health

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Signs of the apocalypse, #1

Spotted in a Sarasota grocery... READ ON

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The Sound Leading the Blind

Scientists at Georgia Tech have come up with a pretty intriguing way to help blind people "see." Using a wearable laptop, 2 GPS receivers, a head and body compass, a gyroscope-based tracker (to measure the head's tilt, of course), 4 small cameras mounted on a helmet, and a bone phone vibrating device that hooks up to your neck (so your ears can still be free for listening to the sounds around you), the system gives you sound directions to get to your location. So, what's that mean... READ ON

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Immortal dogs and contagious cancers

All dogs may go to heaven, but there's at least one who's apparently stuck in limbo, long gone as an individual animal but living on in an extremely unlikely form. According to one of the most bizarre science articles I've ever read, a particular kind of cancer found in dogs is (a) contagious and (b) descended from an "Eve," probably a wolf or an ancient Asian breed like the noble Tibetan mastiff above. Every cancer cell found in dogs with Sticker's sarcoma can be traced back to that one individual animal,... READ ON

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Medical Tourism (why folks are getting their teeth cleaned in Hungary, their noses tweaked in Costa Rica and their hips resurfaced in India)

"This year alone, upwards of 500,000 Americans are expected to travel overseas to get their bodies fixed, at prices 30 to 80 percent less than at home." This is what Krysten Crawford writes in the August issue of Business 2.0. It's a fascinating article about the growing medical tourism industry. Some other facts from the article: There are more than 61 million Americans who are uninsured or don't have sufficient health insurance. Experts estimate medical tourism will become a $40 billion/yr... READ ON

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How the carrot/vision myth got started

A couple weeks ago I posted a story about a man who accidentally blinded his wife by throwing a carrot at her. After getting plenty of jokes from readers about carrots supposedly helping vision, one of our brilliant readers, David K, sent in a link to an interesting article on Snopes. There's a really interesting explanation as to how the carrot lore got its start. In World War II, Britain's air ministry spread the word that a diet of these vegetables helped pilots see Nazi bombers attacking at night.... READ ON

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Your daily ice cream scoop

We promise, we'll quit with the ice-cream fixation once the weather cools down, but: In its quest to create ice cream as voluptuous as butter and as virtuous as broccoli, the ice cream industry has probed the depths of the Arctic Ocean, studied the intimate structures of algae and foisted numerous failures on the American public. ... For Americans who spend each summer wrestling with temptation, there is fresh hope in the freezer case. New industrial processes, including one that involves a protein cloned... READ ON

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I think I'll switch to Junior Mints from now on

One of my favorite blogs at the moment is Effect Measure, which is theoretically all about pressing public health issues but also includes such nuggets as "Paul Revere was a member of the first local Board of Health in the United States" (and that's just in the "about us" profile). Right now on EM, you can read about Robert Frost's "Fire and Ice," the Indian blogspot ban, Iraqi cats that have come down with bird flu, and "popcorn workers' lung," which is apparently the modern-day equivalent of black lung:... READ ON

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31 Flavors (and then some)

If you're bored out of your gourd scrubbing your mouth out with the same old Crest and Colgate flavors (mild mint, strong mint, x-treme mint, peppermint, vanilla mint"¦ what sort of mint will they dream up with next?), Japanese company Breath Palette has got your solution. Dead set on spicing up your morning hygiene ritual, the company has created a 31-flavor toothpaste sample set (which will set you back about $160 at Neiman Marcus—no one said this was going to be cheap). So,... READ ON

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Fish catches man

Last week we wrote about how hard it is to be a member of Class Osteichthyes; this week it seems the fish are fighting back: A fisherman was recovering from surgery after he was speared in the chest and knocked into the Atlantic Ocean by a blue marlin during a fishing competition off Bermuda's coast. ... [Ian] Card and his father, Alan, both operators of a charter fishing boat and experienced marlin fishermen, had just hooked the fish Saturday when it suddenly leapt out of the water, impaled Ian Card just... READ ON

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Fast food facts

I've posted a couple times on obesity in America so I thought I'd continue by sharing some fast food facts I read in flipping through Paul Grobman's Vital Statistics: Odds that an American eats at a fast-food restaurant on any given day: 1 in 4 Odds that an American kid eats at a McDonald's in any given month: 9 in 10 Number of hamburgers the average American consumes each week: 3 First fast-food chain: White Castle (1921 - first one opened in Wichita, Kansas) Year McDonald's first allowed... READ ON