1

Physiology & Medicine / Could super glue be used to suture?

« on: 27/09/2016 13:53:02 »

Luke Pullar asked the Naked Scientists:
   Why shouldn't a person use superglue as a suture? What is the difference between medical grade and the stuff you get in a tube at the supermarket?
What do you think?

2

Physiology & Medicine / Is it abnormal to have individual control of all my toes?

« on: 03/09/2016 12:53:01 »

Jessie asked the Naked Scientists:
   Hello I have control over all my toes individually" eg. I can point with just my ring toe.
Thought it was a normal thing until recent. Am I a freak? Lol
What do you think?

3

That CAN'T be true! / Is there a law of improbability

« on: 11/08/2016 22:23:01 »

martyn willis asked the Naked Scientists:
   Is there a law of improbability and if so what is it?
What do you think?

4

Physiology & Medicine / Why will the same situation cause some people to choose a fight response and other to choose a flight response?

« on: 08/08/2016 15:53:02 »

Lovisa Bergman  asked the Naked Scientists:
   Hi!

I love your podcast, and I have a few questions I would love to have answered:

How does nature make sure that 20% of the population (within all species) is born HSP (highly sensitive person)? How come we don't take over or go extinct?

Why is it that sensitivity is mistaken for fragility a lot of the time? After all, sensitivity is a higher ability to recognize cues (e.g. Social), while fragility has to do with break-ability (like glass).

What gene(s) decide who prefers to take up fights and who prefers to step back? You can even see it in really small children. This sticks with a person the entire life. My friend say that fighting takes more energy than backing down. I on the other hand feel like taking the fight is the most energy efficient choice because the feeling of accepting submission is hurting me more.

Why does bullying happen? It's incredibly weird that a group is terminating members of their own species...

Have a nice day!
Sincerely Lovisa

   
What do you think?

5

Chemistry / How can I test the difference between bone and stone?

« on: 21/06/2016 00:50:01 »

Jane asked the Naked Scientists:
   Hello.  Is there an easy way to test if a substance is bone or stone? Ive just paid  £1170 (that I had to borrow) to have my poor horse cremated. They didnt send enough ashes back and when I checked out the firm that did it, aside from the fact they're not a proper crematorium, they're a commercial incinerator, they also sell aggregate. And the small bag of 'stuff' they've sent me looks like the shingle you buy for the bottom of fish bowls. Ive had other animals cremated and this doesn't look like bone shards. Is there a simple test I can do at home?
Its really important to me and would be so grateful for help.
Many thanks.
What do you think?

6

Cells, Microbes & Viruses / Is the bacteriophage method for antibiotics being developed?

« on: 07/06/2016 12:50:01 »

Wilfred James  asked the Naked Scientists:

Very many years ago, when the widespread use of penicillin in the Western world was discussed on the radio, it was said that the Soviet Union had tried a different approach to killing bacteria using bacteriophages.

From what I gathered at the time, it seemed that these bacteriophages killed many bacteria by consuming them. The penicillin based method killed bacteria by producing an inhospitable environment for the bacteria. This eventually caused the bacteria to develop the ability to survive the inhospitable environment. The bacteriophage method apparently had the advantage that it left no survivors when itworked.

Is there anyresearch being done now on the development of bacteriophages to deal with the increasing resistance of bacteria to modern antibiotics?

Wilf James (now aged 80)
   
What do you think?

7

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Is there any evidence for aether?

« on: 26/04/2016 23:50:01 »

John Lindop asked the Naked Scientists:
   From  the  ancient  Greek  philosophers  down  to  Oliver  Loge and  beyond  the  view  that  we exits in  and are  made  of some  sort  of dense  energy  field  called  the  aether , evidence, in  part,  by  the  velocity  of  light  et al  is  quite  compelling.
Where  is  the  evidence  that  the  aether  does  not  exist ?
What do you think?

8

Cells, Microbes & Viruses / Can cannabis oil cure cancer?

« on: 16/02/2016 12:50:01 »

Anonymous asked the Naked Scientists:
   I have just read of cannabis oil that cures cancer.  That there are trials by cancer research.  Can you please help me.  I have a sister who is 44 years old who has a diffused brain Tumor.  The doctor at Christmas has given her 6 mths to a year.  We are trying everything we can to reverse the Tumor by change of diet and exercise.  My sister Nina is a deputy head at a primary school and has a 9 year son.  If there are any trials could she please take part. She has done so much for so many. The only thing she asks for is to see her son get through school and one day get married.  We are not giving up.
What do you think?

9

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Hear the answer to this question on our show

« on: 12/01/2016 16:32:49 »

We discussed this question on our  show
Kat Arney put this question to physicist Stuart Higgins...
Stuart - The short answer is - no it doesn't wear out. It never wears out, it keeps travelling for ever and that's because light actually is a wave of energy, it doesn't have mass, and so things that have mass, normally decay into smaller things and break down. In this case light doesn't have it. It will just keep going for ever. However, that doesn't really match our everyday experience. If I shine a torch in your eyes and it's blindingly bright, and then I stand the other side of a field and shine it towards you, it looks dimmer, it doesn't seem as bright, so what's going on there? There's different things that actually that could make light wear out as it were, and that's where the light might be absorbed by the particles of the air, or the atmosphere, or scattered off the dust. Or it might be the lights just not reaching you, it's shooting at a slightly different angle.
Kat - So, if there was a perfect vacuum in the field between you with the torch and me, then it would seem as bright as if I was standing right next to you.
Stuart - Not quite. So if it were maybe a laser, and the laser was shining and the laser travelling in a straight line, that would be fine but, actually, the torch, if you think where the lights being made by the filament, it passes through a lens, that scatters some of the light, it passes through. There's usually a bit of metallic foil in their as well that kind of pushes it toward the front of the torch, but even still the light is spreading out and so, if you imagine the number of photons that are reaching your eye, it's actually decreasing the further away you are as your eye is only a fixed area that can receive them.


Click to visit the show page for the podcast in which this question is answered. Alternatively, [chapter podcast=1001251 track=16.01.12/Naked_Scientists_Show_16.01.12_1004657.mp3] listen to the answer now[/chapter] or [download as MP3]

10

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / What's the difference between general & special relativity?

« on: 11/10/2016 21:12:23 »

100 years ago, Einstein's theory of general relativity changed the world. Before that though, came special relativity.

Read the article then tell us what you think...

11

The Environment / How quickly are the ice caps melting?

« on: 16/07/2015 21:50:01 »

Jay M. asked the Naked Scientists:
   
How quickly are the icecaps melting and when will they be gone?
What do you think?

12

Geology, Palaeontology & Archaeology / Hear the answer to this question on our show

« on: 16/06/2015 16:00:38 »

We discussed this question on our  show
Georgia Mills gets to grips with Alpesh's question.
Georgia - To start with, the dinosaurs were around for hundreds of millions of years and I know we think of the really exciting ones like Diplodocus and T-rex. But actually, a lot of animals around then weren’t so big. So insects, their biggest time was around the carboniferous period which was actually a long time before the dinosaurs were around. And I think the largest animal that was ever recorded is of course, the blue whale and that’s still around today. Saying that though, a lot of dinosaurs did get very big and there are several theories about why this might be. The main reason is that the ecosystem could just support larger animals and being big is often a really good idea if you're competing for mates. It can help you to fight off the smaller males and if you're competing for food as well. One idea is that the plants that were around during the dinosaur times were quite tough and were quite hard to eat. So, for herbivores, it became quite a good idea to have longer guts so that they could process this food more easily. And so, they could get bigger and then of course, the carnivores could get bigger as well. Another thing to consider is that dinosaurs could’ve had less physical constraints on them from becoming bigger. So, a problem with warm blooded animals becoming really big is that they could overheat quite easily and dinosaurs, it’s not quite known for sure if they were warm blooded or cold blooded, but it’s likely they were somewhere in between. So, they wouldn’t have had this constraint and they also had quite efficient bird-like lungs which meant that they could take in oxygen and distribute it around the body much more easily.
Max - There's actually a lot of evidence in the fossil record for really large mammals as well after the so-called era of the dinosaurs, after the dinosaurs went extinct and mammals began to become much more prevalent. There's also loads of what we call mega fauna – really large animals. There are some terrifying things - if you look it up - that existed in north and south America, and now, in Australia and Africa as well. The reason we think these are no longer around, is a combination of being over hunted by humans and also, a degree of climate change.
Chris - Equally, did not humans go through a massive phase as well? I remember seeing when I was in Johannesburg, I went to Wits University there. This is the department that Raymond Dart worked in and he was one of the people who was one of the big forefathers, the godfather if you like of sort of palaeoanthropology. There are skeletons there of humans from maybe 300,000 years ago or so and they would have made a pro basketballer look like a dwarf. There are people there who were absolutely huge and I asked Professor Lee Berger who was showing me around, why did people evolve to get so big because the cost of growing to such a big size is extremely costly in the sense that you’ve got to have enormous amounts of energy to go into growth to get that big. You’ve got a huge body to maintain. It makes you easier as a target to hit doesn’t it? He said, They got big because everyone got big. If everyone’s big, you’ve got to get big to defend yourself.
Georgia - Yeah. It’s interesting that these giant people aren't really around so much anymore.
Chris - Not in my case.
Max - There's a few people, like it’s generally regarded as a disease now I think, that you do get people topping 7 feet. Huge people do still exist. They're just very rare.
Georgia - Small people still exist though. I'm an example of that, but being big like you said, it’s a cost. And also, this is really obvious when you look at the fossil record, when mass extinction events happen, big animals are always the first to go because they're slower breeders. It’s easier for them to run out of food. If you look at the animals that are endangered today as well, it’s some of the most big ones.


Click to visit the show page for the podcast in which this question is answered. Alternatively, [chapter podcast=1001073 track=15.06.16/Naked_Scientists_Show_15.06.16_1003775.mp3] listen to the answer now[/chapter] or [download as MP3]

13

General Science / Why are mental health problems so common?

« on: 14/07/2014 12:23:33 »

We answered this question on the show...

Hannah -   Hello.  I'm Hannah Critchlow and this month in Naked Neuroscience, we’ll be opening our minds with a special Q&A show.  We’ll be discussing treatments for depression.
Liz -   So the first in my life, I took antidepressants.  It felt like I've been a car that had something wrong with the engine and then it’s kind of dragging along the road and someone had fixed it.  It was just rolling really beautifully…
Hannah -   Discovering how we can change our behaviour for the better…
Roger -   So we said a little while ago, I said, “A new habit takes about 82 days to form.” So actually, we can be patient with ourselves as things get going.  It’s not instant…
Hannah -   And divulging tricks to help you lose those extra pounds.
Katie -   You sit in front of the tele and eat food, you don’t realise quite how much you're eating.  You don’t attend to it and you don’t feel fill so quickly.
Hannah -   We’ve had stacks of great questions in from you and accrued of brainy panel to tackle them.  They are…
Roger -   I'm Dr. Roger Kingerlee.  I work in Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Trust as a clinical psychologist with a particular research interest in mild psychological health.
Liz -   My name is Liz Fraser.  I'm an author and broadcaster and I have recently setup the website inmyheadcase.com to completely change the face of mental health.
Martin -   Martin O’Neill and I use basic neuroscience techniques to investigate decision making mechanisms.
Katie -   I'm Katie Manning and I'm a PhD student here at Cambridge in the department of psychiatry and I use MRI imaging to look at connectivity in the brain.
Hannah -   And with them, we’ll be finding out why chocolate helps to boost happiness.  We’ll be stumping scientists with the question, is there such a thing as freewill or is life all predetermined?  And have you ever heard or seen things that other people don’t, so experienced hallucination?  Apparently, 10% of the population do.  And we’ll be discussing the case of a musician who hears music when he’s nodding off to sleep.
First up though, David Bailey got in touch asking, “Why are brain conditions and mental health problems so common?”  
In children, there's been a 25-fold increase in autism diagnosis over the last 20 years.  [img float=right]/forum/copies/RTEmagicC_800px-King_s_Cross_Western_Concourse_05.jpg.jpg[/img]Now, 1 in every 100 of primary school children will be affected in the UK whilst 1 in every 20 school children will have a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or ADHD and it’s not only children.  Overall, the percentage of adults diagnosed with mental ill health has steadily increased.  The best estimates today suggests that 1 in 4 people in the UK will experience a problem every year with 10% of the population affected by, for example, depression or anxiety.  So, is it just that we were better at recognising conditions and seeking help, or something about today’s society be to blame?  First up, Roger…
Roger -   Well we know from the statistics you’ve already mentioned that all of our families and all of our workplaces, we can have people around us who have these issues if we haven't got them ourselves.  If we go back evolutionarily, one of the things we know is that life is always very challenging and potentially very stressful.  So, right from the world ago, we’ve always faced a lot of different threats in the environment.  The threats can produce stress in all sorts of different ways.  We know that stress is a big driver of psychological issues of all kinds.  To come back to the present of course, especially since the recession, since around 2007, 2008, most people, most families at least in the UK often work harder.
Hannah -   Is there anything that we can do to try and help protect ourselves against this increasing mental health problem?
Roger -   There's a huge amount we can do.  So, whether that’s giving ourselves a little more time to look after ourselves, whether it’s doing things like using relaxation techniques or increase the meditation techniques, so much is known about how to protect ourselves.
Liz -   It is fairly destigmatised now.  I think people are not frightened anymore.  They still are, but less so to put their hand up and say, “I'm not dealing with things very well.  I'm not coping very well.”  We have to be so careful when we talk about increase in the numbers of cases of things.  Is it just because we’re reporting it more?  Why would we be reporting it more?  Because the knowledge is out there so we know much more about it.  Therefore, we’re reporting it more.  Therefore, there is more diagnosis and therefore, there is more prescriptions.  I don’t agree with that.  I think that the evidence seems to suggest that they are in fact increasing and what you were talking earlier about stress.  And it’s funny because people often say, “Well, you know, life is easy.  We’re not at war.”  There aren't the sort of the daily manual struggles that people used to have.  But actually, one of the things that we know causes a lot of – I suppose stress and unhappiness in people is a difference between expectation and reality.  And so, I think so many people now are not living the normal life path that they perhaps expected to live.  That sort of very traditional, ‘grow-up, get a job, get married, have a house’ with is maybe not crazy, but at least it has a stability and because that’s perhaps boring but at least stable framework.  This doesn’t exist for so many people.  The levels of stress are really on the increase and as you're quite right, you said, stress then causes all of these problems.
Roger -   Just to point out, it’s well-known that social support can be really important, is a buffer against stress and psychological issues.  Perhaps even against physical issues as well.  So, that’s something else we can do – actively seek out support.
Katie -   Although there's still a stigma that surrounds mental health, there's now more options and availability of support particularly with things like autism when a child can be diagnosed and that diagnosis opens up the availability of various forms of support whether that be in education or outside of education.  That now, getting that diagnosis is actually important in terms of getting help for somebody’s child whereas in the past, if that was just destigmatising diagnosis then that was perhaps something to shy away from.
Martin -   Thinking from a basic neuroscience perspective as well, we’ve come to appreciate just how intricately designed the brain is with billions of neurons, billions of connections between neurons, billions of chemicals.  So, it’s actually perhaps not that surprising.  When there's a little glitch in the system, there can be these profound effects on mental processes, emotional processes.  In effect, that sort of appreciation helps is the destigmatisation as well and it’s what's almost making mental disorder seem like they're becoming more common.  But perhaps have always been around but we are just more willing to accept and address those issues.
Hannah -   There's another area of neuroscience that’s really kind of gaining a lot of information, and also momentum.  That's the neuroscience of resilience – so how we can become more resilient to these stressors and how we can maintain a flourishing and happy mind in society as well.

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Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Does sound have mass?

« on: 17/09/2012 19:30:01 »

Candice asked the Naked Scientists:
   
Hi, my name is Candice and I have a quick question.

Sound travels slower than light, and light is the speed limit of the universe because it doesn't have mass. Does this mean that sound has mass?

Thank you

What do you think?

15

Question of the Week / QotW - 10.12.12 - Is blood magnetic? And do magnetic bracelets actually work?

« on: 14/12/2010 15:21:39 »

We spoke to Stuart Richmond from the Department of Health Sciences at the University of York to answer this question for us...[img float=right]/forum/copies/RTEmagicC_Magnet0873_02.png.png[/img]
Stuart -   The fact that blood contains iron is one of the reasons why some people believe magnetic bracelets might have an effect on the human body.  However, blood is not magnetic in a conventional sense.  In other words, it is not ferromagnetic which is what most people understand as magnetism.  If blood was ferromagnetic, then people would bleed to death or explode in MRI scanners which produce much stronger magnetic forces than those of magnetic bracelets.  So although deoxygenated haemoglobin is paramagnetic and very slightly attracted to a magnet, and also both oxygenated haemoglobin and plasma are diamagnetic or in other words, slightly repelled by a magnet, in theory, wearing a magnetic bracelet shouldn’t have a physiological effect.  Firstly, any influence in the polarity of ions within red blood cells would be lost because blood flows in a pressurised and turbulent way.  Secondly, blood is warm, so for any paramagnetic effect to occur it would need to overcome the forces of brownian motion.  All of which are extremely unlikely.  So, we turn to the second part of the question, do magnetic bracelets actually work?  In my research on magnet therapy in arthritis, I began not by asking how magnetic bracelets might work, but rather by testing whether they had any health effects on humans and by trying to control for the power of imagination.  The best available evidence showed that magnet therapy lacks any meaningful effect other than a placebo effect for arthritis and pain control.  Although there are some contradictory results, it would appear that for those trials which have shown a benefit that have also tended to suffer from problems of blinding which might explain those findings.
Diana -   And when he says that test subjects weren’t blind, that means that they were able to identify if their bracelet was magnetic or not, potentially altering the outcome of the trial.
Stuart -   So, despite this, the effects of positive suggestion should not be discounted if people choose to believe that wearing a magnet might help, then it may well do.  Although there are no known side effects, the danger is however that people may use magnetic bracelets instead of other clinically effective treatments.

16

Question of the Week / QotW - 10.03.28 - Is a human bite worse than a dog bite?

« on: 30/03/2010 13:32:38 »

We posed this question to  Dr Nick Brown, Medical Microbiologist and Andreas Karas, Consultant Microbiologist, both from the Health Protection Agency...

Nick -  Well, you might think that the dog bite would be the more dangerous and certainly of course, in terms of trauma, and particularly if related to attacks, they can be very nasty.  But actually, in terms of infections, then human bites have a very high incidence of complications.  And so, many people would actually say that human bites are nastier than dog bites.  So, all our mouths and all animal mouths are full of bacteria all the time and the sort of organisms that cause this infection are the things like Streptococci and Staphylococci particularly.  But the importance of the bite of course is that because of the teeth and the trauma that’s  associated with it and then those organisms can be introduced deep into the tissues where they can replicate and cause infections.

Andreas -  The question about whether a dog bite or human bite is worse would depend largely on where in the world you are.  If you were in the developing world, rabies becomes a major factor and you would much rather be bitten by a human where rabies is much less likely.  If you were in another part of the world, it would depend a lot on the site of the bite.  Human bites in my experience are always much worse as they're often on the face, genitalia, really bad parts of the body, so probably better to go for dog.  But if you had an equivalent bite for the same size bite on let’s say your leg by a human or a dog, it’s probably much of a muchness. Generally, humans probably have a more diverse flora and larger number of different organisms.  Dogs have a lower number of organisms.  But either of their mouths would have hundreds of different bacteria in them of different types, and the ones that do the damage are really anaerobes.  Dogs have a particular organism called Capnocytophaga canimorsus, which can – if it gets into your bloodstream, can give you very severe blood poisoning.  And there’s a lot of talk about human bites being worse than dog bites.  Probably slightly true; not much evidence to prove that.  I would say, probably, if I were to choose, I’d go for dog in the developed world...

Diana - In some cases, human bites can be worse than a dog bite, but this is dependent on how deeply the teeth penetrate the skin.  There are some nasty bacteria living in our mouths, but populations vary between individuals almost as much as they vary between species.  But if your dog has rabies, then you're probably better off being bitten by a person.  Many of the infections hospitals see which come from human bites are actually where someone has punched another person in the face, but their skin was broken when it came into contact with the recipient’s teeth.

17

Question of the Week / Re: QotW - 07.12.09 - Power Source for Magnets?

« on: 06/12/2007 13:51:10 »

We put this question to Alastair Rae, University of Birmingham:

At this time of year, many of us decorate our fridges by attaching magnets carrying pictures of Christmas puddings, holly, Father Christmas, snowmen and so on. One advantage of these magnets is that they are easily removed and replaced when Christmas is over. Brian Starkey asks, ‘how can they stay on the fridges when there is no obvious power source?’

[img float=right]http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/uploads/RTEmagicC_Magnet0873.png.png[/img]The first point to note is that we don’t need any energy to stand still! A stationary car with its engine turned off doesn’t use any petrol!  Power is required only when the engine starts turning and the car starts moving.  What we have in the case of a fridge magnet is a magnetic force pulling the magnet against the iron door; this then leads to a frictional force that stops the magnet sliding down under gravity, but once the magnet is in place, no energy or power is consumed keeping it there.  It’s not very different in principle to sticking the magnet onto the fridge using glue.

When Brian pushes the two like poles of a magnet together, he has to apply a force and use energy.  If they are then allowed to move apart, this energy is released and converted into motion.  However, if he holds them together without letting them move, no more power is needed.  It’s perhaps easier to understand this if we think of the magnets being supported by a rigid frame instead of by a person. Why then do Brian’s arms grow tired if he is not doing any work?  This is all to do with biology and the complex way our muscles work: chemical energy has to be burned to keep them stiff and able to exert pressure.  But magnets are not like that: they exert a force pushing each other apart and do not consume any power as long as they don’t move.