Brain Implant Surgeries Dramatically Improve Symptoms of Debilitating Condition

ScienceDaily (Mar. 8, 2012) — Implanting electrodes into a pea-sized part of the brain can dramatically improve life for people with severe cervical dystonia -- a rare but extremely debilitating condition that causes painful, twisting neck muscle spasms -- according to the results of a pilot study led by Jill Ostrem, MD and Philip Starr, MD PhD at the University of California, San Francisco.

Today, people with cervical dystonia can be treated with medications or injections of Botox, which interrupt signals from the brain that cause these problems. However, those treatments do not provide adequate relief for all patients. Over the last decade, doctors at UCSF and elsewhere have turned to a technique called deep brain stimulation to help people with debilitating dystonia. Also used to treat Parkinson's disease and the neurological disorder essential tremor, the technique is like putting a pacemaker inside a heart patient's chest, except that deep brain stimulation requires a neurosurgeon to implant electrodes inside the brain.

I got interested with this article because I know about many types of inplants, but I never heard about a brain implant. It is very intresting that a brain implant can change the way a part of your body functions. This may facilitate cervical problems, but I am worried that it may damage or affecft some part of your brain or your body. It is a very cool invention and I hope it works.

Right now I can not connect it really to my daily life, but my mom had a cervical problem so she had to get operated, if this implant would have excisted when she got operated she may had put that implant because it may be easier. She still suffers of back hurts and maybe if she would have had the implant she wouldn't suffer anymore. This brain implant scares me a little because the brain is very delicate so it's kind of risky. I hope I will never have cervical problems, but if I do and this implant is successful I may get one if I need to.

http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2011/03/9511/brain-implant-surgeries-ucsf-dramatically-improve-symptoms-debilitating-condition

Oil from Deepwater Horizon Disaster Entered Food Chain in the Gulf of Mexico

Oil rig in Gulf of Mexico. (Credit: Photo by James Pierson.)

ScienceDaily (Mar. 20, 2012) — Since the explosion on the BP Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010, scientists have been working to understand the impact that this disaster has had on the environment. For months, crude oil gushed into the water at a rate of approximately 53,000 barrels per day before the well was capped on July 15, 2010. A new study confirms that oil from the Macondo well made it into the ocean's food chain through the tiniest of organisms, zooplankton.
Tiny drifting animals in the ocean, zooplankton are useful to track oil-derived pollution. They serve as food for baby fish and shrimp and act as conduits for the movement of oil contamination and pollutants into the food chain. The study confirms that not only did oil affect the ecosystem in the Gulf during the blowout, but it was still entering the food web after the well was capped.

This article called a lot my attention, because currently our planet Earth is going into a tough situation that can lead to crisis, due to the fact of all the pollution is done daily. I would love to make a change even though I don't know how can I do it, I don't want to do a little change.. I want to make a world-wide impact that will help us have a better place to live, and by starting reading about the current problems around the world I can start learning. Even though the disaster is not in my country and it is not affecting it right now, it may affect us later because if it affects the food chain it can get to the point that it can affect our food web. Everyday we can see that more and more problems occur, more pollution is made, more endangered species, more diseases, water scarcity, etc.. Do we want to keep on living in this kind of world?

Do we want this?













Or this?














We are responsible for that, we need to make a change NOW before it's too late.. Let's think about our future, and the future of our kids.. We want them to go to beautiful places and know them.. We don't want to tell them "This used to be such a beautiful place full of trees."
This article is so important because every animal is important in the Food Chain, so it may affect world wide.
The Areas of Interaction I consider that take place in the article are: Environment, this issue is definitely affecting our environment and the natural creature that live in the Gulf of Mexico; Health and Social Education, this disaster entered the food chain and that is a major issue because that will affect the food they eat and the other animals that depend on the ones that are dying. It is an important topic that need to be talked about and find solutions to it.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120320142100.htm