Blogs / Discoblog

Success of self-administered home fecal transplantation for chronic Clostridium difficile infection.

“Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) can relapse in patients with significant comorbidities. A subset of these patients becomes dependent on oral vancomycin therapy for prolonged periods with only temporary clinical improvement. These patients incur significant morbidity from recurrent diarrhea and financial costs from chronic antibiotic therapy. We sought to investigate whether self- or family-administered fecal transplantation could be used to definitively treat refractory CDI. (more…)

Identification of gases responsible for the odour of human flatus and evaluation of a device purported to reduce this odour.

“BACKGROUND/AIMS: While the social significance of flatus derives mainly from its odour, previous studies have focused on the non-odoriferous components of rectal gas. The aims of the present study were to determine the role of sulphur-containing gases in flatus odour and test the efficacy of a device purported to reduce this odour. METHODS: Flatus was quantitatively collected via rectal tube from 16 healthy subjects who ingested pinto beans and lactulose to enhance flatus output. The concentrations of sulphur-containing gases in each passage were correlated with odour intensity assessed by two judges. Odour intensity was also determined after treatment of flatus samples with zinc acetate, which binds sulphydryl compounds (hydrogen sulphide and methanethiol), or activated charcoal. Utilising gastight Mylar pantaloons, the ability of a charcoal lined cushion to adsorb sulphur-containing gases instilled at the anus of eight subjects was assessed. RESULTS: The main sulphur-containing flatus component was hydrogen sulphide (1.06 (0.2) mumol/l), followed by methanethiol (0.21 (0.04) mumol/l) and dimethyl sulphide (0.08 (0.01) mumol/l) (means (SEM)). Malodour significantly correlated with hydrogen sulphide concentration (p < or = 0.001). Zinc acetate reduced sulphur gas content but did not totally eliminate odour, while activated charcoal removed virtually all odour. The cushion absorbed more than 90% of the sulphur gases. CONCLUSION: Sulphur-containing gases are the major, but not the only, malodorous components of human flatus. The charcoal lined cushion effectively limits the escape of these sulphur-containing gases into the environment.”

We close with one more quote from To the Royal Academy of Farting:

What Comfort can the Vortices of Descartes give to a Man who has Whirlwinds in his Bowels! The Knowledge of Newton’s mutual Attraction of the Particles of Matter, can it afford Ease to him who is racked by their mutual Repulsion, and the cruel Distensions it occasions? The Pleasure arising to a few Philosophers, from seeing, a few Times in their Life, the Threads of Light untwisted, and separated by the Newtonian Prism into seven Colours, can it be compared with the Ease and Comfort every Man living might feel seven times a Day, by discharging freely the Wind from his Bowels? Especially if it be converted into a Perfume: For the Pleasures of one Sense being little inferior to those of another, instead of pleasing the Sight he might delight the Smell of those about him, & make Numbers happy, which to a benevolent Mind must afford infinite Satisfaction. The generous Soul, who now endeavours to find out whether the Friends he entertains like best Claret or Burgundy, Champagne or Madeira, would then enquire also whether they chose Musk or Lilly, Rose or Bergamot, and provide accordingly.

Thanks to Tusi for today’s ROFL!

Related content:
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Asparagus, urine, farts, and Benjamin Franklin (Part I)
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: It’s like a Brita filter for your butt

A polymorphism of the ability to smell urinary metabolites of asparagus.

Face it: your pee smells after you eat asparagus. (And if you think yours doesn’t, it’s because you can’t smell it.) This phenomenon (which is caused by various malodorous sulfur-containing compounds) has tickled the fancies of many researchers, as well as such luminaries as Proust, who wrote of asparagus: “exquisite creatures who had been pleased to assume vegetable form, and whose precious essence when, all night long after a dinner at which I had partaken of them, they played (lyrical and coarse in their jesting like a fairy-play by Shakespeare) at transforming my chamber pot into a vase of aromatic perfume (translated from Du côté de chez Swann, Gallimard, 1988, I, 119; I, 131).

But our favorite allusion to the asparagus-pee phenomenon has to be from Benjamin Franklin, who, in 1871 1781, wrote a letter asking researchers to come up with a solution to fart smells (the letter is definitely worth reading in full: To the Royal Academy of Farting):

“Certain it is also that we have the Power of changing by slight Means the Smell of another Discharge, that of our Water. A few Stems of Asparagus eaten, shall give our Urine a disagreable Odour; and a Pill of Turpentine no bigger than a Pea, shall bestow on it the pleasing Smell of Violets. And why should it be thought more impossible in Nature, to find Means of making a Perfume of our Wind than of our Water?”

So, now that we understand why our pee stinks when we eat asparagus, can we address Benjamin’s larger concern? Check back tomorrow for some cutting-edge research on fart-smell-reduction!

Ladies and gentlemen, for your viewing and listening pleasure, it’s the fourth installment of “Symphony of Science.” If you missed the first three iterations of  John Boswell’s creation, he auto-tunes the syncopated scientific stylings of Carl Sagan’s monologues from “Cosmos,” combined with guest stars like Stephen Hawking, Neil deGrasse Tyson (of DISCOVER’s StarTalk podcast, among many other media ventures), and Richard Feynman. If you need to catch up, all four are available on Boswell’s site. The first can even be had on vinyl through the label of the White Stripes’ Jack White—Third Man Records.

Here’s the newest, “The Unbroken Thread.” Watch and enjoy.

Related Content:
Cosmic Variance: AutoTuned Sagan
The Loom: The Continuing Return of Carl Sagan
Bad Astronomy: What I Learned from Carl Sagan

Researchers from the Charles Darwin University in Darwin, Australia (they really like Darwin there, apparently) thought they had schemed up a clever way to study how Australian Green Tree Frogs regulate their body temperature.

They surgically implanted temperature-sensitive radio transmitters inside the frogs’ bellies, but months later when they went to retrieve the frogs, the scientists found the transmitters scattered on the ground. Like so many great scientific discoveries, the researchers eventually went from “huh?” to “aha!” according to Nature News:

Researchers have discovered that these amphibians can absorb foreign objects from their body cavities into their bladders and excrete them through urination.

For the frogs, this means that any thorns or spiny insects they swallow while hopping around trees are safely (but painfully?) removed from the body.

This is the first time this phenomenon has been observed in an animal’s bladder, but some fish and snake species can absorb objects into their intestines from their body cavity and remove them by defecation.

Talk about adaptations that would make Darwin proud.

Related Content:
Discoblog: A Fruit Fly With a Laser-Shaved Penis Just Can’t Catch a Break
Discoblog: Australian Bee Fights Like an Egyptian—It Mummifies Beetle Intruders
Discoblog: Jeans: Stylish, Classic, And a Decent Defense Against Rattlesnake Bites

Image: flickr / VannaGocaraRupa

Tales of grown-ups trying to ruin science in the schools usually seem to involve anti-evolutionists. But in Massachusetts, science education has clashed with a different force: squeamishness.

We here at Discoblog love the yuck factor of science. Can’t get enough of it. But for some parents in Sandwich, Massachusetts, a presentation in their kids’ 5th grade class went too far. From MyFoxBoston:

Parents of some fifth-graders at a Sandwich school were horrified when their teacher decided to invite a presenter to class who showed them cell development at different stages of growth.

It happened during a class last Thursday at the Forestdale School. The teacher allegedly had the presenter come into her class with embryos, hearts and lungs at different stages of development.

Besides concerns that their kids were exposed to—gasp!—biology during a science glass, some Sandwich parents also complained that the fifth-graders were allowed to handle jars containing formaldehyde. Fair enough. Formaldehyde is dangerous stuff that shouldn’t be handled without supervisors… like a science teacher and the pathologist assistant who gave the presentation.

Between embryos and chemicals, perhaps a protective parent freak-out was inevitable. But hopefully fear of reprisal won’t scare this teacher or others away from teaching tactics that actually might work. As one parent told a local TV station, “It was a great class, my son actually commented on what a great class it was.”

Related Content:
Discoblog: Cheerleaders, Professor Team Up for Science
DISCOVER: Creationism Lurks in Public High Schools
The Intersection: Is America Scientifically Illiterate?

Image: flickr / lunar caustic

Briton Ged Galvin survived that vicious car wreck that nearly took his life. Unfortunately, the accident crushed some of his organs and left him needing a colostomy bag to go to the bathroom.

That was until his doctors created his cyborg sphincter. Yes, you read that correctly. Doctors removed muscle from above Galvin’s knee, wrapped it around his damaged sphincter, and attached electrodes to the nerves. Now, when Galvin goes to the bathroom he simply presses a button on a remote control.

From The Telegraph:

Mr Galvin, who had previously endured the indignity of carrying a colostomy bag, added: “I thought that in these days of modern medicine surely there was something they could do. They’d mended everything else – why not this? Anything was better than a colostomy bag.

“The operation changed my life and gave me back my pride and confidence. Because of the remote control I can lead a normal life again.”

Outstanding. Though hopefully Galvin’s remote has a lock that prevents him from accidentally triggering it while it’s in his pocket.

Related Content:
Discoblog: The 10 Most World-Changingest Ideas in the World
Discoblog: One Small Step Closer to Superhuman Cyborg Vision
Discoblog: Cyborg Bugs! Researcher Controls Beetles with Radio Antenna

Image: Anna Lythgoe/SWNS.COM

Pulses of certain Turkey Day food ingredients are detected in the water supply in the days after the holiday, according to researchers. But as reported in National Geographic News, it doesn’t stop there:

For instance, thyme and sage spike during Thanksgiving, cinnamon surges all winter, chocolate and vanilla show up during weekends (presumably from party-related goodies), and waffle-cone and caramel-corn remnants skyrocket around the Fourth of July.

A research team from the University of Washington tracked pulses of food ingredients that enter Washington’s Puget sound to learn more about how our actions on land affect the water supply, and to determine what slips through sewage treatment plants. Similar monitoring is underway worldwide, and scientists have turned up things such as flu vaccines, cocaine, heroine, rocket fuel, and birth control in waterways.

Click on over to team leader Rick Keil’s lab Web site to learn more about the Puget Sound research. But Keil told National Geographic News that the no one knows yet whether the subtle seasoning of the water is having an impact.

For now, there’s no evidence that a sweeter and spicier sound is a bad thing—salmon, which can smell such flavors, could be enjoying their vanilla-enhanced habitat, Keil said.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Fun in the Sand Now Hindered by Fecal Bacteria
Discoblog: Vatican Science: Pope Blames Male Infertility on…the Pill
80beats: Duck Flu Defense? Tamiflu From Urine Builds Up Downstream

Image: flickr / Lana_aka_BADGIRL

Leaf beetle mothers give their children an inheritance that many people wouldn’t quite appreciate—a mobile home made of poop. Gee thanks, mom. As Not Exactly Rocket Science describes:

After [a female] lays her eggs, she seals each one in a bell-shaped case. When the larva hatches, it performs some renovations, cutting a hole in the roof and enlarge the structure with their own poo. By sticking its head and legs out, it converts its excremental maisonette into a mobile home, one that it carries around with them until adulthood.

This beetle behavior has been well established by scientists. However, the leaf beetle Neochlamisus platanithey has been singled out by researchers for its “elaborate example of faecal architecture.” The larvae add a little insulation in the form of plant hairs, called trichomes, which help ward off predators, according to new research.

Staged attacks on larvae with and without fecal shelters demonstrated that poop-protected larva were less likely to be attacked by crickets, spined soldier bugs, and green lynx spiders than unprotected larva. NERS explains why:

Even if a predator investigates the case, they must first breach the unappetising shield, and the larva doesn’t make it easy for them. [The researchers] saw that, in some cases, the larvae pulled their cases down flush with the floor, making them even harder to penetrate. That defence was particularly effective against the bugs, whose stabbing mouthparts couldn’t break through the wall of the case. Some of the larvae also wiggled their cases back and forth, which could serve to shake off or startle a predator.

Even if a predator breaks through the case (as frequent holes in the structures suggest), they’d meet a large concentration of trichomes in the attic before they reached the larva underneath.

For beetles at least, putting up with their mothers’ crap can save their lives.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Enough of This S#%t! Dung Beetles Morph into Millipede-Eaters
Discoblog: Finally! An iPhone App That Lets You Track Your Bathroom Habits
Discoblog: Archeologists Find the Darnedest Things Digging Around in Hyena Poop

Image: Wikimedia Commons / Neochlamisus

The folks behind the best-selling book, “What’s Your Poo Telling You?” aren’t satisfied with being mere bathroom reading material. So they’ve dropped a new iPhone app, the Poo Log, which allows you to time, log, and graph your BMs—and learn about your gastrointestinal health while doing so.

Via The Presurfer:

The ‘Poo Log’ is a digital timer and journal for recording and studying the wondrous uniqueness of each bowel movement. With a clever mix of bathroom humor and legitimate medical information, the ‘Poo Log’ allows the user to track his/her digestive workings and graph their ‘poo’ – all with one hand.

According to the app’s developers, AvatarLabs Inc, the tracker features medically accurate info that is suitable for all ages, and of course helpful tips such as, “Light a match. Now.”

Related Content:
Discoblog: Want to Cure Your Fear of Flying? There’s an App for That.
Discoblog: “Electric Fart Machine” Could Lead to Greater Fuel Storage Efficiency
Discoblog: Not Subtle, But It Works: Peepoo Bag Converts Human Waste Into Fertilizer

Image: AvatarLabs Inc