Science & Health – Page 5 – The Daily Opinion

Martians On Mars? Nah, Probably Not

The idea that the legend of Martians on Mars is actually true has taken a further blow as the building blocks of life, which are present on the red planet, did not actually come from any life forms. Granted, it was a long shot in the beginning, but it’s nice to have a little bit of faith in these things. It allows us to make lots of bad Sci-Fi films.

Anyway, the journal Science published its findings about the building blocks of life on Mars. Carbon is required for life on the red planet, the green planet, our planet, and any other planet that hopes to support life as its the main organic molecule that makes up practically everything. If you’ve ever taken a class in chemistry then you’ll realise just how often carbon pops up.

The scientists from Washington D.C. who ran their research from the Carnegie Institution for Science discovered that Mars actually has lots of reduced carbon. Reduced carbon is actually a different form of carbon. To put it simply, reduced carbon is a molecule that’s bonded either to a hydrogen atom or to itself. I’m not going to go into exactly how bonds work or anything, the point is that these are much smaller molecules as carbon normally has four bonds to utilise.

Ok, we’ve answered that. But does it answer the claims by geeks all around the world that Martians on Mars isn’t just a fantasy? In a way it does as this carbon was found to have been produced by volcanic activity. And that’s certainly possible since Mars has the largest known volcano around. On a side note, to give you a sense of scale of Olympus Mons (latin for Mount Olympus) it’s nearly three times the size of Mount Everest when it’s above ground level. Furthermore, it has a large moat surrounding its base that’s thought to be there due to its weight pressing down on the surface of the planet. But the truth is that there are other smaller volcanoes on the red planet as well.

It doesn’t mean to say that life on Mars doesn’t exist as this is only a small sample, but it does hit that myth and reduce its credibility significantly. What this research does mean, though, is that there could have been life on Mars at some point. It also tells us that life could exist on Mars in the future. And that’s something to be happy about as it’s always been one of those space possibilities of tomorrow.

Animals Do Have Personalities

Chimpanzees apparently do have personalities, according to a new study. Although, what first struck me was: “How does one define a personality?” I’ve always viewed it as something quite subjective. When I consider someone to be the type of person who lacks a personality, I tend to have people who disagree with me. They’re wrong, of course, but they still disagree with me.

Anyway, the research team at the University Of Edinburgh apparently found that Chimpanzees do have personalities. What is an animal personality, though? Well an animal personality is defined as the differences between different animals. To make it a little clearer, if there’s a fish and he can see some bait in the water. A fish with personality A may think to himself that he doesn’t want to take the risk and isn’t interested anymore. A fish with personality B may decide he will take the risk to get the juicy piece of bait on the end of the hook. And this can be applied to a variety of different scenarios.

The study also specified that chimpanzees and animals like Orang-utans, which are sometimes referred to as ‘People of the Jungle’, need and require friends just like most humans. But surely we knew this in the beginning due to the herd mentality of many species of ape? If you watch any nature show then you will see it. In fact, some species of ape will even get their protein from killing and cannibalising other apes.

What does all this mean, though?

In short, it will have very little impact on our scientific advancement, nor will it influence tomorrow or anything like that. What it will show, with a little more research, is that we did evolve from a common ancestor; the common ancestor being the ancestor chimpanzees evolved from too. And this will have a profound impact on a variety of religious sects as they still don’t believe that evolution even exists.

Furthermore, a question I’ve always wondered about, is who exactly is this common ancestor? If we can gradually trace ourselves back then it will yield the various incarnations of ourselves all the way throughout history. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but it is a point of interest at least.

On a side note, the only thing we have to be surprised about is why didn’t we know all this before? Why do humans still find it hard to grasp that we are just really intelligent apes? Why do so many humans still think we came from somewhere special, as if we are not like anything else on our planet? If we did then surely we could have predicted this to start with. Surely we are just slightly more intelligent monkeys?

Cloning is Here (in Korea)!

You would have thought that cloning a woolly mammoth would mean big news in this country, however it apparently doesn’t as there’s been absolutely no coverage for it. Russia and South Korean scientists signed an agreement to work together to recreate a woolly mammoth recently.

This is especially interesting as the mammoth last walked the earth about 4,500 years ago. But global warming has finally provided us with something good as the bones of these mammoths were uncovered when the permafrost of Russia’s Siberian plains melted.

The famous clone scientist Hwang Yoo-Suk signed on behalf of South Korea with Vasily Vasiliev signing on behalf of Russia’s North-Eastern Federal University in the Yakutsk area of Siberia. This is monumental because the idea hasn’t sparked any protests from people who want to hold back science due to their outdated ethical beliefs. Or maybe it’s just countries like the UK and the US that have people like that?

Hwang Yoo-Suk is perhaps the most famous scientist specialising in cloning on the planet as he successfully cloned the first dog in 2005. He and his team also unveiled eight cloned coyotes in October of 2011. However, like any good scientist, he has had his fair share of setbacks as in 2005 his research that supposedly read that human cloning could now be done was found to be faked. Nevertheless, he continued on and he is now one of the most respected scientists in the world.

The woolly mammoth is expected to be created by using tissue from the remains of the mammal recovered from the Siberian plains. The tissues are supposedly going to be cloned by using the eggs from a modern Indian elephant.

The Korea Herald then reported that a nuclear transfer process would be used on the tissue and the eggs would then be implanted into a live elephant so the mammal can give birth to the mammoth. This is a mammoth undertaking (pun intended) and this will push our ability to clone animals even further. Maybe one day we will manage to clone a fully fledged human?

But is this wrong in any way? My answer is no. Some people may argue that it’s messing with nature and playing god, and most of these people hold on to silly beliefs from thousands of years ago, but more practical people might argue that it causes undue suffering to the animals involved. The fear of creating mutants and deformed organisms is also a genuine concern.

When it comes to the undue suffering of animals I would argue that this is nothing new and we regularly test our latest medicines on them all the time. Granted, it never makes the news, but it does happen. You have to think about it like this. You can’t cause zero pain and take zero risk and still take the rewards. There’s risk and there’s pain, but for that we get the rewards that can take us into the future. The problem with people is that they only care about themselves and where they are now. Too many people look to the present and not to the future, and the worst of them even look purely at the past. The only way we can get past this is by having a more open mind, and that’s probably why we are talking about South Korea and Russia instead of the USA and the UK. This is one woolly mammoth for now, but in the future who knows?

Clonetrooper — Soldiers of the future, or would it technically be the past?

Will We Soon be Booking Doctor Appointments and Accessing Medical Records Online?

The Coalition government has today unveiled plans for patients that allow them to book appointments with their GPs online, as well as check test results on the Internet too. Apps for smartphones are to be developed and patients will have access to all their medical records online as well. Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said these plans will give patients more power.

Personally, I welcome this move because I tend to use technology every day. I use a smartphone and actually prefer to have most aspects of my life online, from banking to shopping. This move would really hone in the advances in technology and would allow the NHS to become a more accessible part of people’s lives.

I understand the dilemma a lot of patients face on a Monday morning when they have to book an appointment with their GP, often having to spend a considerable amount of time on the telephone trying to get in to see their doctor. In many cases, when individuals do finally get through they are offered an appointment much later in the week, or in some dire cases the following week. My elderly grandmother faces this dilemma each time she has to book an appointment, and to be honest it really isn’t fair. Much like it isn’t fair for people with children to spend so much time out of their day telephoning their local surgery when they really need to be doing much more important things in their lives. In that respect, you’d think that most people would welcome this plan, wouldn’t you?

There are critics of these new plans for the NHS. As ever, we need to look at the positives and negatives of the changes. We might be keen to see the NHS adapt to the 21^st century advances in technology, but many patients may not be ready to put their phone down and pick up a laptop. A lot of elderly patients will feel left behind, out of the loop and quite frankly angered by the new plans. In the technologically advanced generation we find ourselves in, are our older generations being left out or should they in fact embrace any future advances in technology?

The government needs to tread carefully when these plans are turned into reality so that users who don’t have Internet access or don’t use smartphones are included and can still easily access their local NHS branches.

It’s not only about being able to book appointments online. Patients will eventually have access to their medical records online, as well as test results being made available online too. This will raise questions about the issue of security for the proposed plans. Is allowing patients’ medical records to be accessed online a good thing, or will it be only a matter of time before hackers make their own plans to sabotage this information?

However, the government plan to enhance the system of booking appointments, they obviously need to take into account people’s views on security and sensitivity about their private information online.

But, to the vast majority of Internet users, who use online banking and enter their bank details online on a daily basis, is it any different accessing your medical records online and having test results sent through cyberspace?

A Lack of Dental Implants Can Cause More than a Broken Smile

It’s true. If you need dental implants and your dentist doesn’t offer them then you are in trouble. And this is not just because you are stuck with a broken smile that vaguely resembles the keys on a piano. Now you have to go through the arduous task of finding someone who does, but if there’s only one or two people in your area who can do it then you could end up paying out a lot of money.

But why don’t more dentists offer dental implants as part of their itinerary? Well the Dental Economics website sheds some light on this in an article by Anthony Sclar, a Miami-based oral technician.

Inferior supporting team.
More training.
Some dentists just don’t enjoy it.

Ok, if the dentist doesn’t enjoy it then there’s not a whole lot you can do about any of this. Most dentists tend to work in private practice so they are entitled to pick and choose which procedures they offer.

Broken teeth — This is probably why some dentists are not into this stuff.

In some cases, if an inferior team is present then there’s not a whole lot they can do about that either. If they have the ability to bring in a new team then that would be a good idea, but does the hassle really warrant the increased revenue? Some will say yes and some will say no.

Finally, let’s take a look at the dentists who just can’t be bothered. It’s their right to decide on what procedures they offer, but this might say a lot more about your dentist than you think. If they are too lazy to take a few training courses then maybe they’re too lazy to really care about your child’s toothache?

What will be the future of dental implants, though? Well the dental implant industry all around the world is on the up as more and more people are able to pay for this procedure. For example, the 8^th of May 2012 saw a press release from Healthcare Global talk about how ceramic dental implants are now available in Maryland, U.S.

But the future of the dental implant industry is already bright in the UK, because despite the fact that this country is dominated by the public healthcare industry, in the form of the NHS, the dental industry bucks the trend as it’s nearly completely privatised. So finding dental implants in Sheffield, London, Manchester, or Birmingham is not actually that difficult since many dentists prefer to keep away from the NHS.

“Like a patient etherized upon a table”: The horror of anaesthetic awareness

Whilst the statistical likelihood of finding yourself awake on the surgical operating table is less than 0.5%, the horrific idea of ‘anaesthetic awareness’ remains active in the popular consciousness. Although grouped under the title ‘general anaesthesia’, in fact anaesthesiologists administer a wide range of different drugs to place their patient into a sustained state of unconsciousness.

Despite the fact that televised medical dramas have made many of us familiar with the notion of being ‘put to sleep’ (we’ve all seen the injection of an induction agent such as sodium pentathol being given to the patient just before they’re wheeled into theatre), the process of anaesthesia is much more complex. After injecting this first drug, the anaesthesiologist also typically gives his patient an opiate (which works as a pain-eradicating analgesic), a benzodiazepine to reduce anxiety and a neuromuscular ‘blocking’ agent such as vecuronium. This sleeping state is then maintained by having the patient breathe oxygen laced with a vaporized liquid anaesthetic such as isoflurane.

Whilst medical advances have made anaesthesia the safest it has ever been, there are inevitably certain subsections of society who are more at risk of experiencing anaesthetic awareness. Although steps can be taken to offer alternative drugs to patients with medical conditions that would put their health in danger (like those with low blood pressure or women who require emergency caesarean operations) there will always be a margin of risk for anyone who undergoes surgery. Indeed, it is clear that any error in planning – no matter how small – could see the paralysing effects of a neuromuscular blocking agent become catastrophic for the patient. Even though the agent is used with very good reason (anaesthesia slows down the patient’s respiration rate and the paralysis induced by a neuromuscular blocker facilitates effortless control over their breathing), the fact that neuromuscular drugs make no impact on the patient’s consciousness leaves them vulnerable to an unimaginably horrific experience.

Certainly, in the event of any mishap (unanticipated patient tolerance, human or mechanical fault or if the other anaesthetic agents prove insufficient) then the patient is potentially left wide awake, unable to move and terrified. Whilst the clues are there for an observant anaesthesiologist (an increase in blood pressure and heart rate show that the anaesthesia is wearing off slightly), there is always a chance this could be missed.

Statistics vary on the specifics, but there is no doubt that anaesthetic awareness causes deep psychological effects for those who experience it. Although anaesthesia awareness remains relatively rare, the anxiety suffered by those who experience it should not be underestimated, with over 70% of victims experiencing lasting psychological symptoms for the rest of their lives. With such troubling and traumatic potential effects from anaesthesia, it’s no wonder that there are now medical negligence claims specialists helping people secure compensation for this horrible ordeal.