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Podcast TranscriptThe Naked Scientists: Science Radio & Science Podcasts |
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Hibernation May Hold the Key for Treatment of Stroke and Heart Disease
Now that it is autumn, many animals will be preparing to bed down and sleep off the winter. Although humans can't hibernate, we might be able to learn some valuable medical lessons from animals that can. For instance, when it hibernates, the Arctic ground squirrels heart rate drops from about 200 beats per minute to only 5 per minute, and the body temperature can fall to as low as -2.9 degrees centigrade. A human could never survive these extremes. What's more, the blood flow falls to such a low level that it would rapidly kill the brain in a normal person, yet the animal awakes perfectly healthy when the weather warms up. Researchers are therefore trying to unlock the secret of what is happening to the metabolism in these animals because it may be possible to use the same trick to treat people with strokes or heart disease, or to make donated organs such as hearts, livers and kidneys remain in healthy condition to longer before they are transplanted into the waiting recipient. So are we any closer to understanding the mystery of what makes animals hibernate ? Well, one American researcher, Dr. Peter Oeltgen from the University of Kentucky, believes that he has found a gene, which he has called HIT, short for Hibernation Inducing Trigger, which he hopes to try out on people with illnesses caused by low blood flow, such as strokes and heart disease.
7th Oct 2001
What Kind of Teabags Make the Best Tea?
Teabags come in all shapes and sizes nowadays. But a group of researchers have shown that the shape of the teabag makes very little difference to your cuppa - it's the size that counts. They made lots of teabags in different shapes and sizes and filled them all with about a teaspoon of ceylon tea. Then they measured what's known as the "infusion rate" - that's how quickly the tea gets out of the bag and into the cup. They found that bigger teabags are better at "letting the flavour out" - simply because the tea-leaves have more room to move around. But this doesn't mean Tetley will be introducing a new Giant Teabag- there is a limit to how big your teabag needs to be. Anything over 7 cm will do. Most teabags in the shops are already bigger than this anyway. But what about the shape of your teabag-you can get pyramid shaped, round and square ones these days - is it all just a gimmick? The researchers reckon that pyramid shaped teabags probably have the advantage over the others because they give the tea leaves more space to move about. Round teabags didn't perform any better than square ones. A Tetley spokesman said they're probably only popular because they fit in the cup better.
7th Oct 2001
A Greener Funeral
Freeze drying dead bodies may be a green alternative to burial and cremation, according to last week's New Scientist. Most of us would say we were concerned about pollution - but not many people realise that even after you die your dead body is seriously bad news for the environment and could carry on polluting it for another fifty years! Crematoria, for example, use 10 gallons of oil to reduce a body to ash! And in the process, poisonous chemicals like mercury from dental fillings are released into the atmosphere. Burial isn't much better for the environment - corpses can take over fifty years to decompose and when they do, they can release toxic chemicals that pollute the groundwater supply. But now a Swedish scientist has come up with a way to freeze-dry dead bodies and turn them into powdered fertiliser!
She's tested the idea on dead pigs and cows - she immerses them in a bath of liquid nitrogen at 200 degrees below freezing and then fires ultrasound waves to break them up. It sounds a bit gruesome but what you end up with is about 20 kg of an odourless powder. It's better than leaving a corpse hanging around for half a century. Sweden is already considering adopting the new technique, which will probably cost the same amount as a cremation. It has already won the approval of the Swedish church. A Church of England Bishop told New Scientist that freeze-drying the dead probably be accepted in the UK too, as long as it was done in a dignified way.
7th Oct 2001
Computers That Sound Human
People respond better to computer voices that mirror their own personalities, according to Nature this week. Anyone can tell the difference between a synthesised voice (one generated by a computer) and a human voice. As far as most people are concerned one computer voice sounds much the same as another and they are all immensely annoying! But according to communications experts in California, people react differently to different computer voices - even if they don't realise they're doing it. Extroverts like loud, fast computer voices while introverts prefer softer, shyer ones. Apparently even if you know you're listening to a computer voice, subconsciously part of your brain is fooled into thinking it's a human being. Salesmen marketing products on the web could take advantage of this human weakness - voices could be tailored to manipulate customers. It sounds unethical, but salesmen have been manipulating people for decades - this is just another advertising trick. But the new findings will have some benefits - it might be possible to have your computer's voice tailor-made to suit you. This will be a great asset to visually impaired web users.
7th Oct 2001
Brains Make Bad Investors
Brains aren't everything. According to research by Barclays Global Investors, the higher your IQ, the more likely you are to be a bad investor. Intelligent people have trouble being disciplined in the way they stash their cash. But if your portfolio is looking bad, then take heart - you're in good company. Sir Isaac Newton, the man who discovered the laws of gravity whilst watching apples fall from a tree, was a keen, but unsuccessful stock market punter. He managed to lose the equivalent of £1.5 million pounds, investing in South Seas ventures (the 18th century equivalent of dot com companies) just before the bubble burst. Newton said "I can measure the motions of bodies, but I cannot measure human folly".
7th Oct 2001
Comet Sense
It's been a memorable week for astronomers. Last Saturday NASA's Deep Space 1 survived a treacherous venture into the halo of dust surrounding Comet Borrelly and captured over thirty images of it's icy nucleus. This is only the second time a comet has been observed from close up - the first time being when Halley's comet appeared in 1986. The new images reveal what looks like an "eerie cosmic potato" - an icy pockmarked landscape with weird jets of gas escaping from the surface. The biggest surprise is that the comet's 5 mile long nucleus is not where we expect it to be - it is off-centre. The images come as a real bonus to astronomers - few people expected Deep Space 1 to survive the encounter since it had absolutely no shielding against comet's dust halo. NASA scientists are ecstatic and say our knowledge of comets has doubled overnight.
7th Oct 2001
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