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Observatory: For Tough Recyclables, a Self-Mending Plastic
By HENRY FOUNTAIN, The New York Times, April 28, 2009
Most of the plastics that are recyclable today — water bottles and grocery bags, for instance — are what are called thermoplastics. They are polymers that can be melted down and molded into something else.
But there is another category of plastics, thermoset resins, that can’t be easily recycled. These polymers — the stuff of circuit boards, electrical insulation and epoxy glue, among other things — have strong cross-links and when heated tend to decompose. Most products made from these plastics end up as waste.
But chemists at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands have devised a thermoset plastic that, rather than decomposing, heals itself when heated. Writing in the journal Macromolecules, the researchers, Youchun Zhang, Antonius A. Broekhuis and Francesco Picchioni, say the material has the potential to be recycled and reused many times.
( Read More )
Women Who Keep Ovaries Live Longer
By RONI CARYN RABIN, The New York Times, April 28, 2009
Each year, hundreds of thousands of women who undergo hysterectomies have their ovaries removed along with their uterus, a practice meant to protect them from ovarian cancer. But a new study has found that women who keep their ovaries live longer.
( Read More )
With Aid of Drug Library, New Remedies From Old
By KATE MURPHY, The New York Times, April 28, 2009
Housed in a row of white freezers in a nondescript laboratory at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore are more than 3,000 of the estimated 10,000 drugs known to medicine. There is no sign on the door to indicate that this is perhaps the largest public drug library available to researchers interested in finding new uses for old and often forgotten drugs.
Already, researchers have used the library to discover that itraconazole, a drug used for decades to treat toenail fungus, may also inhibit the growth of some kinds of tumors and may forestall macular degeneration. Another drug, clofazimine, used more than a century ago to treat leprosy, may be effective against autoimmune disorders like multiple sclerosis and psoriasis.
“It takes 15 years and costs close to a billion dollars to develop a new drug,” said Jun O. Liu, professor of pharmacology and director of the Johns Hopkins Drug Library. “Why not start with compounds that already have proven safety and efficacy?”
( Read More )
PEERING IN Dissection at the Yale School of Medicine around 1910. Such photos were popular in the 1910s and ’20s.
Books: Snapshots From the Days of Bare-Hands Anatomy
By ABIGAIL ZUGER, M.D., The New York Times, April 28, 2009
The array of familiar objects threatened by digital technology encompasses the old (books, paintings) and the new (CDs). And then there is the human body, which counts as both.
Not the bodies we use, of course, but rather the bodies we allow medical professionals to use while training, to familiarize themselves with the terrain. Dissecting a cadaver has been part of medical education for millenniums. But the cadaver that enters the gross anatomy suite with the blessing of both the prior owner and the state is actually quite a new phenomenon.
Barely a century ago American medical schools were helping themselves to alumni of the local poorhouse for some of their teaching material and paying grave robbers for the rest. Only with a 1968 federal act did a nationwide system of voluntary donation bring uniformity to the process.
Now the same technology that lets us scan living bodies in all dimensions may obviate our need for dead ones, as some anatomy courses move from real dissection to its virtual counterpart — clean and odor-free, in crystal-clear focus with infinite zoom.
Some say virtual anatomy can never replace the transcendent reality. Some say it is a huge improvement over smelly, greasy, inconvenient flesh. Both arguments will be fueled by “Dissection,” an extraordinary collection of photographs that makes even today’s flesh-and-blood anatomy laboratories look tame.
( Read More )
By HENRY FOUNTAIN, The New York Times, April 28, 2009
Most of the plastics that are recyclable today — water bottles and grocery bags, for instance — are what are called thermoplastics. They are polymers that can be melted down and molded into something else.
But there is another category of plastics, thermoset resins, that can’t be easily recycled. These polymers — the stuff of circuit boards, electrical insulation and epoxy glue, among other things — have strong cross-links and when heated tend to decompose. Most products made from these plastics end up as waste.
But chemists at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands have devised a thermoset plastic that, rather than decomposing, heals itself when heated. Writing in the journal Macromolecules, the researchers, Youchun Zhang, Antonius A. Broekhuis and Francesco Picchioni, say the material has the potential to be recycled and reused many times.
( Read More )
Women Who Keep Ovaries Live Longer
By RONI CARYN RABIN, The New York Times, April 28, 2009
Each year, hundreds of thousands of women who undergo hysterectomies have their ovaries removed along with their uterus, a practice meant to protect them from ovarian cancer. But a new study has found that women who keep their ovaries live longer.
( Read More )
With Aid of Drug Library, New Remedies From Old
By KATE MURPHY, The New York Times, April 28, 2009
Housed in a row of white freezers in a nondescript laboratory at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore are more than 3,000 of the estimated 10,000 drugs known to medicine. There is no sign on the door to indicate that this is perhaps the largest public drug library available to researchers interested in finding new uses for old and often forgotten drugs.
Already, researchers have used the library to discover that itraconazole, a drug used for decades to treat toenail fungus, may also inhibit the growth of some kinds of tumors and may forestall macular degeneration. Another drug, clofazimine, used more than a century ago to treat leprosy, may be effective against autoimmune disorders like multiple sclerosis and psoriasis.
“It takes 15 years and costs close to a billion dollars to develop a new drug,” said Jun O. Liu, professor of pharmacology and director of the Johns Hopkins Drug Library. “Why not start with compounds that already have proven safety and efficacy?”
( Read More )
PEERING IN Dissection at the Yale School of Medicine around 1910. Such photos were popular in the 1910s and ’20s.
Books: Snapshots From the Days of Bare-Hands Anatomy
By ABIGAIL ZUGER, M.D., The New York Times, April 28, 2009
The array of familiar objects threatened by digital technology encompasses the old (books, paintings) and the new (CDs). And then there is the human body, which counts as both.
Not the bodies we use, of course, but rather the bodies we allow medical professionals to use while training, to familiarize themselves with the terrain. Dissecting a cadaver has been part of medical education for millenniums. But the cadaver that enters the gross anatomy suite with the blessing of both the prior owner and the state is actually quite a new phenomenon.
Barely a century ago American medical schools were helping themselves to alumni of the local poorhouse for some of their teaching material and paying grave robbers for the rest. Only with a 1968 federal act did a nationwide system of voluntary donation bring uniformity to the process.
Now the same technology that lets us scan living bodies in all dimensions may obviate our need for dead ones, as some anatomy courses move from real dissection to its virtual counterpart — clean and odor-free, in crystal-clear focus with infinite zoom.
Some say virtual anatomy can never replace the transcendent reality. Some say it is a huge improvement over smelly, greasy, inconvenient flesh. Both arguments will be fueled by “Dissection,” an extraordinary collection of photographs that makes even today’s flesh-and-blood anatomy laboratories look tame.
( Read More )
