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Science News
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It's always said that women talk more than men, but here at the Naked Scientists, its hard to get a word in edgeways as Dr Chris is always talking. Now new research from the University of Arizona sugg... |
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Scientists have shown that birds move with the times by updating their songs; play them an old one and, just like teenagers at a disco, they'll desert the dance floor. Elizabeth Derryberry, from Duke ... |
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Researchers around the world are starting to realise that cancer may be more closely linked to inflammation and our immune system than we previously thought. And two new papers this week have further ... |
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Researchers in the UK have uncovered a new gene that triggers asthma. Bill Cookson and colleagues, from London's Imperial College, compared the genes of 1000 children with asthma and 1000 healthy &quo... |
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Hot off the press, scientists funded by Cancer Research UK have found a common gene variation that can increase the risk of bowel cancer. This is the first time such a common gene version has been fou... |
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Researchers in Japan have finally found a use for the huge excess of jellyfish that have been turning up in Japanese waters in recent years - as a source of skincare products. Kiminori Ushida, from th... |
Kitchen Science
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Why do raisins always rise to the top of a box of muesli?
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i caught this show late, and it would seem that i posted a topic that was on the show. many apologies. although, now i have listened to the...
- paul.fr - 14th Jul 07
I have to say that I almost never listen to the show (probably a treasonable offence, but so be it); but the above does sound interesting, and makes a...
- another_someone - 14th Jul 07
Whole Thread | Post Reply | Interviews
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Dr Gordon Gallup, State University of New York at Albany.
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Dr Howard Ring, University of Cambridge
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Professor Nick Craddock, Cardiff University
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Chelsea Wald and Bob Hirshon
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Olaf Blanke, École Polytechnique in Lausanne
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Questions
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Suncream manufacturers say you should buy new stuff every year, as the previous year’s cream loses its effectiveness. True? Or just a marketing scam to keep up sales?
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This is actually true. There are two types of suncream, some with chemicals and some with zinc. The chemical-based suncreams are the most commonly available ones, the ones which absorb into the skin and don’t leave a thick white layer behind. The chemicals in these creams are quite unstable, and are broken down by exposure to sunlight (in this way, the suncream absorbs the radiation, instead of your skin.) This also means that they will break down over time, and last year’s cream will not be as good at protecting you from the sun as a new batch would.
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My question is somewhat creepy. If a person is at the beach, lying in the sun, and dies, will his body continue to become more tanned?
(Eww... I know.)
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When the body dies, your cells don't immediately stop your metabolism winds down over a short time. Tannig involves production of melanin in cells in the skin, and so would probably continue for a little while after death.
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I give blood, so is it possible that people who have had a transfusion could be carrying my DNA?
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Not any more. Since scientists found out that BSE can be spread by blood transfusions, they have been ‘leucodepleting’ all transplant blood in the UK. When you give blood, they use a special technique to remove all the white blood cells and leave only the red blood cells, which are safe to transfuse. Human red blood cells don’t have a nucleus (unlike birds) and therefore do not contain any DNA. So transfusions given recently will definitely not contain any of the donors DNA.
In the 60’s, blood was not separated out like this, but we did realise that you could transfer viruses through transfusion like this, so the blood was irradiated. This destroyed the DNA, but left the red blood cells intact.
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I have a question which needs some arbitrating. When I eat raw celery my tongue goes a bit numb, but by girlfriend doesn’t believe me. I’ve looked on the internet, but haven’t seen any definitive answers about what causes this phenomenon, or whether this even really exists.
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This could be a manifestation of Oral Allergy Syndrome. If you suffer from hayfever, an allergy to pollen, you may find some of the same substances in the plant as you would find in the pollen. When you eat the plant, your mouth is exposed to the same things as you would in the pollen, and so you have a miniature allergic reaction in your mouth. The symptoms are pricklyness, swelling, itchyness, even an itchy sensation on the inside of your ears! The Numbness in your tounge would well be the celery prompting this oral allergy. Celery is in the same family as birch, so if you are allergic to birch pollen, you may well get this reaction to celery.
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What is it that makes your jaw ache when you’re eating?
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When if you’re chewing something like chewing gum and you chew too hard, sometimes you can overwork the muscles and they can ache in the same way as if you did a lot of digging you might make your back or shoulders ache.
The other thing to consider is that there is a joint where the mandible, or jaw meets the skull, called the temporomanibular joint. That can actually end up being sore in some people, and then its called TMJ dysfunction.
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With home electrical wiring, why should the wires oxidise? Would it depend on how often the wires are used? Does it matter if they are insulated?
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Normally, the current passing through the wires in your house does not generate enough heat in order to make them react with oxygen. Most wiring is copper, and you need to get copper to quite a high temperature to make it react with oxygen and produce copper oxide. This shouldn’t happen unless the wiring actually catches fire.
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Homer Simpson once said; “Every time I learn something new it pushes some old stuff out of my brain”. I’m a history student, and as I sit here memorising the last 50 years of the EEC am I simultaneously forgetting potentially more important information, such as my sister’s birthday or how to play the harmonica?
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(We put this question to Dr Howard Ring, a Neuroscientist from Cambridge University)
You should be perfectly safe. There’s probably far more capacity in your brain to put stuff in than you will ever use, although recalling it can be difficult, there’s been research recently demonstrating that recall is the tricky bit, but that there’s far more in there than you might have thought.
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Why do certain foods trigger panic attacks, and sometimes depression?
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(We put this question to Professor Nick Craddock, a Neuroscientist from Cardiff University)
Well the answer to this question is that we’re not sure. Certainly, things that influence neurotransmitter systems that can alter mood or create anxiety feelings. The amino acid tryptophan gets turned into 5-hydroxy-tryptomine, which is also known as serotonin, the brain’s feel good chemical. If your diet is deficient in tryptophan this can lead to depression. One of the reasons people like to binge on chocolate is that chocolate can raise serotonin levels. Undoubtedly, food can have an effect on mood, but we’re not sure to what extent.
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| The Brain, Epilepsy and Out of Body Experiences - More about this podcastThis week on the Naked Scientists Radio Show, we're looking at repairing the brain our expert guests are Prof Olaf Blanke (Ecole Polytechnique, Lausanne) and Dr Howard Ring (University of Cambridge).
Epilepsy and Learning Disabilty
Howard's research centres around three main areas; epilepsy, autism and neurological diseases. His work with epilepsy is largely concerned with studying the management and behavioural correlates of treatment-resistant epilepsy in people with developmental or acquired brain damage. In the field of Autism research he is investigating the brain basis of specific core symptoms of autistic spectrum disorders. Finally, he is also investigating the clinical neuropsychiatric features and underlying biological processes of several neurological diseases in which there are significant neuropsychiatric manifestations. Howard will be on the show to discuss his latest research on the interactions between seizure frequency, psychopathology and severity of intellectual disability in people with epilepsy and learning disability. His study looked at 175 patients epilepsy and learning disability over a three month period, observation showed that 65 patients had no recent seizure whereas 110 had experienced one or more seizures in the previous 3 months. Results showed that depression and psychoses were more common in those with no seizures in the preceding three months but which of the psychiatric states patients experienced depended on the severity of the learning disability. Psychoses states were higher in those with mild learning difficulties whereas depression rates were higher in those with severe learning difficulties.
Is there anybody there?
Ever get the feeling there's someone behind you? Olaf will be on the show to discuss how he can stimulate this in a person thus revealing which part of the brain is responsible. He discovered this following his investigation of a 22-year old woman who was originally being evaluated for surgical treatment of epilepsy. Olaf managed to induce the experience that all of a sudden, during the two seconds of stimulation, that there was another person in the room and that this person was always localised behind her, very specific distance, just behind her to her right. And this experience was so convincing that she actually had to turn around and look in order to make sure that there was actually nobody there. What this shows is that there is at least one anatomical mechanism that seems to be very strongly involved in generating these sensations and, although it's a highly complex phenomenon that you can find in schizophrenic patients but also in healthy subjects, it seems to be due to disturbed brain mechanisms exactly at this area. This area is known as the 'temporal parietal junction' when Olaf stimulates it on the right side of the brain the subject feels the apparition behind them but to the left, likewise stimulating the left side leads to the apparition being sensed behind the subject towards the right.
Olaf has observed that this area is also responsible for other similar illusions such as an out of body experience or the doppelganger experience where you have the impression of seeing an image of yourself outside, out of space. So all these experiences somehow seem to be generated by stimulation or interference with this area of the brain. This has major implications for researching illnesses such as schizophrenia where people experience sensations that are obviously coming from within their own brain but patients feel they're coming from outside. Olaf explains that if you ask a schizophrenic patient to grasp a glass of water and while they perform this action they could tell you that they have the experience as if somebody else were directing their arm, so it is this part of the brain which is responsible for that also.
To find out more about the work of Howard and Olaf and to learn about how are brains work and what happens when things go wrong, turn on, tune in or download (our excellent podcast of course!) |
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