If you've ever participated in a sleep study, you know that one of the aspects that ironically keeps you awake is having myriad electrodes and wires connected to various parts of your body to monitor such things as breathing, brain activity and temperature.
Biomedical engineers may have found an answer to the latter with penny-sized sensors that can be placed all over the body, transmitting a sleeper's temperature wirelessly. The sensors are also able to detect pressure, which means they might also be useful for monitoring bed-ridden hospital patients at risk for skin sores.
Autism and Vaccines
A study published in JAMA Pediatrics reports that children who have been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder are less likely to get the full complement of recommended vaccines than their younger siblings. Researchers suggest that parental refusal may play a role, possibly based on the debunked theory, which has no scientific basis, that vaccines can cause autism. Without full vaccination, these children are at greater risk of acquiring numerous vaccine-preventable diseases, such as tetanus, polio and certain types of the flu.
Body of Knowledge
A larger percentage of left-handers than right-handers smoke cigarettes.
Get Me That, Stat!
Every year, the news service Bloomberg publishes its "Global Vice Index," which measures the cost of a bundle of "vice" products — cigarettes, alcohol, amphetamine, marijuana, cocaine and opioids. This year, the price in the U.S. decreased by 26 percent.
Stories for the Waiting Room
Ancient Egyptians built magnificent pyramids in which to entomb deceased leaders. But before they died, there were the more mundane problems of living, such as coping with a toothache. Their remedy: Apply a dead mouse to the offending tooth or gum. If that seemed a little too gross, one could mash the mouse into a pulp and add flavorings.
Dead mice found therapeutic uses in Elizabethan England, too, where they were applied as wart removers and consumed as remedies for smallpox, whooping cough, measles and bed-wetting.
Doc Talk
Plicae circulares: circular folds in the small intestine that increase the surface area for absorption. "Plica" means "fold."
Phobia of the Week
Scopophobia: fear of being stared at.
Number Cruncher
A serving of hush puppies (five pieces, 78 grams) contains 257 calories, 104 from fat. It has 11.6 grams of total fat, or 18 percent of the recommended total fat intake for a 2,000-calorie daily diet. It also contains 135 milligrams of cholesterol (45 percent), 965 milligrams of sodium (40 percent), 34.9 grams of total carbohydrates (12 percent) and 4.9 grams of protein.
Never Say Diet
The speed-eating record for silver-dollar pancakes is 113 1-ounce pancakes in eight minutes, held by Matt Stonie, whose subsequent indigestion most likely cost a few silver dollars for some Pepto-Bismol.
Best Medicine
When the radiologist married one of his patients, everybody wondered what he saw in her.
Medical History
This week in 1981, artificial skin was transplanted for the first time in the U.S. on burn patients at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. It was a combination of cowhide, shark cartilage and plastic developed by Ioannis V. Yannas and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Medical Myths
Human blood is red in color, but hues range from bright red, when oxygenated, to a very dark maroon, when deoxygenated. The color depends on whether oxygen is bound or not bound to hemoglobin, a red protein in blood that transports it. Deoxygenated blood is not blue. Nor are veins carrying it. Veins appear bluish primarily because of how light is refracted by skin and absorbed by blood. Anatomy drawings depict red and blue blood to differentiate between arteries carrying oxygenated blood and veins carrying deoxygenated blood.
Curtain Calls
In 1987, Franco Brun, a 22-year-old prisoner in Canada's Toronto East Detention Centre, choked to death while attempting to swallow a Gideons Bible.
To find out more about Scott LaFee and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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