Bored? Get Smart!

"Boredom is sort of an emotional dashboard light that goes off saying like: 'Hey, you're not on track'."

"[Boredom is a warning sign that says, it's] really necessary."

"I think boredom gets a bad rap that's not deserved. [Boredom] is linked to a lot of what most of us want out of life, like living a rich, fulfilling, interesting, meaningful life."

"Boredom is just one sort of helpful signal -- maybe unwanted signal -- that helps us get there."

Erin Westgate, social psychologist, University of Florida

Getty Images

 

Dr. Westgate and colleagues found in a 2021 study that participants were led by boredom toward sadistic behaviour. One experiment with bored participants viewing a mundane 20-minute video showed them to be more likely to do something that it was presumed none had ever considered doing before. They took to shredding maggots with names the researchers gave them to 'humanize' the maggots in the minds of the study participants: Toto, Tifi and Kiki.

 

A psychological play to appeal to their consciences that failed to produce desired results, under the influence of boredom for some of the participants. Of 67 study participants who had watched the boring video, a dozen, representing 18 percent of the total, dropped a maggot into a coffee grinder. Just one out of 62 study participants in another group viewing an interesting documentary turned to shredding a maggot. Although the study participants had no knowledge of this, the maggots didn't mind that the grinding machine was faked.

 

A link was proven between boredom and various types of bad behaviour ranging from online trolling, to bullying in the classroom, to verbal and physical abuse by members of the military toward one another in other experiments. Boredom, it was confirmed, does not always make people surrender to our meaner instincts; it merely calls upon us to take action whether it is deigned to be good or bad. When good alternatives are present boredom also can convince people to perform good deeds.

 

In conclusion it seemed that research pointed in the direction that boredom appears to motivate people to search for novelty situations to staunch the boredom and raise interest levels. Having distractions to entice one away from boredom can often mean resorting to favoured topics having the effect of moving distant from feeling bored. Ten adults were placed in an fMRI brain scanner to measure brain activity as they watched either a clip from the nature documentary Planet Earth, a video of two men hanging laundry, or a static image.

This experiment initiated by James Danckert, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Waterloo and his colleagues, featured  the boring laundry video, the documentary or the men hanging laundry, spurred the brain's default mode network to activation; a constellation of brain regions active during internal thought, similar to someone's mind wandering. The anterior insular cortex, a region of the brain believed to signal something important happening in the outside world, shut down as a result of the boring video.

When personal agency is temporarily withdrawn people are most likely to be bored, and that often occurs at work or in school where situations arise where less autonomy presents and fewer options to remedy the emotion are present. Boredom is the mind's way of informing us that something is not quite right, but what to do about it, is not a feature of boredom. It is up to the individual to find useful measures to defeat boredom.

James Danckert, speaks pf people automatically trying to dispel boredom by turning to an iPhone for interest; yet he points out that decision is not particularly meaningful and could lead to a return to boredom. In the search of alternatives more meaningful, he recommends scrutinizing goals, large and small. Boredom, and the search for relief from it, is an essential part of our human experience points out Dr.Danckert. 

Morbid Distaste Over Medical Advance in Xenografting...?

"...But then I thought, 'Well, why not use someone who is now dead due to brain death, and we know they're dead' -- that's absolutely clear. We could minimize the risk to the first human that we're really going to try to transplant."

"I asked our docs, could you learn from this? And they said, you're right. We could." 

"The family was very enthusiastic. I certainly would not want to be doing it without the family saying, 'This is something my loved one would want to do, and we fully support it."

"The answer is, they are really dead, and you can do experiments because we have the means artificially to keep major body organs and cells working even when the person has passed away."

Arthur Caplan, medical ethicist, NYU Langone Health, New York City

"If the public gets the impression that organ donation could lead to something like this, people may find this very disturbing."

"There are many people in our society that would not consider someone that is brain-dead and still with a heartbeat and perfusing and blood flowing as being completely dead."

"But I also see the potential is there to save a lot of lives if it were successful."

"Some people would say this is as disrespectful of the dead as anything can be and others would say it's not. I think the yuck factor -- I'm using a very unscientific term here -- would be quite high with the public."

Kerry Bowman, medical ethicist, Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto

A genetically engineered pig kidney appears healthy during a transplant operation at NYU Langone in New York, US, in this undated handout photo. — Reuters

There are laws and regulations that cover ethics in medical practise in specific focus on the living. None exist of a similar nature to govern research on humans that apply to the brain-dead. People are urged to sign organ-donor cards, permitting their organs on death to be harvested and used for human organ transplant, a vital life-saving program that gives new meaning to 'saving a life'. But there are never sufficient numbers of volunteered organs to supply the urgent needs of people awaiting organ transplant and many die during that agonizing wait period.

The question being raised is whether those same people who so generously see their organs being used to extend the lives of other seriously ill people, could ever foresee and be comfortable with the prospect that their own dead body might be maintained in an organ-functioning state despite their having departed that body, for research and experimental purposes. Whether they might differentiate 'saving a life' with their organs used in desperate medical straits, or their entire body and its in situ organs being used to advance medical science.

In September at NYU Langone, surgeons incised the upper leg of a brain-dead woman to attach a pig kidney to her blood vessels. An experiment in the potential of using a genetically modified pig in lieu of a human organ to extend a life when a person's natural kidneys stop functioning. Transplanting an organ from another species -- even so a pig whose genetics are so close to that of humans -- would normally result in the body's immune system instantly rejecting the intruder organ and death would quickly follow.

In this case, the pig's genetic makeup had been altered to exclude a triggering sugar molecule, called alpha-gal to prevent rejection. It  took three days while the kidney was attached to the brain-dead subject's blood vessels where researchers had access to it outside the body, and no "hyper-acute" rejection occurred. Maintained on a ventilator for 54 hours, surgeons watching for symptoms of rejection. The kidney functioned like a normal human kidney, producing urine, cleansing blood.

 

A surgical team at the hospital in New York examined a pig kidney attached to the body of a brain-dead recipient for any signs of rejection.   Credit...Joe Carrotta/N.Y.U. Langone Health, via Associated Press

Dr.Caplan's theory that the use of a brain-dead body for a brief experiment in pig organ functionality transplanted into a human body without rejection resulting, which he discussed at length and intimately with surgeons at his medical facility proved a success. Dr.Caplan published a paper in 2019 with a colleague, who is an attorney and medical ethicist, along with other members of the NYU Medical Ethics Working Group on Research on the Recently Deceased.

Writing that the procedure "can seem frightening or abhorrent", raising complex ethical challenges "It is appropriate for experimentation to be done in humans due to the potential for cross-species complications, if they were to be studied in other animals." The understanding that for some people transplanting animal organs into people is not an agreeable prospect, aside from the fact that some people find it difficult to accept that brain death equals total body/brain death. 

Yet we eat pigs as part of our normal diets. We are what we eat. In consuming animals something of them is integrated within ourselves; we are sustained physically by ending their lives to continue ours. Materials derived from pigs have long been used in furthering human life, from the production of insulin to heart valve replacements, the choice of which can be pig tissues or carbon-material valves. Biological or mechanical heart valve replacement...

Epic Pig Valve Replacement (Abbott Laboratories)

“Coke on fish gills is as dumb as it sounds", Dr. Solomon David, aquatic ecologist, Nicholls State University

Northern pike  Photo by Darcy Cheek /Postmedia

"We provide the first evidence that counters the growing popularity of using carbonated beverages to stop bleeding in angling-caught fish."                     "We found no benefit or disbenefit with pouring carbonated beverages over the gills of northern pike but it is possible there are longer term impacts."  "These findings provide direct scientific evidence that the use of carbonated beverages does not curtail bleeding from gills, which is counter to anecdotal observations made by recreational anglers that use this technique. Overall, our study debunks the assertion."                                                                                                          Carleton University researchers

Research funded by Muskies Canada and by fishing guide John Anderson and undertaken by the fish ecology conservation and physiology laboratory of Carleton University, led by graduate student Alexandria Trahan, appears to have concluded that a technique to ease bleeding in injured fish that has become popular with anglers has more resemblance to an urban myth than it does a folk remedy to curtail bleeding and discomfort in fish that have sustained injury either as a result of the angler's actions or other misadventure.

And though veteran fishing guide and owner of Ottawa River Musky Factory John Anderson was partially responsible for putting the research into motion, spurred on no doubt by his belief in the healing power of carbonated liquid on fish, his commitment to the use of Diet Coke to help stop muskellunge bleeding from the mouth, throat or muscles around the gills is secure. On the basis of his own experience with the use of the technique on 18 different occasions.

While on a fishing trip four years earlier accompanied by writer and outdoorsman Gord Pyzer, the method was first brought to his attention when it was demonstrated to him. He gave due credit to the senior manager in the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry when he was informed by this man who makes use of spring water, supersaturated with carbon dioxide in cauterizing hook wounds in a fish's mouth, throat or gills, who swore by its efficacy.

In the event, researchers from the lab of biology professor Steven Cooke undertook a scientific study of the controversial and popular belief in the usefulness of Diet Coke as a first aid for injured fish, where advocates insist that carbon dioxide in soda drinks constricts a fish's blood vessels to halt bleeding. Critics of the method on the other hand, label it as pop science for the gullible. Those who want to catch these fish for sport, but are committed to releasing them back to the water. Salving their consciences in the belief that the remedy works. In their analysis the Carleton scientists discovered that in the first 20 minutes following the application of pop to injured gills of northern pike, nothing occurred.

Last year, led by graduate student Alexandria Traham from the lab, 145 northern pike were caught in the
Rideau River system to use as subjects where gill injuries were simulated with the use of pliers removing a one-centimetre section of gill. A carbonated beverage was then applied; Coca-Cola, Mountain Dew or carbonated lake water. Nothing was applied to a control group of fish. The experiments were conducted in May and August in assessing whether changes in water temperature might affect the outcome.

Scientists observed and recorded what happened to the bleeding of the injured fish held in a water-filled tank for 20 minutes -- finding that Mountain Dew as well as the other carbonated drinks produced no discernible effect whatever. No difference was noted, according to the researchers, between the fish in the control group and those that had been treated with a soft drink. Bleeding failed to stop sooner, and nor did the fish bleed less.

A possible explanation was put forward, researchers suggesting that when anglers lift a fish from the water to apply a soft drink to the fish wounds, air exposure induces hypoxia which in turn slows the heart rate of the fish. "The pop does work at the right place and the right time", insisted Mr. Anderson who didn't dispute the Carleton study, but felt that the researchers would have done better to avoid using sensitive gill injuries in their assessment of the value of the technique.

John Anderson of the Ottawa River Musky Factory says the Carleton research has not changed his mind about the value of Diet Coke as a way to assist muskellunge bleeding from the mouth, throat or muscles around the gills. He said he had successfully used the technique 18 times. Photo by Tony Caldwell /Postmedia

Taking the Bite Out of Mosquitoes

"With all the urgent crises facing our nation and the State of Florida -- the COVID-19 pandemic, racial injustice, climate change -- the administration has used tax dollars and government resources for a Jurassic Park experiment."            Jaydee Hanson, policy director, International Center for Technology Assessment and Center for Food Safety

"It’s gone extremely well. We have released over a billion of our mosquitoes over the years. There is no potential for risk to the environment or humans."                 Kevin Gorman, Oxitec scientist 

"The mosquitoes created in a lab have not gone through a natural selection process, in which only the fittest survive and mate. Once they are released in the natural environment, will they be as fit as the naturally occurring males and able to outcompete them for mates?"                                                                                "An ecosystem is so complicated and involves so many species, it would be almost impossible to test them all in advance in a lab."                                                    Max Moreno, expert in mosquito-borne diseases, Indiana University

A biologist in Brazil releases mosquitoes to combat a Zika outbreak   Getty Images

A project is underway in Florida, approved by authorities, to test if a genetically modified mosquito acts as an improved alternative to insecticides to control the spread of Aedes aegypti, the yellow fever mosquito. Known to bite to obtain blood to mature her eggs, the female mosquito spreads a number of exotic diseases like dengue fever, zika and chikungunya. 

A British-based lab, Oxitec, which created the mosquito named OX5034, succeeded in altering female mosquitoes to produce female offspring destined to die in their larval stage, thus preventing them from hatching and maturing to the point of biting for blood and successfully reproducing. Male mosquitoes, which are not disease carriers, have been programmed as well, to kill female mosquitoes.

The aim is to reduce the population of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes Getty

The company's promotions have emphasized that the genetically altered mosquitoes will not bite, despite which a public backlash against the experiment has arisen fiercely opposed to the experiment, with some residents stating they will not be treated as "guinea pigs" with the "Robo-Frankenstein" mosquito.

The concern among environmental activists is that a massive population of mosquitoes released for any purpose could result in a detrimental effect on wildlife, endangering bird species, insects and mammals that feed on mosquitoes. 

This is not the first occasion when Oxitec's altered mosquitoes have been put into action for the purpose of battling mosquito-borne disease.

The first such tests with the altered mosquitoes took place in May of 2018 when the mosquitoes were released within four communities in the city of Indalatuba, Brazil.There, success was realized when the outcome resulted in a reduction in the numbers of Aedes aegypti of 95% in a trial conducted in an urban area of Brazil.

"This is an exciting development because it represents the ground-breaking work of hundreds of passionate people over more than a decade in multiple countries, all of whom want to protect communities from dengue, Zika, yellow fever, and other vector-borne diseases."                                                                                      Oxitec CEO Grey Frandsen

What's Old is New Again

"It [psychedelic drug trials] raises the caution that the investigation of hallucinogens as treatments may be endangered by grandiose descriptions of their effects and unquestioning acceptance of their value."
"Timothy Leary was a research psychologist before he decided the whole world should 'Turn on, tune in and drop out'. It is best if some steps are not retraced."
Dr. Guy Goodwin, professor of psychiatry, Oxford University

‘Magic mushrooms’ contain psilocybin, a psychedelic substance. Jonathan Carmichael

"I was so depressed. I felt that the world had abandoned me that I'd lost the right to exist on this planet."
"I experienced this kind of unity, of resonant love [in a trial with a heavy dose of psychedelics], the sense that I'm not alone anymore. I felt welcomed back to the world."
"I think that trial was the single most effective thing I've done to manage my mental health, and I had tried almost everything."
Rachael Peterson, 29, Maryland, U.S.

"Now we have the core funding and infrastructure to really advance psychedelic science in a way that hasn't been done before."
"That [MEQ: 'mystical experience questionnaire'] was a significant branding mistake, because awe is not fun."
"There's something existentially shaking about these experiences."
Roland Griffiths, neuroscientist, Johns Hopkins

Johns Hopkins is launching a new Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research

 

 

 

 

Johns Hopkins Medicine launched its new Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research in the study of compounds such as LSD and psilocybin as experimental potential aids in dealing with a range of mental health problems, including anorexia, addiction and depression. As the first of its kind in the U.S., all eyes will be fixed on the new Center's progress. Johns Hopkins has been enabled to proceed with this ambitious and controversial project after having received a commitment to the value of $17 million from a foundation and private donors.

By no means is this  the first such center worldwide studying the potential benefits of psychedelics in the treatment of various mental illnesses. Imperial College London had launched the world's first center of its kind back in April, aided with $3.5 million from private funding sources. Both new centers are set to lead the way in "psychedelic medicine", an elusive but long-considered foothold with the acceptance of legitimacy in the scientific establishment. The exploration of the potential of psychedelics and other recreational drugs to aid in psychiatric problems dates to the early 2000s.

Two books and positive headlines were generated out of these early initiatives, attractive enough to researchers to inspire them to study the effects of psychedelics on people suffering from mental illness in a more organized and thorough manner. The anaesthetic and club drug ketamine and related compounds which cause out-of-body sensations used in the treatment of depression has garnered interest as well in therapeutic aids in mind-altering states used to correct for mental illness.

TIBER and REBUS models suggest which psychedelic-assisted therapy may be beneficial

While the evidence of these drugs' successful interventions is not yet convincing, causing many experts in the field to remain wary of their use, reports of improvements have yet to be standardized from the situation where it is not possible for trials with psychedelics to be 'blind'; simply put, participants, unlike most drug trials, are aware when they have been dosed. Acknowledging that situation, scientists at both centers feel the new infusion of funding will lead to clarity in identifying which drugs are useful to which patients, when the altered states are recognized as ineffectual, or where they become potentially dangerous.

Psilocybin, found in magic mushrooms, are among the first of the psychedelics chosen to take into trials for anorexia nervosa and psychological distress and cognitive impairment in early Alzheimer's disease. Since psychedelics can make people with a history of psychosis worse, they are excluded from participation in any trials. On the appointed day of treatment, the individual takes the drug while under continuous observation under the care of a therapist. In some trials, participants are given eyeshades and headphones, are instructed to lie down, and listen to music.

Thus far, the literature from such trials suggest that psilocybin looks promising as a protocol for chronic depression and addiction. And that M.D.M.A. (ecstasy) has the potential to help those with post-traumatic stress, veterans included. LSD and cannabis use in trials have brought in mixed results. What does appear universal in efficacy, is that positive effects are likelier to last longer should the participant experience an especially intense reaction to the psychedelics applied.

Restoring Bald Heads to Luxurious Manes

"It [baldness] has a massive psychological effect. Some of the guys in my unit were fine with it, they would just shave their heads. But I flt very self-conscious. It has that emotional effect. People like me, we will do anything [to try to recover head hair]."
"The procedure to harvest the follicle sample will cost around $3,500. Then it is around $175 per year to preserve it. After that it will be about $10,000 every three to five years to culture and replace the cells. It is a gamble because it is experimental, but if the theory matches the experimental results, it will be a complete game-changer."
"There is a lot of smoke and mirrors out there. People get exploited. But I started losing my hair aged 25. Now I'm 39. And I know now that it is a mental health thing. It's linked to that."
Mike Marsh, retired military, British Armed Forces

Around half of men suffer from male pattern hair loss  : OZAN KOSE/AFP

"Hair is far, far more complicated than it appears. Every week, someone publishes another research paper that describes a compound or chemical that is supposed to play a role in hair growth and loss."

"We're not close to growing hair from scratch. We don't have the full answer about the interaction between hormones and enzymes and proteins to create hair, and even if we do, mechanically it can be hard to deposit in the tiny space and keep it there. We're years away."
"It's like nature has a protection to stop us from curing baldness."
Dr. Bessam Farjo, medical director, HairClone

Based in Manchester, England, the biotechnology firm Hair Clone has been given approval by the Human Tissue Authority to store follicular units (FU), used to clone dermal papilla cells (DPCs) abundant in the roots of healthy, thick hair. This experimental treatment will see clones made into a solution to be injected into the scalp to repopulate roots of thinning hair follicles for their clients. They are awaiting approval from another government agency, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.

If it works -- since this is purely experimental, with no guarantee it may succeed -- Dr. Farjo confirms that the process will need to be repeated every few years to replenish the DPCs. Mr. Marsh, so devastated by the loss of his hair, is willing to bet onthe success of the method, claiming he is prepared to do anything to ensure he can restore  his lost hair. It is an extremely costly venture, one born of vanity. And it is not just men who are involved, but women as well.

This is an industry whose value has been estimated to be around $4-billion globally. Estimates from the International Society of Hair Restoration are that over 600,000 surgical hair restoration procedures were undertaken world wide in 2016, triple that of ten years earlier. According to the British Association of Dermatologists, roughly half of men aged 50 suffer from male pattern hair loss (known as well as androgenetic alopecia). Female pattern hair loss and associated conditions related to a group of hormones known as androgens afflict 40 percent of women with a degree of visible hair loss, at a like age.

Unfortunately, by any measure, no cure for age-related baldness has yet been devised. Treatments include "licensed topical and oral treatments", where reliance on special shampoos to restore hair holds the fantasy of hope for some people. Even those treatments can be expensive. "Decreased libido and erectile problems are recognized side effects of this treatment", notes the British Association of Dermatologists. Additional options such as wigs and 'skin camouflage' also exist. "These preparations may wash away if the hair gets wet in rain", is the downside of the skin camouflage.

The hair replacement industry has remained in the same hopeless groove for the last 70 years, since surgical transplants were offered in the United States in the 50s. Back then, surgeons used borers of four to five millimetre in size to extract follicular units from back and side of the head for re-implantation on top. Tiny discs of hair would not be placed too close, to allow skin to heal, so what resulted was a colander effect, none too attractive.  "Aeshtetically, it didn't look good", Dr. Farjo stated.
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And then in recent times, surgeons attempted something different; removal of strips of scalp to enable the harvesting of follicular units. There is on average 100,000 such units on the average human scalp; this procedure at most could transplant 4,000 units and not leave livid scars. The results were somewhat less than satisfactory, even undergoing several such operations. And in came follicle freezing, the latest in a long, unsuccessful campaign to regrow or restore hair follicles.

At the turn of the year, researcher Dr. Angela Christiano, professor of genetics and dermatology, Columbia University, used 3D printed follicle moulds to implant in mice in which human hair began to sprout. She foresees hair farms where cloned DPCs 'seed' thousands of 3D-printed moulds followed by the follicles thus created being implanted into the scalp. "Use of this new technology by hair researchers, hair restoration surgeons and the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries will have overwhelming implications in the maintenance and regeneration of this complex human tissue."
 

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Getty

Not In My Tea!

"I was not surprised to see there was plastic coming out. I was surprised to see such a high concentration."
"It would be a responsible consumer action ... to stop purchasing this ['silken' tea bag products], not only because of the plastic that it's releasing, but because of the single-use plastic."
"The consumer should avoid plastic packaging, not a specific brand, and definitely not the tea that comes inside. We encourage consumers to choose loose teas ... sold without packaging or other teas that come in paper teabags."
"There is really no need to package tea in plastic, which at the end of the day becomes single-use plastic. [And] which is contributing to you not just ingesting plastic but to the environmental burden of plastic." 
Laura Hernandez, Researcher, graduate student, McGill University, Montreal

Getty Images

New research out of Canada indicates high quantities of microplastics are likely to be present in a cup of tea if that tea was produced with the use of a premium product; tea leaves presented in 'silken' tea bags. Those bags are made of food-grade plastic. They may look good and the tea would needless to say taste very good, but the hidden menace is the burden of microplastics.

Ordinary tea bags made of paper are quite different from the 'silken' tea bags made of plastic. Visually they are pyramid-shaped on the theory that the shape allows the tea leaves within, additional expansion room. Once used for the purpose they're meant for -- to produce a cup of tea -- the bag is discarded just as is the paper type. The difference is that the Researchers discovered that 11.6 billion microplastic particles and 3.1 billion nanoplastic particles are released into the tea produced with the plastic-type tea bags.

"I said, 'Oh God, I'm sure if it's plastic it's, like, breaking down into the tea.'"
"We were shocked when we saw billions of particles in a single cup of tea,"
"There's really no research [with respect to this issue]. But this really points to the need to do those studies. Think of people who drink one or two or three cups of tea a day, every day."
Nathalie Tufenkji, professor of chemical engineering, McGill University

Why the research on tea bags? Professor Tufenkji, it appears, ordered tea while at a coffee shop, then regarded the resulting liquid with astonishment. She was convinced she was seeing tiny bits of plastic floating about in the tea. That inspired her to think of this research. On return to her laboratory she spoke to her graduate student, instructing her to purchase various brands of tea in the plastic tea bags. Resulting lab tests revealed the presence of plastic particles, once the tea bags were steeped in boiling water.

On the evidence of Professor Tufenkji's brief experience, the two fully expected to see microplastic and smaller nanoplastic particles appear. They just weren't prepared for the huge numbers involved. The sheer number of contaminants from the tea bag seemed far in excess of such particles reported previously in other foods. Table salt has a fairly high concentration of microplastics, at 0.005 microplasgrams per gram of salt. In comparison, a cup of tea holds between 13 and 16 micrograms of microplastics, reflecting results for the four different tea bag brands the study tested.

Many fancier teas now come in 'silken' bags instead of paper, and some of them are pyramid-shaped, which is billed as a way to make room for the large leaves in premium teas to expand. (Shutterstock / slawomir.gawryluk)

The study was published last week in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. According to the World Health Organization, little evidence exists to suggest that the presence of microplastics in drinking water represents a harm to human health. Further study is required before any alarm is raised.  Differing dosages of nanoplastics and microplastics were used when the researchers at McGill "treated water fleas" and identified anatomical and behavioural abnormalities in the bugs which nonetheless did not die.

When the McGill team brought the different brands of plastic tea bags to their lab, they removed the tea leaves before testing, to ensure that the presence of the tea leaves would not interfere in their testing for plastic leaching from the bags. Rinsing the tea bags, they heated the water to simulate the brewing of tea, following which a process called electron microscopy measured the presence of minuscule plastics in the heated water.

To gain some perspective on size of the plastic, microplastic particles are equal to the diameter of a human hair, while a nanoplastic is roughly one thousand times more minuscule than that measurement. No evidence yet exists linking plastic particles ingested to health problems, mentioned both researchers, but consumers, they cautioned, would be well advised to exercise normal vigilance and avoid single-use plastic teabags.

In a preliminary experiment, water fleas exposed to the microplastics from the tea bags 'ballooned' and showed behavioural changes that suggested they were stressed. ((Paul D.N. Hebert, University of Guelph))

Transgenisis : In The Name Of Science

"[Six of the monkeys died; the five survivors] exhibited better short-term memory and shorter reaction time [in comparison to wild-monkey controls]."
"[The findings] have the potential to provide important -- and potentially unique -- insights into basic questions of what actually makes humans unique."
"[The monkeys] did not manifest an enlarged brain size."
Scientific team, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Ms. Tech; Evolution: Wikimedia commons

"Now we have created this animal which is different than it is supposed to be. When we do experiments, we have to have a good understanding of what we are trying to learn, to help society, and that is not the case here."
"So, yes, it's morally risky to move towards humanizing primates, particularly when we are talking about the brain."
Martin Styner, computer scientist, University of North Carolina

"I certainly would have thought you would have had to have a reasonable expectation of high benefit to human beings to justify the harms that you are going to have for intensely social, cognitively complex emotional animals like monkeys."
"It's not clear that this kind of research has an reasonable expectation of having any useful application for human beings."
"If you took Einstein as a baby and you raised him in the lab he wouldn't turn out to be Einstein. If you're actually interested in studying the cognitive complexity of these animals, you're not going to get a good representation of that by raising them in labs, because they can't develop the kind of cognitive and social skills they would in their normal environment."
Letitia Meynell, associate professor, department of philosophy, Dalhousie University, Halifax

(Robbie Ross/iStock)

Morally and ethically fragile those experimental research events most certainly are. But the kind of bold approach that some Chinese scientists bring to their work effectively shrugs off the very concept of moral responsibility inherent in the type of experiments they choose to pioneer. Experiments guaranteed to bring the scientific world's attention to their doorstep. That old Hollywood mantra that even bad publicity is good publicity seems to apply here.

Philosophers and ethicists reacted with revulsion when two little girls were born in China who had been genetically modified. He Jiankui had announced his editing of the DNA of human embryos to make the babies resistant to HIV, and so the twins were born and the world of science recoiled. Unchastened, Mr. He was prepared to continue his experimental research in CRISPR technology,  until his own university berated him and the Chinese government, displeased at the unwanted attention and notoriety appeared to have spirited him away out of the public spotlight.

 This time it was a team of scientists at the Kunming Institute of Zoology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences who announced their ground-breaking transgenic operation resulting in 11 rhesus monkeys with human copies of a gene known as MCPH1, described as a vital gene for brain development and brain evolution involved in a process known as neoteny, the delaying or slowing of an organism's development.

A one-month-old macaque monkey in China.

Barcroft Media via Getty Images

In this instance, a baby's brain developing post-birth with an abundant presence of MCPH1 -- particular to human babies -- not in non-human primates. The result of which, according to the report published in the journal National Science Review, the monkeys' brains developed within a like timeline as would a human brain, representing the first such attempt to study the genetic basis of human brain origin with the use of transgenic monkeys.

Dr. Styner, hugely critical of the experiment and its outcome, explained his role in the research as an expert in medical image analysis for which expertise he had been approached by the researchers, in 2011. He was not involved in the science of the project, but did contribute his expertise on how best to perform the analysis of their MRI data. "At the time, I did not think deeply enough about the ethical consideration." The generation of transgenic monkeys began troubling him the more he gave it thought.

This picture released by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Neuroscience shows five cloned macaques at a research institution in Shanghai

STR/AFP/Getty Images

"This was the first attempt to understand the evolution of human cognition using a transgenic monkey model", explained Bing Su, geneticist at the Kunming Institute of Zoology, stating his interest in testing other genes related to brain evolution, inclusive of one called the "humanity switch", in recognition of its presumed role in human intelligence. Mr. Bing informed the journal Nature that he was interested in experimenting with FOXP2, a gene expressing a protein linked to the development of speech and language."I don't think the monkey will all o a sudden start speaking, but will have some behavioral change."

"The use of transgenic monkeys to study human genes linked to brain evolution is a very risky road to take."
"It is a classic slippery slope issue and one that we can expect to recur as this type of research is pursued."
James Sikela, geneticist, comparative primate studies, University of Colorado

A macaque mother with her baby in Guiyang, China.

Lintao Zhang/Getty Images

In the Name of Biological Science : Exploring Space

"I believe it's the most comprehensive assessment of human beings to date."
"I don't know that there's been anything close to this."
"The main conclusion I got from this paper, based on all the objective data, is why would anybody want to go to Mars or be in space?"
Dr. Eric Topol, director, Scripps Research Translational Institute

"The fact that they're twins really narrows down the alternatives."
"We can say that, as best as we can tell, these changes [biological changes to the human body] are due to space flight."
"People have asked me, 'Well, is going to space the Fountain of Youth?' I don't think so If it is, you're going to have to stay up there forever."
Susan Bailey, cancer biologist, Colorado State University

Over the past few years, twins Mark and Scott Kelly have participated in what’s now called the NASA Twin Study: A first-of-its kind longitudinal study in which one brother (Scott) spent a year onboard the International Space Station (ISS) and the other (Mark, who had already retired from spaceflight) spent those same 12 months on Earth.

NASA/Robert Markowitz

Two brothers, actually twin brothers, and both American astronauts. What an opportunity for science to study the effects on the human body that is hurtled into space and remains there for a period of time. What might the change of atmosphere, gravity, living in an scientifically technologically-manipulated environment for an extended period of time result in with respect to the human body's ability to adjust to these radical new conditions imposed upon it?

Scott Kelly, aboard the International Space Station, spent 340 days using his own body as the experiment from which he drew data to be examined at a later date upon his return to Earth from his stay on the orbiting space station. While he played computer games to test his memory and reaction speed, and drew blood for tests, saved his urine for the same purpose, measured the shape of his eyes, his twin brother Mark, conducted identical tests on himself 385 kilometers away, on Earth.

The idea was to compare test results between the twins and to determine the differences at the molecular level. It has taken three years to study the results drawn from the 55-year-old astronaut-twins for NASA researchers to report on the changes that Scott's body underwent while he was in orbit. In some of his cells DNA mutated; his immune system responded with a number of new signals, and his microbiome hosted new bacterial species.

Of the biological changes, many faded away after his return while others, including genetic mutations and declines in cognition test scores failed to return to their former, pre-orbit state. The former was reassuring, while the latter was found concerning, at the very least to the scientists if not to Scott himself. Among the scientists there were some who thought of managing the risks -- leaving others to wonder whether long journeys to Mars or beyond would ever be 'safe' biologically for astronauts.

It's been six decades that astronauts have shot out of Earth's atmosphere into the inner ring of space surrounding our planet. Despite that sixty years and the experiences that have been documented, scientists face a large question mark about life in space. The NASA Twins Study published in the journal Science, led the agency to hope to be able to more fully appreciate changes that Scott Kelly experienced.

Researchers were led to believe by studying the comparison tests between the twins that the pace of biological alterations became more measured, hinting that the human body in space reaches a new equilibrium in adjustment. Dr. Bailey, a co-author of the study, looked at sections of Kelly's DNA called telomeres which protect chromosomes where they are seated, from deterioration. Telomeres become shorter as people age. Radiation or pollution may hasten aging, fraying telomeres more than is usual.

Kelly's telomeres increased while in space, rather than decreasing; it was as though his cells were more youthful, a reversal of expectations -- and it was speculated that the space environment might have aroused a quiet population of stem cells in his body. His body may have produced a fresh supply of young cells with longer telomeres, it was suggested. Thousands of genes, once inactive, increased their activity in Scott's body, while Mark's body on Earth saw his genes remaining stable.

Scott Kelly on board the International Space Station during his year in space. (NASA)

Radiation levels in the International Space Station, higher than those on Earth may have been responsible for some of the awakened genes known to encode proteins to aid in restoring damaged DNA. On his return to Earth in March of 2016, his body indicated signs of intense stress, his immune system in high gear, reflecting a shock to the body, which restored to normal pre-flight condition quite expeditiously. The bacteria that thrived in his gut while in space that were alien, disappeared, back on Earth.

Yet some biological aspects of Kelly's body failed to return to their pre-flight norm, and six months following his return to Earth, 8.7 percent of his genes still behaved in an untypical manner -- and research indicated he failed to respond as well on cognitive exams, while even more worrying was a collection of genetic mutations gained in space, enduring. Radiation can trigger a kind of mutation that incites cells to gain even greater mutations as they divide; cells may begin growing exponentially "taking steps on the road to cancer", explained Dr. Bailey.

"I think all of these problems are solvable", stated Jerry Shay, a cell biologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, who holds out hope for countermeasures that might protect astronauts. To that end, he and his colleagues are testing drugs meant to trigger cells to mend DNA which has been damaged by radiation exposure.

Graphic illustration of the path the individual Twins Study research takes from research to integration to one summary paper to several companion papers. (NASA)

Space Travel and the Human Body

"Now we know that fat cells are active and secrete substances that impact neighbouring cells such as the bone, and the blood."
"The theme of our research hasn't changed since I arrived in Ottawa more than 20 years ago. We're looking at the musculoskeletal effects of immobility. I work with rehabbing patients. They are anemic. They have weak bones, weak muscles and other complications."
"The link to an astronaut is obvious. Astronauts when they're in space have no force on their skeletons and muscles. They touch an object [while floating] and end up at the end of the hall."
"To my knowledge we're the only laboratory in the world that has developed these measures. And we've adapted them to space. Which was quite a feat. It took us two full years."
Dr. Guy Trudel, director, Bone and Joint Research Centre, University of Ottawa

NASA Image: ISS046E008882 - Astronaut Tim Kopra (left) performs blood draw on European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Tim Peake in the Columbus module.

Space travel may be out-of-this-world exciting, but the atmospheric medium is not conducive to human health. The lack of gravity to which all animals on Earth have been designed to accommodate themselves to, represents a direct threat to the organism which is man. Simply put, travel in space has the effect of aging the human body and while it advances that aging process the body experiences utter havoc.

While astronauts are in the long, drawn-out process of preparing for space flight they also undergo a relentless process of conditioning, a process requiring the human body to be exposed to a super-human effort to overcome the more immediate threat to the musculoskeletal challenges that the space flight experience exposes them to.

Dr. Trudel and his investigative team face a challenge of their own devising in an effort to understand fully the process taking place impacting deleteriously on astronauts' bodies and health outcomes. They compare what the astronauts undergo to what they know of bodily deterioration of long-term, bedridden, sedentary people who never leave the bonds of Earth and the gravity that keeps them there.

What the researchers are doing is measuring the impact of space travel specifically on human bone marrow. Long periods of enforced immobility tends to create a situation where bone marrow is infused with excess fat. When that excess fat takes up room on the spongy tissue within the bone we know as marrow, vital red and white blood cells find less room in the marrow, where they normally reside.

The idea then is to determine whether microgravity results in a similar impact on the bone marrow of astronauts. This close scrutiny of marrow is of recent vintage; though the condition has long been known, it was thought to be irrelevant in its outcome. An assumption dispelled by more recent studies in disabled patients which have shown that excess marrow fat has a range of issues attached to it inclusive of osteoporosis and infection susceptibility.

NASA, the world's premiere space agency, does its own studies to enlarge its knowledge base of impacts on the health of astronauts to enable it to assist astronauts in recovering from journeys into space. Dr. Trudel, a rehabilitation doctor at the Rehabilitation Centre of the Ottawa Hospital, explains why it is that NASA is interested in his team's study results.

NASA Image: ISS050E011020 - European Space Agency (ESA) Thomas Pesquet, Expedition 50 Flight Engineer (FE), during Canadian Space Agency (CSA) Generic Sample Minus Eighty Laboratory Freezer for ISS (MELFI) Insertion, in the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) Pressurized Module (JPM). Photo taken during Expedition 50.

Astronauts, unalike bedridden patients, have an intensive physical regimen to counteract and limit as much as possible, atrophy and anemia resulting from their space exposure. On board the International Space Station, there are treadmills and muscle resistance equipment, and they are used for up to two hours daily by each astronaut on a regular pro-active schedule. Still, with the realization that longer space trips are planned for the near future, it is also understood there will be little room for exercise equipment.

Hence the interest in Dr. Trudel's five-year MARROW project to which NASA and the European Space Agency, as well as the Canadian Space Agency have contributed financial support. Astronauts will provide marrow information before and after their flights with MRI exams establishing the fat content in their marrow. During, after and before each space mission they provide blood and breath samples for blood cell data.Samples are also collected in space and stored in thermo lab freezers.

Scientists theorize that astronauts become anemic as 15 percent of their red blood cells are destroyed while in space. The Bone and Joint research lab has developed a method of measuring precisely when a red blood cell is destroyed. In connection with and preparation for the research project, Dr. Trudel has travelled back and forth to Houston to visit NASA.

"It was moving. We were in the very room where the astronauts were after landing. They were in isolation, behind glass. Security was crazy. It's a nice atmosphere. Very dynamic. You feel you are part of something when you're at the Johnson Space Center in Houston." Googling "Canadian Space Agency" and "marrow" will take those interested to a brief video where an astronaut is shown conducting marrow tests in space.

NASA Image: ISS047E131794 - Jeff Williams, Expedition 47 Flight Engineer (FE), taking breath and ambient air samples for the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) Marrow experiment, in the Columbus Module. Photo taken during Expedition 47.

Suspending Credulity

"The first human transplant on human cadavers has been done. A full head swap between brain-dead organ donors is the next stage."
"We have entered an age where we will take our destiny back in our hands. Today, we stand on the brink of a revolution, not only in medicine but in human life as well."
Sergio Canavero, Italian surgeon

Jeff J.Mitchell/Getty Images    Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero

This is a man who appears to misspeak, for there was never a time when any living thing,designed by nature, was the master of its own destiny; that being the case, how can humankind 'take our destiny back in our hands'? as he exults in announcing that a surgical team he has coached in China has managed to transfer a head from one cadaver to the body of another cadaver? Of a certainty, the man is fixated on his theory that a severed spine can be repaired, that human consciousness can be transferred from one source to another.

Dr. Canavero along with a Chinese colleague, Dr. Xiaoping Ren, published in the journal CNS Neuroscience & Therapeutics an account of an experiment that transplanted the heads of laboratory rats on the back of the necks of larger recipient rats, fourteen of which survived for a day and a half, back in April. They described a special pump and tubes used in the rat surgeries ensuring adequate blood supply to the donor's brain until the head was connected to the recipient.

Xiaoping Ren and Sergio Canavero, the surgeons behind the plans for the world's first human head transplant.   Newsweek

"The whole operation process preserves the carotid arteries, jugular veins and vertebral arteries", they wrote. The Italian surgeon created HEAVEN: the 'head anastomosis venture' project. Obviously if his theory could rival nature's creative process, why not coopt heaven too? Two surgical teams working together cut away two men's heads one of whom is the 'recipient', the other, an accident victim for example whose brain is dead but whose body is otherwise healthy is considered the 'donor'.

The recipient's head is placed on the donor body with the use of a specialized swivel crane after which it is reconnected and the trachea, esophagus, carotid arteries and jugular veins are stitched together and the wait ensues for the recipient to awaken and above all, move; a healthy brain/head whose ailing body has been replaced with a healthy one to produce an altogether functional and healthy whole.

This procedure, using two cadavers as a premiere to a progression toward restoring complete body health to an individual whose body has failed and whose brain is fully functioning, fusing his head to a healthy body whose brain is declared dead, took 18 hours to complete. It took place , according to the two surgeons, at Harbin Medical University, China. Its success giving Dr. Canavero the material for a book, Medicus Magnus; the Revolution Medicine and How We Utilize It.

Others in the medical community are yet to be persuaded, while bio-ethicists declare the surgeon to be reckless in his ambition. No one has yet been able to repair a spinal cord completely disconnected, according to other transplant surgeons. And there's the niggling little suspicion that once the transplanted head has been firmly established on someone else's body, should the procedure succeed, what guarantees are there that the original mind will dominate?

A similar operation on a live human will take place 'imminently', the controversial professor claims. Professor Canavero (right) made the announcement at a press conference in Vienna this morning (live stream pictured)

Butterfly Boys

"The patient was in danger of [losing his] life. The prognosis was very poor, but he survived [the whole skin graft procedure]."
"He went back to normal life, including school and sports. His epidermis is stable; robust. It doesn't blister at all."
Dr. Michele de Luca, University of Modena, Italy

Scientists used gene therapy to reconstruct a fully functional epidermis for a 7-year-old boy.

Credit: Nature News & Views

It's hard to imagine that the largest organ in the human body, the one that covers muscle, bone, sinew, tissue, internal organs, all that keeps a human body intact and in good order, failing so catastrophically that a child's life is threatened with impending, early death. And before that eternal release, suffers excruciating pain of a physical nature, while facing the mental torment that he is radically different from other children, so much so that normal experiences of any child growing up is denied him. The anguish of the parents is unimaginable.

And then, where in an earlier era, that child would expire from morbid complications of that dread disease called epidermolysis bullosa, a medical miracle occurs spelling that child's salvation. Which is just what happened with a seven-year-old child, a Syrian boy born in Syria but who arrived with his parents in Germany where his condition dire enough, became even more pronounced. His junctional epidermolysis bullosa, the cause of his blistering skin which the lightest touch would tear became even worse.

After receiving his new skin, the boy plays on the grounds of the hospital in Bochum, Germany.

Credit: RUB

A medical team in Italy miraculously had a cure for this boy. In a first, 80 percent of the boy's entire epidermis was replaced through the course of three operations. Before that, doctors in Germany had taken skin grafts from his father but none had succeeded in easing his condition. Such children, because of their fragility are called 'butterfly' children. The young boy had little option but to live at the burn unit at Bochum's Children Hospital in the Ruhr district of Germany since much of his skin was either missing or damaged.

And that's when in desperation, German doctors reached out to other doctors in other countries to determine whether any had potential helpful therapies. They discovered the presence of a group of Italian scientists busy experimenting with skin cell regeneration. The Italian team led by Dr. Michele de Luca took a sample of skin, four square centimetres in size, and from it extracted stem cells. The next step was to genetically engineer the cells to a state of health.

From that point, the healthy tissue was grown into large skin grafts, to replace an astonishing 80 percent of the boy's skin. Now, his new skin no longer blisters. Finally, the boy is able to play soccer for the very first time in his life, becoming the very picture of a normal schoolboy. And because of the amazing success of this new therapeutic procedure, a larger arena of hope is held out for victims of life-threatening burns.

It's been a long last few days. Last few weeks. Last few months. But today we have good news.
Jonathan is officially growing my cells! The donor study tests show he has 100% my cells, which means the transplant and engraftment is working! That said, however, his cells can't all be mine - he needs to grow some of his own back so the two can become a happy blend. Photo: Tina Boileau

Another, older teen, who this summer had undergone a $1-million intervention therapy with various surgeries after fifteen years spent attempting to heal or even marginally ameliorate his incurable condition of epidermolysis bullosa, was repeatedly re-admitted to University of Minnesota Masonic Children’s Hospital where two exhausting and exhaustive stem-cell grafts [derived from his mother] had taken place; one that saw him coping with discouraging results when the first one failed and some of his internal organs began breaking down, requiring other surgeries.

Jonathan Pitre of Ottawa, now 17, didn't experience quite the uplifting miracle that the 7-year-old from Germany did. One body function after another seemed to break down, though he never lost hope he would prevail. But finally, the second stem cell graft, yet another experimental therapy, appears to be working, and the young man is preparing to return home from Minnesota with his mother, to his home in Canada.

Jonathan Pitre leaving hospital   Photo: Tina Boileau