Science Ain't So Bad

EASY ON THE RADIATION, OKAY?

EVEN HOPELESS STUFF’S NOT HOPELESS

If you get a big dose of radiation (like some of the workers at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi power plant) you’re hosed, aren’t you?

Not necessarily.

Here’s the thing. Radioactivity’s scary. If the blast don’t get you, the “vapours” will.

It’s invisible, insidious, and inevitable.

Until now, if you got overexposed to radiation, all anyone could do was to toss you in the shower, give you a pill (which didn’t do much good) and keep you comfortable while your hair fell out.

Seriously.

GOOD NEWS

If  ”the bomb” blows you up, no pill is going to put you back together again. But Rebecca Abergel (Berkeley Lab’s Glenn T. Seaborg Center) is doing great work on a decontamination pill. It’ll flush the actinides (the “nasty stuff”)  out into your urine before much damage is done.

Maybe bombs ARE being made under the mountains of your least favorite countries. But you can rest easy now with an antidote by your bedside.

Science. An answer for everything, eh? Snide comments aside, this is a terrific project with the potential to save lives; it deserves a ScienceAintSoBadRating = 10 .

Thank you for the good work, Gleen T. Seaborg Center and Dr. Abergel.

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Image credits to Intergalacticrobotos.blogspot.com
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BLOOD TYPES

If you know your blood type it’s probably because you “gave at the office”.

Mister ScienceAintSoBad is proud of you.

If you ever need a transfusion, knowing your blood type may come in handy. A common complication of mis-typed blood is death. If you have trouble remembering whether you’re A, B, AB, or O (or Rh positive or negative), this isn’t exactly going to thrill your pants off but you now also have to know if you are “Langeries” or “Junior” too.

Actually? Hang on to those pants okay? There were already 30 recognized blood types before the new ones came along.

Didn’t know that, did you? Two more blood types brings it to 32.

This is the work of University of Vermont biologist Bryan Ballif (Nature Genetics). And he didn’t exactly “discover” Junior and Langeries. What he did was  get rid of the mystery surrounding them and their genetic structure. Now we know how and why they do what they do.

Your chances of being anything other than A, B, AB, or O are about the same as meeting a Martian on match.com.

(No KIDDING? Well sorry to rub salt into a wound then.)

Ballif’s work is a good thing. First of all, for the small number of people who are in these new groupings this reduces the risk of nasty transfusion reactions. And the proteins associated with these new blood types have some interesting anti-cancer properties which may lead to new therapies. Mostly, this is how science works. One step at a time. Little drama.. Put the pieces together, though, and suddenly things come into focus.

ScienceAintSoBadRating =9. Not bad!

Listen. I don’t want to leave you all worried about this. “Instant blood typing” is common now. So you don’t have to tape your blood type to your nose if you don’t want to. In fact, a team of chemical engineers  at Monash University headed by professor Gil Garnier (Analytical Chemistry) are working on a paper test strip for blood typing. 

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Image credits: Maybe I should have said discredits. This one isn’t exactly inspired. But, anyway, it’s all mine

THE NOTORIOUS BULLS EYE

TICKS

Dear Mister SASB, I live out in the woods with three dogs. I get a lot of ticks on me. No Lyme disease yet but it’s just a matter of time!!! Is there anything I should do? – WoodyLane5

Image credits” Yersinia Pestis. 
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A WORLD OF THEIR OWN

Some people’s senses are “crossed”. One sets off another. The F key on the piano is baby blue in color. Chanel Number Five perfume sounds like a waterfall. Your smelly pooch?

Not going there.

It’s called synesthesia. People with this “problem” live in a special, often delightful, world  where a person’s senses  interact with each other in strange ways, turning life into a symphony/smorgasbord that others can only try to imagine. Intriguing scents  mix with visual cues, sounds with the sensation of touch. Sometimes just two senses combine, sometimes more. Taste and sight. Sound and sight and smell and touch. And, since adding colors or sounds or tastes or smells to a word does make the word (or number) more memorable, synesthetes have amazing memories. Very creative, too.

Degas, Mozart, Stevie Wonder, Duke Ellington, Tessler, Sibelius. Even Richard Feynman and Marilyn Monroe were synesth…

synesth..

whatever!

In case you’re wondering, most synesthetes don’t think it’s so bad. Many don’t realize they’re different  unless someone points it out. And the memory/creativity thing is a nice plus.  A gift, some of them say.

So.

So Dr Devin Terhune and Dr Roi Cohen Kadosh(Current Biology) were curious. They wondered why some people have this “gift” and others have to read about it.  They studied one of the most common forms – the one where words or numbers combine with colors.

Working with volunteers, the two scientists used magnetic or electrical stimulation to control the excitability of the visual cortex  - the part of the brain most associated with vision. They adjusted things just to the point where their subjects started to see light flashes. What the study showed, is that the visual cortex of a synesthete is more easily excited.

Much more easily.

Apparently, this shows that synesthete brains are in a sort of hyper excited state. A clue, perhaps.

This is boutique science. Five subjects. All synesthetes. Maybe that’s not enough to justify sweeping conclusions.  Since there’s no clamor for a pill to cure synesthesia there isn’t much money but, Terhune and Kadosh did good. This is interesting stuff and it does teach something about the brain. Change the excitability and  the colors disappear.

Could this technique be used in reverse ? Could it turn Mister ScienceAintSoBad into a synesthete ? Wouldn’t that be fun? For a little while?

ScienceAintSoBadRating = 7.

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NO SUCH THING AS PEOPLE POX!

Mr. and Mrs. ScienceAintSoBad are off on a trip to see relatives but, first, a short article.

I’ll try to make it good.

CHICKENPOX AND SUNLIGHT

Dr. Phil Rice (University of London) looked at the results of 25 studies from different parts of the world about chickenpox. Do some regions have more chickenpox than other, he wondered?  And, if so, does it depend on humidity? Does it depend on temperature?

The amount of chickens?

Nothing,nothing and nothing.

Could it have something to do with the amount of sunlight?

Bingo! The more sunlight there is, the less chickenpox.

This isn’t news to people who are experts in this field. They figured this might be true. After all, UV light is used to sterilize stuff, right? But this is actual evidence. Science is an evidence game. Now it’s okay to say that chickenpox doesn’t like sunlight. And people who live where it’s sunny may escape the disease and its zitzs.

So?

So Dr. Rice didn’t exactly fall all over himself being specific but he does say there must be some way that this could lead to new methods for reducing the spread of chickenpox.

I hear the motor running. I’ll see you next time.

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Image credits to Hikingartist.comFrits Ahlefeldt-Laurvig and flickr.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.