Science Ain't So Bad

An Artificial Pancreas For Diabetes: Still In The Works

THAT'S one. (A pancreas.)

Medicine: Type 1 Diabetes.

An artificial pancreas really is just over SOME horizon now. An announcement from Cambridge (article in the Lancet) describes the fine work of Dr Roman Hovorka at the University of Cambridge, working with a group of seventeen diabetic kids.

A cure for diabetes would be nice, of course. And there are some intriguing hints but, for now, an artificial pancreas would be stunning enough.

If it works out (and if it is widely accepted), this development has the potential to greatly reduce the complications of the disease, ease peoples’ lives, and reduce health care costs significantly (Wouldn’t THAT be nice?).

Back to which horizon this is over.

It’s hard for MISTER ScienceAintSoBad to say this but, once again, this is only a tantalizing possibility of something that is badly needed. We ARE a lot closer, thanks to the great work being done. Maybe as little are three, four or five years.

Karen Addington (Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation) says this is a “proof of principle” and that we “need to redouble our efforts.”

I’m not sure that’s what we want to hear. But reality IS so darn real, isn’t it?

ScienceAintSoBadRating = 9

- – - – - – - – - Postscript – - – - – - – - –

Karen Addington was nice enough (and ubiquitous enough) to leave a comment which I am duplicating below since it addresses the question of when this device might really hit the road. Notice that her motivation is personal.

Her comment:

Thanks for picking up on this new research.

We know that developments like the artificial pancrease can’t come quickly enough for people living with type 1 diabetes, and their families. That’s why we’re working really hard to make sure that the artificial pancreas becomes a reality as soon as possible. In January my colleagues at JDRF International (based in the USA) announced a partnership with Animas (a Johnson & Johnson company that manufactures pumps) to develop a first generation artificial pancreas.

The goal is to develop a system that can prevent the extremes of both hypoglycaemia and hyperglycaemia automatically – but will still need some input from the wearer, such as informing the system of meal times and periods of exercise.

This partnership is planned for four years and by the end we hope to reach the point where it will ready to go forward for approval by regulatory bodies like the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMEA), and from there to people with type 1.

I have had type 1 diabetes for 30 years, and I’m really excited about what this research could soon mean for me, and everyone else with type 1.

The Future Of Light

Implications

SEMICONDUCTOR TECHNOLOGY: Cheap, bright, and disposable.

ORGANIC LIGHT-EMITTING ELECTROCHEMICAL CELLS

I’ve never been a big fan of light coming from walls. Too much pressure on the dust devils.

But ACS Nano describes a new kind of light source made from graphene which consists of sheets of ultra efficient lighting material for displays and glowing walls and whatnot.

It makes it sound like the current hot technology for plastic displays, OLED, (have you even heard of it yet?) is old before its time.

Cheap, recyclable, and highly efficient, Organic Light – Emitting Electrochemical Cells ( LEC’s) sound fine but, having read one too many articles about big breakthroughs followed by deep and long lasting silence, MISTER ScienceAinSoBad is becoming a bit jaundiced. We’ll spare this fascinating tease a ScienceAintSoBadRAting = 7 until it shows itself to be a game changer.

Behaving Robotically

Employee Killer (uh.. EmployMENT Killer)

Jobs Jobs Jobs

We need more jobs, right? Maybe General Motors and NASA are a little “off message” here.

They’re creating “Robonaut 2“, a humanoid robot worker that any productivity – hungry, greedy corporation would LOVE to get its mitts around.

See, workplace robots aren’t easily mistaken for somebody you went out with last year. They tend to have wrenches for arms and stuff.

Hmm.. I take it back.

Anyway, the philosophy behind workplace robots is “form follows function”. In fact, it’s kinda reassuring when they look like machines. Easier to tell the difference between a robot and a me.

But at the Johnson Space Center, they attacked the problem quite differently because they need human assistants to work beside their astronauts. If you want a robot working beside you, it needs to be compatible with its human partners who do not HAVE little sockets to accept various special purpose tools. So Robonaut 2 (the familiar form of its name seems to be R2) can swap tools with its partners and is less likely to accidentally sideswipe a hapless spaceman (or woman) and send him.her spinning into space.

As far as gender is concerned, Robonaut 2 seems less likely to get tossed out of the men’s room than the ladies room with its current chestal configuration but I don’t see anything in the specs on the subject. Maybe its humanoid features aren’t THAT specific.

You may find it reassuring to note that he.she.it doesn’t look cheap to make.

ScienceAintSoBadRating = 7 and we’ll watch this development.

If You Only Took One Pill, What Would It Be?

Take THAT!

Nutrition: The Everything Pill!

A SCIENCE KINDA MIRACLE

For the elderly, it helps sharpen memory and reduces falls.

It’s effective against chron’s disease and cancer and PMS and gum disease.

It helps with insomnia and prevents skeletal defects.

And, by the way, it also works against stroke, hypertension, autoimmune diseases, depression, pain, , cardiac disease and can defend against multiple sclerosis.

Let’s see. What else?

Oh. You know about telomeres, the little twisty ties at the end of chromosomes which keep them from falling apart? This thing I’m describing protects the twisty ties and slows down the aging process. Pretty good, huh?

I’ll skip the rest of the benefits (there are more). You get my point.

Just got a telegram from a reader who says: “You’re full of CRAP! And, even if such a thing DID exist, I couldn’t afford it and the side effects would melt me”.

Dear Reader

Just hold yer water there, Dear Reader.

Let’s start with price.

You can buy it over-the-counter for less than 2 cents a pill and it’s FDA approved.

As far as side effects are concerned, none I can find unless you stuff so many down your gullet that you choke. Or overdose. And I’m not even sure you CAN overdose. There’s some controversy as to whether there is a toxic level. If there is, it takes a systematic effort over a long time to build it up in your body fat. In other words, you really gotta try.

Enough with the long run up. I guess you’ll be surprised to learn that “it” is vitamin D, the “sunshine vitamin.”

The Clues

MISTER ScienceAintSoBad tries to stay on top of relevant news.

Keeps him busy.

While skimming through the blizzard of buzz about science and technology, I began to notice studies about vitamin D which were related to all KINDS of things like stroke, chron’s, multiple sclerosis, and on and on, and on..

This is a LITTLE blog. A one- guy-when-he-has-a-chance-to-write blog. I can’t comment on everything so I look for things that’re the most useful or relevant or interesting or amusing.

Nobody wants to hear about vitamins and minerals. I’m not yer mother.

But the articles and studies kept coming until, FINALLY, I started to get the picture. This isn’t just a pill. This is a PILL!

Wow!

The “crept up on us” factor

“D” was “discovered” in 1905 ( William Fletcher). Before that, remedies for rickets and scurvy (deficiency diseases) were recognized, consisting of certain foods that we now know were D – rich.

By the modern era, sailors were smart enough to avoid scurvy by keeping a few oranges around (after there was a way to keep them cool). Course the issue became kinda moot when steam engines made ocean crossings shorter.

We were conquering D deficiency.

Then we got REALLY smart.

We discovered that the sun can cause skin cancer and we started wearing big hats. And sun block. And watching flat screen TV’s.

Inside.

And now, one in seven teens is deficient in vitamin D (even by traditional measures). And it’s starting to sound like much of the population needs a D tune up (in part because of the recognition that the prior minimum daily dose was insufficient for all its possible uses).

How much?

Many of the benefits of D that are discussed here are pretty new and the entire question of how much is enough is under review. Walter Willett’s a smart guy as well as the chairman of the Harvard School of Public Health’s Department Of Nutrition. He says 1000 IU might be about right.

An extra orange or a tangerine in the morning couldn’t do you any harm either.

- – - – - – — – A PostScript – - – - – - – -

An article by Tara Parker-Pope in the New York Times this morning, observing the claimed wide ranging benefits for vitamin D, throws (possible) scientific cold water at it. Where are the randomized clinical trials? These are mere correlations. Correlations aren’t NECESSARILY cause and effect. Maybe staying healthy RAISES levels of vitamin D.

Science can be SUCH a BUMMER!

Take your D.

8 Year Old Inventor Tackles Two HUGE Problems

REDLANDS' RASCALLY RESOURCE

MISTER ScienceAintSoBad brings up the same tired old names in science and engineering a lot – Newton, Einstein, Kepler, Planck, Jobs (That’s Steve, not “jobs, jobs, jobs”) and so on.

Today, however, I would like to introduce a fresh face – a rising star in engineering, known as the Redlands Rascal, who, only yesterday sent me.. well, let him speak for himself.

For his highly innovative and truly ingenious solutions to some of society’s most nagging problems:
ScienceAintSoBadRating = BOING! (That’s the weight hitting the bell at the top)

Men Have (Small) Consciences

The image is mine
(not a self portrait) .

By the way,
I don’t steal images
from others.
I wouldn’t be able to handle the guilt.

Psychology: Guilt.

Hold onto your wig because this is a real toupee blaster. According to an article in the Spanish Journal of Psychology, men feel less guilt than women.

An article like this illustrates beautifully the power of the scientific approach.

You observe the male species, burdened as it is with feelings of over sensitivity, huddled in corners with arms tightly clasped and murmuring about the possible emotional injuries we may have caused, through a passing slight, to another, and you would, necessarily, conclude that it is the oppositely endowed gender – the x chromosomal female version of us – that is a stranger to feelings of guilt.

But it is the work of scientists to tease out the facts from the seemingly obvious. MISTER ScienceAintSoBad can’t BEGIN to express his awe at this work.

ScienceAintSoBadRating = YGBKM (You Gotta Be Kiddin’ Me!)

Fifteen Minute Cure For EVERYTHING

AN IMPORTANT OPTION

EndoBarrier is a plastic sleeve that gets inserted through your throat into your upper intestine.

It modulates the amount of food that’s absorbed which, in turn, tends to shed pounds which, as we know from other studies, tends to (really) turn off type II diabetes.

Not A Condom

G I Dynamic’s device is smart and seems pretty benign (compared to tummy surgery) and, in fact, it does have the potential to be very helpful. An earlier article in OPNOTES describes the concept well.

The “Endobarrier” is probably a good thing.

But MISTER ScienceAintSoBad’s butt starts to itch when he reads over-the-top journalism (except his own) that describes stuff like a “15 Minute Cure For Diabetes.” AND for obesity.

EndoBarrier HAS been approved (in Europe).
And it SEEMS pretty safe.
And it DOES seem like an “easy install”

BUT the AMOUNT of weight lost is quite a bit less than with bariatric surgery

Not an unreasonable trade off.

ScienceAintSoBadRating = 7 .

Time will tell.

Stick Figures Have Lives Too

A follow up to my recent article on comic books as literature:

Randall Munroe studied physics at Christopher Newport University and has worked for NASA. He also writes a sparse but very funny “webcomic” with sardonic observations on life as lived in the technobulb.

ScienceAintSoBadRating = 10

The Oh So Very Stubborn Anterior Cruciate Ligament

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rubber_slippers_in_italy/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

Was this necessary?

Orthopedic Surgery: Knee.

Have you ever heard the term “Anterior Cruciate Ligament?”

I sure hope not.

It’s one part of the most complicated thing in the world – probably the most complicated thing in the whole UNIVERSE – the knee. And when the ACL gets ripped, it really HURTS!

Normally, it doesn’t get much better on its own – especially a major tear. Which means you get to make a visit to MISTER Orthopedic Surgeon.

Whee!

Surgical repair of the ACL is a common procedure and, with a little cooperation on your part and a bit of luck, it usually works pretty well. But it’ll cost you in the long run since your chances of arthritis later in life bump up significantly.

The interesting thing about all this is WHY the thing doesn’t get better on its own. Some parts of our body (luckily) do. Other parts don’t.

So that’s the question for our time. What’s it take to get the things that DON’T heal to change their ways?

Dr. Martha Murray (Children’s Hospital, Boston) has been puzzling out this very thing with respect to the Anterior Cruciate Ligament.

No big announcements. Just slogging through the science. But, so far, she has figured out that fibrin – the stuff that makes blood clot and which plays a role in repair of other tissues (including bones) – doesn’t seem to last long enough at the injury site – an important clue which may lead to techniques for enhancing the fibrin around the ligament.

Anyway, this is just a report on a work in progress but one that is so representative of the many efforts throughout medicine to learn how to teach the body to heal in new ways.

ScienceAintSoBadRating = 5 . Still early days.

Comic Books As Literature

Literature?

By the time I hit kindergarten, I was a reader.

I wanna think it’s cause I had a brain but, thinking back on it, my primer consisted of a small collection of comic books which my Mom (and other adults in my life) helped me to figure out.

The process was kinda informal.

I would point and ask my Mom what was happening and she would say “Captain Marvel’s about to get hit by a brick. He’s saying ‘Shazam!,”

“Shazam?”

“It’s the word he uses to turn into a tough guy” she would say. And she would help me to see the pieces of the sound – the “sh” and the “a” sound and so on.

I’m off comics now (because you can’t buy ‘em for a dime anymore) but they did give me an edge in kindergarten (where you want every advantage you can get).

Carol Tilley, who teaches Library and Information Science at the University Of Illinois has done some research in this area; the research was picked up in Science Daily .

I wasn’t able to find the original study and Ms Tilley wasn’t particularly responsive to ScienceAintSoBad (which I don’t hold against her) but the gist seems to be that comics deserve to be taken more seriously as adult literature.

She reminds us that some advocates of comic books use the term “Graphic Novel”. And she says that comics are just as sophisticated as other forms of literature.

You’re gonna ask me where’s the science in all this, aren’t you? You’re gonna ask me why I’m even writing about it, right?

Cause I LIKE comic books.

ScienceAintSoBadRating (for MISTER ScienceAintSoBad’s article here) = 1