Category Archives: Health Care

Research on Reducing Hamstring Injuries

Good sports: Hamstring findings may help injured athletes stay healthy:

The researchers’ computer simulations enable them to estimate how much load the hamstrings are under and how much they’re stretched. In animal models, says Thelen, the mechanical strain a muscle is experiencing is a good predictor of injury potential.

Now the researchers can translate what they’ve learned about hamstring muscle mechanics into how best to rehabilitate the muscle after injury. Sherry and Thomas Best, an associate professor of biomedical engineering, family medicine and orthopedics and rehabilitation, have discovered that exercise programs that strengthen the core muscles-the abs and lower back-are related to fewer hamstring re-injuries. “Through our experiments and simulations, we’ve been able to show that these muscles can have a large influence on pelvic orientation, which affects hamstring stretch-and thus, presumably affects injury potential,” says Thelen.

Are Our Vegtables Less Nutritious?

Grandma’s Veggies May Have Been More Nutritious:

“Of the 13 nutrients that we were able to study, we found statistically reliable declines in six of the 13,” he says. Levels of other nutrients stayed roughly constant over the years.

But a big word of caution: USDA nutritionist Joanne Holden says those 1950 numbers may not be trustworthy. For one thing, measurement techniques have changed, possibly changing the results. In addition, she says, no one knows whether the vegetables measured in 1950 were an accurate sample of the American diet.

Lifestraw

Lifestraw is an excellent example of an engineered appropriate technology solution.

At any given moment, about half of the world’s poor are suffering from waterborne diseases, of which over 6,000 – mainly children – die each day by consuming unsafe drinking water.

Today, more than one billion people of the world’s population are without access to safe water, causing lack of safe water supply to rob hundreds of women and girls of dignity, energy and time.

Safe water interventions, therefore, have vast potential to transform the lives of millions, especially in crucial areas such as poverty eradication, environmental upgradation, quality of life, child development and gender equality.

Lifestraw is a filter solution that allows water to be purified for about 6 months (before needing to be replaced) at a cost of just $3.50.

Illusion of Explanatory Depth

The “Illusion of Explanatory Depth”: How Much Do We Know About What We Know? (broken link was removed)

Often (more often than I’d like to admit), my son (Darth Vader over there on the left) will ask me a question about how something works, or why something happens the way it does, and I’ll begin to answer, initially confident in my knowledge, only to discover that I’m entirely clueless. I’m then embarrassed by my ignorance of my own ignorance.
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I wouldn’t be surprised, however, if it turns out that the illusion of explanatory depth leads many researchers down the wrong path, because they think they understand something that lies outside of their expertise when they don’t.

Great stuff. It took me a lot longer to stop asking why, why, why than most kids. I only gave up after years of repeated obvious clues that I was not suppose to ask why (once I aged past 5 or 8 or something – I actually have no idea when it is no longer desired). But most days I, curious cat, want to ask how does that work, why do we do that, why can’t we… I just stop myself. But it does mean I asked myself and realized I don’t really know. So I am at least more aware how little I really know, I think I am anyway.

The internet is a great thing. Google doesn’t mind if you ask as many questions as you want.

Regular Exercise Reduces Fatigue

Regular Exercise Plays A Consistent And Significant Role In Reducing Fatigue:

Health professionals encourage regular exercise to prevent or improve symptoms of conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and obesity, but the scientific evidence on whether exercise increases or reduces fatigue had never been reviewed quantitatively. O’Connor, kinesiology professor Rod Dishman and lead author Tim Puetz, who recently completed his doctoral work at UGA, analyzed 70 randomized, controlled trials that enrolled a total of 6,807 subjects. They found strong support for the role of exercise in reducing fatigue.

For myself this seems true. But what seems true for me doesn’t mean much.
Continue reading →

How Our Brain Resolves Sight

Brain Pathway Brings Order to Visual Chaos

The world you see around you appears perfectly stationary, even though your eyes dart back and forth two to three times every second in little hops called saccades. For more than a century researchers have assumed that the brain must keep track of the impulses that cause these tiny motions, so as to subtract their effect from our visual awareness. Now researchers have identified a circuit in the monkey brain that seems to play this role.

Programing Bacteria

Duke Packard Fellow to Examine Processing Speed of “Reprogrammed” Bacteria:

research into the development of synthetic gene circuits, carefully designed combinations of genes that can be “loaded” into bacteria or other cells, directing their activity in much the same way that a basic computer program directs a computer. Such re-programmed bacteria might eventually serve in a wide variety of applications, including biocomputing, medical treatments, and environmental cleanup
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The research now, however, is in its very early stages, You said. So far, E. coli bacteria have been programmed to grow in numbers until a certain population size is reached. The bacteria then kill themselves off, growing again only after their numbers dwindle sufficiently.

The relatively simple program takes advantage of bacteria’s ability to communicate with one another, a process known as “quorum sensing,” and essential genetic pathways that control cell death.

Medical Buckyballs

Secret’s in the stuffing – Researchers fill ‘buckyballs’ with metals in hopes they’ll have medical applications

Virginia Tech has been stuffing hollow buckyballs, or fullerenes, with metals in hopes they could someday be used as contrast agents for imaging or tracing cancer cells.

Nobel laureate and co-discoverer Harold Kroto of Florida State University, who worked out the structural rule that the buckyegg violates, learned of Virginia Tech’s pursuit of buckyballs for pharmaceutical and medical applications during a visit to Blacksburg this month.

“It’s very exciting,” he said, joking that he’d been about ready to give back his Nobel because no one had found humanitarian uses for buckyballs until now.

The buckyegg is the latest from Virginia Tech, where in 1999 Harry Dorn and a team of chemists created the first buckyballs made with a shell of 80 carbon atoms and three metal atoms stuffed inside.

Energy Efficiency of Digestion

Why is Fecal Matter Brown?

The complex digestion process ensures that almost no useful energy goes unused. The average bowel movement is three parts water to one part solid matter. Bacteria make up 30 percent of the solid stuff. The same goes for indigestible foods like cellulose and extra fiber. The remaining 40 percent contains various inorganic wastes, fats and used-up body substances like red blood cells

Scientists Examine 100 Trillion Microbes in Human Feces:

Aiding the large intestine in this task are trillions of microbes that reside in the gut, where they help digest foods we would otherwise have to avoid. In this way the bugs contribute to our overall health.

Some of these tiny settlers are with us from birth, imparted from our mothers, while others gradually colonize our bodies as we grow. This microbial community is as diverse as any found in Earth’s seas or soils, numbering up to 100 trillion individuals and representing more than 1,000 different species.

Virus may be eating your brain

Forgetful? Virus may be eating your brain

Viruses that cause a range of ills from the common cold to polio may be able to infect the brain and cause steady damage, a team at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota reports.

“Our study suggests that virus-induced memory loss could accumulate over the lifetime of an individual and eventually lead to clinical cognitive memory deficits,” says Dr Charles Howe, who reports the findings in the latest issue of the journal Neurobiology of Disease.

The viruses are called picornaviruses and infect more than 1 billion people worldwide each year.

They include the virus that causes polio, as well as colds and diarrhoea. People contract an average of two or three such infections a year.

Related: Viruses as Nanomachines (webcast) (excellent, John) – What Are Viruses? – More info on Picornaviruses from Tulane – Microbes