracapacitors

Special Forces- Science Explains Their Reaction To Stress

This is a very interesting article about why some people handle stress better than others do. Dr. Andy Morgan of Yale Medical School conducted research to determine why some people handle stress better than others do.

His research took him to Fort Bragg which where the Army's elite Airborne and Special Forces school is located. Let's take a look at an excerpt from the article.

"For Morgan, POW school was the perfect place to study who survives the best under acute stress. If you think it's just training and the soldiers know they're not really in serious danger, consider what Morgan discovered. During mock interrogations, the prisoners' heart rates skyrocket to more than 170 beats per minute for more than half an hour, even though they aren't engaging in any physical activity. Meanwhile, their bodies pump more stress hormones than the amounts actually measured in aviators landing on aircraft carriers, troops awaiting ambushes in Vietnam, skydivers taking the plunge or patients awaiting major surgery. The levels of stress hormones are sufficient to turn off the immune system and to produce a catabolic state, in which the body begins to break down and feed on itself. The average weight loss in three days is 22 pounds.

Morgan's research—the first of its kind—produced some fascinating findings about who does the best job resisting the interrogators and who stays focused and clearheaded despite the uncontrollable fear. Morgan looked at two different groups going through this training: regular Army troops like infantrymen, and elite Special Forces soldiers, who are known to be especially "stress hardy" or cool under pressure. At the start or base line, the two groups were essentially the same, but once the stress began, and afterward, there were significant differences. Specifically, the two groups released very different amounts of a chemical in the brain called neuropeptide Y. NPY is an abundant amino acid in our bodies that helps regulate our blood pressure, appetite, learning and memory. It also works as a natural tranquilizer, controlling anxiety and buffering the effects of stress hormones like norepenephrine, one of the chemicals that most of us simply call adrenaline. In essence, NPY is one of the fire hoses that your brain uses to extinguish your alarm and fear responses by keeping the frontal-lobe parts of your brain working longer under stress.

Morgan found one very specific reason that Special Forces are superior survivors: they produce significantly greater levels of NPY compared with regular troops. In addition, 24 hours after completing survival training, Special Forces soldiers returned to their original levels of NPY while regular soldiers were significantly below normal."

So if this NPY serves as a sort of natural anti-anxiety drug I have to ask the obvious question. Can we find a way to produce it? Maybe I am being naive, but from a laymen's perspective it sounds like it could be a great resource for people. It might allow some people to stop taking their meds.

Another part of the article that I thought was interesting is the section in which they discussed heart rate variability. Take a look at this:

It turns out that the best survivors don't have a lot of heart-rate variability. Instead, they've got "metronomic heartbeats"—their hearts thump steadily like metronomes—with almost no variability between beats. That is, the intervals between the beats are evenly spaced. Morgan believes that a metronomic heartbeat is an easy way to detect good survivors and high neuropeptide Y releasers. It makes sense biologically because your brainstem, which controls your heartbeat, has a high density of neuropeptide Y.

Part of what I found interesting was that the article says that metronomic heartbeat is associated with early heart disease and sudden death. So there is a question about whether this is really a benefit. It is good if you are a soldier or in some sort of very stressful profession.

But if it is tied to heart disease the negative can potentially outweigh the positive. Nice to stay calm, but not at the expense of not living past fifty.

Untapped Sources of Energy

You might think that this story is full of crap, but I think that it has some merit.

More than half of the 15 trillion gallons of sewage Americans flush annually is processed into sludge that gets spread on farmland, lawns, and home vegetable gardens. In theory, recycling poop is the perfect solution to the one truly unavoidable byproduct of human civilization. But sludge-based as fertilizer can contain anything that goes down the drain—from Prozac flushed down toilets to motor oil hosed from factory floors. That's why an increasing number of cities have begun to explore an alternative way to dispose of sludge: advanced poop-to-power plants.

By one estimate, a single American's daily sludge output can generate enough electricity to light a 60-watt bulb for more than nine hours. Here are the six most innovative ways that human waste is being converted to watts:

Read the whole story and learn about:

Poop-Eating Bacteria
Turd Cell Smashers
Geological Toilets
Feces Ponds
Gassifiers
Poop Pyrotechnics

Who knows, maybe one day you'll fill up your car at the outhouse. ;)

Top Ten Greatest Explosions Ever

Livescience has the list.

Potential Health Benefits of Blueberries

I thought that this article on WebMD was interesting.

In the study, presented at Experimental Biology 2009, researchers fed rats bred to become obese either a high-fat or low-fat diet enriched with whole blueberry powder or carbohydrates as 2% of their total diet.

After 90 days, the rats fed blueberries had less abdominal fat, lower cholesterol, and improved glucose control and insulin sensitivity. The latter two factors are markers of how well the body processes sugar for energy and are related to diabetes risk.

These health benefits of blueberries were evident in rats fed both high- and low-fat diets enriched with the blueberry powder. But the benefits were greatest among those who ate a low-fat diet.

In addition to the other heart health benefits of blueberries, those fed the low-fat blueberry diet also lost body weight and fat mass compared to those on the high-fat diet.

Although more research is needed to confirm these results in humans, a related study presented at the same conference showed that men with risk factors for heart disease who drank wild blueberry juice for three weeks seemed to experience slight improvements in glucose and insulin control.

The Science Behind Beer Goggling

Time Magazine has an interesting story called Does Beer (Goggling) Affect Whom We Find Attractive?

The new study, set to be published in June in the 100th issue of the British Journal of Psychology, examined how alcohol plays into all these murky attractions to youth. The vast majority of men don't act on their potentially inappropriate, or criminal, impulses, but can those who do blame the booze?

The study's authors, Egan and Cordan, asked their 120 drinking and 120 sober participants to rate the attractiveness of 15-year-old girls versus 19-year-old girls shown in photographs. The study participants were evenly divided between men and women. For ethical and legal reasons, the photos were actually altered images of 17-year-old students from McMaster University in Ontario; they had given permission for their likenesses to be used. Researchers digitally manipulated the pictures to make the students' craniofacial features look like those of typical 15-year-olds or those of 19-year-olds. The doctored pictures were then shown in random order to participants recruited in bars, airport lounges, cafes and other natural settings.

On average, the participants found the "15-year-olds" slightly more attractive than the "19-year-olds," which reconfirms our inclination toward neoteny. Both men and women found the more youthful images of girls to be a bit more attractive than the older ones.

Surprisingly, drinking had little impact on the results.

The Speech Nixon Never Had to Give

This July marks the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. Had tragedy struck President Nixon would have had to address the nation. This article discusses the speech that he would have given. It was entitled In the event of Moon disaster.

If Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin had been stranded on the Moon, unable to return to Michael Collins’s orbiting Apollo 11 command ship, Nixon would have called their widows then addressed a horror-struck nation.
“Fate has ordained that the men who went to the Moon to explore in peace will stay on the Moon to rest in peace,” he would have told the watching millions.
These brave men know there is no hope for their recovery but they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.
“These two men are laying down their lives in mankind’s most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.
“They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.
“In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.”
The President would have added: “In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood. Others will follow and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied but these men were the first and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.”
And in an allusion to Rupert Brooke’s First World War poem The Soldier, his concluding lines were to be: “For every human being who looks up at the Moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.”

Hot Monkey Love- Chimps Put Out for Meat

My apologies to those readers who are offended by the title of this post, but it is based upon science. The following clip helps to document how relations between chimps are conducted.

Come to think of it, maybe we aren't all that different from chimps. Quite a few of the boys took their wives out for a steak dinner on Valentine's day. Maybe we should take notes. ;)

The oldest profession isn't restricted to humans. A new study found that wild chimpanzees exchange meat for sex.

By stealthily following a group of about 20 adult chimpanzees in Côte d’Ivoire's Taï National Park, behavioral ecologists Cristina Gomes and Christophe Boesch of Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany carefully noted which male chimpanzees copulated with which females. The researchers found that she-chimps put out more often for males that shared food with them at least once, compared to stingy males who never offered meat.

Apparently, buying dinner is a good way to improve the chances of getting lucky on a date, even if you're a chimp.

The primates' food-for-sex barter occurs indirectly, over the course of weeks or months, with males seeming to accrue credit with the ladies by plying them with meat killed on a hunt.

Make Sour Things Sweet

Kind of interesting.

But after chewing the fruit and rubbing the pulp against the tongue, the berry, known by a promising name -- "miracle fruit" or Synsepalum dulcificum -- releases a sweetening potency that alters the taste buds.

For about 15 to 30 minutes, everything sour is sweet.

Lemons lose their zing and taste like candy. Oranges become sickeningly sweet. Hot sauce that usually burns the tongue tastes like honey barbecue sauce that scorches as it trickles down the throat.

Through word of mouth, these miracle fruits have inspired "taste tripping" parties, where foodies and curious eaters pay $10 to $35 to try the berries, which are native to West Africa.
About five months ago, a Miami, Florida, hospital began studying whether the fruit's sweetening effects can restore the appetite of cancer patients whose chemotherapy treatments have left them with dulled taste buds.

"What happens in patients is the food tastes so metallic and bland, it becomes repulsive," said

Dr. Mike Cusnir, a lead researcher on the project and oncologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center. "Most of the patients undergoing chemotherapy have weight loss. Then they cut further into their diet and then this furthers the weight loss. It causes malnutrition, decreased function of the body and electrolyte imbalance."

Undersea Volcano Erupts

I find this fascinating.

The eruption began Monday after a series of earthquakes near Tonga, a 170-island archipelago between Australia and Tahiti, residents told the Associated Press. There were magnitude-5.0 quakes there Sunday night and Monday afternoon, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Though the Wellington Volcanic Ash Advisory Center (VAAC) issued an advisory for the area, the plume isn’t engendering island residents and so far hasn’t hurt fish or other animals, according to the AP.
Yesterday a plume rose to between 15,000 and 25,000 feet (4.6 to 7.6 kilometers), the Smithsonian's Global Volcanism Program reported. "It's a very significant eruption, on quite a large scale," Tonga's chief geologist, Kelepi Maf, told the Times of London. This is not unusual for this area and we expect this to happen here at any time.

Paralyzed Man Walks Again

This story was really interesting. I wonder why I haven't seen more about it.

"He has been confined to a wheelchair for 20 years. Now a paraplegic man is walking again, and his doctors call it a miracle. CBS13 went to Manteca to find out how a spider bite helped get him back on his feet.

"I closed my eyes and then I was spinning like a flying saucer," explains David Blancarte.
A motorcycle accident almost killed David 21 years ago. At the time he might have wished he was dead.

"I asked my doctor, 'Sir what happened? I can't feel my legs'," said David.

Ever since, David's been relying on his wheelchair to get around. Then the spider bite. A Brown Recluse sent him to the hospital, then to rehab for eight months.

"I'm here for a spider bite. I didn't know I would end up walking," says David.

A nurse noticed David's leg spasm and ran a test on him.

"When they zapped my legs, I felt the current, I was like 'whoa' and I yelled," he says.

He felt the current and the rush of a renewed sense of hope.

"She says,'your nerves are alive. They're just asleep'," explained David.

Five days later David was walking."

Blue Whales

I intend to watch the National Geographic special on Blue Whales. I think that they are incredible.

Blue whales can grow up to 100 feet (~30 m). Lengthwise that's the equivalent of two city buses and longer than an NBA basketball court.
They can weigh up to 200 tons. That's about 8 DC-9 aircrafts or 15 school buses.
In fact, their tongue alone weigh as much as an elephant. About 100 people can fit in a blue whale's mouth.
A blue whale heart is the size of a Mini Cooper and can weigh close to 2,000 pounds (~907 kg). Its heartbeat can be detected from two miles away and a human can easily crawl through its major arteries.
Blue whales can produce sounds louder than a jet engine (188 dB vs. jet engine's 140 dB) and can communicate with other whales up to 1,000 miles away.
A single adult eats about 4 tons of krill (tiny shrimplike animals) a day.
The spray from a blue whale's blowhole is almost as tall as a three-story building (30 feet or 9 m).
A toddler can fit into its blowhole.

Here is a link to some more incredible facts.

Where Have All The Honeybees Gone?

Stumbled onto an interesting movie that deals with "Colony Collapse Disorder.” That is the name that beekeepers have given to the sudden and dramatic loss of large portions of their hives.

Take a moment and watch the trailer, it is interesting and worth thinking about.

Mammoth Found in Los Angeles

I thought that this was pretty cool. Think that I might have to take a walk on down to the George C. Page museum. Been a while since I got to see the tar pits.

Now, at least 10,000 years later, visitors in Los Angeles, California, can see the remains of "Zed," a Columbian mammoth whose nearly intact skeleton is part of what is being described as a key find by archaeologists at Los Angeles' George C. Page Museum.

Zed was discovered at a construction site in the heart of Los Angeles. An earth mover helping to build an underground parking garage near the L.A. County Museum of Art uncovered the mammoth's skull, according to project director Christopher Shaw.

"The skull was hit and shaved off ... by a scraper," Shaw told CNN Thursday. "We don't know just how smashed up it is, but it's fairly intact because it's a huge jacket we put it around."

The mammoth's fossil was among 16 deposits at the site that archaeologists wrapped, along with the surrounding dirt, in plaster jackets, creating 23 boxes weighing between 5 and 53 tons that were then lifted out intact.

The construction was being monitored by an archaeological consulting firm because the site is so close to the La Brea tar pits -- an archeological site that has yielded 100 million bones belonging to 300 species of mammals and birds.

Construction on the parking garage began in 2006, but it took two more years for all the recovered materials to be handed over to researchers at the Page Museum, who began analyzing the various fossils in June, Shaw said.

"It's very exciting for us because each one of these ... could be different ages in the past 10,000 to 45,000 years," Shaw said.

John Harris, the head curator of the Page Museum, publicly announced the finding of "a whole new treasure trove of fossils" on Wednesday. He described it as "the most important discovery" for the museum "of the last 90 years."

Shaw said the announcement was made to "create interest" in the museum's discovery.
Among the most interesting items is likely to be Zed, who is believed to have died in his late 40s. Mammoths are thought to have had an average lifespan of about 60 years.

Not all of Zed's remains have been cleaned off and analyzed.

"Right now we have opened the plaster jacket of four sections that were excavated, including vertebrae and ribs and pelvis, one tusk and the lower jaw," Shaw said. "It will take another six to 12 months to open everything."

Shaw said both of Zed's tusks were found intact, which is very rare.

"Previously, we've found mammoths but the tusk material was very poorly preserved," Shaw said. "It's very exciting to us to have these two complete, beautifully preserved tusks."

Octuplets- An Abdication of Medical & Parental Responsibility

In concept I am a big believer in giving people freedom to live their lives and do what they are going to do with the caveat that the limits are drawn when their actions hurt others. Nadya Suleman and the doctor who helped her have crossed the line.

They have abdicated moral and parental responsibility with little to no regard for the impact of their actions. Their actions are selfish and misguided and it infuriates me that the public is going to be forced to help support the moronic decisions made by all of the parties here.

The LA Times has a number of articles that document the sad state of affairs of a mother who has 14 children, no source of income and owes $50,000 in student loans. Oh and did I mention that she is already receiving money from food stamps and that three of her children are disabled.

This makes me want to tear my hair out. This article outlines a number of serious issues and her complete lack of touch with reality. I believe in social responsibility. I believe that we have an obligation to try and give people a hand up, not a hand out. But apparently she feels otherwise. We'll get to that in a moment.

"Even before she gave birth to the octuplets Jan. 26, Suleman was receiving $490 in monthly food stamps, and three of her children were receiving federal supplemental security income because they are disabled.

Let's review because it really does blow me away. She is an unemployed single mother of six children who is receiving almost $500 a month in food stamps and additional money from the federal government for the disabled children goes t o a doctor and undergoes IVF and then delivers eight more children.

Eight more children. Eight more children who will be in the hospital somewhere between seven to twelve weeks. According to the Times that bill will run on the low end at about $500k and could approach more than $800k, provided that there aren't any complications.

And that doesn't take into account the team of more than 46 medical professionals who were assembled for the delivery. But none of this matters to Suleman. She engages in some sort of mental masturbation that allows her to try and say that she is not really receiving any sort of assistance.

"I'm not living off any taxpayer money," she said. "If I am, if it's food stamps, it's a temporary resource. And I was so reluctant. I very much so look forward to the day when I am not getting any kind of help with food stamps, which I believe will end when I graduate in about a year or year and a half."

Oh ok, you're going to collect somewhere around nine grand in food stamps, not to mention however much you receive for the disabled children. And during that time what sort of activities will you be engaged in. Are we to believe that you are going to work so that you can support your children and so that you might pay into the system. Doesn't sound like it.

Some people might say that I am being too harsh, but this was elective. She didn't have to have more children. She had six and don't forget that some are disabled. Six healthy children are a lot of work, but when some of them are disabled there is more to be done. And now she has increased the load ten fold.

But we shouldn't worry because in lollipop land everything works out.

Suleman also bristled at suggestions made by some commentators that she was being irresponsible for having so many children with no income or partner to help raise them."No. I am not being selfish. . . . If I were just sitting down watching TV and not being as determined as I am to succeed and provide a better future for my children, I believe that would be considered to a certain degree selfish," she said.

Great. She is determined to succeed and by gum that makes all the difference. I believe in having a "can do" attitude and that it makes a difference, but again there are limits. She doesn't have the financial resources to take care of these children there are legitimate questions about whether she'll have the time. Fourteen young children, eight of whom are infants. It is just wrong.

But never fear, she has a website that she is using to ask for donations.

And lest we think that I have forgotten about the doctor and clinic let's shed some light on these mental midgets.

According to records reviewed by the Times

The Beverly Hills doctor whose fertility treatment led to the birth of Nadya Suleman’s octuplets – and her six previous children – has one of the worst success rates of any fertility clinic in the country, according to federal records reviewed by The Times.
In fact, Suleman’s children represent a sizable portion of the pregnancy rate at his clinic over the last several years

The Times used data from 2006. Out of 61 procedures only five resulted in pregnancies and only two of those resulted in births. So we have a mother whose completely out of touch with reality and a doctor who is seemingly inept with everyone but her.

Even better the good doctor has been involved in a number of lawsuits with past employees.

It is a perfect storm of chaos and we're the lucky people who get to pick up the pieces. Just peachy.

Is That A Camera In Your Eye

Talk about playing Eye Spy. Wired has the story of a man who intends to place a miniature camera in his eyesocket. Don't worry, he isn't going to remove a live eye to do this. Apparently he had one removed a number of years ago. You can even see a short video of the surgery he had to extract it.

Click here for the full story or just settle for the excerpt I am going to post.

"When you completely lose an eye it is a difficult thing to let go of," he says. "The eye has an emotional attachment. It is a window to your soul."

Spence wore an eye patch for a while, which he says looked cool. But once he started thinking about having a camera in his eye, Spence got in touch with Steve Mann, a professor at the University of Toronto. Mann is one of the experts in the world of wearable computing and cyborgs -- organisms that blend natural and artificial systems.

"There are a lot of challenges in this," says Mann, "from actually building a camera system that works, to sending and receiving images, to getting the correct shape of the camera."
Even in the age of miniaturization, getting a wireless video camera into a prosthetic eye isn't easy. The shape of the prosthetic is the biggest limitation: In Spence's case, it's 9-mm thick, 30-mm long and 28-mm high.

While that might seem like plenty of room in an age when digital cameras are squeezed into unimaginably slim and compact phones, it actually isn't. The average area available inside a prosthetic eye for an imaging sensor is only about 8 square mm, explains Phil Bowen, an ocularist who is working with Spence. Also, a digital camera has many more components than the visible lens and the sensor behind it, including the power supply and image-processing circuitry. Getting a completely self-contained camera module to fit into the tiny hollow of a prosthetic eye is a significant engineering challenge.

That's where Professors Huang and Rogers' research could come in handy. Three months ago, the duo published a paper that showed how a new sensor built out of a flexible mesh of wire-connected pixels could replace the traditional flat imaging chip as the light sensor for a camera. The mesh is made from many of the same materials as a standard digital-camera sensor, but it has the ability to conform to convoluted, irregular surfaces -- like the back of a synthetic eyeball.
"Our cameras might more naturally integrate with a prosthetic eye, due to their hemispherical shapes," says Rogers. "One might also argue that they can provide a more human-like perception of the world."

Then there's the question of how the prosthetic eyeball (the outer shell for the camera) will be made. The eyeball chassis has to close shut and be watertight.

Traditional prosthetic eyes are single pieces made with polymethyl-methacrylate (PMMA), a flexible polymer that is also used in dentures. To fit a camera in, Bowen redesigned the prosthetic eye into two pieces that could snap shut.

But with a camera inside there's something new to worry about. The modified prosthetic eye will be heavier than traditional ones and that could affect the eye socket, says Bowen. "The weight might stretch out the lower lid," he says, potentially disfiguring the face.

The Science of Lines

I thought that this article about the study of queuing was interesting. Especially as it sometimes feels like I spend my life waiting in lines for one thing or another. And in case you are wondering, the answer is that you stand in line, not on line.

If you read the whole article you'll see that they found that knowing how long you are going to wait reduces anxiety. Duh. I could have predicted that. But it still doesn't solve the problems you sometimes encounter when stuck behind the man/woman who screams into their cellphone or whose unpleasant scent makes you want to gag.

You may not know it, but the seemingly mundane task of forming a queue at the airport, a fast-food joint or a post-Thanksgiving midnight sale is the subject of careful study by experts in the field of queuing psychology.

The findings may not always reduce wait times, but they can cut frustration and make people feel better, or even happy, about waiting in line, said Richard Larson, who has researched queuing psychology for more than two decades.

"You can change a queuing experience into a very positive experience," said Larson, director of the Center for Engineering Systems Fundamentals at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

To do that, businesses where people often wait in line must realize some basic principles of queuing psychology.

Eliminating empty time, for example, makes waits seem shorter, Larson found in his research.
Visitors lining up for attractions at theme parks see this principle at work with queues that often use clever design and technology to make the line itself entertaining.

"We like to view [queues] as the first scene in the story, whatever the story of that particular attraction is," said Joe Garlington, creative vice president of interactives at Walt Disney Imagineering, which develops Disney parks and resorts.

The line to one popular attraction at Epcot features cameras and large interactive screens that allow visitors to see themselves and play games, such as trying to burst virtual water balloons to reveal a hidden image, Garlington said.

People waiting in line for a comedy show at Walt Disney World are asked to text message jokes that may be used during the main event.

"It works as our warm-up act essentially for the show, but it also takes time while people are working through that and so it keeps them entertained while they're waiting," Garlington said.

"We do study the psychology, try to understand what our guests are thinking and make sure that we're keeping them happy as they move through the lines."

Disney employs more than 75 industrial engineers who help the company with queue management at its parks around the world, said Marilyn Waters, director of media relations at Walt Disney Imagineering.

Social justice

Fair play -- or the idea of first come, first served -- is at the heart of most successful queues. It's one of the reasons most banks, airlines and fast-food restaurants have switched from several open lines that force customers to choose the line they think is moving fastest, to a single serpentine line, which guarantees first come, first served, Larson said.

Violation of fair play can lead to "queue rage." Larson himself became interested in queuing psychology after a frustrating experience he calls the "red bike incident."

Use the link above to read the rest.

The Right Stuff- Astronaut's Challenge

How much would it take to convince you to spend three months lying in bed. Three months in which the overwhelming majority of your day would be spent lying down. Eating, drinking, sleeping etc.

CNN has the story about one man who did so in the name of science.

"We know that bone loss in space is an extremely significant problem. Astronauts lose about 10 times more bone every month than a postmenopausal woman on Earth loses," says Dr. Peter Cavanagh, former director of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Space Medicine. Bone loss occurs presumably because astronauts don't get enough load-bearing exercise in zero gravity. Cavanagh says that their findings may later contribute to new treatments for the millions of Americans
who suffer from osteoporosis.
Roderick Jones is doing his part to help further the field of skeletal health by staying in bed -- for 84 days straight.
The 40-year-old chemist was in between jobs when he saw a curious ad on the Internet. He recalls reading, "Do you have projects you'd like to complete. Would you like a small vacation while you're actually helping the NASA space program?" Rod had always been a science fiction fanatic. A chemist by trade, he was in between jobs and trying to save for a family move from Ohio to Georgia. After several interviews, physiological and psychological tests, it was determined that Rod had the right stuff.
For three months straight, Rod lay not only in a horizontal position, but with his body tilted 6 degrees towards his head. Most of his days were filled with watching television, surfing the Web and writing in a log he called the, "Bedpan Chronicles" named for what he deemed to be one of the toughest parts of the assignment. He ate, slept, read, typed, talked on the phone, and drank -- all
while lying down.His compensation for being bed bound for 12 weeks? $12,000 for the entire
project. Rod is the twelfth study subject, and NASA is halfway through the project. Cavanagh points out how difficult enrollment has been, "So far, for every 300 applicants, only one person has the right stuff."
Researchers claim that lying at a 6-degree angle is the best way to simulate zero gravity, here, on Earth. This simulation doesn't come cheap. NASA estimates that placing one subject in bed for a period of three months or so costs about a quarter of a million dollars."

Medical Technology- The future is now

In my travels throughout the web I often search for interesting gadgets and inventions that will change our lives. A while back I stumbled onto MedGadget. It is an interesting site that discusses technological advances in medicine.

Here are a couple of things that caught my eye:

MIT Technology Review is reporting on new metal and polymer microgrippers that can be chemically activated to grab or cut tissue deep within the body without requiring any incisions. The scientists that developed the device envision swallowing a bunch of these and then guiding the particles using magnets to specific spots in the body for microsurgeries or doing biopsies.

From MIT Tech Review:

A gripper based on the current design could respond autonomously to chemical cues in the body. For example, it might react to the biochemicals released by infected tissue by closing around the tissue, so that pieces can be removed for analysis.
Gracias [David Gracias, biomolecular and chemical-engineering professor at JHU] and his colleagues presented the microgripper at the American Chemical Society meeting earlier this month. To demonstrate the device, they used it to grasp and maneuver tiny beads and clumps of cells in a petri dish. They have also used the device in the laboratory to perform an in vitro biopsy on a cow's bladder. "This is the first micromachine that has been shown convincingly to do very useful things," Gracias says. "And it does not require electric power for operation."

The open gripper is 500 micrometers (0.05 centimeters) in diameter, and it is made of a film of copper and chromium covered with polymer. As long as the polymer stays rigid, the gripper remains open. But introducing a chemical trigger or lowering the temperature causes the polymer to soften, actuating the gripper's fingers so that they curl inward to form a ball that is 190 micrometers wide. Another chemical signal can be used to reopen the gripper. All of the chemicals used as triggers in experiments are harmless to the body.

And the ReWalk Exoskeleton which helps paralyzed people walk again. It is made by an Israeli company called Argo Medical Technologies. I think this is just very cool.

ReWalk™, the first commercially viable upright walking assistance tool, enables wheelchair users with lower-limb disabilities to stand, walk, and even climb stairs. For potentially millions of wheelchair users.

There is a cool video you can see by clicking on this link.

Random Thoughts- Do They Have Meaning?

Links that Caught My Eye