Category Archives: Science

Science

Mapping the Structural Core of Human Cerebral Cortex

A groundbreaking study has just come out that used various MRI techniques to map the structure and function of human brains. We are working with MRI experts to do similar things with the heart. Here’s a figure from the paper illustrating the process:
Brain Mapping

The study was done by an international team of scientists, with first author Patric Hagmann. Because it was published in the open-access PLoS Biology, you can get the whole article, online or in PDF form, here, regardless of your university affiliation or lack thereof.

This is really cool. It’s the first step in a new era of reverse-engineering the brain, and the body in general.

What do you do?

Yet another Piled Higher and Deeper that makes me think the author is spying on me. This gets really annoying, but I’ve developed a pretty solid tiered system of answers, going up in complexity as people keep asking for specifics. If I’m not in the mood, I’ll drop a bunch of jargon on them and hope they go away.

What do you do

Phun With Macs

Phun, the interactive physics simulator, is now available for Mac OS X.

Be warned. If you like physics or tinkering around with things, this program could be a huge time sync sink. (I’ve been futzing with SyncML too much lately.) I was playing with it in (ugh) Windows XP last time I was in New Orleans, and Amanda informs me that what I thought was about 20 minutes was actually closer to two hours.

Chest Compressions During Defibrillation Probably Safe

This study asked an interesting question: “Is it safe for a rescuer to continue chest compressions during defibrillation of a rescuee?”

You’d think that with the high voltages involved, and mental images of TV doctors yelling “CLEAR!” before defibrillating, there’s no way it could be safe. Apparently, for a gloved rescuer, even with a “worst-case” accidental connection of electrodes between the two people, the leakage current is well within safety standards.

Between this and the recent change of guidelines for CPR (favoring chest compressions over combined compressions and breathing), the long-time typical methods of resuscitation are suddenly changing a lot.

Moderate Drinking (of what?) Found to be Cardioprotective

This study has been making the rounds lately in the news. The evidence as analyzed in the article supports the assertion that moderate drinking is cardioprotective in middle age.

HOWEVER

What I have not seen in the reviews of the article are mentions of which kind of alcohol are significantly protective. (Perhaps because people are just reviewing the abstract, and not the paper.) This paragraph from the results is revealing:

After adjustment for demographic and cardiovascular risk factors, wine-only drinkers were significantly less likely to have had a subsequent cardiovascular event than nondrinkers (OR 0.32, 95% CI, 0.12-0.87). Consumers of moderate amounts of beer/liquor/mixed (which includes some wine) tended to also be less likely to have had a subsequent cardiovascular event than nondrinkers (OR 0.79, 95% CI, 0.49-1.26), but the difference was not significant.

Emphasis mine. The evidence supports the assertion, then, that it is not alcohol that is protective, but wine. The authors astutely state this in the discussion:

This study’s finding that new wine drinkers experienced a significant reduction in cardiovascular events after 4 years while new drinkers of other alcoholic beverages did not, is consistent with recent studies showing a slight advantage to wine drinkers.