Hey there science fans! We are back with yet another Friday column jam packed with all (well, OK, most) if the hottest, coolest, awesome-est science stories from the past week!

Owing to a new high tech and brilliant (OK, low tech and obvious) new scheme for preserving science stories until they are ripe for the plucking, we have six, count them, SIX, science stories to cover this week, and let me tell you, it was hard enough just whittling it down to six!

Never let it be said that I don’t work hard (OK, moderately firm) for you nice people!

First up, we have some paranoia busting news from the field of microbiology. Turns out, there is a protein in human breast milk that help antibodies fight antibody-resistant diseases.

This protein, rather adorably named HAMLET (for Human Alpha-lactalbumin Made Lethal to Tumor cells.. a little sloppy, I know… hey, I didn’t coin it!), acts as a kind of biological crowbar that pries open resistant strains of diseases like Staphylococcus aureus and makes them vulnerable to antibodies and antibiotics once more.

For those of us who have been getting rather anxious about the current rise of resistant strains of nasty diseases due to our unintentionally applying positive evolutionary pressure on existing strains via vaccines and antibiotics, this is very good news.

The war between humans and germs has been going very well for the last 100 years or so, at least in the developed world, and we have, anti-vax nuts aside, destroyed many terrible scourges that killed millions of people over the centuries.

But the rise of diseases that resist our best efforts to destroy them has put us, to a minor but potentially lethal degree, back where we were in the days of Pasteur.

Anything that can keep that from happening is good news to me.

Also on the front of fighting disease, we have news of a new molecule that kills the bacteria that causes tooth decay.

The molecule is called Keep 32, and it could be showing up in toothpaste and even in sugary foods themselves some time in the near future.

As we all learned in health class, sugar doesn’t cause tooth decay. It just feeds the bacteria, Streptococcus Mutans, that causes tooth decay. It does this by excreting acid all over your teeth which eats through the enamel.

So in theory, if you could kill all the Streptococcus Mutans in your mouth and keep them dead, you could eat whatever you like without fear of cavities.

Makes me wonder how the big gets on your teeth in the first place. Is it floating around in the air we breathe, or the water we drink? Are we born with it there? If you went three weeks without eating anything with any sugar in it, could you starve the little fuckers to death?

Heck, if this stuff is safe enough (big if), we could just add it to the water supply, just like we did with flouride in years gone past, and for pretty much the same reason.

Imagine, a future without tooth decay! (Sorry, dentists!)

Keeping with the Cool Molecule theme, how about a molecule that if injected into your bloodstream allows you to live without breathing?

Is that straight from science fiction, or what? The “martians” in Vonnegut’s Sirens of Titan survive on Mars by taking oxygen pills and learning to breathe in a special way. This is not far from that!

The idea is that these microparticles are made of oxygen molecules separated by micro-thin layers of lipids, essentially creating time-release oxygen.

The most immediate use for this would, of course, be medical. There are all kinds of catastrophic medical situations where the patient simply cannot get oxygen from the air, and with these particles in the doctor’s arsenal, they could simply inject them into the patient’s bloodstream and give them a nearly normal blood oxygen level for up to 30 minutes.

That is more than enough time to deal with the issue, or at least get the heart-lung machine hooked up and working, although honestly, with this particle, maybe you wouldn’t even need those any more.

Of course, the fun uses would be things like scuba diving without oxygen tanks, or just really convincingly faking your death to mess with your friends.

Speaking of stuff straight out of science fiction, how about a bionic ear? How about, in face, a 3D printed bionic ear made of your own cells and with the electronics built right in?

Eat your six million dollar heart out, Linday Wagner aka The Bionic Woman! All you had was a souped up hearing aid.

As you all know, the exciting new world of tissue engineering is a fave here at the Friday Science Whatever, so I just had to cover this. And while an ear is not technically all that complicated a thing to reproduce, this is definitely an encouraging first step towards a future where custom printed 3D organs are widely available and any part of our body can simply be replaced if it breaks.

And as someone who will be turning 40 in 9 days, I find that highly reassuring.

Speaking of that rat bastard aging, a highly unusual theory of aging has emerged recently : it turns out that aging might actually be all in your head.

Your hypothalamus, to be exact. An over-activation of a particular protein causes inflammation of the hypothalamus, and that leads to various aging-type symptoms, including inhibiting a protein used to repair nerves.

At least, it does so in rats. This theory seems fairly left-field, but it is actually in line with a lot of the current research about the surprisingly deep and profound role that inflammatory responses in our body in all kinds of disorders, including ones that don’t seem related at all.

To me, blaming all of aging on this one factor seems a tad extreme. Modern medicine knows that aging is not a single process but a number of concurrent but not necessarily related processes.

But this hypothalmic route might provide important clues as to how the whole thing gets started.

Finally, we will talk about something that might help us all live better in this glorious organ-replacement aging-free future : aquaponics.

As the name implies, it is a brilliant synthesis of aquaculture and hydroponics where the ammonia rich waste from the fish becomes nitrogen rich food for the plants, which take the nitrogen out of the water and returns nothing but pure, clean water.

This replaces aquaculture’s constant need for waste disposal and hydroponics’ heavy need for constant nutrient injection. One problem solves the other in a beautiful display of harmonic efficiency.

If we are to feed the world in the future, we will need to go way out of the box in order to create ways to grow food in cities, and a system like this one could very well be the backbone of skyscraper farms of the future. Fresh fish and produce from the same place!

Of course, the biggest threat to a closed recirculating system like this is disease, so it will take very strict monitoring and near quarantine levels of cleanliness to make it work.

Besides that, I wonder how well the system would scale upward. A lot of promising systems produce very high efficiency rates under highly controlled conditions but can’t make the transition to the less tightly controlled world of industrial production.

Still, I am absolutely in love with the efficiency of the whole thing, and I have no problem with the idea of a future in which all our food is produced this way.

As long as it still tastes good and is nutritious, I don’t care how you make it.

That’s all for this week. Ain’t science grand?

Thanks to faithful correspondent William Graham, who shared this link with me, tonight I will be talking about that whole split brain thing that got me so annoyed earlier this week.

But I will be doing it based not on an irritating essay but on this very interesting talk which comes to you from the mind and mouth of renowned psychiatrist and writer Iain McGilchrist and the always amusing and entertaining visuals come from those fancy folks at RSA Animate.

So sit back and get the skinny on what is up with split brain science in this day and age!

It’s a lot clearer than that stupid essay, isn’t it? Yes, the old oversimplifications about language being in one half of the brain or creativity being only in another are long since dead. This, I knew.

But the essay made it sound like we had given up on hemispheric specialization altogether, which is patently absurd, and I am glad Doctor McGilchrist backs me up on that.

I am quite intrigued to find out that in terms of the ration between the corpus callosum and total brain size, our brains have actually grown less connected over our evolutionary history. This suggests that either there was a very good reason why greater separation was needed, or that the evolutionary pressure was for the rest of our brains to grow in size and function and there was not sufficient pressure for our corpus callosum to keep pace.

It might well be that semi-independent cerebral hemispheres are actually far better for abstract reasoning and other higher mental functions than a fully integrated mind. Each hemisphere can concentrate on its specialties most of the time and only pass information in between when it’s needed.

I also had no idea that the hemispheres were not symmetrical. That is highly counterintuitive and as our lecturer points out, there must have been a damned good reason for us to develop in a way that clearly takes up more space and doesn’t fit as well in our symmetrical skulls.

I wish he has followed that up, in fact. I would really liked to know what those parts of the brain do as a clue as to why we might have needed to expand them.

Now we get into the meat of the subject, which is the notion that the hemispheres are divided so that we can both focus in on what we are looking for or doing and still have half our brains dedicated to the sort of ready-for-anything broad focus that monitoring our environment for threats requires.

This makes sense to me. In the state of nature, you cannot afford to get so absorbed in your focus task that you do not notice the predator sneaking up on you. On the other hand, if you are completely unable to focus because every little stimulus from your environment distracts you, you are never going to be able to concentrate well enough to complete complex tasks which require focus like finding food or hunting.

Regarding the specific brain which is typing these words for you to read, I would definitely come down really strongly on the focus half of the equation. I can become entirely absorbed in a book, a video game, a conversation, writing, or even just thinking my own thoughts.

On the other hand, I pay almost no attention to my surroundings. In the state of nature I would be sabretooth chow on my first day out. Even if I was hunting (something I dearly hope I never have to do), I would get so wrapped up in tracking my prey (or just daydreaming) that a wolf could just casually saunter up to me and start chewing on my leg and I wouldn’t even notice until the third bite.

So like I have always thought ever since I learned about this whole split brain stuff, I am left-brained to a very high degree.

I just consider myself fortunate to also have a very good relationship with my subconscious mind and thus also have a great deal of creativity.

My corpus callosum is constantly abuzz with information and reasoning passing between the two hemispheres.

Then we get to the frontal lobe, which from what I gather from McGilchrist functions as our detachment center, the part of the brain that lets us step back from the situation and give our higher reasoning functions a chance to operate, and not just act on instinct or reflex.

If so, one could make the argument that it is a highly human part of the brain. Even our close cousins the chimps do not spend a lot of time thinking about things. They are capable of reasoning, but it is more like the reasoning of an active child who learns by trying things out constantly.

I find it very illuminating to learn that it is my underdeveloped right hemisphere that deals with empathy and connection to others. I wonder what that implies for us left brained types? it seems to me that a lot of us have trouble connecting to others. When it gets really bad, we end up on the autism spectrum, with narrowly focused minds oblivious to larger contexts and unable to even understand the motivations of others on the most basic level.

I suppose the opposite of this would be someone who has amazing interpersonal skills who connects with and relates to others easily, but is confounded by even the simplest of focus tasks like screwing in a light bulb or paying their bills.

I will not get into the philosophical issues McGilchrist gets into nearish the end of his speech. Let’s just say that as a philosopher, McGilchrist makes an excellent psychiatrist.

Human beings have never been freer or happier, Doc. Things have never been better. Don’t let the anecdotal blind you to the big picture. Overall, the human race has never had it so good and the trend is clearly that things will keep improving for at least the near future.

The ride is bumpy, but that doesn’t mean we are not getting anywhere.

Let me tell you about the Miser Paradox.

We will use that archetype of all misers, Ebeneezer Scrooge.

Here is a man whose every waking moment is devoted to the acquisition of wealth. This pursuit has twisted his once gentle soul onto that of a hard, bitter, callous, grasping wretch who is almost as miserable inside as he makes the lives of others.

What makes this a paradox is that all his wealth gathering neither makes him happy nor makes his life any better. He cannot bring himself to spend even a tiny fraction of his considerable wealth on any sort of creature comforts. small pleasures, or anything that might bring him joy.

So he is a man driven by the need to acquire wealth he will never use. That is the paradox. The pursuit of wealth is the end unto himself. He gathers money compulsively, blindly, and this compulsion is so strong, so dominant in his psyche that he cannot bear to spend any of it (besides the bare minimum for survival) because that would mean letting go of it.

Essentially, he is a hoarder of wealth. He is no different than the people who gather all kinds of garbage not because they rationally ever have any use for it, but because their compulsion is so strong that completely dominates their psyche and blinds them to anything but that drive for mindless acquisition.

The difference, of course, is that trash hoarders, pet hoarders, food hoarders, hoader-collectors, and their ilk live sad lives of pathetic squalor and unbelievable misery and horror, whereas, for some reason, we let wealth hoarders more or less rule the world.

The parallel is so close, in fact, that I think wealth hoarding (and its close relative, status hoardind) should be in the DSM as a genuine mental disorder which honestly does make the sufferers a threat to themselves and others on so very many levels.

And just as trash hoarders develop “clutter blindness”, where they honestly lose the ability to perceive how nasty or cluttered their environment has become (because to perceive that might lead to the conclusion that they should stop hoarding, and that is absolutely unacceptable to their disease), I think wealth hoarders have a similar pathology I will call “wealth blindness”, where no matter how much money they have, they will still feel like they desperately need more.

There is no such thing as “rich enough” to a wealth hoarder.

That is why they scream so loudly about their taxes and will actually spend 2 dollars to avoid 1 dollar in taxes. Being hoarders, there is nothing worse to them than a reduction in the hoard. To them, it is worse than a death in the family or the loss of a limb. Hoarders identify with their hoard beyond the point of total insanity, well beyond the horizon of mental illness, and therefore the slightest reduction in their hoard fills them with a sense of loss so profound that it only further cements their determination to make sure it never happens again, and keep the hoard growing.

That is the only thing that keeps them even remotely sane, and when someone needs something to keep their head just barely above water, you can bet they will not be rational or flexible about it.

They are powerfully addicted to the pleasure of acquisition. And like all addicts, they can seem perfectly normal and rational and calm when their supply or access to their addiction is secure.

That’s why when you watch these programs about hoarders, they always seem quite friendly and rational at first… until someone suggests taking something, anything, from their hoard, and then the madness rears its ugly head and they start screaming like you are trying to kill one of their children.

With wealth hoarders, of course, it’s taxation that brings out the screaming and incoherent animal madness in their blood. They absolutely cannot stand the idea of money leaving their hoard against their will. You might as well be raping them with a red hot stovepipe.

Now you might think that a person like me is fairly immune to hoarding. I don’t have the money to hoard anything, after all. Not money, not stuff. I have a lot of books but those have been acquired over a very long time as I can rarely afford even used books.

Perhaps if I had more money, I might be a book hoarder. I do love my books.

Otherwise, me, a hoarder? How could that even be possible?

Today, I answered that question. Typical of me, my hoarding is entirely internal. It happens all in my mind. It is a kind of cerebral hoarding.

And what do I hoard? Ideas. Inspiration. Information. Insight. All the magical products of my overflowing imagination and extraordinary intellect. I do nothing with most of them. They just build up in my mind, and I think I take some comfort from that, as though I have turned hoard of ideas and so forth in my mind into a fortress which protects me from the harsh outside world.

And so when it comes time to try to bring one of them to life, I have to deal with the same profound sense of imminent loss that any hoarder feels when faced with the prospect of letting go.

I think this is a large part of what has been holding me back from tapping into even a fraction of my creative potential. Keeping the thoughts and ideas and whatnot inside adds more bricks to that fortress, more soft and cozy lining for my next.

Bringing those ideas into harsh reality means giving up some of that security and grappling with the conflict between my desire to express myself and my emotional dependence on this internal hoard.

I have an enormous fortune in ideas and inspiration inside me. Thoughts, theories, insights, ideas… my mind teems with them. There are more than I could ever use in a lifetime.

And yet, I never spend this fortune.

I am a mental miser.

Welcome back to another sizzling hot edition of the Friday Science Whatsit. It is a simply gorgeous day out here at Science Central. The sky is bluish, the sun is shining bright, the air is filled with that heavenly fresh mowed grass smell from all the folks mowing their lawns, and the kids are playing in the green spaces around this apartment building.

It is downright bucolic out there, and reminds me of pleasant summer days of my youth. I have always enjoyed the blue skies and sunshine of summer, despite a propensity for both heatstroke and hay fever.

But before this turns into A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu, on with the science!

First out of the gate is this story of an intriguing new therapy to cure deafness.

It involves taking some bone from the patient’s rib and essentially molding a new eardrum for the patient. That, and an amplifier and receiver implant so small that it’s practically weightless, allows the patient to abandon more cumbersome and expensive hearing aids, and gives them a broader dynamic range than most traditional hearing aids can afford to give as well.

After all, less sophisticated means of amplification simply increase the volume of the sound, and under that model, you usually have to turn up the volume to get more dynamic range.

That’s why people with hearing aids are always fiddling with the volume control. They turn it up when they are trying to understand speech, but then everything else becomes too loud to endure so they end up turning it right back down again.

With this new innovation, specifically the replacement eardrum and the tiny audio processor attached to it, allows for something far more like the subtlety and sophistication of a normal human ear.

Three cheers for medical science!

From there we go to the realm of the animals. Brace yourself for… ZOMBIE ANTS.

There is a fungus, Ophiocordyceps unilaterali, that incorporates living carpenter ants into its life cycle in a particularly gruesome and chilling way.

When the ant is infected, it is overcome by the urge to climb down from its high forest canopy home to the lower leaves of the tree, where it clamps down hard with its powerful mandibles, and dies.

The fungus continues to grow inside the ant, dissolving the ant’s internal organs into food for itself, but avoiding the muscles that keep the ant clamped in place.

Eventually, the infected ex-ant splits open and drops spores onto the forest floor, where they can infect more ants and start the cycle again.

It is always fascinating when an apparently complex series of actions can be the result of something as simple as a fungal infection.

Intriguingly, some theorize that need to avoid this fungus is the whole reason carpenter ants build their nests high up in the tree when all their food is on the ground.

Ants have even been shown to avoid areas infected by the fungus.

It’s like there is a terrifying war going on between the ants and the fungus. Real horror-movie stuff.

Got to feel sorry for the poor ants, though.

On to a less horrifying section of the animal kingdom : humpback whales have been shown to learn new dishing techniques from one another.

Whales being elusive creatures with vast ranges, it took 27 years to get enough data to make this conclusion, but now we can add the humpback whale to the list of species which have shown signs of social learning, or what in humans we call “culture”.

In the whales’ case, what was tracked was a particular method of feeding that involved the whale first smacking its mighty tail down on the surface of the water.

It was first observed in 1980 in a single whale, and researchers were able to track it as it spread from whale to whale and even through successive generations.

That means that these whales are capable of innovation. A future researcher who was ignorant of this study might very well declare this fish-slapping technique was “instinctual” to the whales.

But it’s not. One whale invented it. Other whales tried it and liked it. They in turn taught it to their calves. Eventually, they will all know it.

The implications regarding the sophistication of the whales’ society order and mental capacities are breathtaking. It means they still try new things as adults. It means they are capable of innovating by experimentation and observation just like we do.

Suddenly, those people who wants to give whales citizenship seem a little less silly.

And if you think that is impressive, wait to you learn how vervet monkeys adapt to local monkey culture.

It is the classic “when in Rome” situation. A vervet monkey who finds himself amongst members of a different monkey troupe than his own will quickly adopt that troupe’s distinctive habits and mannerisms.

This suggests to me that these monkeys have the same instinct to conform that we humans beings have. Any world traveler will tell you that when you are in a foreign culture, you instinctively begin to search for social cues to tell you what to do and how to act in that culture.

And you don’t need to travel to the Kalahari to experience this, either. Even just hanging out with a different social group than your own will activate this instinct.

That is why people at a party always go through a careful feeling-out process at the beginning. When a bunch of socially unconnected people go to the party, they are essentially creating a new temporary culture for the duration of the party,

And when we are out of our usual social groups, we instinctively become more reserved, formal, and hesitant. We observe the others around us for social cues, just like we did as children.

So these vervet monkeys are doing a very human thing when they do “as the Romans do”. So much for yet another thing that we humans thought made us unique.

And we definitely are unique amongst all of the children of Earth.

We just haven’t put our finger on exactly why yet.

And finally tonight, we have an update on a medical miracle in the making : teaching the immune system to go after cancer.

Normally, your immune system ignores cancer because, mutated as they are, cancer cells are still cells of your body and it is the immune system’s job to protect, not attack those.

But with modern genetic immunotherapy, still in its infancy, the immune cells can be programmed to go after the cancerous cells (and ONLY the cancerous cells), and wipe out cancer entirely.

Here’s the update : the group working on this at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia has another success story to report : 7 year old Avery Walker is cancer free!

For now, they are only testing this therapy on children who do not respond to the usual chamber of horrors that is modern chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

And that was Avery. At the age of 4 she was diagnosed with a particularly nasty kind of leukemia. Traditional therapies just did not work for her. It was time to take some risks.

And so far, it seems to have worked wonderfully. Avery is cancer-free and all she had to suffer through was a day or so of feeling a little under the weather.

Beats the hell out of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, doesn’t it?

Dare to dream of a world without cancer!