House and hypochondriacs

My wife and I have become addicted to viewing the serial exploits of Dr Gregory House MD, you know, the character played by the inimitable British actor Hugh Laurie. House MD has not only made Laurie very rich and famous and convinced a whole generation of Americans that the nouveaux blues singer is surely an Amercun not a Brit, but has underpinned the emergent psychological infection of seasonal hypochondriasis.

House MD is fundamentally a medical version of Sherlock Holmes and hinges on the notion of differential diagnostics. I was hoping to find or make a nice infographic of symptoms and outcomes or a flow chart based on the TV show, but GE have essentially beaten me to it with their interactive DD graphic.

When you have heartburn, do you also feel nauseous? Or if you’re experiencing insomnia, do you tend to put on a few pounds, or more? By combing through 7.2 million of our electronic medical records, GE has created a disease network to help illustrate relationships between various conditions and how common those connections are. You can take a look at conditions or condition categories and gender to uncover interesting associations.

Health InfoScape.

Looking forward to Christmas?

In the West, it’s relatively easy to get caught up in the euphoria of Christmas, isn’t it? Regardless of one’s beliefs in the origins of the Universe and humanity’s place in it, countless millions of us succumb to the fake snow, the tinsel and the artificial sentimentality.

My latest Pivot Points column Looking forward to Christmas in The Euroscientist.

Bertrand Russell did not worship a teapot on the far side of the Sun

Russell: “Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes.

But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.”

More tea Vicar?

What are the main cancer risks?

NHS Choices recently summarised and analysed the findings of a UK study into cancer risk. It reports that for many people several factors are involved. Moreover, one’s personal risk also depends on genetics, family history and aging. According to the study in 2010, around 43% of UK cancer cases were blamed on lifestyle and environmental factors, equating to about 134,000 cancers. The research showed the following percentages for 34% of cancers in 2010 for which four key lifestyle factors were invoked:

Tobacco: 19.4%
Diet: 9.2%
Being overweight or obese: 5.5%
Alcohol: 4%

Smoking was commonly associated with lung, mouth, throat, trachea and oesophagal cancers.

Other risk factors included: occupation (3.7%), UV radiation (sun or sunbed) (3.5%), infection (3.1%), excess intake of red and processed meat (2.7%), lack of physical exercise (1%), breastfeeding for less than six months (0.5%), use of post-menopausal hormones (0.5%). Smoking was the single biggest risk factor for both men and women.

After smoking, the three biggest risk factors were: lack of fruit and vegetables (6.1%), occupation (4.9%)
and alcohol (4.6%). For women they were: overweight/obesity (6.9% link to breast cancer), infection (3.7%), UV radiation (3.6%), alcohol (3.3%), lack of fruit and vegetables (3.4%).

Gone chemical fishing

The latest issue of my column on SpectroscopyNOW is online this week, reporting on Euro chemists who have used a combinatorial approach to go fishing for ring-shaped molecules that soak up specific heavy metals: Macrocyclic fishers.

Also online: Gold nanorods with a non-toxic coating to beat cancer, a theoretical approach to crystallisation reveals at long last the complete chemical structure of an important amino acid.

Finally, chemists in Iran have developed a statistical tool for tracking down the culprits who spill heavy fuel oil at offshore drilling sites.

Three wise sci-tech books for the holidays

Three sci-tech books books landed on my desk just in time for a short seasonal review: 9 Algorithms that Changed the Future, The Twitter Book and Science Ink.

In “9 algorithms”, Computer Scientist John MacCormick discusses the ingenious ideas that drive today’s computers pointing out how a simple web search plucks needles from virtual haystacks while uploading a photo to Facebook involves millions of pieces of information being transmitted and received over myriad error-prone network connections. The algorithms that make such things and many others, including data compression, encryption, error correction, and pattern recognition seem simple from the user perspective are laid bare by MacCormick in an engaging and jargon-reduced manner.

The second edition of Tim O’Reilly and Sarah Milstein’s tweety classic – The Twitter Book – brings us up to date with getting the most out of twitter. As up to date as any printed document can be with respect to an online activity, that is. They explain how to use the micro-blogging platform to connect with friends, family, colleagues, customers and even celebrities. They also teach you how to stand out on Twitter and how to avoid the common mistakes and pitfalls. Finally, the duo reveal how Twitter is more than what the majority of non-users imagine it to be, they explain how Twitter can become a critical communications channel that breaks the news, offers advice, answers questions and entertains.

Finally, Science Ink is Carl Zimmer’s latest book and builds on his well-known accidental hobby of collecting scientific tattoos. The lavish hardback reveals the DNA dudes and the chemistry chicks who have adorned themselves with sub-dermal inky residues as a badge of geeky honour. Almost every part of the body has been stamped or marked tribally in almost every area of science: astronomy, biology, chemistry, earth sciences, mathematics, neuroscience, palaeontology, physics and more. Some are exquisite, some not so much. Discover the very personal stories about these scientific tattoos (if you want the science itself you’ll have to look elsewhere). Almost all the tattoos are inspirational in some way, but, at the same, I’m afraid you won’t see me in a tattoo parlour getting the sciencebase crown ether logo needled into my biceps.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a.k.a. chronic obstructive lung disease (COLD), chronic obstructive airway disease (COAD), chronic airflow limitation (CAL) and chronic obstructive respiratory disease (CORD), is the occurrence of chronic bronchitis and emphysema together. This pair work together to narrow the airways of the lungs leading to breathing problems. The disease is under-diagnosed and under-treated. Smoking tobacco smoking is one of the major causes as is exposure to smoke from coal and wood used as domestic fuels.

In contrast to asthma, breathing problems in COPD are poorly reversible even with powerful bronchodilators and the condition worsens over time. BusinessWire reports that the market for COPD drugs will increase from approximately $8.3 billion in 2010 to more than $13.4 billion by 2020. A lateral part of the market is, of course, influenza vaccination. Most healthcare practitioners recommend that COPD patients receive an annual flu jab. Among the companies hoping to treat COPD is MediciNova, which has a product in the pipeline.

MediciNova’s MN-221 is being developed for the treatment of exacerbations of COPD (and asthma), and was licensed from Kissei Pharmaceutical Co. It is an intravenous beta(2)-adrenergic receptor agonist. MediciNova has completed a Phase 1b clinical study on patients with stable, moderate to severe COPD.

In case of osteoporosis, don’t take lead supplements

If you’re worried about osteoporosis (and you should be, it’s a killer, albeit indirectly through hospitalisation and the potential for acquiring lethal infections on a prolonged medical incarceration), you may have been considering calcium supplementation. Fine. But, , stick to purified supplements (calcium carbonate or calcium citrate, for those taking proton pump inhibitors for GERD, such as omeprazole).

Why?

Because ‘natural’ does not necessarily mean good. Calcium carbonate preparations made from oyster shells or bone meal can be high in lead or other toxic heavy metal elements that are detrimental to (bone) health. Load-bearing exercise is also a very useful combatant to prevent loss of bone mass as one gets older.

If you’re worried about “synthetic” being bad for you compared to “natural” then take a look at the chemistry. Pure calcium carbonate dissolved in your stomach is exactly the same regardless of its source, but those “natural” supplements are generally not pure, despite what your naturopath might claim. This has, of course, been known for several years, but my recent foray into the world of personal proton pump inhibition led my neurotic brain to seeking out information on side-effects of omeprazole.

Osteoporosis Symptoms.

Research Blogging IconKim, M., Kim, C., & Song, I. (2003). Analysis of lead in 55 brands of dietary calcium supplements by graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry after microwave digestion Food Additives and Contaminants, 20 (2), 149-153 DOI: 10.1080/0265203021000053588

What is a Higgs Boson?

Today, CERN the laboratory behind the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is set to make an announcement about the discovery, or not as the case may be, of the so-called “God Particle”, the elementary particle formed just after the Big Bang, almost 14 billion years ago that is posited to give all other particles the property we know as mass.

Here’s a snippet from the CERN press release on today’s announcement. I’m paraphrasing, of course:

“A seminar will be held blah blah on 13 December blah blah sufficient blah blah to make significant progress in the search for the Higgs boson, but not enough to make any conclusive statement on its existence or non-existence…blah blah blah blah… ”

It’s that phrase “not enough to make any conclusive statement”, that gets me. In other words, after more than two years of activity (not counting the 2008 false start) and terabytes of data generation, they’re confident in telling the world that they have a hint of a possible tentative suggesion of an inference of a sneaking suspicion that the Higgs Boson might putatively exist…or not.

Resident Evil, Uroboros and the benzene ring

The Ouroboros or Uroborus is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent eating its own tail. From the Greek meaning tail eater.

The Ouroboros is commonly used to represent self-reflexivity or cyclicality, and other psychobabble nonsense. But, for chemists, it has far greater, more truly physical relevance as it’s the metaphor Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz used to sell his theory that the C6H6 molecule we know as benzene is in fact a ring.

Benzene is an aromatic molecule, which not only means it has an odour, but also that it has the property of aromaticity, which is stability conferred on it by the particular arrangement of the electrons that hold the carbons together in a ring. From tail-eating snakes to the present day benzene has intrigued chemists. It’s present as part of millions of molecules but we still do not fully understand its stability nor its reactions. A new study on which I reported for Chemistry Views recently takes us a step closer with a surprising result regarding that aromaticity…

Apparently, the name Uroborus also has relevance to players of the game Resident Evil 5, although I wouldn’t know. I never got the hang of Asteroids nor Space Invaders so haven’t spent a lot of time playing computer games…

Research Blogging IconBean, D., & Fowler, P. (2011). Effect on Ring Current of the Kekulé Vibration in Aromatic and Antiaromatic Rings The Journal of Physical Chemistry A, 115 (46), 13649-13656 DOI: 10.1021/jp2077424