swimming freestyle

New Pew poll on science

It seems fair to say the most economically powerful nations in the world are those that develop a strong technology base.  And those capabilities require a culture that appreciates and understands the science that supports their technologies.   

The new Pew Research poll on Americans view of science paints a pretty bleak portrait for a long term technology leadership role for the U.S.

Science is complicated stuff, so it's not surprising to see inconsistencies in the poll results.  But what's most obvious from the poll is a general decline in Americans respect for the value of science, and a strong tendency for Americans to decide sciences worth based on whether it conflicts with their religious beliefs.

While 84% of the respondents believe science has a positive effect on society, only 27% (compared to 47% in 1999) felt that science, medicine and technology were America's "greatest achievement" of the last 50 years.  I suspect the reason for the decline in respect has to do with another result from the poll:  When scientists were asked about the big problems facing science, 85% identified the public's lack of knowledge as a "major problem".  

Anecdotally, this sounds right.  There's very little science covered in the media and, when there is, the media seems to feel compelled to produce an opposing viewpoint.  More often than not, this opposing view is from a religious perspective that's all about faith and not at all about science.  The argument becomes apples/oranges.  Add on top of that what seems a public lack of interest in science and you end up with only 27% of Americans valuing the technologies that have afforded them the quality of life they so readily take for granted.

I also found the ideological and political party breakdown of scientists interesting.  52% of the scientists surveyed considered themselves liberal.  35% called themselves moderates and only 9% considered themselves conservative.  Of the scientists surveyed, 55% were Democrats, 32% Independents and 6% Republican.

The poll has enough to scare and depress everyone.  For most of America, the poll demonstrates an increasing disinterest and disregard for the value of science.  That doesn't bode well for a long term technological dominance for the United States that can only result in a declining standard of living.

And if I was one of the few sane Republicans out there, those statistics on ideology and party identification would scare the shit out of me. 

Wearing contact lenses so you don't have to wear contact lenses

They don't work for everyone.  But for many who have tried this new approach to contact lens technology, the results have been quite good. 

Conventionally, contact lenses are worn during awake hours to correct vision, but this new technology (trademarked i-GO) has users wear the lenses while asleep.  The lenses encourage the movement of cells in the epithelium to shift, creating a temporary correction to the users vision.  The user wakes up, removes the lenses and many are able to go through the day without using eyeglasses, contact lenses or resort to laser surgery.

A journalist from the Guardian tried the lenses:

These lenses, I am told, do not usually work instantly. "We should achieve something like a 70% change within the first night of wear," says Minshull. In the early days, most users find their eyesight deteriorates by the end of the day. "You may notice a little bit of ghosting in the evening," he says. I am supplied with some -1.50 daily disposable contact lenses in case my eyesight becomes less than perfect.

After two nights in the lenses, I wake up and - hosanna! - I can see. Without lenses. Almost perfectly. The problem is at night: when it gets dark, I realise that while I can read car numberplates at a distance, my sight is distorted by electric lights, which are almost as blurry as if I had my normal vision. Street lights and car headlights are fuzzy.

The lenses only correct for up to moderate short sightedness and some astigmatism.  But very cool nonetheless.

The roots of schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is an insidious disease.  Usually striking in late adolescence, schizophrenics suffer with hallucinations and delusions, hear voices and experience severe paranoia.  Drug therapy is the rule, but the schizophrenics life is often marked by poverty and homelessness.

Scientists have known that schizophrenia has a significant genetic determinant, and a recent set of research projects have more successfully identified the roots of schizophrenia.  The researchers now believe that thousands of tiny genetic mutations significantly raise the odds for the onset of schizophrenia.

Although the schizophrenia studies have so far only identified a handful of the many thousands of genetic variations implicated in the mental illness, scientists believe it represents a breakthrough that will accelerate the understanding of the condition and the development of new drugs and treatments. "This is a pretty major breakthrough for us because before today you could count on the thumb of one hand the number of common [genetic] variants that have been reliably identified for schizophrenia," said Michael O'Donovan, professor of psychiatric genetics at the Medical Research Council's neurogenetics centre in Cardiff.

"Discoveries such as these are crucial for teasing out the biology of the disease and making it possible for us to begin to develop drugs targeting the underlying causes and not just the symptoms of the disease," said Kari Stefansson, the head of deCode Genetics...(Link)

We're fat

Americans are getting fatter and fatter.

The Trust for America's Health (TFAH) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found adult obesity rates rose in 23 of the 50 states, but fell in none.

In addition, the percentage of obese and overweight children is at or above 30% in 30 states.

The report warns widespread obesity is fueling rates of chronic disease, and is responsible for a large, and growing chunk of domestic health care costs. (Link)

Interestingly, this news comes on the heels of the publication of a new study suggesting that obesity stems from a variation in a gene controlling the central nervous system.  And, not unexpectedly, the gene is related to addiction tendencies.

After analyzing more than two million regions of the human genome, the researchers found that the NRXN3 gene variant ─ previously associated with alcohol dependence, cocaine addiction, and illegal substance abuse ─ also predicts the tendency to become obese. Altogether, researchers found the gene variant in 20 percent of the people studied. (Link)

Identifying the gene variant early could allow for early treatment and prevention methods.  But in the meantime, the Onion has a solution:

Medical myths debunked

“Don’t Swallow Your Gum! Myths, Half-Truths and Outright Lies About Your Body and Health,”
by Dr. Aaron E. Carroll and Dr. Rachel C. Vreeman (good title, by the way) is a collection of medical mythology.  From the NY Times article, a couple interesting, and sometimes funny, examples:

2. Green mucus indicates a sinus infection. The importance of mucus color is a medical myth even doctors believe, the authors say. “There is no evidence…that antibiotics shorten the duration of an illness when green snot is a symptom,” they write.

3. You lose most of your body heat through your head. There is nothing special about the head and heat loss. You will lose heat through any uncovered body part.

9. You should poop at least once a day. A half-truth, say the authors. Regular bowel movements prevent discomfort and constipation, but a perfectly healthy person may not move their bowels every day. Constipation is defined as having fewer than three stools per week.

11. Food quickly picked up from the floor is safe to eat. Scientists have put the commonly-cited five-second rule to the test. They found that food that comes into contact with a tile or wood floor does pick up large amounts of bacteria. Food doesn’t pick up many germs when it hits carpet, but it does pick up carpet fuzz.

Oh, and it's OK to double dip.

The Mexican jumping bean

The story of the "Mexican jumping bean", told in an arresting visual style.  From the BBC.

(h/t Boing Boing)

Some hope for stroke victims

Some stroke victims brains "rewire" themselves, rebuilding new neural pathways to compensate for motor functions lost from damage caused by the stroke.  Some folks aren't so fortunate.  

But a new study out of the Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston suggests that multiple electrical stimulations can goose the brain to "rewire" itself and, when used in conjunction with physical therapy methods, can lead to great progress towards restoring lost motor skills in stroke victims.

While it's not yet clear exactly how (the electrical stimulation) improves motor function after stroke, one theory is that it helps repair an imbalance in the interactions between the two hemispheres of the brain. In the healthy brain, the left and right sides of the motor cortex continually inhibit each other in order to carry out one-sided movements, such as writing or brushing one's teeth. If one side is damaged by stroke, it can no longer effectively inhibit the healthy side, which in turn leads to increased inhibition of the stroke-damaged hemisphere.

It's pretty early.  The researchers note they don't know how long the benefits will last or how much improvement they can expect.  But to those rehabilitating from a stroke, this must come as some good news.

Synthetic lethality and cancer treatment

The ideal would be to have personalized medicines.  Remedies developed specifically for the patients genetic make-up and only treating the patients specific malady.  Compare that to primary cancer treatments today, where radiation and chemotherapy represent the shotgun blast school of treatment; aiming for the cancer and trying to minimize the damage to the healthy cells surrounding it.  The treatments have been described as akin to taking the patient near death and bringing them back.

Personalized diagnostic tools are beginning to emerge and represent real opportunities for not only saving time and money, but only address the diagnostic half of the equation.

A new article in the New England Journal of Medicine outlines what may be the early beginnings of the other half of the equation, treatment.

Researchers have developed a drug that takes advantage of the molecular glitches that characterize certain cancers.  Known as synthetic lethality, the drugs effect is to interfere only with the cancerous cells ability to replicate and not effect the surrounding healthy cells.

Of 19 patients with BRCA-associated cancer treated by olaparib in the trial, 12 experienced substantial and lasting stabilization or shrinkage of their tumors. "[The drug] was given as a single agent to treatment-resistant advanced cancers--these cancers shouldn't respond to a piddly little enzyme inhibitor," says Iglehart. "So the fact that it was so effective was very exciting to people."

The drug's specificity means that unlike conventional chemotherapy drugs, which are toxic to normal cells and cancer cells alike, olaparib causes remarkably few side effects. "Compared to chemotherapy, this drug's a breeze," says Johann de Bono, a medical oncologist at the Institute of Cancer Research, in Sutton, England, who is co-leading the trial. "It's like taking Tylenol twice a day." (Link)

It should be noted this drug only targets cancers resulting from a specific mutation.  But the new thinking on synthetic lethality sets the stage for a new way of thinking on treating other cancers as well.

NASA's Saturn photos

Nasa's Cassini-Huygens probe has produced some stunningly beautiful images of Saturn.  The Royal Observatory in London is hosting a collection of the photos and the Guardian has a nice slideshow of several of the images.

Several examples:

A stem cell treatment for blindness

A new embryonic stem cell therapy for treating degenerative eye diseases has been deemed safe and effective during animal trials and will begin human trials in the next several months.  This represents the second embryonic stem cell therapy to reach human trials. 

As it turns out, there are some fairly significant issues that come with stem cell therapies, at least at this point.  One of the risks associated with stem cell therapies is the resulting propensity for tumor growth.  The other is the body's tendency to reject foreign tissues, requiring the recipient to take drugs long term to suppress the immune systems reaction to the new cells.

Fortunately, there are a couple so-called "immune privileged" sites such as the eyes and nervous system; body locales that don't react to foreign cells in this way. 

This latest treatment for eye disease, developed by Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), based in Worcester, MA, uses human embryonic stem cells to re-create a type of cell in the retina that supports the photoreceptors needed for vision. These cells, called retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), are often the first to die off in age-related macular degeneration and other eye diseases, which in turn leads to loss of vision. Several years ago, scientists found that human embryonic stem cells could be a source of RPE cells, and subsequent studies found that these cells could restore vision in mouse models of macular degeneration.

The treatments, though, may not be the end-all solution.  In some of the trials, the improvement in vision was unsustained. 

But I suppose that's why scientists carry out these kinds of testing protocols; it's all about trial and error.