Hopefullyoblivious

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved an auto-injecting device that can treat overdose from a variety of painkillers. The agency said in a statement today (April 3) that it could save lives; drug overdoses have become the leading cause of death from injury in the United States, surpassing vehicle crashes. 

The treatment, known as Evzio, injects a drug called nalaxone that "rapidly reverses the effects of opioid overdose" and is the standard treatment for overdose, the FDA noted. Previously the drug had to be given via a syringe, which often requires taking somebody to the emergency room, taking up time. But the new auto-injector can be administered by caregivers or family members, and can fit in a medicine cabinet or pocket. 

Tests have shown that the device administers that same amount of nalaxone as when somebody injects the drug with a syringe, and gives verbal instructions to whoever is using it. 

Almost three out of four prescription drug overdoses are caused by opioid painkillers like oxycodone (Oxycontin) and hydrocodone (Vicodin), and since 2003 have caused more overdose deaths than cocaine and heroin combined, the CDC noted. Strangely the FDA also recently approved Zohydro, an opioid painkiller drug with up to 10 times more hydrocodone than Vicodin. 

The pocket-sized XStat, a hemorrhage-stopping invention we wrote about in February, yesterday received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a first-of-its-kind medical dressing. This means that the U.S. Army, which funded development of the sponge-filled syringe, can now purchase XStat to be carried by military medics. 

XStat plugs gunshot and shrapnel wounds faster and more effectively than the standard battlefield first aid. Currently, medics treat hemorrhage by stuffing gauze as deep as five inches into an injury—a painful process that doesn't always work. Of soldiers who died between October 2001 and June 2009 of wounds that weren't immediately fatal, blood loss was the killer in an estimated 80 percent of cases.

The 2.5-ounce syringe slides deep into a injury, such a bullet track, and deposits pill-size sponges that soak up blood and rapidly expand to stem bleeding from an artery. Each sponge is coated with chitosan, a substance that clots blood and fights infection. The FDA says the sponges are safe to leave in the body for up to four hours, allowing enough time for a patient to get to an operating room. To ensure they don't get left inside a wound, X-shaped markers make each sponge visible on an x-ray image.

Created by veterans and engineers at Portland-based startup RevMedx, XStat is the first battlefield dressing designed specifically for deep, narrow wounds in areas like the armpit or groin, where medics can't place a traditional tourniquet. RevMedx, along with Oregon Health and Science University, is now developing a version of the device to stop postpartum bleeding.

Read more about XStat here.

Most caviar, especially the high-end stuff, comes from sturgeons, long-lived fish that die when their eggs are forcibly removed. It can fairly be said that eating caviar is unsustainable at best, since sturgeons are the most critically endangered group of animals, with 85 percent of sturgeon species at risk of extinction. When German researcher Angela Köhler visited an Iranian caviar facility a few years back, she came face-to-face with a 30-year-old, 10-foot-long sturgeon that was being "harvested," as reported by Civil Eats: 

That came as a shock, and helped inspire Köhler to find a way to harvest caviar without killing sturgeon. She spent 9-years developing a system in which sturgeon's eggs can be "massaged" out of them to produce "no-kill caviar," or "cruelty-free caviar," as NPR reported: 

Some are skeptical that no-kill caviar will take off. Geno Evans, a caviar producer in Florida, said the method produces "mushy" eggs, although Köhler's method gets around that with a chemical treatment. This treatment improves the texture, said Deborah Keane, owner of the California Caviar Company, in Sausalito, Calif., which is currently the only American importer of Vivace no-kill caviar.

[NPR and Civil Eats]

 

 

Astrophysicist and new Cosmos host Neil deGrasse Tyson speaks quickly, efficiently, and entertainingly about the biggest ideas in the universe. But slow down his speech and he sounds absolutely stoned out of his gourd, as a recent video proved. ("How does that work?" he says midway through, hilariously, before counting his fingers.)

Tyson, far from being offended, liked the video, too; he played it at a lecture in Toronto this weekend for a giggling audience. I can't stop reading everything from him in that voice now. 

Here's the original slow-mo video:

 

 

And meanwhile, another industrious YouTuber slowed down Carl Sagan: 

 

 

[Gawker]

It used to be thought that human noses could only detect around 10,000 smells, although many scientists thought that was probably a bit too low. A new study suggests that number is much higher--that humans can distinguish among 1 trillion different scents. 

“Ten thousand is kind of pathetic — it’s a pretty low number,” study author and molecular neurobiologist Leslie Vosshall of Rockefeller University told the Washington Post.

This study went like this, as the Post noted: 

Using a procedure similar to a hearing exam, in which listeners must try to distinguish between two tones, Vosshall and her colleagues put 26 noses to the test. Each individual was given three vials, two of them containing the same scent, and asked to determine which smell was the odd one out.

After hundreds of these tests on each subject, the researchers assumed that the subjects’ performances would be similar in recognizing all possible smells able to be made in the lab. They extrapolated that the average human should be able to distinguish at least 1 trillion odors.

The researcher came up with their number by creating mixtures of 128 different odorous chemicals and testing how well 26 different people could distinguish among them. The ability to distinguish between closely related compounds varied from one person to another.

[Washington Post]

It's not just for the sexiness. (Although obvs it is very stylish and attractive, right??) This experimental space outfit's skintight design compresses the body, mimicking the effects of gravity. The suit's makers hope it will reduce the bone and muscle mass loss astronauts experience after spending time in low gravity.

The BBC has a new video describing the suit, which has been years in the making. Called the Gravity Loading Countermeasure Skinsuit, it has hundreds of Spandex-like layers, King's College London physiologist David Green told the BBC. It even compresses more firmly lower down on the legs, which normally feels more pressure from the weight of the body above it, than upper regions of the body. Green and his colleagues envision astronauts will wear the suit while hanging around inside spacecraft, thus getting a dose of gravity-like pressure while they go about their daily tasks. The suit should work in conjunction with the exercises astronauts already perform to stay healthy in space. Even with the exercises astronauts perform now, they lose bone and muscle mass they live in a low-gravity environment. That can make a return to Earth painful. Astronauts may even have pain while in space, as their spines lengthen in the absence of gravity.

The Gravity Loading Countermeasure Skinsuit may soon be tested in space. If Earthside experiments are promising, Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen will take a Skinsuit with him on his trip to the International Space Station in 2015. U.K. astronaut Tim Peake may also wear a Skinsuit on the same mission, the BBC reports.

Researchers at MIT first published a paper describing the concept for the Skinsuit in 2010. They also developed prototypes, which Popular Science reported on at that time. Researchers at King's College London are now performing experiments—including zero-gravity flights—to check whether the suit really does slow bone loss.

Russian astronauts aboard the International Space Station do sometimes wear another spacesuit that's designed to mimic gravity. But the MIT creators of the Skinsuit seemed skeptical of the Russian design, which is called the Pingvin, or "Penguin," suit. "Despite use since the 1970s and Russian faith in the device, the effectiveness of the suit in preserving bone mass has not been quantified," James Waldie and Dava Newman wrote in their 2010 paper.

Hopefully, tests of the Skinsuit will provide firmer answers—and a firm boost for humans to take on longer missions, including flights to Mars. 

Scientists drilled into the permafrost beneath an old moss bank on Signy, an island northeast of the Antarctic Peninsula, finding a bit of brown moss that had been frozen for more than 1,500 years, according to radiocarbon dating. Just to see what would happen, they put it under a light and misted it. After a couple of weeks, it sprouted and came back to life.  

"It's basically the first record of anything regenerating of that sort of age," British Antarctic Survey researcher and study co-author Peter Convey told National Geographic. "There are records of microbes being pulled out of ice cores and permafrost, but nothing that's multicellular has ever been recorded to do it."

The finding raises interesting questions: What if mosses and other plants could come back to life after being exposed following the retreat of glaciers? "That gives you a very different way of understanding the biodiversity of a region,” Convey told the New York Times. Or, where can I buy a moss plant that lived at the dawn of the Roman Republic? 

The story of the moss, described in a study published in Current Biology, bring to mind other life-forms that have been revived after being frozen, as the Times noted: 

It also brings to mind these incredible leeches, which can survive immersion in liquid nitrogen, at temperatures of -321°F (-196°C).

Springtime means the return of wildlife and greenery—and annoying chores. Here are a few unconventional devices that nip the season’s nuisances in the bud with military efficiency.

1) Tank Mower

Electrical engineer Luis Medina wanted to trim grassy lawns that no ordinary lawnmower could touch. So he and some friends built the TREX (Terrestrial Robotic Explorer): a remote-controlled, industrial-strength mower with tank-like treads to grip the steepest of slopes. The TREX, now sold by their company, Evatech, weighs 540 pounds and costs about $15,000 to make. It uses electrical motors instead of hydraulic fluid, and it’s waterproofed to mount amphibious assaults on marshy plots.

 2) Wildflower Ammo

When inventor Per Cromwell fires his shotgun, he unleashes a blast of life. Cromwell’s flower shells replace metal shot with a dozen different types of seeds, including poppy, lavender, and peony. He aims his gun at the ground in front of him and shoots; sprouts appear three to five weeks later. “Out of this very violent approach,” he says, “you can actually grow beautiful flowers.”

3) Squirrel-Squirting Turret

Kurt Grandis set up a feeder in his backyard to watch birds—not squirrels—so he created an autonomous water sentry gun. Custom software analyzes data from a webcam (pointed at the feeder) and distinguishes squirrels from birds by size, color, and fuzziness. “The idea is basically teaching the computer what squirrel-ness is,” he says. Motors aim a Supersoaker at rodent marauders and pull the trigger.

This article originally appeared in the March 2014 issue of Popular Science.

We've mentioned this before, but one of the coolest candidates for Material of the Future is silk. It's insanely tough, and in the human body, doesn't put the same strain on tissue that metal does. It can also harmlessly degrade in the body over time, which it makes it handy for use in medical devices. 

In a study run by Tufts University researchers, a team harvested silk from silkworm cocoons and used it to make plates and screws. They recently tested the materials in six rats and, after four to eight weeks, the silk had dissolved. Next up: the silk screws and plates could be used to mend broken bones in humans, then allow the silk to melt away, rather than requiring another surgery for removal. The researchers want to use the technique to treat face injuries at first, then expand to other broken bones. 

They aren't the first to toy with this idea; other researchers have suggested implants like this could come to humans by 2030. So just don't break anything until then, and you're good.

[BBC]

Unveiled last Friday, the Airlander is the world's longest aircraft. Developed by Hybrid Air Vehicles, the 302-foot-long Airlander was once a candidate military craft called "Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle," until Pentagon budget cuts forced the U.S. Army to abandon the program.

The Airlander resembles both a blimp and a Zeppelin, but it's not quite either. Blimps have no rigid internal structure, while Zeppelins (technically, "rigid airships") have a stiff internal structure that holds the shape of the aircraft. The Airlander is, as the company name implies, a hybrid airship that gets lift from bags of helium. It has a rigid structure that offers more control than comes with blimps. To house the massive aircraft, Hybrid Air Vehicles is using a century-old airship hangar in Bedfordshire, England.

The U.S. military considered the Airlander for surveillance and cargo transport. Global Hawks and Grey Eagles, America's go-to surveillance aircraft, can each fly for about 30 hours. Fully stocked, the Airlander could stay in the sky for five days with a human crew. In wars where small armed groups move over vast rural areas, such as in the recent conflict in Afghanistan, a long-range surveillance tool is very valuable. While America's military involvement in Afghanistan is drawing to a close, Hybrid Air Vehicles is billing the Airlander as a tool for humanitarian relief, communications relay, border patrol, search and rescue, and drug enforcement. In addition to surveillance, the Airlander can be set up to carry 55 tons of cargo.

[BBC]

You're looking at what might be the pacemaker of a decade from now: a custom-made membrane, developed by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Washington University in St. Louis, that slides over a heart and keeps it regulated by a network of sensors and electrodes.

This is a rabbit's heart, but the building process would be similar for people: a team computer-modeled the heart, 3-D printed a mold, and created a membrane tailored to the organ. The sensors make sure the heart stays beating at a proper rate, and the electrodes automatically correct any discrepancies, like an arrhythmia. 

And, yes, unlike this one, a real one stays inside your chest.

 

 

[St. Louis Public Radio via Sploid]

One way to avoid getting sick while traveling is to only eat fruit that you peel yourself, since plants can filter out bacteria and prevent it from traveling throughout their tissues. Well, why not apply this principle to filtering water directly? 

A team of scientists have done just that, testing how well pine wood filtered water with its xylem, the tube-like tissue that transports water from plant roots to leaves. The results, published last week in the journal PLOS ONE, were very promising. "Filtration using three different xylem filters showed nearly complete rejection of the bacteria," catching at least 99.9% of them, the authors wrote. 

The xylem filters used in the study appeared to catch nearly all particles larger than 100 nanometers in diameter, meaning they would exclude protozoa (like Giardia) as well. Smaller viruses would be expected to pass through, but research suggests that other types of wood with smaller pores could possibly be used to filter out these pathogens as well; pine was used in this experiment since a larger percentage of its cross-section is made up of xylem, making it a more feasible choice for a prototype. 

To make a filter, all you need to do is peel the bark off a pine twig and stick it into a tube, sealing holes between twig and tube with epoxy. Then the pressure must be optimized, which is a little bit trickier. But once that's worked out, each twig-filter processed 4 liters of water per day, enough for one person.

The particles are filtered out in the wood's pits, the sieve-like holes between adjacent tube-like conduits of xylem. The pits' nanoscale pores "perform the critical function of preventing bubbles from crossing over from one conduit to another," allowing water to flow from the ground to the leaves in live plants, but also filtering out bacteria for us humans. Fresh wood appears to filter material much better than dead wood.

"The simple construction of xylem filters, combined with their fabrication from an inexpensive, biodegradable, and disposable material suggests that further research and development of xylem filters could potentially lead to their widespread use and greatly reduce the incidence of waterborne infectious disease in the world," the authors concluded. 

[PLOS ONE]

There aren't too many details on this, but an abstract called "Can We Eliminate the Major Tornado Threats in Tornado Alley?" appearing in the Bulletin of the American Physical Society is definitely, uh, intriguing. How are we to eliminate tornadoes? Through gigantic walls strategically placed across the country.

Here's the abstract in full:

The recent devastating tornado attacks in Oklahoma, Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota raise an important question: can we do something to eliminate the major tornado threats in Tornado Alley? Violent tornado attacks in Tornado Alley are starting from intensive encounters between the northbound warm air flow and southbound cold air flow. As there is no mountain in Tornado Alley ranging from west to east to weaken or block such air flows, some encounters are violent, creating instability: The strong wind changes direction and increases in speed and height. As a result, it creates a supercell, violent vortex, an invisible horizontal spinning motion in the lower atmosphere. When the rising air tilts the spinning air from horizontal to vertical, tornadoes with radii of miles are formed and cause tremendous damage. Here we show that if we build three east-west great walls in the American Midwest, 300m high and 50m wide, one in North Dakota, one along the border between Kansas and Oklahoma to east, and the third one in the south Texas and Louisiana, we will diminish the tornado threats in the Tornado Alley forever. We may also build such great walls at some area with frequent devastating tornado attacks first, then gradually extend it. 

The abstract was posted by Temple University physics chair Rongjia Tao, ahead of a talk to be presented next week on "the physics of climate." It's not clear if this is being proposed as an actual solution to tornadoes, or if it's more of a mathematical exercise. For now I'll assume the latter and hope for the former. 

Update: USA Today got in touch with Tao, who says it's a real proposal for 1,000-foot-high by 150-foot-wide walls that would be built at an approximate cost of $60 billion per 100 miles. People are skeptical. 

For the past five years, Dave Lange has handled all FedEx shipments that require a chartered plane, coordinating deliveries of the big, weird, and extra important. His techniques put your stamps and envelopes to shame.

Popular Science: When the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago renovated in 2008, you flew its seven whales to a host aquarium. So how does a whale travel?

Lange: Each one is in a metal container, which has a sling, where the whale sits. The box isn’t completely filled with water; there’s just enough to keep the animal moist. 

PS: If you’re moving many animals together on a plane, how do you decide where to put each one?

Lange: The plane has to be balanced, so they have to be in certain positions. But you still want everyone to be calm during the flight: You don’t want to put stallions next to mares. That’s not a good idea. 

PS: What’s the craziest delivery you’ve ever done?

Lange: I had to arrange my first panda charter in 13 days, which is a really quick turnaround. We were moving two panda cubs from the U.S. to China and didn’t get approval from the Chinese government until two days before we operated. 

PS: And the biggest one?

Lange: The heaviest shipment we did—it set a record for FedEx—was a famine-relief charter from Paris to Nairobi. We carried almost 218,000 pounds of high-protein bars, which could feed 4,000 people for two weeks.

PS: What are you working on now?

Lange: Our next shipment is two planes carrying 77 horses from Liege, Belgium, to Doha, Qatar. You never know what you’re going to get at this job. It could be anything.

This article originally appeared in the February 2014 issue of Popular Science.