Science, Technology & Health: September 2007 Archives
I think Bill Clinton is probably right in recommending that our leaders get more sleep.
Clinton also recommended, as Political Radar notes, that the presidential candidates get more sleep."I do believe sleep deprivation has a lot to do with some of the edginess of Washington today," he said, "And if we can find a way for them and their challengers to run for elections without making them go out five nights a week for this endless hunt for funds. ... I think America would be better."
I know lack of sleep can make me cranky!
My brother sent me a link to a really cool invention that enhances your senses with virtual whiskers.
Ever wanted some cat's whiskers or insect antennae? Probably not, but check out this head-mounted haptic device developed by researchers at the University of Tokyo in Japan. It lets a wearer "feel" their surroundings from a distance, roughly as if they had several long whiskers sticking out of the head. At least, that's what the researchers say.A series of infrared sensors positioned around the device act as invisible whisker or antenna sensors. When these detect an object, a small motor vibrates on the appropriate side of the wearer's head to alert them.
A brilliantly simple idea that will find a myriad of applications.
Researchers in North Carolina have discovered a strain of mice with blood that can cure cancer in other mice. They don't know why it works yet, but if there are humans with similar cancer resistance a simple blood transfusion could be capable of curing cancer in the recipient.
A universal treatment that would work against any type of cancer has always seemed like a far-fetched fantasy. But now researchers at Wake Forest University have made a discovery in mice that might one day lead to a "magic bullet" against human cancers if it proves to be true in people. Several years ago, the researchers identified a rare strain of mouse immune to high, usually lethal doses of cancer cells. Now they have shown that not only are these mice cancer-resistant, but their immune cells are also capable of curing normal, non-resistant mice of any type of advanced cancer.As reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, lead researcher Zheng Cui and his team injected white blood cells from the cancer-resistant mice into normal mice with aggressive cancers that should have killed them in two to three weeks. Instead, their cancer disappeared.
There are a myriad of potential advances against cancer, and I won't be surprised to see the disease cured in my lifetime. Heck, if we can cure depression through electroshocks to the brain, why not cure cancer with a blood transfusion?
(HT: Instapundit.)
Update 070917:
More about "Granulocyte InFusion Therapy" tests in humans.
A pretty cool technique that allows you to "burn" saltwater using radio waves. Here's a video: turning saltwater into fuel.
An Erie cancer researcher has found a way to burn salt water, a novel invention that is being touted by one chemist as the "most remarkable" water science discovery in a century.John Kanzius happened upon the discovery accidentally when he tried to desalinate seawater with a radio-frequency generator he developed to treat cancer. He discovered that as long as the salt water was exposed to the radio frequencies, it would burn.
The discovery has scientists excited by the prospect of using salt water, the most abundant resource on earth, as a fuel.
Rustum Roy, a Penn State University chemist, has held demonstrations at his State College lab to confirm his own observations.
The radio frequencies act to weaken the bonds between the elements that make up salt water, releasing the hydrogen, Roy said. Once ignited, the hydrogen will burn as long as it is exposed to the frequencies, he said.
From the images it's clear (ha) that the flame isn't entirely hydrogen (since hydrogen burning in oxygen appears as a clear flame and is invisible to the naked eye) -- maybe some of the salts are also burning? The article also doesn't mention that the radio waves required for the technique require more energy to generate than is released in the reaction. Still, with further research we could have an abundant new source of fuel on our hands. (Or a megaweapon capable of destroying the earth.)
The instructions for Google Earth Flight Simulator, built right in. (HT: Nick.)
A brief article about growing new heart valves from bone marrow stem cells. Astounding.
Few people read the British journal Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society, but the current issue contains details of the research by a British research team led by Sir Magdi Yacoub that may end the scourge of heart disease as we know it. ...Unlike rigid artificial valves that just open and shut, these valves are living tissue that responds to events and changes shape as required. The heart can pump freely and unobstructed by a foreign object. There's no need to replace valves as children grow older — indeed, no need to replace them ever.
According to the World Health Organization, some 600,000 people will need replacement heart valves by 2010, and Yacoub's team may have found a way of providing them. "The ultimate goal," Yacoub said, "is to produce an 'off the shelf' product which will not produce an immune response from patients." Such tissue solves the rejection problem common in transplants and in use of artificial valves. Patients often require a lifetime of drugs to prevent post-op complications. ...
So why haven't you read about this in the newspaper or heard about it on the evening news? Perhaps because it didn't involve embryonic stem cells, or federal funding thereof, or even the election of a Democrat, like John Kerry, whose 2004 running mate, John Edwards, promised he would help people rise up out of their wheelchairs.
Aside from not producing any significant therapies, embryonic stem cells research is literal vampirism.
(HT: Instapundit and NewsBeat 1.)
