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Tooth-Mounted Hearing Aid for the Masses

Linda Gettes
New Scientist
Sat, 19 Dec 2009 06:00 UTC
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© Barnaby Hall/Photonica/Getty Images
Learning to hear again.
Beethoven is said to have overcome his deafness by attaching a rod to his piano and clenching it between his teeth, enabling the musical vibrations to travel through his jawbone to his inner ear. Next year, a similar but less unwieldy approach might restore hearing to people with a common form of deafness.

Single-sided deafness (SSD) affects around 9 million people in the US, and makes it difficult for them to pinpoint the exact source of sounds. This can make crossing roads extremely hazardous, and also makes it hard to hear conversations in noisy rooms.

Sonitus Medical of San Mateo in California has created a small device that wraps around the teeth. It picks up the sounds detected from a tiny microphone in the deaf ear and transforms them into vibrations. These then travel through the teeth and down the jawbone to the cochlea in the working ear, where they are transmitted to the brain providing stereo sound. The same process of "bone conduction" explains how we hear our own voices, and why they sound different when they are recorded and played back to us.
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Cheeseburger

Johnny Can You Spell Salmonella? U.S. School Lunch vs. Jack in the Box

David Murphy
Civil Eats
Tue, 22 Dec 2009 01:32 UTC
How is it that a country can put a man on the moon, but can't seem to feed it's children school lunches that are safer than those eaten at McDonald's or Jack in the Box?

In the past 10 years more than 23,000 school children have become sick as a result of hundreds of food poisoning outbreaks in our nation's lunchrooms. A recent investigation by USA Today found that the meat served in U.S. school cafeterias faces less testing and lower safety standards than the mystery meat in Big Macs and Whopper Juniors.

USA Today reporters discovered that meat served at McDonald's, Burger King and Costco is tested as much as 10 times more often as the ground beef served in America's school cafeterias. While fast-food chains take samples on their production lines every 15 minutes, the USDA only tests 8 times a day.

In addition to testing more frequently, fast-food chains also set more stringent limits on so-called indicator bacteria. In the case of generic E. coli, the USDA allows 10 times more bacteria than Jack in the Box!

This fact should be a national embarrassment to all members of Congress, USDA officials and meat industry executives who have allowed our nation's school lunch programs to become the dumping grounds for cheap commodity products that feed the bottom line of corporate agribusiness.
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Amid Monsanto's Troubles, Another Study Questions the Health Effects of GMOs

Tom Philpott
Grist
Wed, 16 Dec 2009 21:02 UTC
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Pity executives at genetically modified seed giant Monsanto. Not only are they having to knock heads with Department of Justice lawyers over the company's business practices, but some of their most-cherished PR talking points are being obliterated by researchers.

In the past few months, we've learned that its much-vaunted technologies don't really increase yields after all; and aren't really all that promising for adapting to climate change.

We're also getting a trickle of information that calls into serious question the PR talking point on which the entire GMO seed industry hangs: that GMO products are safe to eat. This is a widely held assumption; but as Don Lotter showed in a recent paper in the International Journal of the Sociology of Food and Agriculture, there has actually been shockingly little research done on the long-term effects of eating GMO foods - and most of what has been was conducted by the industry itself.

The problem is that government funding for independent research on GMOs is scant - and industry funding is non-existent. And it's extremely difficult for independent researchers to get their hands on GMO seeds without signing restrictive contracts with their patent holders, as the New York Times reported earlier this year.
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Lupus Not Identical in Twins

Tina Hesman Saey
Science News
Mon, 21 Dec 2009 18:33 UTC
Pattern of chemical tags on DNA linked to the autoimmune disease

Lupus can tell identical twins apart by the distinguishing marks the pairs carry on their DNA.

Fewer DNA methylation marks may leave one twin vulnerable to the inflammatory autoimmune disease, even while the other sibling remains healthy, a new study appearing online December 22 in Genome Research shows.

The finding suggests that environmental factors determine whether genetically susceptible twins will contract lupus, or systemic lupus erythematosus, which is characterized by the immune system attacking the body's own cells.

Researchers have previously identified at least 17 different genes involved in lupus. If genes alone were responsible for determining whether a person gets lupus, then every time one identical twin got the disease, the other should too.
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Big Pharma Kills Yet Another Celebrity: Brittany Murphy on Multiple Prescriptions at Time of Death

Mike Adams
Natural News
Mon, 21 Dec 2009 10:00 UTC
It's not normal to die at age 32 of a heart attack. To make that happen, you normally have to be taking chemical substances of some kind, either recreational drugs or prescription drugs. Actress Brittany Murphy, who died this last weekend from a heart attack, was reportedly taking prescription drugs to treat the symptoms of the flu (not to actually treat the flu itself, mind you, just the symptoms of the flu). She was found collapsed in her shower after her heart gave out.

If prescription drugs are the cause, this would be just the latest celebrity death caused by pharmaceuticals. Other celebrity deaths recently caused by pharmaceuticals include:

- Heath Ledger

- Patrick Swayze

- Bernie Mac

- Michael Jackson

- Farrah Fawcett
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Testing group data shows swine flu waning in U.S.

Maggie Fox
Reuters
Mon, 21 Dec 2009 18:06 UTC
child_tamiflu
© Reuters/Nacho Doce
A boy looks at a woman holding out a box of Tamiflu as she talks with journalists outside a school in Lisbon July 7, 2009
Results from flu tests show the pandemic of swine flu is definitely on the downswing in the United States, researchers at Quest Diagnostics said Friday.

The report supports what U.S. health officials have said -- the H1N1 is ebbing across much of the United States, having reached a second peak in October.

"Children ages five to 14 continue to experience the highest percentage of H1N1 positive test results compared to negative results, with a positivity rate close to 40 percent. By comparison, nearly 80 percent of children in this age group tested positive for the virus in late October," Quest said in a statement.

The company analyzed 170,000 flu tests taken between May and December to map out two peaks in the U.S. epidemic -- one in April and one at the end of October.

"Between this peak week and December 9, testing rates fell by 75 percent. In the most recent week reported, December 9, testing rates were equivalent to volumes experienced in late August, when the second wave began," the company said.
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Phoenix

Amino Acid N-Acetylcysteine Eases Compulsive Behavior Such as Hair Pulling

David Gutierrez
Natural News
Mon, 21 Dec 2009 08:09 UTC
A supplement of the amino acid N-acetylcysteine may ease the symptoms of compulsive hair pulling, according to a study conducted by researchers from the Minnesota School of Medicine and published in the Archives of General Psychiatry.
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Maine to consider cell phone cancer warning

Glenn Adams
Associated Press
Sun, 20 Dec 2009 21:33 UTC
Augusta, Maine - A Maine legislator wants to make the state the first to require cell phones to carry warnings that they can cause brain cancer, although there is no consensus among scientists that they do and industry leaders dispute the claim.

The now-ubiquitous devices carry such warnings in some countries, though no U.S. states require them, according to the National Conference of State Legislators. A similar effort is afoot in San Francisco, where Mayor Gavin Newsom wants his city to be the nation's first to require the warnings.

Maine Rep. Andrea Boland, D-Sanford, said numerous studies point to the cancer risk, and she has persuaded legislative leaders to allow her proposal to come up for discussion during the 2010 session that begins in January, a session usually reserved for emergency and governors' bills.
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How Diabetes And Obesity Are Ravaging America Today

Dr. Mark Hyman
Huffington Post
Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:50 UTC
Do you fear for your health or feel exhausted all the time? Are you overweight? Or do you just have too much belly fat? Do you suffer from diabetes, monitor your blood sugar all the time, have serious blood sugar and insulin imbalances, or have elevated cholesterol, blood pressure, and triglyceride levels? If so, you may find this remarkable story of one my patient's very interesting.

One evening, after a lecture in New York, a man approached me about becoming my patient. He was rotund, with a round, ruddy face, a booming voice, and a gentle manner. Everything about him was large--his appetite, his belly, and his heart.
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Traits Of People With Rare Accelerated Aging Syndrome Identified By Researchers

Kristen Holland Shear
Medical News Today
Sun, 20 Dec 2009 00:00 UTC
UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have provided the most extensive account to date of the unique observable characteristics seen in patients with an extremely rare premature aging syndrome.

The findings, reported online and in the December issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, suggest that patients with atypical progeroid syndrome (APS) should not be lumped together with those diagnosed with two similar but more well-defined accelerated aging disorders called progeria and mandibuloacral dysplasia (MAD).

"Before this paper, APS was not recognized as a distinct disease," said Dr. Abhimanyu Garg, professor of internal medicine in the Center for Human Nutrition at UT Southwestern and the study's lead author. "Although APS is extremely rare, we believe it should be a distinct entity, particularly since it seems to be less severe than either of the related disorders, and the patients show unique clinical features and metabolic abnormalities."

There are currently 24 reported cases of APS worldwide, including the 11 evaluated in the recent UT Southwestern study.
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