CAROLINA NATURALLY

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Is Chewing This Piece Of Rubber The Same As Brushing Your Teeth?

This spiky piece of rubber that resembles a sea anemone is the Rolly, a product that claims to be just as effective as giving your teeth a good brushing when you’re on the go.
Here’s how it works:

Besides reaching into every nook and cranny of your mouth, and gently stimulating your gums while you chew it, the Rolly contains Xylitol and Fluoride which are claimed to fight plaque and strengthen tooth enamel. And using the small disc doesn’t require toothpaste, a mirror, or even water to rinse your mouth out afterwards. When you’re done, you just spit it into the garbage like a piece of gum.

It looks like a scary little squid creature to me, but if it works I guess I’d give it a go. Would you?

Warning labels can act as nocebos

Remember the nocebo effect? It's the flip side of placebos. Placebos can make people feel better or even relieve pain (to a certain extent). Nocebo happens when a placebo causes negative side-effects—nausea, racing heart, dizziness, etc. And here's one more weird thing to add to this veritable bonfire of weirdness: When we tell people about the possible negative side-effects of a real drug, that might make them more likely to experience those side-effects.

In one study, 50 patients with chronic back pain were randomly divided into two groups before a leg flexion test. One group was informed that the test could lead to a slight increase in pain, while the other group was instructed that the test would have no effect. Guess which group reported more pain and was able to perform significantly fewer leg flexions?
Another example from the report: Patients undergoing chemotherapy for cancer treatment who expect these drugs to trigger intense nausea and vomiting suffer far more after receiving the drugs than patients who don’t.

And, like placebos and classic nocebos, this isn't just "all in their head"—at least, not in the sense that they're making it up or deluding themselves. There are measurable physical effects to this stuff.
As science writer Steve Silberman says in the article I've quoted from above, what we're learning here is that the feedback we get from other people ("That might make you feel yucky" or "You look tired today") has a physical effect on us. It's a little insane. It's also worth thinking about when we talk about medical ethics. Full disclosure of what treatments you're getting and what the risks and benefits are is generally regarded as the ethically right way to practice medicine. And that's probably correct. But how do you balance that with what we know about placebo/nocebo? What happens when transparency keeps you from using a harmless placebo as a treatment? What happens when transparency makes you more likely to experience negative health outcomes? It's a strange, strange world and it's not always easy to make the right ethical choices.

Read Steve Silberman's full story on the nocebo effect

Daily Comic Relief

Remembering The Great California Cycleway

Over a hundred years ago bicycles ruled the day, and highways were being built just for them. The California Cycleway, opened in 1900, was an elevated tollway built specially for bicycle traffic through the Arroyo Seco, intended to connect the cities of Pasadena and Los Angeles, in California, United States.

The inventor and promotor of the cycleway was Pasadena resident Horace Dobbins, who attracted ex-California governor Henry Harrison Markham to join him in the scheme. The toll was 10 cents one-way, or 15 cents round trip. Due to the end of the bicycle craze of the 1890s and the existing Pacific Electric Railway lines connecting Pasadena to Los Angeles, the cycleway never made a profit. In the first decade of the 20th century, the structure was dismantled, and the wood sold for lumber.

Bamiyan

Life Beyond the Destruction of the Giant 1,500-Year-Old Buddhas

View the Gallery

Although probably best known for the ancient Buddha statues destroyed by the Taliban, there is much more to the Afghan town of Bamiyan than this one blot on its history. More

“Godverdikke! Ken a kapmes in me kop!”

Long, long ago–almost before humans had devised writing–there was a tradition among the people of Usenet of translating the phrase “My God, there’s an axe in my head!” into different languages. The title of this post is just that in the Ostend dialect of Flemish.
At the link, you can find one of the oldest and most comprehensive archives of this sacred tradition, featuring hundreds of different translations of this phrase. Preserve it and pass it on to your children, so that the ways of the ancients are not lost to the ravages of time.

They needed to expand her log cabin home. So they decided that an old grain silo would be just the right structure to attach to the house:

Radiant floor heating. stamped and stained concrete floor, spray foam insulation, 7 windows and soon plaster walls along with a 6?x6? living wall. After finding a silo on a near by farm we moved it over to our house, cut out one wall and attached it to the side of our house for a much needed dining room.

You can see a large interior photo here.

The Real Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin

Christopher Robin was a real little boy and Winnie the Pooh was a real stuffed bear. The UK’s National Portrait Gallery has many pictures of him as a young boy. Some of them include his father, A.A. Milne, the author of the Winnie the Pooh stories.

Researchers are working to identify exactly how a changing climate will impact specific elements of weather, such as clouds, rainfall ...

Lightning Kills Two Texas Soccer Players

Two soccer players died and a third was injured when lightning struck a tree that they were standing beneath to get out of a storm Sunday in Houston.

Astronomical News

After Mars Landing, NASA May Have Anxious Wait

Due to a glitch with a primary communications satellite, we may be in for a nail-biting wait to hear from Curiosity after it lands on Aug. 6. Read more

Using Lasers and Antimatter to Trek to the Stars

The VARIES concept will use powerful lasers to excite a quantum phenomenon, generating antimatter fuel from the vacuum of space. Read more

How Pluto Got Its Moons

Astronomers found Pluto's fifth moon 34 years after finding its first. Read more

Not a Dwarf: Is Pluto a Binary Planet?

Pluto really has only four moons if the largest moon in the system, Charon, is considered a "binary planet" companion to Pluto. Read more

Herschel Spots a Hot Young Star-Forming Butterfly

ESA's Herschel Space Observatory images the intricate structures that form a stellar nursery, 2300 light-years from Earth Read more

Science and Environment News from the British Perspective

Solomons 'launders' exotic birds

The Solomon Islands is exporting thousands of wild birds each year claiming they are captive-bred, concludes an investigation by wildlife trade experts.

Rodent thieves 'forest saviours'

Rodents that steal seeds from each other are filling the seed-dispersing role of extinct giant mammals, research suggests.

Kenya ivory seized in Thailand
Nearly half a tonne of ivory worth more than $700,000 is seized at the airport in Thailand's capital, Bangkok, customs officials say.
US approves HIV-prevention drug
US health regulators for the first time approve a drug to prevent HIV infection, despite warnings it could engender a false sense of security.
Cold blamed for climate bid miss
UK science to be freely available
New delay at Finland nuclear site
UK wildlife 'threatened' by rain
E Guinea science prize 'shameful'

Also in the News

Rodents Pass Huge Seeds Like Olympic Torches

Muscular rodents called agoutis move giant seeds similar to the way we humans move the Olympic torch.

Read more Rodents Pass Huge Seeds Like Olympic Torches

The cute cat-sized agouti above is much more than a lowly jungle creature. In fact, it is very much the Robin Hood of rodents.

The furry bandit hides and buries black palm seeds, which it finds delicious. What it doesn't eat sprout into new plants. When other agoutis find the hidden cache, they steal and rebury the seeds at a different place, thus helping the plant spread!

The Glaucus atlanticus is a planktonic animal that belongs to the oceanic group known as Nudibranches. This amazing-looking creature is a sea slug that floats freely on open seas feeding on jellyfish including the Portuguese Man o' War.

Chickens facing censorship in Iran

The rising cost of chicken in Iran has prompted the country's police chief to urge broadcasters to censor it from television screens in the interests of social harmony. Against a backdrop of lengthening food queues, Esmail Ahmadi-Moghaddam, the head of Iran's law enforcement forces, has warned that films depicting scenes of chicken dinners could provoke the underprivileged classes to attack the rich.
"They show chicken being eaten in movies while somebody might not be able to buy it," Mr Ahmadi-Moghaddam, brother-in-law of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, told a law enforcement officers conference in Tehran. "Films are now the windows of society and some people observing this class gap might say that we will take knives and take our rights from the rich. IRIB [Iran's state broadcaster] should not be the shop window for showing all which is not accessible."

The warning is the latest sign of official alarm over the strains being caused by rampant inflation and international sanctions aimed at curbing Iran's nuclear program, which the West suspects is intended to produce an atom bomb, despite Tehran's denials. Rising chicken prices have come to symbolize the privations being endured by ordinary Iranians amid this increasingly grim landscape. In recent weeks, shoppers have had to fork out 70,000 rials (£3.67) for a kilogram of chicken, around three times last year's price.

Farmers and retailers have blamed a shortfall of imported livestock feed – partly caused by sanctions – leading in turn to a drastic rise in the price of domestically-produced feed. Similar increases have been witnessed in the costs of red meat, fruit and vegetables. With chicken forming a core part of the meat-rich national diet, long-queues have been reported at state food distribution centers, where it has been sold in rationed quantities at lower, government-fixed, prices. Perhaps with a view to stemming negative reporting, the Caspian Sea province of Gilan even took the novel step of offering discounted chicken to accredited journalists.

Mantis Shrimp

A team of divers from the BBC's documentary series Deadly 60 delve deep for the mantis shrimp to capture these amazing ambush predators on film in the wild. Just like its insect namesake, the mantis shrimp uses its claws to impale its prey with lethal accuracy.

YouTube link

Twin Panther Cubs

Two baby black panther cubs were introduced to the public at Tierpark Zoo in Berlin, Germany, over the weekend. Buzzfeed has a collection of photographs taken at the event. More