Daily Science Dose

I know, it’s the weekend.

I know, it’s 5:30 a.m.

I know, I know, I can see the sun coming up.

But, while checking out the latest news during my early morning “wake-up and take last night’s pills” time, I found some cool news. Cool news. You heard me right. News is cool. Like, word.

I can’t go into much detail right now, since I should probably get back to sleep, lest I end up staying up for good. But this stuff was too good to let go. Or maybe it’s just the “not having taken last night’s pills” getting to me.

1) Things look good for a new TB vaccine, the first in 80+ years, so the vaccine is moving into Phase II trials in South Africa.

Here’s some info regarding what the various vaccine phases mean. The site says of Phase II:

“Phase II testing involves a larger number of volunteers (50-500), usually a mixture of low-risk people and higher-risk individuals from the population where Phase III (vaccine efficacy) trials will eventually be conducted. Phase II trials generate additional safety data as well as information for refining the dosage and immunization schedule. Although not set up to determine whether the vaccine actually works, Phase II trials are sometimes large enough to yield preliminary indications of efficacy. These trials generally take 18-24 months, with the increase over Phase I due primarily to the additional time required for screening and enrolling larger numbers of trial participants.”

2) Recalls, recalls. Sara Lee bread that’s full of metal scraps, cans o’ botulism that are still being found on store shelves. Please do take a moment to check each recall site, as the names of the products are not just “Sara Lee [bread]” - they include store brands and obscure brands and even some dog food with botulism.

Botulism is nasty. A topic for another day.

3) Japanese scientists have made a sort of womb to be used in IVF (in vitro fertilization). The womb is, um, some cultured uterine cells on a chip. I don’t know why they call it a chip. It’s…a little thing full of cultured uterine cells. The womb helps the newly-fertilized embryo grow faster than it would if it were in the plain ol’ test tube environment (where test tube environment = microdroplets of fluids).

4) A new study out of Canada says that male circumcision does not decrease sensation. So, you can stop being upset about that one. Besides - what are you gonna do about it now?

If you are uncut, perhaps you should go have some cutting done? There’s evidence to suggest that circumcision may help reduce one’s chances of becoming infected with HIV.

5) SLIT isn’t a dirty word, not today - it stands for sublingual immunotherapy, and if you’re allergic to cats, it might be helpful in getting your body used to cats. Just SLIT some cat dander-laden drops under your tongue and, after awhile, your cats might not bother you so much. You might just be able to keep your cats afterall! This technology works pretty much the same way allergy shots work, by acclimating the immune system to larger and larger amounts of an allergen.

Go cat SLIT!

6) New study suggests that I might get a whole lot more accomplished if I go to bed when the sun goes down and wake up when the sun comes up.

How very meta, how very post-modern of me.

The end.

Tags. I don’t need no stinkin’ tags. Not ’till coffee, which is scheduled for a few hours from now.

Adios! Wach what you eat, and don’t worry about your missing foreskin so much.

UPDATE: Here are your tags.

recall, food, botulism, Sara Lee, circumcision, HIV, Phase II vaccine, SLIT, womb, IVF, tuberculosis, TB, Africa, metafiction, sublingual immunotherapy