Speaking of unpredictable consequences, here’s another one: techniques developed to combat spam turn out to be useful against HIV. I always thought that spammers had a lot in common with viruses, in that both are annoying and potentially dangerous, but I didn’t expect the metaphor to stretch that far!
Archive of posts filed under the Medicine category.
“I Live in the Future and Here’s How it Works”
A small excerpt from that excerpt: A few years ago, researchers quizzed more than thirty surgeons and surgical residents on their video-game habits [...] Then they put all the surgeons through a laparoscopic surgery simulator, in which thin instruments akin to extremely long chopsticks are inserted into one or more small incisions through the skin [...]
“Bill Gates drops $1m on laser-based malaria fighter”
I’ve had this vision for years of a machine that identifies mosquitoes in a house or around people in a backyard area at dusk, targets them, and ruthlessly burns them down with a precision blast from a small, high-powered laser. I’m generally a peaceful person, but I have no mercy toward fleas, ticks, and blood-suckers [...]
“What Happens When the Average Lifespan is 150 Years?”
As a semi-related extension of yesterday’s rant, here’s some more evidence that science does have some idea what it’s talking about. If it didn’t, none of this would work. It’ll be interesting to see how humanity adapts to much longer lives. So long as life expectancy climbs slowly, I think we can handle it without [...]
“Boffins place living creature under control of brain chip”
Hm… could the world of Darrell Bain’s The Pet Plague be far behind? Or more seriously, the brain enhancements of Peter F. Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn trilogy, or any of a dozen similar science fiction works? Scary stuff, but ooh so exciting, too.
“Porn Then and Now: Welcome to Brain Training”
Some fascinating brain research on how the ready availability of Internet porn has changed things for younger generations — and more importantly, the medical reason why: [...] Your brain didn’t evolve to handle today’s erotica-at-a-click. It doesn’t just see videos; it perceives endless fertilization opportunities, and it will use its dopamine “whip” to make sure [...]
“Value, Emotions, and Survival”
I ran across an article the other day that baldly stated that the survival instinct is not the strongest and most universal instinct. Creating value is. Surprising on the face of it, but the more I thought of it, the more I had to admit that there’s something to it. Conventional wisdom (which may actually [...]
“Alzheimer’s vaccine could be available in two years”
It seems that our generation, and that of our parents, may be spared the horrors of Alzheimers. My maternal grandfather had it, and though I don’t remember much about it (I wasn’t even school age at the time), I remember enough to know that it was pretty bad.
“Tanning Can Cause Cancer, but Not Tanning Could Cause a Lot Worse”
Vitamin D, produced in human skin when it’s bombarded by the ultraviolet rays of the sun, may be the most powerful anticancer agent ever known, and lack of it during a mother’s pregnancy and breastfeeding (and keeping babies shielded from ultraviolet sunlight) could be the cause of most autism: Many researchers now fear that the [...]
“Surgeons carry out first synthetic windpipe transplant”
This is probably the first really tangible benefit of any form of nanotechnology. It won’t be the last. I expect that replacements for most body parts will be able to be fashioned and seeded this way within a decade, and that it will become common practice within twenty years. So much for the SF/horror scenario [...]