Category Archives: Health

Astronomy, Computing, Consumer, Electromagnetism, Engineering, Health, Imaging, Internet, Physics, Science, Space, Technology

Laser Communications Gets a Zap(pa) from Moon Unit

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Photo by ESO Photo Ambassador Yuri Beletsky. Unrelated to the NASA experiment but cool nonetheless.

Lasers rank among the most vital and widespread technologies in the industrialized world, but for years they were considered a solution looking for a problem. One possible application lay in communications: Lasers, being of higher frequency and energy than radio, held the potential to communicate more information per second.

Fast-forward to October 2013, when NASA pulled off one of the most impressive proofs-of-concept in history. That month, a spacecraft orbiting the moon sent data 239,000 miles to Earth via a pulsed laser beam at a download rate of 622 megabits per second (by comparison, high-speed consumer data plans are usually measured in the tens of megabits). Everyone from cryptographers to high-speed Wall Street traders sat up and took notice. Sound cool? Read on as I explain…

How Laser Communication Works

Biochemistry, Health, How To, Medicine, Science

Fecal transplants: One man’s trash…

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C. diff photo
Scanning electron micrograph of C. diff, courtesy CDC

Accepting a transplant of someone else’s stool might sound extreme, but it might just be the next big thing in medicine, thanks in part to a potentially deadly stomach bug called Clostridium difficile.

C. diff, an emerging epidemic in hospitals and nursing homes that tears through the gut like Sherman through Georgia, has grown increasingly virulent and antibiotic-resistant in recent years. For many sufferers, fecal microbiota transplantation offers hope when all else fails. Can we get over the “ick factor” when our lives are on the line? You bet we can.

How Fecal Transplants Work

Art, Biochemistry, Culture, Film, Health, Medicine, Neuroscience, Religion, Science, Weird

The scandalous sneeze

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Fred Ott's Sneeze (film by William K.L. Dickson)
Fred Ott’s Sneeze

The 1894 kinetoscope of Fred Ott sneezing after inhaling a pinch of snuff, taken by Thomas Edison’s laboratory, was one of the first human acts ever committed to film. If you believe the internet rumors concerning the relationship between sneezing and sex, it might also have been the first movie orgasm.

No wonder nasal snuff was so popular for hundreds of years – and small wonder, too, that Pope Urban VIII threatened to excommunicate Catholics who took snuff in church….

Is Sneezing Really Like an Orgasm?

Anthropology, Astronomy, Biochemistry, Genetics, Health, How To, Psychology, Science, Space, Technology, Travel

Defining the “right stuff”

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Astronaut visor reflection
Photo courtesy NASA.

Space travel isn’t all glamor: Body odor and bad breath hang around; food and filth float; emotional pressure builds; weightlessness degrades bone and muscles; the body experiences higher radiation levels; and risks of kidney stones and eye problems mount.

Clearly, astronauts require a pioneering spirit, but near-future space colonists will need more than guts and gusto to thrive en route to, and on, other worlds. What constitutes an ideal astronaut candidate? Should we select space travelers based on genetic risk factors? Could we train colonists from childhood to be better adapted, mentally and physically, to life in space? And would we be willing to go to the extreme of changing what it means to be human?

How to Build a Better Space Explorer

Consumer, Gadgets, Health, Medicine, Sports, Technology

Watch-ing your weight

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Basis bands
Image courtesy BASIS Science, Inc.

Times are tight. Many of us feel trapped between the food we can afford and the medical bills that we can’t. As obesity and its related illnesses – including heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes – grow more prevalent, ballooning healthcare costs threaten to shrink our wallets.

Most of us know that we need to take charge of our own health, but how? And where will we find the time? We’re busy, frazzled, mired in bad habits and assailed by late-night ads for fad diets, pills and gimmicky workout machines. Meanwhile, most of us have no idea how our caloric intake stacks up to our daily burn.

Surely, this is a job for a gadget.

Can a watch help you lose weight?