Science has come so far these days, even as far as to now potentially developing safer ways to getting drunk. These developments are to do with reducing the toxic levels in the human body, and how a world free of hangovers might just be a thing of reality rather than fiction.
Imagine enjoying an alcoholic drink (once of a legal age obviously) on an occasional event such as Christmas with a zero percent risk of experiencing a hangover the next day, or possibly taking an antidote that would get you driving home safely. This may seem like science fiction to you, but these aspirations are in the boundaries of modern neuroscience.
Alcohol is one of the oldest, as well as the most dangerous drug, accounting for approximately 2.5 million deaths worldwide, this being more than malaria or aids. The causes for this are popularly known to man: alcohol is toxic to all body systems, especially the liver, heart and brain. It makes the consumer unaware of their surroundings if taken to an excessive stage, that they will tend to be violent and cause them to be dependent (also known as alcoholics).
If alcohol were to be discovered in this modern era, it would simply be banned, due to it being too excessively toxic to be permitted under current food regulations. It is said that the most effective way of cutting back alcohol dangers is to limit consumption through increased pricing and limiting availability by a nations government through laws; ironically many governments avoid such legislations, as to increase tax income.
Producing a safer version of alcohol would be an ideal alternative strategy that brings about greater health advantages. The main target for alcohol in the brain is the neurotransmitter system : gamma aminobutyric acid (Gaba), which keeps the brain calm.
Alcohol is what stimulates the Gaba function by mimicking it and relaxing the consumer.
There it is a possibility, therefore to formulate an alcohol substitute that causes people to feel relaxed and yet block the negative effects, such as belligerence and dependency. Targeting compounds that affect the Gaba system could be possible to create other drugs that may be sold with the alcohol surrogate as an antidote.
Possible surrogates are drinks that taste similar to alcoholic beverages. Experiments have been undertaken to explore possible compounds that caused the end-user to feel relaxed whilst being drunk for about an hour, later, within a few minutes of taking an antidote the user was able to sober up, without any harm whatsoever.
Watch this space...
Could Science cure hangovers?
by Nathan McGaw on 17/11/2013
Are WiFi Signals killing Plants?
by Nathan McGaw on 12/01/2014
In this modern day and age, nearly every person, from toddlers to parents, have found themselves absorbed in electronic devices that serve as means of helping people get over their boredom. One major way in which these devices are made useful is by surfing the web.
So what's the problem? Well the procedure in connecting your device to the internet may be killing plants and stunting their growths. How you ask? A group of girls in Denmark placed an experiment to find just whether that was true or not. Their shocking results showed that plants that were used in this investigation (Garden Cress) had either died or not been able to grow properly when placed near a Wi-Fi router (we all know that little box that we use to connect our phones/laptops to the internet). However, plants that were placed in a Wi-Fi-free room were found to grow healthily and uninterruptedly.
This experiment could be backed by another research that took place in Holland, which showed that trees which were found in contact with radio signals were suffering from weakened bark and dying leaves.
What makes this scenario even more worrying is that it could affect humans just as much; which is why the experiment was conducted in the first place. A hypothesis of another experiment stated: " Students have trouble concentrating in school if they had slept near their mobile phones the previous night".
Whether or not this is true would be hard to prove since there is very little evidence to support this statement, due to mobile phones not being around for very long.
Moving on to a more positive side, critics argue that the reason for these plants dying could be caused due to the heat being given off from the Wi-Fi routers, causing the plants to dry up, and not the electromagnetic micro-waves.
A safety factor which we should all take into consideration is that sitting about 3 feet away from your Wi-Fi router and placing your laptop on a table rather than on your lap, may help reduce your risk of radiation exposure and cancer development (saying this as I ironically do the exact opposite).
So ask yourselves next time, "Could I be killing that poor hibiscus in my garden when I search the web"?
Digital faces are the New Faces...
by Nathan McGaw on 24/02/2014
It's only been a few years since we started using emoticons (or emojis as some people call them) in our daily communications with one another. As we use them regularly, we seem to have wired our brains to respond to them as if they are real faces!
Such a discovery has been made by Dr. Owen Churches at the School of Psychology at Flinders University. Seeing faces leads to very precise reactions in certain regions of the brain. Having the emoticon switched round proves to have another effect, which can be understood through the use of advanced brain scanning techniques. Dr. Churches witnessed that when the image was viewed by 20 participants in a common format (being read from left to right), it resulted in the brain reading the emoticons as real faces. However, when they had been read from right to left, the reaction observed was completely different.
For instance, our brain responds differently when we see ‘:-)’ in comparison to ‘(- :’. The study shows that humans have reached a stage whereby they are able to read digital faces in the same way as real-life faces, ONLY when they are read from left to right. "Emoticons are a new form of language that we're producing, and to decode that language we've produced a new pattern of brain activity," says by Dr. Churches. Prior to the year 1982, no one anticipated that little coded faces, which are typed using a keyboard, would stimulate respective regions of the brain. Yet, living in an era of advanced technology, we have adapted to understand that ':-)' resembles a smiley face.So, how do you feel about the idea of being able to understand a new form of language?
Does it make you think that, as a race, we are too engaged in our electronics and are slowly slipping away from our traditional ways? Or do you think that this is a technological form of evolution? Whatever you may think, I find it quite incredible that we have come so far in being able to acknowledge small bits of code and associate them with things we see in our daily lives.
"We are not born for ourselves but for the world."