There`s a fundamental problem with having a crowd of people in a spaceship where delicate microgravity experiments are under way: Crew activities introduce disturbances that can upset experimental results.
This is especially true on long flights by the space shuttle, such as the recently completed Columbia mission, because crew members must exercise regularly to remain fit in the weightless environment.
Many scientists suggest that this problem would be solved by launching microgravity experiments into space by themselves, leaving people at home. But with its huge financial commitment to the shuttle and human space flight, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration rejects such notions. Instead, NASA and its contractor, Lockheed Missiles & Space Co. Inc., came up with a high-tech bicycle that allows astronauts to exercise without jiggling the ship and its finnicky experimental apparatus.
The exercise bike is rigged with a series of motors that respond while astronauts pedal. Each time the pedaling produces a vibration in one direction, a motor produces one in the opposite direction to cancel it, stifling jiggles before they start. Next, the space researchers plan to apply their anti-jiggle technology to a treadmill.
BREAST SURGERY PROCEDURE One side effect of the recent controversy over use of silicone breast implants has heightened interest in a procedure that uses excess abdominal tissue to reconstruct a breast. The surgery, called TRAM Flap for transverse rectus abdominal myo-cutaneous muscle flap, is a complex procedure that in the past hasn`t been nearly as popular as silicone implant surgery.
The TRAM Flap isn`t seen by physicians as appearance-enhancing cosmetic surgery, but as a reconstruction technique mostly used after a woman`s breast is removed as cancer therapy.
”In counseling women who are in need of breast reconstruction, I have had a 100 percent increase in requests for the TRAM Flap,” said Dr. Laurie Casas, affiliated with Northwestern University and Glenbrook Hospital. ”No one wants to hear about silicone implants.” One aspect of TRAM Flaps that patients also find appealing, Casas said, is that they require a standard tummy tuck to provide tissue used to construct a new breast.
MOST PHYSICIANS APPROVE OF SPANKING Spanking children when they misbehave was supported by a majority of physicians who responded to an Ohio survey.
Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Kenelm McCormick of Barberton Citizen`s Hospital said that among more than 600 pediatricians and family physicians who responded to his survey, 67 percent approved spanking children under some circumstances.
McCormick found more support for spanking among doctors under the age of 40 than among older physicians. He also found that 90 percent of pediatricians said they discussed child discipline with parents, and 52 percent of family physicians said they did so.
EXERCISE CAN HELP OLDER MEN SLEEP BETTER Older men who have trouble falling asleep, awaken frequently and are drowsy during the day could increase their slumber time with exercise, according to Dr. Jack Edinger of the Duke University Medical Center.
In tests with men 60 and older, regular exercise enabled them to fall asleep faster, sleep more deeply and feel more rested during the day, he said. LEAVE THOSE WOOD DUCK MOTHERS ALONE Well-meaning conservationists may be making life extremely difficult for mother ducks by building artificial houses for the birds and then putting them in conspicuous places. Female wood ducks, it seems, like to sneak around laying eggs in one another`s nests.
The very sight of a mother duck in her nest can trigger the urge in other females to lay some eggs, researchers report in the spring issue of Living Bird. Biologists Paul Sherman of Cornell University and Brad Semel of the McGraw Wildlife Foundation in Dundee, Ill., found that some conspicuous artificial houses they studied had 30 or 40 eggs in them. This is too many for a mother duck to keep warm. Usually, ducks nest on about a dozen eggs.
Having layers and layers of eggs leads to breakage and spread of bacterial infection as well as cold eggs on the bottom, Sherman and Semel said. The pair slogged through swamps for hours to conduct field tests involving more than 300 nest boxes and 6,000 individually marked eggs.
Their work proved that when artificial boxes are well hidden, they don`t attract any more eggs from outsiders than do natural nests. Even so, about one of every four eggs in a nest was laid not by the mother, but by some bird who then ducked out on her maternal obligations.
FINDING COULD HELP IN OVERCOMING IMPOTENCE For more than a century scientists have been puzzled about the final step that leads to erections, information that could help many men overcome impotence.
The answer appears to be related to nitric oxide, an unstable gas that has recently been found to carry messages between brain cells.
In the penis, nitric oxide is released by nerves, causing muscles that act as valves around arteries to relax, allowing blood to flow into special tissue to produce an erection, said Dr. Arthur Burnett of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions.
”This finding has direct therapeutic implications,” Dr. Solomon Snyder, a co-author and discoverer of nitric oxide`s action in the brain, reported in the journal Science. ”We know of drugs that can generate nitric oxide and presumably elicit erections, and there are other drugs that can block its production to do the opposite.”
DIVORCE HARDER ON MEN, RESEARCHERS FIND Breaking up is hard to do, but it is harder on men than women, according to researchers at the Yale University School of Medicine.
Among wives and husbands who had no previous history of major depression, divorce produced nearly three times more cases of depression among men than women, said Dr. Martha Livingstone Bruce.
”These findings are consistent with previous studies reporting that the psychological advantages of marriage are greater for men than women, which suggests that the impact of marital disruption may be more detrimental to men,” she reported in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
ALTERNATIVE TO MARROW TRANSPLANTS The shortage of bone marrow for transplants could be significantly eased by the use of blood extracted from umbilical cords after birth, English researchers have found.
Laboratory tests show that cord blood contains more of the all-important stem cells than does the bone marrow, said J.M. Hows of the Paterson Institute`s Kay Kendall Laboratory in Manchester, England.
Stem cells, which normally reside in the marrow, are now extracted from the bones of volunteers, a process that can be painful. Stem cells are necessary to reconstitute a person`s blood system because they give rise to red and white blood cells.
