The Power of Planaria

There is this one certain animal that I have done some work with that I think is absolutely amazing. It is called the planaria, and it is a free-living, freshwater flatwork. They are very small, and very simple, so you may be wondering why I take such an interest in them.

The reason is that they have the extraordinary power of regeneration. If you cut them in half, the head end grows a new tail, and the tail end grows a new head. It is pretty amazing. In fact, a fun thing to do with the little creatures is to slice them halfway down their body vertically, and then they grow two new heads on one body.

At this point you may be thinking that is is a extremely cruel practice; cutting things up for fun does not seem like a great idea. But planaria do not, basically, feel pain. They have a very simple structure, with a bundle of nerves in their head that could be called a brain. They have a ladder structure throughout their body to transport nutrients and waster, as well as to serve their reproductive purposes. Below, you can see a diagram of the normal planaria.

The work that I have done with these animals is researching to discover if a certain type and color of light increases or decreases their regeneration rate. I found that LED light, in particular infrared LED light, increase their regeneration rate. This may not seem like a very important discovery, but infrared LEDs are currently being used to help heal wounds, and humans do not regenerate, but we do heal.

The interesting thing, though, is that even though this light makes the planaria regenerate faster, planaria do not like to be exposed to light. This got me thinking. The reason that planaria regenerate and do not heal is because regeneration is a slower, but healthier, process. Healing damages you, leaving scar tissue, and the reason we heal is to stop us from bleeding to much. Planaria do not bleed, so they take the healthier option: regeneration. Healing is basically just producing more cells to fix the wound. When humans have too much of an increased cell production rate, cancer develops. This could be the reason that planaria do not like light, and that constant light exposure causes the planaria to regenerate slower than just 6 hours a day.

What I found here, basically is that infrared light can be used to help healing. The planaria are evidence. But we have to be careful with the methods we are using now. For a long time we though that ultraviolet light was the only cancer causing light. Infrared light can cause cancer too, when it is used in too long of time periods.

Another interesting thing is that Infrared light travels easier through skin tissue that ultraviolet light does, as they are on different ends of the electromagnetic spectrum. This could be why ultraviolet light lead to skin cancer and infrared light may lead to cancers of the internal organs.

So this amazing little planaria is not only cool, but it can show us a lot of healing and cancer research. In addition, they are quite cheap. If you would like to play around with some of them, just let me know, and I can get them for you at a discounted rate. If not, you can order them at Carolina Biological Supply, and you will also need some X-Acto knives to cut them with. Have fun, and learn a lot from these flatworms!

The Healing Touch

Here is another interesting topic that I have been looking at for a while. My mentor at the University of Nevada, Reno, has done some work on the healing touch cure (or method of reduction) for cancer. What the method basically involves is examining the energy field of sick patients. By altering that energy field, the cancer has been shown to be reduced in humans. Special trained individuals, called feelers, feel the field and mold it to a healthy shape.

This may sound like an impossible method, but there has been some studies that have shown that the cancer is reduced in humans through work with the energy fields. There is, though, always some problem with studies that humans are used for. Scientists have absolutely no idea weather the cancer remissions are due to the actual treatment or the placebo effect.

For this reason, the people involved in Healing Touch have decided to do some work with mice. Mice do not have the placebo effect that is shown in humans. If the same treatment works in mice, then there is some truth behind the alterations of energy fields.

The studies don in mice had two parts. One of the parts was to see if the feelers could actually identify the fields of sick mice to be different than the fields of healthy mice. It was shown that the feelers correctly identify the sick mice 50% of the time more than a trained eye of a professional mouse handler. This part really has potential. The other part of the study, to see whether the Healing Touch method actually worked to reduce the cancer in the mice, was not able to be done completely, and the Healing Touch person working with my mentor on this study was convinced that she had to get the results she thought she would get, and no other results would do.

This kind of science completely ruins an otherwise good study, and the Healing Touch researcher is still trying to find someone that will continue her research with her. Because she was so set on corrupting the study to get good results, there is still not a result. Perhaps this sort of method to reduce cancer really does work. But it is yet to be found out.

I really had two messages to convey in this post. One is to give you all an idea about the research that is being done on this subject. The other is to show you that nothing good comes out of bad science. So if any of you are doing research, or plan to in the future, no that any results give conclusions, even if they are not the conclusions that you wanted or expected.

My Research

So, I thought that would include just one post (or maybe more if you guys wish) about what research I am doing. I am attempting to decrease stress in laboratory mice through cost effectively designing their cages to mimic their natural environment.

I am not going to go in depth on my methods, so if you have any questions, feel free to ask. Basically, I had three groups. Mice living in a standard laboratory cage, mice living in an enriched cage, and mice living in a natural cage. I measure stress levels and weights at multiple timepoints, when the mice were adults, pregnant, pups, pre/post-weaning.

I ultimately found that stress was significantly reduced in prenatal mothers living in the natural cage, and that natural cage pups had higher weaning weights and weight gain rates overall. This is good for the mice because low stress and high weight correspond to a healthier mouse. Increased prenatal maternal stress leads to decreased pup bodily functioning, and decreased pup weaning weights lead to increased chance of obesity later in life.

This also is good for the studies using these mice. If the mice are healthier, then they are more scientifically viable, and the results of the studies using the mice will be more reliable. This will lead to more efficient and less expensive treatments for patients using the medical system, and it will increase public health overall.

For this reason, I feel that more study should be done on this subject so that this natural cage system can be implemented in labs around the world. I hope to do more research in the upcoming years. If you have any questions, please ask!

Popular Science Update

This is a new thing that I will be adding to the blog, hopefully, everyday, but at least twice a week. It just covers some of the most interesting information put up on www.popsci.com. Alright, each time I will talk about three interesting articles.

The First Synthetic Life: Today, scientists announced that they have made the first ever synthetic life. This is self-replicating life whose parent is a computer. The scientists took chromosomes from a certain bacteria and used yeast to make the whole genome, then further "watermarked" it so that it would not be mistaken for the natural species. Think about it. Life, real life, being made from a computer! Amazing!

Psychological Disorders Linked to Physiology: For many years, scientists have known that psychological disorders have some root is physiology. But recently, it was found that a psychological disorder similar to obsessive compulsive disorder was found to be cured or lessened in mice through bone marrow transplants. Sick mice, given healthy bone marrow, were cured. Health mice, given sick bone marrow, were made sick. Although this does not give a sure way of how to cure psychological disorders, it will certainly help in the future.

Fruit Flies Can Smell Light: It was found recently that fruit flies have the ability to smell light. When their brains were stimulated in a certain way through certain neurons, the olfactory nerves were used, and the flies went over to a blue light. Scientists know that it was the olfactory nerves at use because they imaged how the signal traveled through the brains of the flies, and it went right to the smell part of the brain.

I hope this was interesting to you. If you want more information on any of these articles, or want to see some more cool ones, visit the Popular Science website! I will be bringing another one of these to the blog either tomorrow or Monday!

The Evil "Chem Trail"

I have heard a theory circling around lately: that the jet contrails that airplanes leave behind are actually hurting the environment, and some people are going as far as saying that the government is putting chemicals in the trails to further increase global warming. These two theories are what is being discussed in this post.

The first theory is based off of a sound principle. Water vapor, the main principle of clouds and jet contrails, is a greenhouse gas, trapping heat in the earth's atmosphere. Although water vapor does not have much as much of a negative effect as carbon dioxide does, there is a lot more water vapor in the atmosphere than there is carbon dioxide. So, basically, this theory is saying that adding water vapor into the air is artificially increasing the amount of greenhouse gasses in the air, therefore increasing the rate of global warming.

To a minimal extent, this is most certainly true. But when one looks at the number of contrails that exist, and compared that number to the number of clouds that exist in the atmosphere, the number of contrails is minimal. For this reason, contrails are not having a drastic effect on the environment, or at least that is how I see it.

The second theory is based in conspiracy. What people are thinking is that water vapor dissipates into the atmosphere after a short period of time, but many jet contrails actually stick around in the sky for hours. They think that these contrails cannot be made of just water vapor, there must be some chemicals in them. They speculate that these chemicals are placed there by the government to increase global warming and cause a global disaster. This, my friends, is most definitely not true. But now you may be wondering what the real deal is with those pesky contrails that just do not go away.

Well, water vapor will dissipate into the atmosphere at different rates depending on the temperature, the altitude, and the humidity. My theory is that those contrails just will not go away because of those changing factors. The temperature and the humidity might have reached the air's saturation point at that altitude, making it impossible for any more water vapor to dissipate, because the air is literally filled to capacity with water.

So, as you can see, contrails are really not much to be concerned about yet. Although there may be a problem that most people are looking past, it is highly unlikely that any earth processes are going to be made worse by these contrails, and it is absolutely impossible that the government is trying to worsen these properties by using contrails.

Sustainable College in Maine

I recently mentioned in one of my comments that there is a highly environmentally sustainable college called College of the Atlantic. This college is in Bar Harbor, Maine, on Mount Desert Island near Acadia National Park. They run a great program over there.

They are, of course, into the normal stuff: recycling, turning off the lights, using less paper. But they are also part of something bigger. They run their whole campus off of biomass pellet burning, and they use the amount of power needed to run a single-family home. This is pretty impressive, and it is why they are part of a group of college called the eco-league. This consists of Alaska Pacific University, College of the Atlantic, Green Mountain College, Northland College, and Prescott College. These colleges have a commitment to being sustainable, and they run their programs that way.

Another interesting thing about College of the Atlantic is that it is completely carbon-neutral. This basically means that its net carbon output is zero! College of the Atlantic was the first college to every do that. They even take the time to look at how much carbon their students emit, whether it is driving around or coming to visit the college as a prospective student, and they offset this amount. In this way, they are truly the most environmentally focused college.

If any of you are thinking about going to college, and think that College of the Atlantic might be a good fit for you, please visit their website, and www.coa.edu. There is way too much information about them for me to explain here, but they are a really great college, with very devoted and independent students!

The Gulf Oil Spill

As most of you probably know, the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has just surpassed the tragic Exxon Valdez Spill as the worst oil spill in United States history. This is a most tragic turn for the worst in accordance to this spill. Literally, this has now become less of a spill and more of a cascade of oil dumping into the ocean.

One of the major reasons that this is a problem is because oil, after it is released into the ocean, actually has the potential to remain there forever. There was once a spill in England, many years ago, where the sand on the beaches is still black because of the oil. Not only will the actual beaches be damaged, the ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico will be forever changed for the species living there.

The National Marine Fishing Service has closed 54,000 square miles of the Gulf to commercial fishing. The problem is that much of the Gulf still remains open. This will affect the fish that come out of that area. I urge all of you to please be careful of the seafood that you are eating. The oil is rounding the coast of florida and will eventually pass through the waterways of the entire world. However small amounts of oil they may be, there will be oil in every water system.

There are many organizations that are attempting to give aid to lessen this disaster. The Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Oiled Wildlife Care Network are providing aid at the moment. I hope that you look into the good work that they are doing in this situation and donate to their cause.

In addition, I hope that you see the true problem behind this. In the Gulf of Mexico, there have been many oil spills. Most of them have been due to concreting issues, as this one is, and many of those concreting jobs have been done by Halliburton. You should all write emails or letters to both Halliburton and BP telling them that this is a major disaster and something needs to be done in the future to prevent others that are of equal or greater volume.

I am not going to go into the details of the attempted fixes of this problem, but if you have any questions, I would be glad to answer them. Just know that this has turned into an extreme issue, and everyone should be concerned.