Bandages Made of Edible Starch Could Dissolve On Your Skin Once You're Healed

No need to peel them off Duct Tape Bandage There is a better way. Finely spun starch fibers woven into a bandage could dissolve on your skin and be absorbed by your body, eliminating the sting and hassle of ripping it off in one fast motion. Starch fibers could also be used to produce toilet paper, napkins and other biodegradable products, according to researchers at Penn State. Food science researchers dissolved starch into a fluid, then spun it into long strands that can be woven into mats, according to a university news release. Anyone who has ever dissolved starch in water knows it can have some awesome physical properties, but the resulting thick paste is not that useful beyond a fun experiment or maybe thickening some soup. To spin it into thin threads, the Penn State researchers added a solvent to help the starch break down more readily. The solvent allowed it to maintain its molecular structure, and the researchers used an electrospinning device to spin the material into long strands. The fibers could then be woven like any other fiber into a wide range of materials, from bandages to paper. If they're used as a bandage, the starch fibers could simply degrade into glucose after some time and be absorbed by the body, according to grad student Lingyan Kong, who led this research. No more ripping off a Band-Aid. The fibers could serve other functions where other polymers, like cellulose or petroleum-based plastics, are typically used. The research was supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and now the Penn State team is applying for a patent.

ZEBRA FINCH BRO-MANCE TRUMPS MATING

For zebra finch males, having a partner can be more important than having a mate.

Zebra finches form life-long relationships, usually with members of the opposite sex. But a study published in the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology found that male birds raised together form bonds with each other that are just as strong.

Sixteen male finches were raised to adulthood together. Upon reaching maturity, the males coupled up and showed signs of affection, like singing, preening and nuzzling beaks. When females were then introduced to the finches' cage, five of the eight male-male pairs stayed together and ignored the females.

“Relationships in animals can be more complicated than just a male and a female who meet and reproduce, even in birds,” said lead researcher Julie Elie of the University of California Berkeley in an interview with the BBC.

The researchers did not report any sexual activity between the paired males, only that they formed cooperative bonds. This suggested to the researchers that the survival advantages of having a pair bond can be more complex than simply having a reproductive partner.

"A pair-bond in socially monogamous species represents a cooperative partnership that may give advantages for survival," said Elie. "Finding a social partner, whatever its sex, could be a priority."

Although some have reported this as evidence of homosexuality in the animal kingdom, the lack of any observed sexual behavior means there is an important piece missing from that argument. Just because males are affectionate to each other and live together doesn't mean their “bro-mance” is homosexual.

Same sex pair bonds have been observed in birds before. Elie noted the case of female albatross, who will bond with another female, then mate with a male from another pair bond in order to raise a chick with her female partner.

"Female partners copulate with a paired male then rear the young together," Elie said.

In the zebra finch study, females were not raised together, so it is unknown if female finches will form pair bonds as well.

The famous relationship of two male penguins, Roy and Silo, at Manhattan's Central Park Zoo is another example of same-sex pair bonding in birds. The two male chinstrap penguins formed such a strong bond that they were even able to incubate and hatch a fertilized egg that a keeper placed in their nest.

In situations like these, humans are quick to put their own sexual definitions on animals. But it is important to remember that our own sexual definitions of hetero- vs. homosexual are set by our cultures, and the labels we put on each other and on animals are based in our culture as well. Cultural sterotypes in some human societies about male-male affection may make people inclined to label affection between male animals as evidence of homosexuality.

Putting our labels on animal behaviors runs the risk of anthropomorphic interpretation, or seeing human characteristics in animal behaviors.

Hooking a 9-Volt Battery To Your Brain Improves Your Video Game Skills, Researcher Finds

(But don't try this at home)

9-Volt Battery Wikimedia Commons

We’ve already seen how magnets hovering close to a person’s head can affect speech, behavior and learning patterns. Now it appears zapping your brain with a 9-volt battery will make youbetter at video games, at least according to one researcher. Don’t try this yourself, though.
Neuroscientists at the University of New Mexico asked volunteers to play a video game called “DARWARS Ambush!”, developed to help train American military personnel. Half of the players received 2 milliamps of electricity to the scalp, using a device powered by a simple 9-volt battery, and they played twice as well as those receiving a much tinier jolt. The DARPA-funded study suggests direct current applied to the brain could improve learning.
This type of brain stimulation, called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), is controversial but could show promise for treatment of various neurological disorders and cognitive impairments. Click through to Nature News for a thorough overview.
It’s different from transcranial magnetic stimulation, in which a magnetic coil running at high voltage is positioned close to the head. The magnets stimulate electrical responses in the brain. Transcranial direct current stimulation is just what it sounds, applying the current directly to the brain.
We’ve been hearing quite a lot about these methods lately, and the scientific literature indicates the fields — tDCS in particular — are experiencing a revival, Nature News points out. Scientists hope the methods could be used to treat depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, stroke and autism, as well as to improve learning by increasing the brain’s plasticity.
Researchers are beginning to understand how an external electrical current affects brain function, including by inducing changes to the flow of electricity across neurons and increasing the expression of certain synapse proteins.
Apparently, it takes very little electricity to do all this. But please, don’t start hooking up 9-volt batteries to your brain — leave that to the scientific studies.

SCIENTISTS CAN TRICK YOU INTO THINKING YOU’RE INVISIBLE

THE ILLUSION COULD ONE DAY HELP PEOPLE CONQUER THEIR FEARS

Bringing Hogwarts to Life

Staffan Larsson

Ph.D. student Zakaryah Abdulkarim, M.D., shows how to create the illusion of invisibility in the lab.

It looks like Muggles have finally caught up with the wizarding world. Neuroscientists from Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet gave 125 study participants the illusion of being invisible.

The researchers described the invisibility illusion in the journal Scientific Reports. For the experiment, a participant stands and wears a head-mounted display, which plays a real-time video feed from a camera pointed down at an empty space nearby. So when the participant looks down, she sees an empty space instead of her body. The scientist touches various locations on the participant’s body with a large paintbrush. At the same time, with a paintbrush in his opposite hand, he imitates these motions in mid-air beneath the camera. The participant simultaneously feels the brush poke and sees the brush poking into empty space. The trick leads to a Harry Potter-like sensation of invisibility. Off to Hagrid’s!

Arvid Guterstam, the lead author of the study, explains in a press release, “Within less than a minute, the majority of the participants started to transfer the sensation of touch to the portion of empty space where they saw the paintbrush move and experienced an invisible body in that position.”

To test how well the illusion worked, the researchers made stabbing motions with a knife toward the empty space that represented the invisible body. When participants were under the spell of the illusion, they perceived these jabs as threats to their invisible bodies, and their sweat and heart rates were elevated. But when the illusion was broken--for instance, when the brushstrokes they felt and those they saw weren't in sync--they weren't unnerved by the knife.

Interestingly, the illusion of being invisible changed participants' responses during stressful situations. The researchers positioned the participants in front of a virtual audience of strangers, measuring their heart rate and self-reported stress levels. Unsurprisingly, participants were less stressed when they thought they were invisible.

So basically, pretending you’re invisible seems to be a more effective way to handle stage fright than imagining everyone in their underwear.

Looking ahead, the researchers hope to find out what else an illusion of invisibility might affect. This study might be useful for social anxiety disorder therapies or to examine decision-making. The study’s principal investigator Henrik Ehrsson says, “Follow-up studies should also investigate whether the feeling of invisibility affects moral decision-making, to ensure that future invisibility cloaking does not make us lose our sense of right and wrong, which Plato asserted over two millennia ago.”