I've been extremely busy lately with school, having barely enough time for sleep let alone writing proper blog entries. So until my exams are finished I'm going to be posting some short (but interesting) videos on the "wow" part of science.
I present to you flying snakes! In reality, the species shown here, Chrysopelea paradisi, is really gliding and not flying. They can glide about 10 meters and use their characteristic undulating motion for a bit of extra propulsion. And get this, they can use this to escape from predators, or even attack arial prey!
On a side note, for some reason DARPA is interested in this research. Are they planning to make arial undulating search-and-destroy drones? Only time and a lot of phobias will tell.
Socha JJ, Dempsey TO, LaBarbera ML. (2005). A 3-D kinematic analysis of gliding in a flying snake, Chrysopelea paradisi. J Exp Bio; 209: 1817-1833 doi:10.1242/jeb.01579
Could new microchips implanted in the back of the eye restore sight to the blind?
Image Credit: Iris Health.com
Can you imagine not being able to see? If you're not blind, this can be much harder to imagine than you think. As humans, former tree swinging apes really, our eyesight developed to help locate the most colorful looking fruit for consumption, or to judge the distance between trees; fatal consequences arising if not done properly. Unfortunately, blindness in various forms afflicts millions worldwide and is by no means a homogeneous condition, impaired eyesight below a certain threshold can be considered functionally blind and can leave one severely handicapped, even if minimal vision remains. Now, a new study by the Royal Society of Biological Sciences shows that certain forms of blindness can be cured though...you guessed it, computer chips and implants!
A new paper published by Nature Medicine has found that your lungs contain taste receptors, and they can specifically sense bitterness!
Dr. Stephen B. Liggett MD, a pulmonologist at University of Maryland School of Medicine, and his team of researchers discovered the bitter taste receptors (TAS2Rs) by accident while studying human airway smooth muscle (ASM) receptors. What's even more surprising is that the TAS2 receptors found in the lung's smooth muscle cells are identical to those found on your tongue. There are a few exceptions of course; the lung's taste receptors are not grouped together like they are in the tongue (better known as taste buds), and they have no sensory link to the brain, which explains why you can't taste awful bitterness every time you travel to a very polluted city and simply inhale.
For those who don't know, the CT scanner (Computed Tomography Scanner, or more famously the CAT scanner) is the big donut-shaped device seen in Gray's anatomy or House whenever the doctors have no idea what to do with a patient. It can magically view the insides of a person with great clarity by acquiring x-ray images from multiple angles and computer processing the data to create a salami-thin slice of your gooey insides. Although it is an invaluable tool (imagine hospitals without x-rays, it's practically impossible), the main problem in recent years has been the debate over how often these diagnostic tests should be performed.
Below is a youtube video of what goes on in the scanner as it`s spinning around you (I loved the "patient goes here" caption, hilarious!). It's simply for entertainment purposes.
Now back to the conversation at hand. The only problem is that the x-rays generated are a form of ionizing radiation: electromagnetic energy that can damage living cells and could lead to different forms of cancer. Now, despite sounding like a horror story where everyone will get cancer that undergoes medical imaging, the reality is that the dose of radiation received from a standard chest x-ray is about the same as the dose you get from being outside in the sun all day.
The dosage of radiation received by the CT scanner is a bit more pronounced however; it's the equivalent of getting 200 chest x-rays! And it accumulates, so the more scans you receive over your lifetime, the larger your risk of developing cancer. However, the risks and benefits need to be weighted according to the situation, if you're potentially going to die in the next few minutes from a heart attack, the benefits of getting a diagnostic image far outweigh the small risk of developing cancer 20 years down the road.
The main controversy over the use of these devices is that many physicians are over ordering these tests for minute complaints, such as headaches. A recent paper in the American Journal of Medicine showed that of 623 patients receiving scans for a complaint of headaches, fewer than 2% were found to have any relevant findings on their CT scans. However, there was one patient where the CT image and analysis showed a malignant brain tumor! Something that would be worth catching early on in any case.
What are your thoughts on this issue? Personally I'm quite divided. Being in the medical physics field I'm a huge proponent of medical imaging and it's ability to identify various diseases in patients (like brain tumors), however I think it needs to be used more responsibly on the part of those ordering the tests, many who (at least to the best of my knowledge) seem to have no formal training in the understanding of radiation exposure risks associated with medical imaging.
NASA recently published several research papers on an experiment they conducted in 2009. The experiment consisted of bombarding moon craters and detecting the debris that was released from the impact using LCROSS (the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite). Spectrometers, radiometers, and several cameras were used to detect the presence of chemicals within the debris. What they found? water vapor, hydroxyl radicals (that nasty stuff that tends to damage human DNA), sulfur compounds, CO2, and various hydrocarbons. The satellite was even able to estimate the amount of water that was present in the ejection, nearly 155kg!
Now, before anyone jumps for joy and starts fantasizing about moon colonies and moon vacations to moon beaches, recall that the vast majority of that water is in the form of ice. Even when measured by LCROSS it was in the form of water vapour, not the familiar liquid we're used to. The NASA team conducting the experiment are saying however that around 11-12 gallons could be extracted from about 1 tonne of moon rock! That's a substantial amount, especially for visiting astronaughts.
It's interesting to note that frost-like water is not distributed equally but in "oases" across various parts of the moon, leading to the hypothesis that this is actually ancient water brought by asteroids or comets.
At that quantity of water though, one can't help but think of a moon resource-extraction colony supplying space travelers on their way to far off planets; to even think that in the next 10 years we could have dedicated structures operating on the moon makes one feel giddy. At worst the drill operations would simply break through the moon causing havoc for the people of earth, not unlike that god-awful remake of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine.
Here is the link to the various scientific papers discussing the findings:
So it appears that a receptor for FSH (Follicle Stimulating Hormone), a hormone that stimulates follicle development in the ovaries and testes of humans,was found (to an extent) in the blood vessels of specific kinds of tumors!
This receptor was found in over 11 kinds of tumors, many at different stages of development.But here is the cool part: normal tissues located mere millimeters away from the tumor cells didn't express the receptors!
It's still really early in development stages but this could have some very profound consequences on cancer detection and treatment. The main problem with current methods of cancer treatment is that they have no specificity for cancerous tissues, but because this receptor seems to be so common to so many varied forms of cancer it makes development of specialized treatment methods a much more realistic possibility. My main question about any new treatments is if methods specifically target this receptor, what will they do to other cells that express these receptors, namely ovaries and testes? Only time and more research will show what they make of this new information.
Here's the link to the New England Journal of Medicine source:
