Man unknowingly has a knife stuck in his face for four years.
A man who went to the doctor complaining of a headache was shocked to discover he’d had a 4in knife blade stuck in his brain for more than four years.
Li Fu from Yunnan Province, China, was stabbed during a robbery in 2006, and the blade of the knife had lodged in his cranium.
But despite receiving treatment for his injuries, doctors failed to notice the knife buried deep in the 37-year-old’s skull.
Wait, what?
First Ever Video Of A Thought Taking Shape Captured
Researchers at Japan’s National Institute of Genetics believe they’ve captured a world first video — images of a thought making it’s way through the brain of a zebrafish.
Researchers were able to image visual perception in the fish using a new tool designed just for the purpose — a super-sensitive fluorescent probe that detects neuron activity, causing neurons to light up when they’re activated. In this case, the images are of the activity in neurons as a zebrafish watches a paramecium flit around it, registering the movement of its prey.
Thought might be a bit of a stretch, and this should definitely be taked with a grain of salt, but this still can be a little exciting.
Alex Seifalian’s lab at University College London is helping humans who lose body parts to repair their bodies the way a newt would if it lost its tail – by growing another.
The researchers in his lab, which Seifalian calls “the human body parts store,” create the body parts with synthetic materials and a patient’s stem cells.
The lab builds a scaffold of the needed body part with a porous nanocomposite material, developed and patented by the team, and then puts it in a bioreactor with some of the patient’s bone marrow. The patient’s cells cover the scaffold and fill its many holes so that it essentially becomes the patient’s own.
After it is inserted into the patient, it’s absorbed by the body and replaced by new cells over time.
1. A nose mold made of nanocomposite material seeded with cells in a cell solution.
2. A nose mold.
3. An ear mold made of nanocomposite material.
4. A lab-grown trachea, or windpipe, inside a bioreactor.
5. An artery is tested using a simulated heard and blood flow.
6. Nose and ear molds made of nanocomposite material seeded with cells in a cell solution.
Credit: Seamus Murphy/VII
‘Tattoos no longer confined to sailors’: Ottawa Hospital told it can’t force nurses to hide body art or remove piercings
The Ottawa Hospital’s pioneering attempt to impose a dress code on its staff has been struck down by a labour arbitrator, who ruled there was no justification for ordering workers to cover up their tattoos and remove their piercings.
Defending a policy considered unique in Canadian health care, the hospital had argued the body art could be disturbing to patients who need all the help they can get to recover.
Arbitrator Lorne Slotnick agreed some of the hospitals’ older patients might have a more negative first impression of a nurse sporting a tattoo or nose ring, but concluded there was no evidence the adornments affected patient health. The dress code did, on the other hand, unjustifiably restrict staff members’ right “to present themselves as they see fit,” he said.
“As sideburns were controversial in 1972, so tattoos and piercings are now,” the arbitrator said. (Thinkstock/Dina Rudick/Globe staff)
Is It Time to Treat Violence Like a Contagious Disease?
Interesting read, but the short answer is absolutely not. A disease model of violent crime is detrimental to the study of crime. Nice metaphor, but this is nowhere near academic worthiness. Mere exposure to violence does not account for enough variance in violent behaviors. Applying a disease model to violent crime or violence oversimplifies the phenomena and discredits the vast archive of criminological research on violence that has been established.
‘People often don’t have an answer why violence goes up or down. Sometimes it’s because of the epidemic nature.’
People Criminological researchers frequently do have answers to why violence goes up or down. But most of the explanations are academic-heavy and not readily available to the public. There wasn’t a single criminologist or sociologist interviewed or cited in the article. Again, interesting read, but the disease model of violence is a pop-crime concept and is not supported in the academic literature.
Neuroplasticity…
… is the most overused and misunderstood concept in neuroscience and psychology at the moment.
“I feel my heart ache, but I’ve forgotten what that feeling means.” -Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
Image credit: Kevin Curtis/Getty Images
Histology Dessert Plates
Created using real human tissues, these bone china histology dessert plates are 8” diameter and available in 4 different human tissue designs:
- Testicle
- Liver
- Thyroid
- Esophagus
Medical illustrator and artist, Emily Evans, made these gorgeous plates from original slides of various human tissues provided by Michelle Spear, Clinical Anatomist at Cambridge University. The plates were then fired by ceramic artist, Emma Smith.
Neuron forest grows out of brain trauma experiment
Badar Rashid decided to find out what white and grey matter inside a brain look like. He started with an image of neuron bundles taken using scanning electron microscopy, and blew it up to 4,000 times its actual size. He then added colour to the black and white result according to his own aesthetic.
The image appears in Physics Today (DOI:10.1063/PT.3.1651).
(Image: Badar Rashid, UCD)
Great image. Theses are actual neurons that have been given color.
