The idea of surgery in general spooks a lot of people. Everyone does their best to console patients who are nervous about being sliced open or poked around inside. However, sometimes it does not go as planned. What would you do if you woke up during the surgery being performed on your body? You are unable to speak. You cannot move. You feel the sensation of the surgery still going, and you are frozen for five full minutes to experience it.

This is one of the horrific cases that happen to roughly one in 19,600 patients. This study surveyed over three million patients who underwent general anesthesia in the United Kingdom and Ireland. More relatable studies about us citizens in the United States have worse news. One in every one thousand surgical patients wakes up during surgery in the US. A high portion of this number is from the amount of surgeries that require lower dosages of anesthesia. This includes emergency C-sections, cardiac and emergency trauma surgeries. Dealing with fragile people whose bodies demand dangerous medical procedures should not be given massive amount of anesthesia. It could put them “over the edge.”

Another factor that may contribute to this would be paralytics. When these are used, patients are unable to move and let doctors know that they are conscious. Doctors are taught ways to monitor periodically that people are still asleep, but they are not always reliable. Methods include testing of heart rate and blood pressure. They may rise when a person wakes up and becomes nervous and alert; however, the drugs being used often numb the body’s stress response. The amount of gas used in a person’s lungs are measured continuously, but if impacts each person differently.

A solution to this problem may be brain monitors. Doctors would be in charge of using the monitors to keep “brain activity below a certain threshold” during surgery. Professor Jaideep Pandi, consultant anesthetist at Oxford University Hospitals says that some studies show no signs of reduction in the rate of anesthetic awareness when these monitors are used.

I cannot imagine having to sit through something like that. The feeling that people have talked about in this CNN article terrifies me. “Among the symptoms experienced during the event, paralysis was the most distressing to patients — more so than pain,” says Pandit. Patients have developed severe posttraumatic stress disorder from this occurrence. Carol Weihrer had to sleep in a recliner for the last 16 years in fear of lying down and having flashbacks that cause her to starting thrashing. Another young boy showed signs of separation anxiety before speaking with a therapist about his nightmares that continue to haunt him. I hope that some day people do not have to innocently go through this experience. Surgery must already be difficult; people should not have to worry about waking up during it.

Malcolm X once said, “Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but now it’s more like a vulture. It used to be strong enough to go and suck anybody’s blood whether they were strong or not. But now it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and it can only suck the blood of the helpless.” Cowardly or not, that is how the vulture survives. Not many animals can survive like it either. They always seem to make work with what they’ve got. Vultures can feast an animal covered in deadly microbes, and still be immune to them. Vultures typically eat rotting flesh, sometimes even through body cavities often consuming fecal matter. Helpless, dead, or dismantled carcass- whatever you’d like to call it, is consumed by the vulture in a way that have scientists baffled.

Vultures have immunity toward these microbes. Microorganisms like this that cause disease or fermentation would make a quick kill of any other animal. Researchers have looked into the intestines of vultures to see why these animals stand out against the microbes. DNA located in the intestines includes 76 types of different microorganisms. Lars Hestbjerg Hansen is a microbiologist at Aarhus University in Denmark. He is also the author on a new study on these birds. He admits that although it would feel as though the microbiome inside vultures is complex to make it better, it is actually quite simple.

Hansen thinks that over some period of time, vultures have made an adaptation. They have made it possible to surpass the disease and eat past the toxic bacteria in carcasses. He also suggests that the digestive system may destroy the bacteria, since it does not show up in the stool of vultures. With all of the horrific diseases going into vultures and nothing going out, my first thought was to question if vultures are spreading diseases. However, Dr. Hansen says that there are no signs indicating this. 

It is amazing to me that we have no real idea where or why this happens. The human body seems so complex and varied, yet we have professionals and medical practitioners. This is a bird that eats DEADLY things and we can’t figure out what is going on in that little body. I would be interested to see how further testing on this would go. How would you try to find something like this out?

source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/science/a-vultures-gut-is-simple-but-seems-effective.html?ref=science

The holiday season is here. What better way to celebrate than with food? New York Times gives a word to the wise: “Measure your nutmeg carefully. Very carefully.” Nutmeg is known as one of the more “interesting” spices in the kitchen by most toxicologists. This season, teenagers wound up in poison control centers. The effects of nutmeg are not anything like food poisoning. They are considered “exotic.” Years ago, nutmeg apparently mad a man spit at strangers while walking on the street. We have seen these side effects for a while now. Nutmeg was used to end unwanted pregnancies in the Middle Ages. More recently, prisoners use it as a drug substitute. At one point it was thought to fight the Black Plague. It is said to be “stimulating enough to bring on menstruation, poisonous enough to induce an abortion.” Last, let’s not forget about the high-like state that may include hallucinations. Malcolm X once said, “A penny matchbox full of nutmeg had the kick of three or four reefers.”

More common symptoms include intense nausea, dizziness, cottonmouth, and much slower brain function. People even forget what happened while they are in this state. It is compared to a two-day hangover. Nutmeg contains myristicin and safrole. Myristicin has psychoactive potential, while safrole is sometimes used in Ecstasy. Teenagers like the ones mentioned have been getting themselves into their own chemistry lab of trouble, thinking that the results from nutmeg while be like synthetic drugs. In a ten-year period, 17 cases found were accidental whereas 15 were deliberate. In a larger study done, 72.3% of the poison cases were from intentional use.

This article was very interesting to me because I had never heard of anything beyond spray paint that people tried to get high from in their homes. I suppose the idea of real food doing that by accident is also a bit frightening when you least expect it. I did not know the history of nutmeg and found it’s toxic history interesting. Personally, I found this scientific article to be legit. Not only does is have patients that were willing to admit their experiments with nutmeg, but there were even reports throughout history that people used it to become under the influence. I had no idea a spice could do that to your body, especially one we use this time of year! Enjoy the holiday spice in moderation.

source: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/25/a-warning-on-nutmeg/?ref=science

In grade school, it probably got girls out of gym class. It even keeps some from going to school at all. It is the wonderful gift Mother Nature has given women, periods. The United States National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health shared an interesting topic regarding women’s menstrual cycles. The investigation was based around rotating shift work and menstrual cycle characteristics. Information on shift work and menstrual cycle patterns in the Nurses’ Health Study II was collected from 1993. This consisted of 71,077 nurses from 28-45 who were not on birth control.

This is a study that showed that women whose work shifts change are modestly associated with menstrual function. There are “possible implications for fertility and other cycle related aspects of women’s health.” Women with over twenty months of rotating shifts had more irregular cycles. They were also more likely to have a cycle length less than twenty-one days or greater than 40 days. This is a very wide difference that strays from the average “one month mark.”

Reuters.com has information that agrees with this hypothesis. They have reviewed the facts that involved the NLM, but are still questioning how much of this is relevant for the disturbance in women’s cycles. Lead researcher, Christina C. Lawson of the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health says that shift work itself does not directly lead us to believe it disrupts women’s periods. She addresses factors such as age, weight, and exercise levels. She believes that there in more confidence in association so far, but that does not mean it is as simple as cause-and-effect.

Night shifts have been seen to disrupt natural circadian rhythms, which alters blood pressure and hormone production. Although this is an observation made by scientists, they are still unsure of the “exact mechanism”. Melatonin is supposed to be produced during the night while in darkness to help regulate sleep. When people do not sleep or are exposed to light, this could impact their bodies. However, melatonin is not specifically related to reproductive hormones. Overall, I am not sure what could come of this study. It seems as though even with a large group of people, there are varied results. This may go to show that even with thousands and thousands of women in a study, the answer can still be hidden.

other source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/

Chances are, you will survive that last breakup, just like the rest of them. Breakups, being cheated on, dumped, public humiliation, or whatever stunt you did to propose and got rejected: you will be ok. Your significant toher doesn’t have that much control over you, right? There’s speculation that when one partner passes away, the other’s accompanying death may be caused by a “broken heart.” People actually die from having their beloved one pass on. They die from a broken heart. We have all seen the classic couples like Brittany Murphy and Simon Monjack, alongside June Carter and Johnny Cash. Each husband died shortly after losing his wife. Could the cause of each husband’s death relate to the loss of both wives?

Signs of this syndrome include severe emotional stress and heart attack symptoms. Although upon autopsy, officials could not identify the cause of death to have any relation to a heart attack. This is according to a report in 2005 done by the New England Journal of Medicine. Only nineteen women were evaluated in this study. The women had left ventricular dysfunction after sudden emotional stress. This is an extremely small study case to be done. I imagine it is not easy for scientists to find patients who seek to be a part of an experiment after going through a difficult emotional experience. Perhaps these people were unaware that they were being studied to watch for death. Maybe in some cases, people just did not care. Whatever the case, New England Journal concluded that without coronary disease, emotional stress could precipitate severe left ventricular dysfunction in patients. Sympathetic stimulation is a probable cause of death.

Dr. Ilan, who is a cardiologist and lead author of the study at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, claims that these look exactly like heart attacks. In an article from the New York Times, he says that the EKGs were abnormal but no blockages, just weak hearts. Looking further into the Johns Hopkins studies, patients had more epinephrine and norepinephrine hormones, which are stress. Apparently these hormones weaken the heart muscle. This process “mimics” a heart attack. So far, Johns Hopkins University has followed about 170 patients with this. NY Times reports, “About 2 percent of patients who undergo emergency cardiac catheterization, a procedure used to examine blood flow to the heart, eventually receive a diagnosis of broken heart syndrome. Among women who are rushed to the catheterization lab, an estimated 5 percent to 7 percent get a diagnosis of broken heart syndrome.”

Genes and menopause are factors that have been only slightly mentioned during this study. In addition, some people did not suffer a tragic loss at all, only about 40% from the John Hopkins study. I find it amazing that our bodies can think ourselves into mimicking a heart attack anyway. The romance in the movie “Walk the Line” based on June Carter and Johnny Cash sparked my interest for this one. Maybe it should not be diagnosed with the name “broken heart syndrome” after all? Good news though: once diagnosed and treated, most recover.

Do you have one of those best friends that can finish your sentence? Pick out something that you like? Know exactly how you feel or what you might say about it? What if twin siblings had proven paranormal power to read things like this from one another? Twin telepathy is something that has been discussed for hundreds of years. This article dates back to Francis Galton’s observational article discussing the ability of twins in the same company to sing simultaneously and comment similarly in the same situation. Today, scientists toy with different ideas to find a proper explanation for these out of the ordinary experiences that twins may have.

It is said that telepathy of this sort occurs within closely connected twins during a time of crisis. For example, in 1977 a woman by the name of Martha Burke reported that she felt she had been “cut in two.” She experienced pain across her chest and abdomen. Later during that day, she discovered her twin sister had passed away in a plane crash. In addition, in 1975 Nita Hurst’s left leg bruised out of the blue one day, eventually traveling up the side of her body. At the same time, her twin was in an automobile accident. These are very strange cases because this plane crash happened on the other side of the world from Martha Burke and this car accident happened 400 miles away from Nita Hurst. Neither twins knew previously and were nowhere near the scene. I wonder how made up these stories may be, when Nita Hurst claims to have physical bruising on her body, although unharmed.

Noetic.org says that, “Despite the many anecdotes, there is a shortage of convincing evidence from laboratory studies. One reason is that there have been very few studies. Another is that among the studies conducted, factors known to enhance the chances of telepathic contact weren’t, or couldn’t be, incorporated, such as inducing danger to a twin to evoke crisis telepathy. Other variables that have been scientifically associated with a higher probability of telepathic occurrences are extroversion and a belief in telepathy, but subjects are not usually screened for these attributes.” This topic may suffer from the file drawer problem, seen as though not many studies have been collected to gather a decent hypothesis regarding what twin telepathy really is from. To make this study experimental, it would be unethical to put people in a crisis-like situation to satisfy test results. In this case, I am not even sure how a scientist could provide a horrific environment believable for twins to start their telepathy. This seems like a difficult task to do. Other ideas that people have on telepathy may not be suitable for all other twins. It is a fragile subject that we do not know much about, nor how to go about exploring.

Twins were raised apart and also studied. The findings were published in Entwined Lives, by Nancy Segal. Sixty-eight cases were studied, and the reunions displayed an act as if the twins had known one another their entire lives. There were similarities beyond genetics, of course. After 34 years apart, one set of female twins both wore seven rings, two bracelets on one wrist, and a watch and a bracelet on the other hand for the reunion. Another strange example from Noetic.org, “The “Jim twins,” for example, had been separated at 4-weeks-old and were apart for 39 years. Both were named Jim, married a woman named Linda, divorced, and then married another woman named Betty. However, one Jim was on his third marriage. They both had had childhood dogs named Toy and sons named James. One son was James Allen and the other James Alan. They both had been firemen and sheriffs. Both bit their nails, suffered from migraines, smoked Salem cigarettes, and drank Miller Lite beer. Each was 6 feet tall and weighed exactly 180 pounds, though they wore their hair differently. Among the most remarkable shared details was that both had a compulsion to build a circular white bench around a tree each of them had in his yard right before they met. Also, they both had owned light-blue Chevrolets, which they had regularly driven to Pass-a-Grille Beach, Florida, for family vacations. What’s more, both enjoyed leaving love notes to their wives throughout their homes. Their facial expressions, IQs, habits, brain waves, and handwriting were nearly identical. To top it all off, they died from the same illness on the same day.”

So what will it take to get down to the science behind these communicating brains? Perhaps we have enough anecdotes to start the conversation, but how will we reach a conclusion? This is going to be some tricky testing…

You set your alarm to allow enough time to brush your teeth, grab something to eat, and you are out the door. How much time do you spend picking out what you will wear? Uniforms are an easy solution, but do they really have other benefits? Many teachers and schooling officials believe that uniforms relate to behavior. They believe that students in uniform are more focused on school work, rather than comparing clothes and social class. Schools who offer “dress down” days may even see a rise in poor behavior due to the outfit change on these days. However, studies show that is not the case.

David L. Brunsma, a researcher at the University of Missouri-Columbia has been studying this topic since 1996. “Despite the media coverage,” Brunsma writes in The School Uniform Movement and What It Tells Us About American Education, “despite the anecdotal meanderings of politicians, community members, educators, board members, parents, and students, uniforms have not been effective at attacking the very outcomes and issues they were assumed to aid.” He concludes that they have nothing to do with violence, behavior, self-esteem, motivation, or social status. There may even be a small negative effect on reading. Brunsma also used two major studies from the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 and the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study of 1998. The National Educational Study used 8th graders that were able to represent the nation. Early Childhood tracked students from their preschool years. Brunsma looked into third variables such as soccioeconomic status and race.

In 1994, the Long Beach School District in California made uniforms from K-8 mandatory. In two years, suspension rates dropped 28%. There was even a 36% decrease in suspensions at the middle school level. Fights decreased 51% in middle school and 34% in elementary schools. Brunsma critiques this study, claiming that it is just one district. The study was not done widely enough to prove that this could be the case if more schools made uniforms a requirement to get these kinds of benefits. There are all sorts of results published from studies like these. The results are scattered all over. Some results are from smaller studies such as Long Beach School District, while others were aimed to represent the nation’s average 8th graders. It is hard to determine what impact uniforms may have on children at this point. Do you think wearing a uniform would help you in any way?

More info at: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/18/more-school-uniforms/2662387/

Being rather young, I would say we do not have to worry about hair loss. However, there are times when body hair is just not where you want it. Laser hair removal is a solution that many people take to get rid of that undesired hair. In 1996, the first approved lasers were made available to those willing to pay for the treatment. It is a very costly process. Naturally, since 1996, many technological advances have been made. The laser hair removal process consists of destroying follicular units. A molecule called chromophore makes this safer to use. Chromophore is a light absorbing molecule that makes the target for this laser more accurate. This will help prevent damage to surrounding skin. A particular wavelength, pulse duration, and fluence is also taken into consideration to avoid further damage. Highly successful lasers include the ruby laser (694 nm), the alexandrite laser (755 nm), the diode laser (800 nm), an intense pulsed light source (590 to 1200 nm), and the neodymium:yttrium-aluminum-garnet (Nd:YAG) laser (1064 nm). An important thing to remember is that this is regarded as a medical procedure. People who request this procedure are required to consult a family physician first. They will know the skin-related side effects and can properly diagnose and provide correct treatment for patients. There have been an overwhelming amount of reporting side effects from patients who went to nonphysicians to seek this treatment. Although commercial claims suggest it is safe and will have no side effects, even certain physicians have seen problems.

This particular website claims “Complications can occur after laser hair removal, but can be reduced through an understanding of the fundamentals of laser treatment.” It is interesting to see that the fragile medical process that makes this treatment possible is still difficult to carry out by trained officials. Other than the burns it is considered a successful treatment for people to use. This is for cases where the razor or the tweezer method just is not cutting it (literally). We have talked a lot in class about physicians and the power they can have with our health in their hands. For people who desire to get ride of hair, it may not be a great risk to try!

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2628842/

We have all seen our fair share of outlandish commercials. Let’s face it, we made the inventor of a backwards robe rich, once it was named a “Snuggie.” Another interesting commercial was for those shoes that were said to make your butt bigger, legs stronger, and hey if Kim Kardashian is doing it- it’s cool right? That’s right; Sketchers shape-ups were going to be the answer to all your workout nightmares. The answer was to just buy these shoes, and stroll around! They have not only broken these promises, but are now causing mass amount of injuries to people.

I found this to be a funny example of possible anecdotal data. Experimental trials are considered well-done when they are widely conducted. There is a direct causality present here to show that the Sketchers company has done some of their homework. However, it is clear that they produced results that would help sales. This could have been a Texas-sharp shooter problem. It is possible that while Sketchers was trying to create the next big thing, they overlooked that creating a shoe with this form could have dangerous impacts.

It is interesting to see that when this commercial first aired, all we saw were the facts that were given to us. We saw a fit Kim Kardashian and believed in the technological science behind this new shoe. It is just another example that nothing is for certain. We question things around us to rule out anecdotes and variables, but sometimes our society’s market leads us to think what they tell us really is the truth! Now Sketchers faces lawsuits for all sorts of injuries including ankle fractures, hip fractures, and even head injuries. Let’s keep questioning the “facts” people!

We see them in our foul trashcans, picking at our scraps and eating rotten foods. But are raccoons more intelligent than we think? I have seen a couple raccoons in my lifetime, but I have not known much about them beyond a few rumors of possible domestication. One study was done looking at a colony of raccoons and their processes of learning and association. Using E.L. Thorndike’s puzzle box methodology, raccoons solved this wooden crate puzzle more easily the second time around. This could be compared to humans teaching pets “tricks.” Meaning, it may not be that their brains are able to critically think, but just to get the job done to completion. It was independently concluded that they “bested the abilities” of cats and dogs. I found it interesting that raccoons are one of the species that flourished beside human expansion, while others receded.

It is said that, “Both popular and scientific naturalists had argued that cunning, mischief and curiosity characterized the species.” In addition, “The raccoon’s instinctual curiosity lay at the heart of Cole’s most startling claim: that the animal possessed ideas derived from complex forms of mental association, a quality that many scientists argued non-human animals did not possess.” Raccoons are being considered to be very good learners. There was an experiment done with twenty-two rats, two dogs, four raccoons, and five human children to measure intelligence. Apa.org shows us the method: “Hunter first trained the subject to associate a light source with the positive experience of being fed. Next, he detained the subject behind a gate, but permitted it to observe three light bulbs, one of which was briefly illuminated and then turned off. The task was to remember the position of the lighted bulb and to approach it and collect the food reward. Hunter defined success in terms of the subject’s repeated correct approach to the stimulus. He manipulated the duration of the delay before release to assess how long a subject could remember the location of the previously lighted bulb.”

Although not widely conducted at all, Cole’s observations found that while rats and dogs needed to maintain their “bodily orientation” toward the light bulb testing, the raccoon did not hesitate as much. The raccoon results were compared to the human children’s results because they could both “identity the correct stimulus even after being distracted.” The results here are not enough to make any sort of conclusion regarding raccoon’s intelligence. I think that this also a very old study from at least 1915. This does show how much more raccoon have developed, or how much more animal-like they have become. If raccoons were proven to be smarter, would we use them more in labs or domesticate them like our cats and dogs? I’m not sure I’m ready to snuggle up to a raccoon, no matter how smart they are…

As a classroom we were encouraged to ask about things we were interested in. We have talked about Ebola, prayer, and physicians killing people. More recently, we have been talking more and more about talking in class. Andrew made a joke at the start of this problem way back. It was noted that the noise was mostly coming from the right side of the room. This made me think, why would it always be over there? Finally, I became curious after all this time, does where an individual sit it say something about them?

USA today wrote an article about the seating of students. It is reported by the Western New England University that there is a better chance at a relationship with a professor for a student who sits in the front of the class; however, this does not always help produce better grades. It is noted that students in the front will be more likely to make eye contact and feel obligated to pay attention. The sizing of classes seems to impact this theory as well. This article admits “Although there has been a lot of research done on seat placement in classes, Hakala says the data is hard to interpret because it relies on correlation.” Researchers find it hard to rule out reverse correlation here. Good students may prefer to sit up front or students sit up front because they are good students. Third variables include friend’s seat choices, eyesight, or (possibly something we are all familiar with) lateness limiting available seats. The Dean of Academic Services at York College of Pennsylvania says seating choice has “little to no impact” on her perception of students’ work ethic. There are always those students who perform well and go against the thinking that front row students are “better.”

In the end, I agree with the director of the Center for Academic Achievement at Susquehanna University when he says, “You have to realize that where you sit communicates something to the professor and affects your engagement in the classroom, but it’s not more important than learning the material and studying.” If you are doing well, why change your seat? It may be a confidence barrier, or just a comfort zone holding you back. However, your class time is what you make of it.

Here is additional research done from Penn State Altoona: https://www.altoona.psu.edu/fts/docs/SeatingPositionGrades.pdf

It is the trip everyone dreads. It is the appointment no one wants to schedule. It is: going to the dentist. Adults and children can both agree that this is never a desired trip, no matter how many incentives there may be for healthy teeth. However, children of this generation have one more thing to worry about than adults. We have to worry about the “fluoride treatment” at the dentist. Fluoride is a natural mineral found in foods and water that we drink. Basically, the argument pertains to the impact on children’s neurodevelopment. Harvard researchers have found neurotoxicity in adults, which alters the activity of the nervous system and damages nervous tissue. Rodent studies were also conducted, reporting negative impacts on memory. Twenty-seven studies done by Harvard School of Public Health and China Medical University in Shenyang have found that fluoride alters children’s cognitive development. People were alarmed by these findings and more research is currently being done.

Reading this article, however, it shows that none of the human studies completed were done on Americans. The studies turned out to be “differed” or “incomplete.” One study was only done on students up to age fourteen. The article factored in that there is a “speculation” toxic effect could have taken place earlier in the lives of the children. It was reported in this study, fluoride created an average loss in about seven IQ points. A professor of environmental health at HSPH noted, “Fluoride seems to fit in with lead, mercury, and other poisons that cause chemical brain drain. The effect of each toxicant may seem small, but the combined damage on a population scale can be serious, especially because the brain power of the next generation is crucial to all of us.”

This was a review of a study done to investigate fluoride and what it does to memory. This study does not apply to anyone of this generation that is fourteen and up, or from anywhere besides China. Although twenty-seven can seem like an impressive number, especially attached to a Harvard Medical study, it was not as well conducted as it could have been. I take it that there are some people who do not regularly visit the dentist to receive these kinds of treatments anyway. (We are trying to avoid the thirty minutes after a fluoride treatment that forbids food, I know.) So how many people are getting too much fluoride? How many people get these treatments at all? Will we be able to determine from people’s teeth how much more is needed to prevent tooth decay or gum diseases? There can be many other factors that make people’s IQ lower. I am not sure that it is worth stopping fluoride treatments, but maybe it is worth the argument to spend less time in the dentist’s office…

Hi I’m Rachel! I am taking this class because it meets the requirement and it’s basic science. I am not majoring in science because although it holds my interest I could not see myself doing it every day of my life as a career.