March 30, 1842: First documented use of ether as an anesthetic

1842: James Venable has a tumor surgically removed from his neck by Dr. Crawford Long. This otherwise routine surgery is significant because it is the first documented use of ether as an anesthetic.



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Drugs and Toxicity: "The least toxic drug known to humans is now illegal."

The least toxic drug known to humans is now illegal. The most toxic is available at Safeway. None of this makes any sense at all. And yet we continue to imprison people for ingesting substances far less harmful than others freely available. One has to wonder what the prohibitionists are smoking. Maybe nutmeg.



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Chinese food - no good !

The typical Chinese food restaurant menu is a sea of nutritional no-nos, a consumer group has found. A plate of General Tso's chicken, for example, is loaded with about 40 percent more sodium and more than half the calories an average adult needs for an entire day. The battered, fried chicken dish with vegetables has 1,300 calories, 3,200 milligrams of sodium and 11 grams of saturated fat. That's before the rice (200 calories a cup). And after the egg rolls (200 calories and 400 milligrams of sodium).



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Why Do Guys Fall Asleep After Sex?

For many women, the correlation between sex and snoring is one of those annoying facts of life: no matter when passionate encounters occur, men always seem to fall asleep immediately afterwards. Although women sometimes feel sleepy after sex, the phenomenon does seem more pronounced in men. What is it, then, that spirals them into the land of nod?



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20 Things You Didn't Know About... Skin

1 It's your body's largest organ, despite what the readers of Maxim think.

2 An average adult's skin spans 21 square feet, weighs nine pounds, and contains more than 11 miles of blood vessels.

3 The skin releases as much as three gallons of sweat a day in hot weather. The areas that don't sweat are the nail bed, the margins of the lips, the tip of the penis, and the eardrums.

4 Ooh, that smell: Body odor comes from a second kind of sweat—a fatty secretion produced by the apocrine sweat glands, found mostly around the armpits, genitals, and anus.

5 Yum! The odor is caused by bacteria on the skin eating and digesting those fatty compounds.


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Genetic Pattern of Nicotine Addiction

Scientists at the University of Iowa have discovered certain genetic profiles in smokers that may determine a person's risk of developing nicotine addiction and other psychological behaviors. Using a genome-wide scan, scientists analyzed blood samples from smokers versus nonsmokers and found similar genetic patterns among smokers that may one day be used as a genetic test to determine who may be more vulnerable to nicotine addiction.

In this latest study, published in the American Journal of Medical Genetics, Philibert and his colleagues analyzed the DNA samples of 94 people, some smokers and some nonsmokers. Using a technique called transcriptional profiling, they looked at all 30,000 genes of the human genome, fluorescently labeling those that were turned on versus those that were turned off in both groups. What they found was both promising and daunting: 579 genes were more activated and 584 other genes were less activated in smokers versus nonsmokers.

Gunter adds that few psychological behaviors exist alone. For example, people who smoke may also have panic disorders or depression, each of which may involve a number of different genes. "How do you sort that out?" Gunter asks. "Is a genetic test disorder- specific, or specific to a cluster of disorders? There may be some sites that contribute more to prediction of a disorder than other sites. In the years to come, could we prune that down? Maybe."

There's also a question of whether, once a person starts smoking, increased nicotine consumption causes certain genes to turn on or off. To that end, Philibert plans to run similar genome-wide analyses on younger people who have not yet started smoking but may have a family history of nicotine dependence. He will also analyze DNA samples from patients with single psychological diagnoses to obtain what he calls a "cleaner phenotype."

However, Hinrichs believes it will be a while before scientists can design accurate genetic tests for such disorders. "So far, researchers have identified a number of genetic markers which may increase susceptibility to drug addiction," says Hinrichs. "Any of these would only increase the risk of addiction by a small percentage. We certainly have a long way to go before we can routinely use genetic tests."

Obesity can make you even hungrier

New research shows that severely overweight individuals develop a leptin resistance, destroying the body's ability to regulate appetite.



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What happens in our brain when we think about potentially losing money?

UCLA psychologists recently offers new insights about brain respond when we think about taking risks, like gambling.

What happens in our brain when we think about potentially losing money? Some of the same areas that get turned on when we think about winning money get turned off when we think about losing money.

A surprising finding is that as the amount of a potential loss increases, the parts of the brain that process fear or anxiety, such as the amygdala or the insula, are not activated.

"What we found instead," Poldrack said, "is you don't turn anything up. You turn down the reward areas of the brain, and you turn them down more strongly for losses than you turn them up for gains. Just as people respond more strongly to a $100 potential loss than a $100 potential gain, the brain responds more strongly to a $100 potential loss versus a $100 potential gain."

Nanotechnology and Brain Surgery

Victims of stroke and traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries sometimes recover through rehabilitation, yet they often have permanent disabilities, in part, because slow nerve growth in the brain.

Fortunately, a treatment has restored lost vision in lab animals appears to overcome these obstacles, allowing a mass of nerve cells to regrow after being cut. "We think this is the basis of reconstructive brain surgery -- which is something nobody has ever heard of before," says Rutledge Ellis-Behnke, the researcher on this project and a brain and cognitive sciences researcher at MIT.

The treatment may be available to humans in trials in as little as three years if all goes well in large-animal studies, the researchers say.

In their experiments, the researchers first cut into a brain structure that conveys signals for vision, causing the small lab animals to be blinded in one eye. They then injected a clear fluid containing chains of amino acids into the damaged area. Once in the environment of the brain, these chains, called peptides, bind to one another, assembling into nano-scale fibers that bridge the gap left by the damage. The mesh of fibers prevents scar tissue from forming and may also encourage cell growth (the researchers are still investigating the mechanisms involved).

As a result, nerve cells restored severed connections, allowing 75 percent of the animals to see well enough to detect and turn toward food. The treatment restored around 30,000 nerve connections, compared with 25-30 connections made possible in other experimental treatments, Ellis-Behnke says.

Because the treatment overcomes key obstacles to the healing of nerve tissue in stroke and traumatic brain and spinal cord injury, the researchers, as well as other experts in the field, believe it could prove to be an effective treatment for these types of nervous system damage.

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