Category: Science

Astronaut Tim Peake interview: boldly going where no body has gone before

Timothy_Peake,_official_portraitFor Tim Peake it’s T minus 600 hours until launch. Come 15th December, the 43 year old father of two will be strapped atop 150 tonnes of rocket fuel looking skyward. He will be spending six months aboard the International Space Station, during which time he will be floating around, admiring the view, and playing with test tubes. The life of the astronaut – boldly going where no one has gone before. It’s every schoolboy’s (and girl’s?) dream job. Except that it isn’t. If they knew what being an astronaut was really like, that is.

Earlier this year I interviewed Tim while he was undergoing final preparations in Houston, Texas. I asked him about what life would be like in space and, with my doctor’s hat on, wanted to know what medical research he would be doing when in space. I learnt that going into space isn’t like in the movies. Within moments of Tim entering orbit, his body’s internal workings will be tipped upside down. As soon as he enters zero gravity, blood will rush to his head, causing his heart and kidneys to go haywire. When not nursing a killer headache, he would be emptying his bladder in the space khazi as his body fluid levels rapidly adjust. In the days and weeks that follow, his bones will rapidly leech out their calcium, his muscles will shrink and his heart get weaker. He will grow a couple of inches taller which, while not a problem in space, will give him terrible back ache when gets back onto terra firma. Read more

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It’s official: you’re only as old as you feel (and look)

Forever Young by Roberto Ventre on Flickr“You are only as old as you feel,” or so the saying goes. This adage is great for cheering yourself up when the grey hairs start to take root, but science has recently revealed that the time-honoured expression is alive and kicking – the younger you feel, the younger you actually are.

Ground-breaking new research has shown what happens when you follow the lives of 1,000 twenty-somethings over a period of ten years. A team of American and New Zealand scientists monitored each volunteer’s ‘biological of age’ over this period, measuring their ‘true age’ through tests for cholesterol, heart and lung health, immune system function and DNA damage (among other things). Incredibly, they found that each person’s body aged at a different rate. Read more

Gardener beware! 4 deadly plants that could be in your backyard

Monkshood (Source: Wikimedia)
Monkshood (Source: Wikimedia)
Vegetable growers will know that there is little to beat eating the fruit of efforts. A bowl of garden-grown lettuce leaves, tomatoes and cucumbers, sprinkled with freshly cut basil leaves puts any shop-bought salad to shame. The mysterious death of gardener Nathan Greenway, however, highlights the dangers of unwittingly harvesting the wrong kind of plant. Experts believe that the Hampshire gardener may have died from monkshood poisoning after handling its leaves without gloves. There are many plants that gardeners and foragers should always keep at arm’s length but here are just four to watch out for.

Monkshood. Also known as wolf’s bane or aconite, monkshood has tall ‘hooded’ flowers that come in a variety of colours. It looks elegant but is one of Britain’s most deadly plants, containing a paralysing toxin that attacks nerves and stops the heart beating. Monkshood has killed countless people throughout history; Cleopatra used it dispatch her brother and our early ancestors made poison arrows with it. Make sure you know what it looks like because monkshood poison can be absorbed through the skin and so should never be touched with bare hands. Read more

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Test yourself: Could you spot a skin cancer? Never miss a melanoma.

Test yourself: which do you think are malignant skin cancers? Click to enlarge. Answers at bottom of post.
Test yourself: which do you think are malignant skin cancers? Click to enlarge. Answers at bottom of post.

If you ever doubted humankind’s ability to do great things for our planet, just look at the sky. Or rather, look toward the ozone layer high in the stratosphere. If you cast your mind back, you will remember that there was a lot of talk of the ‘hole in the ozone layer’ brought on by CFCs in the eighties and early nineties. Today, no one seems to mention it anymore, even though climate change is still a very hot potato. This fragile ozone layer is the Earth’s way of blocking out the worst of the sun’s harmful UV rays and without it everyone would die of cancer. But ever since all the world’s nations outlawed all CFC-releasing chemicals in 1987 – such as those in fridges and aerosol cans – ozone layer damage has stopped. Better than that, the ozone layer is now actually repairing itself and the ‘hole’ is shrinking. Read more

A chocolate a day (may possibly) keep the doctor away

Unlucky chocolate bunniesThe Easter eggs don’t last long in our house. It wouldn’t have always been that way though: as I child, I would diligently squirrel away Easter chocolate, treating myself only on special occasions. I now have no such willpower and, by the looks of it, neither do the rest of you. A recent survey has shown that 43% of us hide chocolate wrappers to conceal how much we eat while 37% of Britons tell outright lies to our spouses about the amount they scoff. Presumably the world’s chocoholic scientists also share our guilt because over the years, chocolate has been one of the most intensively researched foodstuffs in nutritional science. Thousands upon thousands of research papers have searched for health-giving virtues in our favourite indulgence – over 1,600 studies look at cocoa’s effect on the heart alone. The prospect that excusing our chocolate addiction just seems too tantalising to resist. Read more

‘Google to rank pages by accuracy’ shown to be inaccurate

Google Knowledge Panel in search resultsAs a science writer who writes a lot about health, I spend more time than most scouring the internet for medicine-related information. Unfortunately, the advice that ‘Dr Google’ prescribes is all-too-often a bit dodgy. Search ‘how to treat my headache’, for example, and in alongside the sensible suggestions are some rather more dubious and laughable ‘natural cures’. Search for answers to child health problems and things get far scarier. A 2010 paper showed that only 39% of the top 500 Google results gave correct information about specific child health questions. Search queries related to mumps, measles and rubella and autism yielded the the most misleading information.

It was exciting, therefore, to learn of Google’s new effort to rid the internet of dodgy advice and quackery. Today, all search results are ranked according to popularity (crudely speaking); dodgy science seen as ‘trustworthy’ by appears toward the top of search rankings, regardless of how erroneous it may be. Published research reveals how Google ‘want to’ organise search results according to their accuracy. Read more

Three parent babies: it’s not what you think

feet in bedMost of us came into this world through a moment of passion between our father and mother. Not so for everyone. In the world today there are 200,000 people who were not conceived in the conventional way – but in a Petri dish. For the past 35 years, IVF (In Vitro Fertilisation) and similar ‘test tube baby’ techniques have transformed the lives of millions of couples with fertility problems, offering them the chance to have children when they otherwise couldn’t. Lauded as one of the greatest achievements of modern medicine, it nevertheless remains controversial. For example, the process often results in fertilised eggs being discarded – something many religious organisations object to. A few weeks ago, however, fertility techniques just became a whole lot more contentious when the UK became the first country in the world to allow three-parent babies. By next year there will probably be children born of two mothers and one father. It sounds truly bizarre but it’s not what you think. Read more

The health benefits of generosity – it really is better to give than receive

Shoebox appeal 2014Christmas is a time for giving. This week, we will give more to charity than at any other time of the year. For, all the fundraising carol singers, shopping-bag-packing Brownies, and charity tin-shakers make it hard for even the stingiest of scrooges to keep their wallets buckled shut. But a couple of weeks ago, I witnessed thousands of acts of kindness that would make Father Christmas proud.

Every year, the ‘Operation Christmas Child’ initiative invites members of the public to fill empty shoeboxes with Christmas presents to send to countries in the developing world. Individually wrapped and purposed for a boy or a girl, boxes are shipped to underprivileged youngsters in Africa, Eastern Europe and worn-torn countries such as Iraq. The appeal has been running for over twenty years and for many children, that solitary shoebox of gifts will be the only thing they receive this Christmas. Read more

Granny’s Marvelous Medicines: 3 traditional treatments that actually work

Cod liver oil bottleImagine a time before the internet. Go further back: think of what the world was like before mobile phones. Now go even further back… back to when computers weren’t around. I know that in today’s touch-screen age, it’s hard to imagine – but not so very long ago all knowledge was passed down through spoken word and books (paper ones). That’s right kids: no Gameboys. For it was a mere fifty years ago that technology was a slide-rule and a wireless – and back then most medicine was more hearsay than science. And the advice doctors gave you in the post-war era probably wasn’t much different to your grandmother’s wisdom.

Today, the majority of traditional remedies have been shown to be nonsense (like giving Guinness to pregnant mums) or wishful thinking (like treating a cold with chicken soup). But a handful of ancient remedies have stood the test of time. Here are just three old-fashioned medicines that can actually do some good. Read more

Smells can help restore memories

Sniff by Smabs Sputzer, on FlickrFreshly cut grass, rain falling on sun-baked tarmac, the cologne of your first love… we all have smells that stir up special, personal memories. For me, the smell of wood smoke evokes memories of camping as a child. A close friend told me that, for him, even the faintest whiff of a burning mosquito coil reminds him of living in Africa when he was five. Smelling is the most primitive of all our abilities and is the first sense we use from the moment we are born. Yet for people whose faculties are failing with age, an aroma can be the key to unlocking memories long forgotten. Read more