Archive for the ‘Science’ Category
Maggot Therapy
Maggot therapy (also known as maggot debridement therapy (MDT), larval therapy, larva therapy, larvae therapy, biodebridement or biosurgery) is a type of biotherapy involving the intentional introduction by a health care practitioner of live, disinfected maggots (fly larvae) raised in special facilities into the non-healing skin and soft tissue wound(s) of a human or animal for the purposes of selectively cleaning out only the necrotic tissue within a wound (debridement), disinfection, and promotion of wound healing.
Rare tongue-eating parasite found
A rare parasite which burrows into host fish before eating and replacing their tongues with itself has been found off the Jersey coast. Fishermen near the Minquiers – islands under the jurisdiction of Jersey – found the isopod, a type of louse, inside a weaver fish.
Marine researcher Paul Chambers, from the Société Jersiaise, was one of the fishing party and identified the find. He said he was surprised to find the isopod away from the Mediterranean sea. Isopods are normally about 2cm (1in) long and live in fish, surviving on the animal’s blood, in warm waters.
Mr Chambers said: “When we emptied the fish bag out there at the bottom was this incredibly ugly looking isopod. Really quite large, really quite hideous – if you turn it over its got dozens of these really sharp, nasty claws underneath and I thought ‘that’s a bit of a nasty beast’.
“I struggled for weeks to find an identification for this thing until, quite by chance I stumbled across something that looked similar in a Victorian journal. Apparently there’s not too much ill effect to the fish itself except it’s lost its tongue.”
Blind patient sees again with eye tooth
Kids Marshmallow Experiment
The marshmallow experiment is a famous test of this concept conducted by Walter Mischel at Stanford University and discussed by Daniel Goleman in his popular work. In the 1960s, a group of four-year olds were given a marshmallow and promised another, only if they could wait 20 minutes before eating the first one. Some children could wait and others could not. The researchers then followed the progress of each child into adolescence, and demonstrated that those with the ability to wait were better adjusted and more dependable (determined via surveys of their parents and teachers), and scored an average of 210 points higher on the Scholastic Aptitude Test.




