Basketball Padding

Basketball used to be considered a non-contact sport. Now more and more college and pro players are wearing padding. March Madness, this year with more padding

Plumlee and dozens of other college basketball players wear compression shirts and shorts dotted with foam and plastic shock-absorbing pads under their uniforms. There are also padded sleeves for the elbows and knees. In the past few years players have started to wear this layer of protective gear meant to feel like a second-skin in a sport that has bigger, faster and stronger athletes than ever.
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“Some of the things you’ll see like these products, a lot of them tend to be more fads that come and go,” he said. “But anything that comes down over the edge of a bony prominence, or on the knee, makes sense. For the ribs — there’s cartilage that is a natural shock absorber so I don’t know how truly affective that piece might be.”

Purchase: McDavid knee and elbow pads – McDavid Hex Power Shooter Arm Sleeve – Hexpad Thudd with Extended Thigh

Taste Cells in the Stomach and Intestine

Stomach’s Sweet Tooth

Taste, scientists are discovering, is a whole-body sensation. There are taste cells in the stomach, intestine and, evidence suggests, the pancreas, colon and esophagus. These sensory cells are part of an ancient battalion tasked with guiding food choices
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Newly discovered taste cells in the gut appear to send a “prepare for fuel” message to the body, a finding that may explain a link between diet soda and diabetes risk.
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The gut’s taste cells appear to be built from the same machinery as the taste cells of the tongue, the structures of which scientists have only recently nailed down. Taste cells interact with what are called “tastants” via receptors, specialized proteins that protrude from cell walls and bind to specific molecules drifting by. When a tastant binds to a receptor, it signals other molecules that, in the mouth, immediately send an “accept” or “reject” message to the brain.
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Gut taste cells appear to regulate, in part, secretion of insulin, a hormone crucial for telling body tissues whether they should tap newly arrived glucose or valuable stored fat for energy.

Engineering Mosquitoes to be Flying Vaccinators

Mosquitoes Engineered Into Flying Vaccinators by Emily Singer

Researchers in Japan have transformed mosquitoes into vaccine-carrying syringes by genetically engineering the insects to express the vaccine for leishmaniasis–a parasitic disease transmitted by the sandfly–in their saliva. According to a study in Insect Molecular Biology, mice bitten by these mosquitoes produced antibodies against the parasite. It’s not yet clear whether the immune response was strong enough to protect against infection.

“Following bites, protective immune responses are induced, just like a conventional vaccination but with no pain and no cost,” said lead researcher Shigeto Yoshida, from the Jichi Medical University in JapanYoshida, in a press release from the journal. “What’s more continuous exposure to bites will maintain high levels of protective immunity, through natural boosting, for a life time. So the insect shifts from being a pest to being beneficial.”

Researchers consider the project more of a proof of principle experiment than a viable public health option, at least for now.

Very cool.

Invisible Worlds: Fastest Thing on the Planet

Fun with Fungi.

Praying Mantis Attacks Hummingbird

The hummingbird did survive.

Statistical Errors in Medical Studies

I have written about statistics, and various traps people often fall into when examining data before (Statistics Insights for Scientists and Engineers, Data Can’t Lie – But People Can be Fooled, Correlation is Not Causation, Simpson’s Paradox). And also have posted about reasons for systemic reasons for medical studies presenting misleading results (Why Most Published Research Findings Are False, How to Deal with False Research Findings, Medical Study Integrity (or Lack Thereof), Surprising New Diabetes Data). This post collects some discussion on the topic from several blogs and studies.

HIV Vaccines, p values, and Proof by David Rind

if vaccine were no better than placebo we would expect to see a difference as large or larger than the one seen in this trial only 4 in 100 times. This is distinctly different from saying that there is a 96% chance that this result is correct, which is how many people wrongly interpret such a p value.
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So, the modestly positive result found in the trial must be weighed against our prior belief that such a vaccine would fail. Had the vaccine been dramatically protective, giving us much stronger evidence of efficacy, our prior doubts would be more likely to give way in the face of high quality evidence of benefit.
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While the actual analysis the investigators decided to make primary would be completely appropriate had it been specified up front, it now suffers under the concern of showing marginal significance after three bites at the statistical apple; these three bites have to adversely affect our belief in the importance of that p value. And, it’s not so obvious why they would have reported this result rather than excluding those 7 patients from the per protocol analysis and making that the primary analysis; there might have been yet a fourth analysis that could have been reported had it shown that all important p value below 0.05.

How to Avoid Commonly Encountered Limitations of Published Clinical Trials by Sanjay Kaul, MD and and George A. Diamond, MD

Trials often employ composite end points that, although they enable assessment of nonfatal events and improve trial efficiency and statistical precision, entail a number of shortcomings that can potentially undermine the scientific validity of the conclusions drawn from these trials. Finally, clinical trials often employ extensive subgroup analysis. However, lack of attention to proper methods can lead to chance findings that might misinform research and result in suboptimal practice.

Why Most Published Research Findings Are False by John P. A. Ioannidis
Continue reading →

Autonomous Underwater Robot Decides on Experiment Options

Ocean robot plans experiments

the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) used a piece of software called “T rex”, which operates in a similar way to the software used to control Nasa’s Mars Exploration Rovers – helping them to avoid obstacles on the surface of the Red Planet.

One main difference between the two pieces of software is that for the Mars rovers, the software ran in the control centre on Earth. With this marine vehicle, it runs onboard the robotic vehicle.
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“We tell it, ‘here’s the range of tasks that we want you to perform’, and it goes off and assesses what is happening in the ocean, making decisions about how much of the range it will cover to get back the data we want.”

Researchers at MBARI used the Gulper AUV to monitor potentially harmful algal blooms.

Kim Fulton-Bennett from MBARI explained: “We used to send out a ship for a full day every few weeks to manually take these measurements. Now we just take the AUV outside the harbour and send it on its way.

“About 24 hours later, it comes back, we hoist it on board, and download the data.”

IBM Fellow Grady Booch on the Value of Engineering?

In this webcast IBM Fellow Grady Booch discusses the critical role engineering plays in moving society forward. And he explores the history of science and engineering. This interesting webcast would be a good video to show children, or anyone, to bring out the desire to study engineering and encourage them to study so they can join the many engineers shaping our world and our future.

Innovation, America and Engineering: NAE Grand Challenges Summit

Innovation, America and Engineering: NAE Grand Challenges Summit in Raleigh, North Carolina:

Friday morning in Raleigh, a group of engineers from industry, academia and even government met to discuss the threat of America losing its global lead in innovation. The panel discussion was part of a Summit on the National Academy of Engineering Grand Challenges…

Jeff Wadsworth, CEO and president of Battelle Memorial Institute, noted that high school graduation rates have fallen from about 86 percent in the Baby Boomer generation to about 72 percent today. He compared that to a 96 percent graduation rate in Denmark, 92 percent in Japan and the fact that China graduates three engineering students for every one that we do. It’s not news that international competition is stiffening against us, but the statistics he presented about how the U.S. measures up to foreign countries in K-12 metrics was gut-wrenching.

“Our historic lead in secondary education has disappeared,” Wadsworth said. “And as a leader of a large organization, I worry about education.”
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Another panelist, Senator Ted Kaufman (D-Delaware) said the country was at a critical point in history. “We are in an economic war,” he said. “The future of our country rests on our ability to use STEM to solve problems.” Kauffman is the only sitting senator in Congress to have worked in the engineering field, and he repeatedly drummed out a message that policy could drive a solution to the STEM crisis.
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A third panelist – John Chambers, chairman and CEO of CISCO – said he believed changing teaching methods in K-12 settings to be more collaborative, projects-oriented and skills-mastery oriented would be a good starting point.
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the deans of the engineering colleges at both Duke and NC State universities announced today a new nationwide program targeting attracting school-aged children to the STEM fields. The Grand Challenge K-12 Partners Program will lean on engineering colleges throughout the U.S. to be resource hubs for K-12 students and teachers in their region.
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Three more NAE Grand Challenge Summits are scheduled to take place next month, in Phoenix, Chicago and Boston. A fourth is scheduled for Seattle in May.

The importance of innovation and engineering education to long term economic success is one thing I believe strongly in and have written about here: Engineering Economic Benefits, Techonolgy Innovation Global Economy Changing, Centers of Technical Excellence and Economic Power. And is one reason I work for the American Society of Engineering Education (this blog is my own and not associated with ASEE).

Norway Reduces Infections by Reducing Antibiotic Use

Norway conquers infections by cutting use of antibiotics

Twenty-five years ago, Norwegians were also losing their lives to this bacteria. But Norway’s public health system fought back with an aggressive program that made it the most infection-free country in the world. A key part of that program was cutting back severely on the use of antibiotics.

Now a spate of new studies from around the world prove that Norway’s model can be replicated with extraordinary success, and public health experts are saying these deaths — 19,000 in the U.S. each year alone, more than from AIDS — are unnecessary.

“It’s a very sad situation that in some places so many are dying from this, because we have shown here in Norway that Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus [MRSA] can be controlled, and with not too much effort,” said Jan Hendrik-Binder, Oslo’s MRSA medical advisor. “But you have to take it seriously, you have to give it attention and you must not give up.”

The World Health Organization says antibiotic resistance is one of the leading public health threats on the planet. A six-month investigation by The Associated Press found overuse and misuse of medicines has led to mutations in once curable diseases like tuberculosis and malaria, making them harder and in some cases impossible to treat.

Now, in Norway’s simple solution, there’s a glimmer of hope.