Category Archives: Science in the News

Questioning Chemotherapy

The increasing amount of cancer cases is no secret in our world today. According to Statistics Canada, one in four people will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. Billions of dollars are being used to find solutions to this disease; however one method of treatment is particularly controversial. Chemotherapy is the treatment of disease by the use of chemical substances by cytotoxic and other drugs. After doing some investigation I was shocked when I came across statistics about the effects chemotherapy had on the human body. Although chemotherapy has saved many from an early death, the negative effects it has on others is not to be overlooked.

Example of Chemotherapy Machine Source: Flickr Commons

Example of Chemotherapy Machine
Source: Flickr Commons

What stood out to me the most when investigating chemotherapy was the results of surveys conducted on 118 doctors from McGill Cancer Center asking if they would consider chemotherapy themselves if they were terminally ill with cancer.  Three of every four doctors would refuse chemotherapy for themselves due to its devastating effects on the entire body and the immune system, and because of its extremely low success rate. How could one feel comfortable if the physician administrating chemotherapy doesn’t agree with the method themselves? Furthermore how could a physician feel comfortable administrating it to an unknowing patient?

I was even more shocked when I discovered that Chemotherapy doesn’t universally affect all types of cancer the same way. In a book called “Questioning Chemotherapy,” by written Dr. Ralph Moss he reveals the ineffectiveness of Chemotherapy against cancers such as breast, colon, prostate and lung cancer. The types of cancer that Chemotherapy has proven to neutralize are 2-4%! If the health benefits are not as effective, then the body is left fighting off the stress and damage that it got from the process. If anything you are doing more damage than help. Now I understand why doctors would not go ahead with this themselves.

Before and After Image of Skin Cancer Cells. Source: Flickr Commons

Before and After Image of Skin Cancer Cells.
Source: Flickr Commons

So what exactly is the stress that Chemotherapy puts on the body? Chemotherapy attacks rapidly dividing cells in the body, which is how cancer cells are in nature. However, the most rapidly dividing cells in the body are the cells in our immune system. This is vital because the immune system is what fights off disease in the first place. If Chemotherapy is used on a type of cancer that it is not effective against (96%), and it fails, then the body is left to recover using a now damaged immune system.

Considering the results of my investigation I believe Chemotherapy, at best at this point, should be used as an alternative method instead of the standard one to treat cancer. During my research I came across many inspiring success stories where patients had overcome cancer by strengthening their immune system. The main way to do so is through your diet, especially with fruits and vegetables. I have always been a strong believer that food is our greatest medicine because it is always more bioavailable to the body than synthetic medicines.

Video on Alternative Cancer Treatment by Dr. Ralph Moss
Source: Youtube
Author: Beth Greer

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Frozen Food : to eat it or not to eat it?

Fast food picture. source: Google image (free to share)

Frozen Food is getting a bad rap.

Many people think that the frozen meals are unhealthy, opting for a fast-food meal over a frozen food, according to a British consumer group that tracks grocery shopping habits.

But a new study published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics found that people who regularly have frozen meals consume 254 fewer calories and 2.7 less grams of saturated fat per day than people who eat fast food. Also, adults who ate frozen meals had higher daily intakes of important nutrients such as protein, fiber and potassium.

Nestle USA, the maker of lots of popular frozen-food brands such as DiGiorno, Stouffer’s, and Hot pockets, funded a study. The findings have been reviewed and considered impartial. Does the findings mean a frozen lasgna is better for your health than a hamburger and fries? Not really.

Nutrition facts of an example of frozen food. source: Google image (free to share)

Registered dietitian Staci Nix McIntosh, an assistant professor of nutrition at the University of Utah College of Health, notes that the researchers did not compare meal for meal frozen versus fast food and cautions against taking the study findings at face value. “There are lots of factors at play here,” she says, “not the least of which is that people who consume fast food and people that regularly eat frozen food are people who choose different methods of quick meals and may have different lifestyles in general.”
Still, frozen foods can be healthy choices, depending on what you pick. McIntosh says to look for these items on the label:

1.Vegetables, but without the sauce.
2.High nutrient content relative to calories—potassium, calcium, fiber, vitamins A and D, and iron. You want a meal that will provide those nutrients while not exceeding your overall energy intake for the day.
3.Low sodium and no trans fats.

 

Particle Accelerators are Really Expensive

Plasma inside of a Plasma Lamp, from Wikimedia Commons

Plasma inside of a Plasma Lamp, from Wikimedia Commons

Particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) or the TRIUMF facility here at UBC are massive projects. The LHC cost roughly 7.5 Billion Euros to build, and has a circumference of 27 kilometers. These facilities allow scientists to perform all kinds of experiments about fundamental physics, but they take years and incredible amounts of money to construct. Ars Technica reported on an experiment at SLAC National Accellerator Laboratory at Stanford that could help reduce the cost of these projects by helping to accelerate particles faster in a shorter distance. All current particle accelerators work by using electromagnets to give energy to a stream of particles. Different designs arrange them in different ways, but the basic design involves a electromagnets arranged around a cavity which the particles pass through. Because the various particles that are accelerated are charged, they can be manipulated by electromagnets. Speeding them up is really not all that different from spinning up an electric motor or any other electromechanical device. The most powerful particle accelerators are large circular tunnels which pass the beam through the same cavities multiple times. The bigger the tunnels can be, the more speed can be added to the particles, which is a big part of why they’re so expensive. Building a 27 kilometer tunnel is expensive in and of itself, and the cost only grows when that tunnel needs to be built with incredibly precise dimensions. With science funding flagging in most developed countries, these costs might make it difficult for researchers to get the kind of investment they need to keep making progress on fundamental physics research using particle accelarators. What the SLAC group proposes is instead to use a field of plasma to transfer energy to particles. A state of plasma occurs when atoms are stripped of their electrons, leaving electrons and positively charged atoms floating freely around each other. The SLAC group found that when a group of electrons was passed through plasma, a “wake” (not unlike the wake of a ship on the ocean) followed them, pulling more electrons with them. These wake electrons were accelerated to nearly the speed of light, drawing energy from the surrounding plasma. This technique is far less straightforward than accelerating particles with electromagnets, but it is also far more efficient, so it could allow us to build more powerful particle accelerators without requiring as much space or money. There is still a great deal of research to be done on the dynamics of plasma, but this is a promising discovery.

The Slow Carbon Cycle

As we may already know, the carbon atom is very essential to life on Earth.
We use carbon to fuel our economy and we also eat the carbon we get in form of
sugar from plants.  The reservoirs of carbon are where the carbon is stored. Being the fourth most abundant element in universe, carbon is mostly stored in rocks. It can also be found in fossil fuels, ocean, soil, atmosphere and plants.

The carbon cycle is when carbon flows from one reservoir to another in an exchange. In this blog, I will describe the slow carbon cycle, which is the exchange of carbon between the atmosphere, land and ocean.

The slow carbon cycle initiates when atmospheric carbon combines with water to form carbonic acid (H2CO3). This acid falls on rocks and it dissolves them. When the rocks dissolve they form ions such as calcium and these ions flow into the rivers, which leads to the ocean.  In the ocean, the calcium ions react with carbonate and produce calcium carbonate, which makes the shells of different organisms. When these organisms die, they sink to the bottom of the ocean where layers of sediment are buried and carbon is stored in limestone.

600px-Marine-microfossils-major_hg

These are four marine organisms living in the ocean. The micro organisms in c and d have shells that are made of calcium carbonate. When these organisms die, these shells sink to the ground to form limestone. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Then how is the carbon transported from the bottom of the ocean back into the atmosphere? This is done though volcanoes. Volcanoes make the rocks at the bottom of the ocean melt under extreme pressure and heat. When the rocks are heated they combine with silicate minerals and from this process carbon dioxide is formed and released back into the atmosphere.

800px-Puu_Oo_-_Beach_1988

This is a volcano in the ocean which effectively melts calcium carbonate in the bottom of the ocean and through reactions produces and releases carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. Source: Wikimedia Commons

I find this process to be very unique. Through the slow carbon cycle, carbon flows through different reservoirs and meets the biological needs of the living organisms in that reservoir. When the organism no longer needs the carbon, the carbon then flows out of the system and into another system where it is more useful.

Naqsh Fatima Bhangu

Can’t decide? Roll a die

chess

Image source: Flickr commons; Uploader: neni d

Do you ever feel as though despite your experiences, you repeatedly make the same mistake? Most of the time, we center our decisions on logic and prior experience. But…  can we ever get the best outcome by simply making a random choice and ignoring what we already know?

(Click here for an awesome article about how our brain helps our reasoning and decision-making!)

Rats were monitored by a computer that tried to predict the rat’s decisions. Image Source: Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI)

In a study recently published in Cell, scientists from Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) found that when faced with a challenging “opponent”, rats stopped using strategy to make decisions and made decisions randomly instead. In the experiment, rats were presented with two holes in a wall, one of which contained a sugary reward. Meanwhile, the rats were monitored by a computer-simulated opponent, which recorded the rats’ past choices so as to predict its future choices. To get the sugar, the rats had to choose the hole that was not predicted by the opponent. When faced with opponents that made weak predictions, the rats selected holes using strategy. However, when the computers used complex algorithms to predict the rats’ choices, the rats instead selected holes at random!

Are there advantages for animals to change behaviour from using logic to choosing randomly? Firstly, when animals encounter situations that are unpredictable in the wild, such as predators or prey that move erratically, it could be beneficial to move randomly to evade predation or capture prey. Moreover, random behaviour might be useful in the exploration of new environments. For example, a rat might find food in a place that it would not explore if it were making decisions based on past experience gained in a different environment.

The scientists from HHMI discovered that when the rats faced hard-to-beat opponents, the amount of a stress hormone (norepinephrine) increased in the rat’s brain. Furthermore, the rats continued to act randomly even after the opponent started to make weak predictions again! To free the rats from this state, the scientists suppressed the release of the stress hormone, causing rats to return to their strategic decision-making.

Further research into the role of hormones in the brain on decision-making may lead to novel treatments foe mental conditions. Image source: Flickr commons; Uploader: European Space Agency

This study may be a step in the right direction of developing a treatment for “learned helplessness” in people. Learned helplessness is a mental condition in which an individual becomes unwilling to avoid painful situations because they believe that they cannot control the outcome. The actions of people suffering from this disorder resemble that of the rats stuck in “random mode”, as their decision-making is impaired. Perhaps a treatment can be found in the near future for learned helplessness and other conditions, such as depression, with further research investigating the brain’s function in decision-making.

In the video below, uploaded to YouTube by LennyBound, an Oxford math professor participates in an experiment that aims to explain the brain’s role in decision-making:

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-Imran Mitha

Ebola: The Most Dangerous Virus In The World

Microbes, life forms too small to be seen by the unaided human eye, make our bodies their home and use it to live and reproduce. Among these microbes are viruses, more like machines than organisms, with only one purpose: to keep making more of themselves. Viruses inhabit living cells and use the cells’ machinery to reproduce, so the cells can’t work the way they’re supposed to. The results are generally horrible, and none more so than those of Zaire ebolavirus. Zaire ebolavirus can kill about 90% of the people it infects, though the current outbreak in West Africa has killed only about 65% of the confirmed cases according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Zaire ebolavirus image courtesy of The Tech Journal (click image).

Ebola is transferred through contact with infected bodily fluids, even sweat, and people infected with Ebola must be isolated in a health care facility. Symptoms of Ebola include vomiting, diarrhea, and haemorrhage (losing blood through openings on the surface of the body). In spite of this, contact with infected bodily fluids is not hard to come by, and Ebola is quite easy for a healthy person to contract. In addition, Ebola has started making its way around the world, and nobody is really safe. Humans have no official pharmaceutical defense (vaccines, drugs, medicine, etc.) against Ebola, making Ebola the deadliest virus in the world to humans, even more so than the almost invariably fatal (if untreated) rabies virus since humans have developed effective vaccines and treatments for rabies.

So how can we avoid Ebola? It’s worth pointing out that Z. ebolavirus can be killed with soap, so wash your hands frequently. If someone diagnosed with or suspected to have Ebola has been on your property, the area should be professionally cleaned and disinfected. Everyone who’s been on the property since the infected individual should be tested for Ebola as symptoms do not appear immediately after infection and may have been contracted by a visitor or resident. Ebola has a horrifying reputation, and the results are very real. Nonetheless, if we all do our part, Ebola is unlikely to become a global pandemic (rapid infections and outbreaks all over the world). A YouTube video by TestTube puts this matter in clear perspective:

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– Jared Martin