physiology
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Man Holds in Sneeze, Rips Open His Windpipe
Here’s a scary lesson about why you shouldn’t hold in your sneezes. In a case report this month, doctors in the UK describe a man in his 30s who tore open his windpipe by holding his nose and mouth closed while sneezing—apparently the first documented instance of such an injury. Though the man did have…
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DARPA Wants to Find a Drug That Makes You Impervious to Cold
The Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is looking for a new way to get nice and cosy: The agency is funding research into drugs that could protect people from extreme cold. Should these efforts bear fruit, the drugs could have a variety of uses, from treating hypothermia patients to helping people better explore the…
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Will We Ever Be Able to Edit or Delete Memories?
Impossible even to broach this subject without reference to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in which an unkempt Jim Carrey enlists a legitimate if shoddily run medical firm to erase the memory of his ex-girlfriend. If that film had a message, it was almost certainly not “erasing memories is good,” but that is not…
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How Fast Can You Travel Before It Kills You?
The human body can withstand a lot before giving up and dying: falls from second-story windows, years of fevered substance abuse, wolf attacks, etc. We have a pretty good idea of what it can’t tolerate, but some ways of dying instantly have received less attention than others, and speed is one of these. We’ve all…