Chloé Sharrocks

Photo by Christian Gidlöf, courtesy of Wikipedia

Cola soft drinks may soon carry health warnings on their packaging if doctor’s warnings are listened to.

A report in the International Journal of Clinical Practice suggests that excessive drinking of cola drinks can lead to profound muscle paralysis.  This news comes after an Australian ostrich farmer required emergency treatment for lung paralysis after consuming between 4 and 10 litres of cola a day and a pregnant woman complained of tiredness, appetite loss and persistent vomiting after drinking as much as 3 litres of cola daily for six years.  Tests showed that she was suffering an irregular heartbeat.

Scientists now believe that cola soft drinks cause potassium levels in the blood to fall dangerously low, leading to hypokalaemia.  Caffeine-free cola fans should not rest on their laurels either.  Dr Moses Elisaf from the University of Ioannina in Greece, and author of the research paper, warned that caffeine-free cola products could also cause hypokalaemia because of the fructose they contain can cause diarrhoea.

This news has got me thinking.  In a world where health and safety is a significant issue and people have tried suing McDonald’s for making them obese, will most food and drink products one day have to carry health warnings akin to those on cigarette’s packaging?  Will chocolate one day say: “Warning, may cause tooth decay and obesity”, packets of nuts say warn that they “May cause allergies” and alcohol (in addition to its current advice) be labelled with notices that it “Can cause irresponsible behaviour, crazy dancing, addiction and in some cases death”?

I’m all for pointing out the truely harmful effects that cigarettes can cause, but am worried that the current prevalence of the ’suing culture’ could lead to rather obsessive labelling.  The point regarding cigarettes is that even a limited amount of smoking can cause severe harm, whereas the occaisional can of Coke or chocolate bar (as a treat) is unlikely to kill anyone.

As a keen horse-rider, I’ve always advocated that riding is good for your health and fitness, but now it seems research carried out on horses could have real impact on the world of injured sportsmen and women.

Researchers at Cambridge have discovered that a revolutionary stem cell treatment for equine tendon injuries could have some impact on human injuries.

VetCell Bioscience in Cambridge carried out tests on more than 1,500 horses with tendon problems and found that half of them were less likely to re-injure themselves over a three-year period.  Traditional treatments, involving box rest, icing and anti-inflammatory drugs were not found to be as effective.

The stem cells used in the treatment come directly from the patient themselves and do not carry the same controversy as those generated from embryos.  Millions of the patient’s stem cells are injected directly into the injured tendon or ligament to aid the body’s natural healing process.

If human trials in 2011 are found to be successful, the development could mean that footballers and other athletes will be able to come back to full fitness more quickly following injury.  David Mountford, chief operating officer of VetCell Bioscience in Cambridge also hopes that “the treatment could alleviate or cure long-term tendon injuries in older human patients, such as prolonged shoulder injuries.”

Professor Nicola Maffulli, a sports medicine and orthopaedic consultant believes it is inspiring that clinical veterinary science is providing novel approaches for human medicine.  She told Horse & Hound:

“We normally see the translation happening the other way around.  I am very excited to be involved in the human studies and hope that the results will herald a new era in the treatment of musculoskeletal soft tissue injuries.  At present the management of human tendinopathy [tendon injury] is more an art than a science but this approach could potentially reverse that situation.”

As part of my MSc Science Communication course at Imperial we spent some lectures focusing on semiotics (the science of signs) and how science is frequently incorporated in science advertising.  The use of seeminly-scientific buzz words (eg. Nivea’s face-cream “DNAge“) and selectively chosen images that denote nature-vs-man-made/good-vs-evil all connote the essence of science, – the appealing values of truth, certainity and control – indirectly transferring these onto the product being advertised.  And is it any wonder that marketing brand managers are so keen to latch on to science?  In 2008, Danone saw sales of their yoghurt Activia, rise by more than 25% – surely some of their success is the way they market it as scientific, with it’s aptly named “Bifidus ActiRegularis®” culture.

So I can’t say I was surprised when I came across the article “The genius of Wii Fit” on the guardian’s website earlier today.  This piece by Keith Stuart emphasises how even the world of videogame marketing is no longer distinct from science.  His article is an enjoyable read (although it’s a shame about the abundance of typos he has made!) and I recommend reading his piece in full.

However, to quickly summarise: he discusses how Wii Fit is being marketed very much in the same way as “low cholesterol dairy spreads and pro-biotic yoghurt drinks”, using a documentary-style influenced advert, road-shows around the country and a website with the unanticipated name of “Feel Great Britain”.

One other thing we learnt in our course is the use of rhetoric in science.  Pieces of revolutionary science (such as Einstein’s great theories of relativity) don’t follow the normal – they buck the trend.  Einstein wrote his academic paper in a refreshing way, employing his own method of rhetoric and staying away from the passive third-person style of many journal articles.  Other scientists too have bucked the trend and even if their findings have since been disproved, we still remember their work as classical piecesof science, because of their enthralling writing style.

Wii Fit is following suit – instead of using marketing techniques akin to movies or music the way other video games have done, they’re being maverick.  They’re using science and branding commonly used for products advertised in women’s magazines to make them stand out.  And with Wii Fit still enjoying being top of the videogame charts, their new approach seem to be working.

With Britain having one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in Europe, it could be argued that things are looking pretty dire.  A couple of months ago several British male teenagers (one of whom was still a ‘tweenager’ at the date of the intercourse) were fighting over newspaper space claiming that they had fathered the child of a 15 year old girl.  Alfie Patten the now 13 year old was declared the “the exploited face of broken Britain” by the Telegraph.

At the same time, many older couples are still having unwanted pregnancies, whether through carelessness or as a result of pure accident.  Now scientists have found a possible way to improve contraception and shift the responsibility of contraceptive preparation onto both sexes.

Researchers in China have found an effective, reversible method for male contraception that is thought to have no serious short-term harmful side-effects.

Copyright of Armin Kübelbeck

Publishing their work in The Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM), Dr. Yi-Qun Gu from the National Research Institute for Family Planning in Beijing, China, carried out the largest multi-centre male hormonal contraceptive efficacy clinical trial.  Using healthy fertile men between the ages of 20-45 (all of whom had fathered at least one child within the preceding two years), they injected for 30 months the 1,045 participants with 500 mg of a formulation of testosterone undecanoate (TU) in tea seed oil.

The men all had partners aged between 18-38, and results showed a cumulative contraceptive failure (pregnancy) rate of 1.1 per 100 men in the 24-month efficacy phase.  There was no serious adverse effects reported and after the injections were stopped normal reproductive function returned in all but two of the 1,045 participants.

Further experiments are required to ensure there are no long-term side-effects (either on the cardiovascular system, prostate or changes in behavior), but this work is surely promising news for both ‘broken Britain’ and couples worldwide.

Researchers in South Korea announced at the end of last week that they had successfully created four beagle puppies that can glow red after using cloning techniques.

An innocent looking Beagle

Each of the four dogs is named “Ruppy” (a combination of the words “ruby” and “puppy”) and initially look like normal beagle puppies. On closer inspection it can be seen that the dogs’ nails and thick-skinned abdomens look red to the naked eye and when under ultraviolet light glow red.

Although previous experiments have accomplished the same feats in rats, mice and cats the researchers at Seoul National University are the first to create transgenic dogs carrying fluorescent genes.

Using skin cells from a normal beagle, the scientists added fluorescent genes and then inserted the cells into eggs which were implanted in a surrogate mother (a mixed breed bitch).

The significance of this experiment is that it shows scientists are capable of successfully inserting genes with a specific trait. This could lead to them being able to manipulate their knowledge of genetic engineering so that they can implant other (non-fluorescent genes) to treat specific diseases.

However this experiment raises many questions. As well as the ethical concerns of engineering animals in seemingly pointless and humorous ways it leads to concerns of the ways in which scientists can engineer living creatures. In years to come will it be possibly for quirky parents to not only make their children clever, tall and healthy, but will quirky characteristics – maybe glowing green so that they can spot them amongst their friends easier? As farcical as it may sound, it may indeed be possible in years to come – humans may start looking less human-like and more alien.

There are already some concerns about the dog breeding industry (look at the BBC’s retraction of television coverage of Crufts) – will this piece of research be the start of more breeding manipulation – will pink Labradors soon be the latest fashion with the likes of Paris Hilton?

Firstly apologies for the blog falling quiet for the last few weeks – I moved flats during April and have been without internet access until only several days ago!  Hopefully, there will be more frequent blog posts from now on!  Thanks for waiting patiently!

Photography is something that has always interested me, though I can’t claim to know anything about how to take good photographs!  Today the Guardian published a gallery online of portraits taken by the photographer Richard Cannon of ambasedors of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) and some of the photographs are really inspiring. Scientists are shown snow-boarding (all in a day’s work according to Liza Brooks), standing inside a bubble and being blown about in a wind-tunnel, as well as some more artisitically orchestrated shots. eg. Jonathan Taylor who works for Rolls Royce.  Perhaps some of these shots could be used in promotional material to show children that science isn’t all about sitting in a lab wearing a white coat.  Anyone fancy sending the link on to DCSF (Dept. for Children, Schools & Families) or DIUS (Dept. for Innovation, Universtities and Skills)?

After doing some searching online for more science photography (rather than of scientists) I discovered that there is an abundance of it on Flickr.  Here are some of my favourite images:

Please note that all of the above images are copyright of their creators.  Please hover over the image to see the copyright information and to see the original image please click on the above relevant thumbail.  Many thanks to the owners who have kindly agreed to their reproduction here.

If anyone knows of any other good sources for amateur/professional science photography (other than libraries) that’s worth me perusing, please leave a comment.