From the department of “sounds too good to be true but a guy can dream, can’t he?”, comes news that there might be hope for a one-time flu shot which not only works against your garden variety flu bugs, but some of the known pandemic-grade varieties as well.

Doomsday scenario #842:

…a year later and millions of Americans are dead and the nation’s infrastructure lies in tatters. The World Bank declares America a developing nation. Europe, Scandinavia, China and Japan are also struggling to recover from the same fateful event – a violent storm, 150 million kilometres away on the surface of the sun.

As if I didn’t have enough to fret over. Not to mention the indignity of having civilization shattered by something called “plasma balls.”

It’s awfully nice to have an administration that embraces science, and not just because of what it might mean for my scalp.

Y’know how you can stretch Silly Putty slowly, but if you yank it apart quickly it snaps like it’s brittle? d3o labs has taken that to the extreme. They have a gel that is looks and acts like a gooey Silly Putty, but that hardens instantaneously on impact. Discover says the military is taking a look to see whether it can be made to stop bullets. This stuff really needs some HD, high-speed video online, but until then, thankfully, we have Japanese talk shows.

Announcing the first-ever victory by a parent in the face of the neverending “why?”: A Dialogue With Sarah, Aged 3: In Which it is Shown That if Your Dad is a Chemistry Professor, Asking “Why” Can be Dangerous.

I love how long it takes before he gets to “that’s complicated.”

An immortal jellyfish is spreading through the oceans. Sounds like a mixed blessing. On the one hand, eternal youth. On the other hand, you’re a jellyfish forever.

I really have to try the ping-pong ball-induced hallucinations.

This couldn’t be much cooler, Josh Silver has come up with an approach to mass-produce glasses for the poor in developing nations, no optician required. Genius.

Seed Magazine’s 2008 science & nature picks (also pages 2 and 3). I’ll have to dig into some of these, maybe Bonk first:

There are many humorous science books. There are not many hilarious science books. With Bonk, a review of science’s study of sexual behavior, Mary Roach has written a volume so viscerally funny, it’s easy to overlook how obsessively she researched her subject. But Roach’s tales of a day with pig inseminators, a hands-on experience with penile implants, and a romp under an ultrasound machine serve as not-so-subtle reminders of her commitment to writing the first-ever comprehensive book on sex research.

Discover Magazine’s top 100 stories of 2008, number 62: Researchers Discover Why Wound-Licking Works.

I love these little aggregator coincidences: this afternoon The Science of Sport puts up a good piece on swimming’s credibility crisis, and this evening I catch this NewScientist article on a new nanotech fabric that is unwettable (too bad the word “waterproof” is already in play). You can leave it in water for hours and it comes out bone dry.

From DNA is not Destiny by Ethan Watters (emphasis added):

In recent years, epigenetics researchers have made great strides in understanding the many molecular sequences and patterns that determine which genes can be turned on and off. Their work has made it increasingly clear that for all the popular attention devoted to genome-sequencing projects, the epigenome is just as critical as DNA to the healthy development of organisms, humans included. Jirtle and Waterland's experiment was a benchmark demonstration that the epigenome is sensitive to cues from the environment. More and more, researchers are finding that an extra bit of a vitamin, a brief exposure to a toxin, even an added dose of mothering can tweak the epigenome--and thereby alter the software of our genes--in ways that affect an individual's body and brain for life.

The even greater surprise is the recent discovery that epigenetic signals from the environment can be passed on from one generation to the next, sometimes for several generations, without changing a single gene sequence. It's well established, of course, that environmental effects like radiation, which alter the genetic sequences in a sex cell's DNA, can leave a mark on subsequent generations. Likewise, it's known that the environment in a mother's womb can alter the development of a fetus. What's eye-opening is a growing body of evidence suggesting that the epigenetic changes wrought by one's diet, behavior, or surroundings can work their way into the germ line and echo far into the future. Put simply, and as bizarre as it may sound, what you eat or smoke today could affect the health and behavior of your great-grandchildren.

Cooking for Eggheads by Patricia Gadsby:

"Cooking eggs is really a question of temperature, not time," says This. To make the point, he switches on a small oven, sets the thermostat at 65°C, or 149°F, takes four eggs straight from the box, and unceremoniously places them inside. "I use an oven in the lab; it's easier. But if the oven in your kitchen is not accurate, cook eggs in plenty of water, using a good thermometer." About an hour later--timing isn't critical, and the eggs can stay in the oven for hours or even overnight--he retrieves the first egg and carefully shells it. "The 65-degree egg!" he announces. The egg is unlike any I've eaten. The white is as delicately set and smooth as custard, and the yolk is still orange and soft. It's not hard to see why l'oeuf à soixante-cinq degrés is becoming the rage with chefs in France. (Salmonella can't survive more than a few minutes at 60°C, or 140°F, so a 65-degree egg cooked for an hour should be quite safe.)

Next, This turns up the oven thermostat to 67°C, or 153°F, and after waiting a while for the eggs inside to reach that temperature--again, he's casual about the timing--he retrieves a second one: "The 67-degree egg!" At this temperature the yolk has just started thickening up--some of its proteins have coagulated, but the majority have not. "Look, you can mold it," he says, scooping out the yolk and manipulating the pliable orangey-yellow ball like fresh Play-Doh. He tries to mold a heart, then settles for a cube.

Funny, came across two fun, completely unrelated "Teach the Controversy" links this week: one on Barack Obama, and the other to these intelligently designed t-shirts.

I've wondered before (although perhaps not on this weblog, can't remember) how much of all medicine rests on the placebo effect. How many treatments would simply stop working if the placebo effect were suddenly erased from our minds? Consider this, from the article 13 Things That Do Not Make Sense:

Don't try this at home. Several times a day, for several days, you induce pain in someone. You control the pain with morphine until the final day of the experiment, when you replace the morphine with saline solution. Guess what? The saline takes the pain away.

This is the placebo effect: somehow, sometimes, a whole lot of nothing can be very powerful. Except it's not quite nothing. When Fabrizio Benedetti of the University of Turin in Italy carried out the above experiment, he added a final twist by adding naloxone, a drug that blocks the effects of morphine, to the saline. The shocking result? The pain-relieving power of saline solution disappeared.

Stop reading now if you don't want me to ruin certain treatments for you, because faith is everything...

Still here? Okay... I was discussing this with my neuromuscular therapist friend yesterday, and she mentioned a few interesting studies, one which showed that of the "alternative" pain management techniques, acupuncture appeared to be the most effective. However, another study showed that fake acupuncture (sticking in needles randomly?) is pretty much just as effective as real acupuncture. Did some Googling, found a bunch of references, but I particularly liked this one: Sham Acupuncture More Effective Than Sugar Pill in Easing Arm Pain.

First question that leaps to mind: what do you use as a control group if you're studying the placebo effect? :-)

Read this older NY Times book review of "Wise Man" (a collection of Richard Feynman's letters) while I was on vacation and thought of my school committee duties when I read this:

The title of this book is taken from a letter that Feynman wrote for the California State Curriculum Commission, in which he appraised the science textbooks to be used in elementary schools. His son, Carl, was then three years old, due to go to elementary school three years later and learn from the textbooks. Feynman spent much time and effort reading textbooks and pointing out their deficiencies. He also examined the teachers' manuals that came with the textbooks. The manuals were supposed to explain the material in the textbooks so that teachers could teach it intelligently. Feynman was especially critical of the manuals.

Can you imagine?! Richard-freaking-FEYNMAN reviewing your science curriculum?! Awesome. But wait, it gets better:

He was particularly concerned that teachers using the manuals might penalize children who came up with original ways of solving problems. This actually happened many years later when Michelle was in high school and was penalized for going off the beaten track to solve an algebra problem. When Feynman went to the school to complain, the teacher accused him of knowing nothing about math.

!!!

After a few weeks of receiving the paper version of The New Yorker (rather than the limited online content) I can see why a buddy of mine found my not subscribing inexcusable. Fantastic. Each issue always has at least one must-read article in it, and often more than that. Off the newsstand you'd pay over $200 for a year's supply, but you get get it for less than $1/issue delivered. The highlights of the July 3rd issue were an interesting World Cup piece, a fascinating article on hemispherectomies (brain surgery, exactly what you'd guess it is from the word):

I asked him Mike's question, about all that space left by the missing lobes. In the past, [Dr. Ben Carson] said, doctors worried about this and tried to anchor the remaining brain by stitching it to the dura. They would put all kinds of things in the cranial cavity—one surgeon used sterile Ping-Pong balls. But, as Carson did more hemispherectomies, he realized that the brain's own drip of cerebrospinal fluid could adequately fill the cavity. Sometims the remaining brain moves during the weeks following the surgery, but usually by less than an inch. "It doesn't seem to be a problem," he said. Much of Carson's method is intuitive. "You develop a feel for the brain," he said. "Normal brain feels like a very soft boiled egg. A bad brain feels like a mushy apple."

... and a profile of David Addington (Cheney's chief-of-staff):

David Addington is a satisfactory lawyer, [Bruce] Fein said, but a less than satisfactory student of American history, which for a public servant of his influence, matters more. "If you read the Federalist Papers, you can see how rich in history they are," he said. "The Founders really understood the history of what people did with power, going back to Greek and Roman and Biblical times. Our political heritage is to be skeptical of executive power, because, in particular, there was skepticism of King George III. But Cheney and Addington are not students of history. If they were, they'd know that the Founding Fathers would be shocked by what they've done."

Richard Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, Google Video, 50 minutes. Wonderful. « via kottke.org »

Via Crossfit comes a bombshell, lactic acid is your friend:

[George Brooks] and his UC Berkeley colleagues found that muscle cells use carbohydrates anaerobically for energy, producing lactate as a byproduct, but then burn the lactate with oxygen to create far more energy. The first process, called the glycolytic pathway, dominates during normal exertion, and the lactate seeps out of the muscle cells into the blood to be used elsewhere. During intense exercise, however, the second ramps up to oxidatively remove the rapidly accumulating lactate and create more energy.

Training helps people get rid of the lactic acid before it can build to the point where it causes muscle fatigue, and at the cellular level, Brooks said, training means growing the mitochondria in muscle cells. The mitochondria - often called the powerhouse of the cell - is where lactate is burned for energy.

"The world's best athletes stay competitive by interval training," Brooks said, referring to repeated short, but intense, bouts of exercise. "The intense exercise generates big lactate loads, and the body adapts by building up mitochondria to clear lactic acid quickly. If you use it up, it doesn't accumulate."

Oh man, I want some eyeglasses made of this stuff. For some reason the video only worked for me when I saved it locally first (it stopped after 1 second when viewed in the browser).

Super-cooled floating magnet. Make sure you watch to the end. « via Whoba! »

Ferrofluid is a liquid that does really amazing stuff when you get a magnet close to it. Make sure you watch past the halfway point of the second video, as that's where the really good stuff is.

A bit off the beaten path for this blog, but fascinating enough to post. Mirror therapy:

[Complex regional pain syndrome] occurs in about one-third of people who fracture their wrists: they suffer unexplained persistent pain in their hand, arm or shoulder once the supportive plaster cast is removed. The pain can be so bad that some patients beg for their arm to be amputated, says Candy McCabe, who developed the novel mirror therapy at the University of Bath in the UK.

In the study, eight CRPS patients sat in front long mirrors. These were placed so that each person could see only the healthy half of their body, along with another reflection of the same half.

The result was that the side of the body with the painful arm was hidden from their view and it appeared to the patients as if they had two healthy arms. They were told to concentrate hard on the image and try to believe that what they saw was a true depiction of themselves.

"Three of them were cured instantly; the others took a little longer," says McCabe. "But once the mirror was removed, the pain returned." However, with continued mirror therapy, six people were completely cured. The two exceptions had conditions complicated by limb ulcers and actual physical distortions.

Be sure to click through to find out what happens to healthy folks subjected to the treatment.