The Unseen Impact of Physics In Healthcare

This is a nice news article that provides a basic summary of the applications of physics in healthcare and medicine. It's another one of those where if someone thinks physics only deals with esoteric and useless ideas, show him/her this. I've mentioned many examples of similar medical/health/etc. applications and concepts that came directly from physics, such as this one.

As someone who often teaches general physics to life science/premed/bio/kinesiology major, this is definitely another useful evidence to get them to realize that the physics class they are taking has a direct relevance to their area of study.

Zz.

10 Scientfic Evidence In Support Of Airborne Transmission of SAR-CoV-2 Virus

The ridiculous battle during the pandemic on wearing masks, social distancing, and other restrictions reveals the lack of understanding among many in the general public on how science works, on what is considered as valid scientific evidence, and how our knowledge progresses as more and more evidence and data accumulates. I continue to be amazed at the reasons why some people still resist wearing proper face masks. I can understand if they find it uncomfortable (who does?) and that it is inconvenient (who thinks otherwise?). However, if the reason given is that masks doesn't do anything or isn't effective in reducing the chances of the virus being spread, then I want evidence to back that up.

This is where the public lack the understanding of (i) the nature of valid, scientific evidence, versus simply something you read on Facebook, news websites, or even from talking heads on TV, (ii) where to find such evidence or what should you pay more serious attention to versus those other sources that I mentioned. Here, I want to contrast the type of information that is contained in a scientific paper versus what you find in news article or many public online websites.

(1) When you read something in the news on a typical mass media source, you are told the content, but very seldom are you given proper, exact citation. At best, the type of citation that would be mentioned would be something to the effect that this was published in such-and-such journal or book, etc. Worse still, often times the sources are not even cited, so many of these things are stated as if they are facts, and facts that many of us are unable to verify on our own, if we wish to.

In contrast, scientific publications require exact citation. If you say that this result is in agreement or support by recent discoveries, you must give bibliographical references to those sources, i.e. name of author/s, name of journal where it was published, what page/volume number, date it was published, etc. These details are crucial in someone else verifying the sources of the claim. This is what is often missing in many general public articles, and unfortunately, this is often the source of Fake News, because exact evidence and sources to back the claims are either bogus, unreported, or unrevealed, which prevented anyone from double-checking their validity.

(2) News report and online articles often ignore contradicting evidence. When someone claims that he/she got sick after receiving a vaccine shot, why doesn't he/she consider why a lot of other people didn't get sick? Of if receiving a vaccine shot makes one "magnetic", how come other people aren't? This can also be applied to a lot of "news" programs that reports on certain occurrences that was due to something, but ignore other instances where those occurrences do not happen.

In scientific papers, this is a no-no. In fact, as a referee for several physics journals, I often will check if the authors are ignoring contradicting experimental evidence, or other papers that may be in the opposite to what the authors observed or claiming. These contradictions MUST BE ADDRESSED, i.e. they are not swept under the carpet or just ignored. And they must be addressed in terms of scientific reason, not simply by claiming that the contradicting results were made by Democrats, Republicans, Muslims, Jews, liberals, conservatives, etc. Look at how many so-called discussions or reports attached labels as a means to dismiss something. Such flimsy tactics do not wash in scientific papers.

(3) General public articles and news lacks details and clarity. I read a news article last year where a family decided to go to Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL, and when they got home, they tested positive for COVID-19 and immediately blamed their presence at the theme park for being infected. The news article didn't mentioned any other details about their trip. It did not say if they took a plane, didn't not say how long they stayed, whether they only went to the Disney theme park or did they also went elsewhere, and if they drove there, did they stop anywhere along the way, etc. There was a huge amount of information here that was missing even for a casual reader to be able to clearly analyze the validity of what the family was claiming.

If this claim is to be analyzed scientifically, then an epidemiologist would need to do really detailed tracing of every activity that the family did. Casual and speculative connection between A and B are usually insufficient to draw up valid conclusions.

In a scientific publication, every detailed of a calculation, every detail of the experiment, and every detail of how the analysis was done, must be clearly revealed. Often times, the experimental setup and equipment may had already been published elsewhere, and those will be cited as a reference. Similarly with the calculation and analysis. These details allow for an independent investigator to not only double-check what was done, but also to duplicate the experiment if necessary to see if the results are reproducible, which is a pillar of all scientific experiments (and why the Fleishmann and Pons cold fusion claim failed).

(4) Scientific papers are permanently recorded. They are not like Twitter feed that can be deleted, or news article that may be difficult to find anymore, or Facebook postings that have disappeared. This allows for future citations by other papers, and allows for continuing evaluations, advancements, refinements, rebuttals, contradictions, etc. There is a clear paper trail of who said what and when, which means that it is hard to deny or lie about something, or claim that someone didn't say that or didn't do that.

The whole point in all of this is not to force you to read scientific papers. It is ridiculous to insist that because many of them are not easy to read and are written for other experts. Rather, it is to distinguish on the nature of the evidence, and that if something is backed by proper scientific sources, then the evidence has a greater degree of validity and support than something that someone just rattled off on a TV talk show or on some Facebook post. It is unfortunate that many people, especially politicians, give equal credence to someone testifying that their bodies became magnetized without bothering to invite an expert to debunk such silliness. It seems that whole topics in physics, biology, and physiology were ignored to give air to this craziness.

It is the inability to evaluate the validity of the so-called evidence is one of the fundamental reasons why we are in the state that we are in today.

"But ZapperZ, the topic is about the scientific evidence for airborne transmission of the COVID virus.  Where is it?", you asked.

Good question. I guess this is the long, circuital route to point you to this Lancet article that contains the evidence, and the references to the scientific papers, that support the claim. Compare the types of research that were done, the analysis that were performed, and how the conclusions were drawn, and compare that with the types of "evidence" presented in the popular media and TV news programs.

Have fun reading!

Zz.

Bringing Current News Into A Physics Lesson

I chat often with my colleagues from the English and other departments. I often envy them because many of their assignments have the ability to incorporate the hot topics of the day. They often assign tasks such as essay writing that involves subject matter that are relevant for the current times, such as writing about Black Lives Matter movement, the pandemic, etc.

While I always want to do the same, it is less obvious and not so straight-forward in bringing the same thing into a physics lesson. I had managed to incorporate some over the years (direct observation of blackhole in an IR image while we were studying EM waves as an example). But to incorporate topic-of-the-day to match the topic of the lesson is not that easy.

But this time, I managed to do it, and it was a doozy. We were about to dive into the topic of magnetism and electromagnetic field when I stumbled upon a goldmine. It is the claim that the COVID vaccine can cause one to become magnetized!

Now, my class is still being done remotely, so I make extensive use of the discussion forum as one means of student engagement. When the subject of magnetism comes up, the topic of discussion that I created was for the student to read a couple of news reports on this claim being made. The task is not to either belittle or make fun the claim or the people who made them. Rather, it is to rationally examine the claim and use well-established scientific facts to analyze the validity of such a claim. The students had to do this based on what they have learned about magnetic field, the type of magnetism in a material, and what type of materials are attracted to a magnet.

They were encouraged to make their own at-home observation. Everyone had refrigerator magnets, and I asked them to try and stick various items to the magnet, especially the ones that had been used in the testimony reported in the news article. A student also had the bright idea to use a compass that she had and see if the compass needle changes direction if she brought it against her skin (she's fully vaccinated) or her parents' skin. She cleverly argued that if something has a strong enough magnetic field to attract a spoon, it should cause a noticeable deflection in the compass needed.

This ended up being a lively discussion topic in the discussion forum, with students posting pictures, videos, etc. either one something they found, or something they did. It forced them to sift through what they read in the news to find the details that they can analyze and compare with what they learned about magnetism. They studied the validity of the claim only from the scientific point of view without passing any judgement on politics or personal beliefs.

The whole thing went better than I expected. The students were engaged because this was a current and relevant topic, and they get to see first hand how something that they just learned was actually useful enough to be used to analyze a news item. They get to see that a physics topic is not just something esoteric with little direct practical use in everyday life.

Oh, I should also mention that this is an algebra-based General Physics course that is tailored to life-science/pre-med/biology/kinesiology major. Many of the students are quite familiar with the human body and biological functions, so their discussion included several possible explanations on why something would or would not stick to a human skin without any consideration about magnetism.

It is on days like these that I get great joy in being a teacher.

Zz.

Far-UVC Light Kills Airborne Viruses, And Safe To Humans Too?

First, let me give you the link to the paper that was published in Nature recently.

I actually have 3 separate topics to discuss here all based on this single paper.

The first is the science. UVC is used to kill viruses and sterilized stuff. We know that already. But it is also unsafe to human and we do not want to be exposed to it. But it turns out that far-UVC, having wavelengths in the range of 207-222 nm, is not totally harmful to human. In fact, ...

a regulatory limit as to the amount of 222 nm light to which the public can be exposed, which is 23 mJ/cm^2 per 8-hour exposure

means that humans can be exposed to this range of UVC for a limited amount of time. This is the basis of that research, i.e. using that wavelength and intensity of far-UVC, and see whether it can greatly "inactivate" the amount of viruses carried in airborne aerosols. They found that an exposure of just 25 minutes, very much below the regulatory limit. So there is a way to kill off viruses in airborne aerosols in the same space that human beings are around!

Certainly the implication of this research can be quite important, considering that airborne transmission of the COVID-19 virus is a strong possibility, which is why we are all wearing masks in public. There is now a way to greatly reduce such mode of transmission if this research is verified. The only thing I'm a bit weary about is the health and safety aspect. I know that they cited several sources that seems to show that the far-UVC is harmless to human, and the regulatory limits that have been imposed. Still, I'd like to have this one to be more well-established before I get really excited about it. For example, although the exposure limit is given in per 8-hour doses, how often can someone be exposed to that limit, say, in a month? Is that 8-hour dose limit per day? And certainly, long-term effect needs to be considered in anything of this sort.

But still, I find this result to be very promising, and it certainly is a new piece of information to me that far-UVC is actually not that harmful to humans.

The second aspect of this paper that I want to highlight is to the general public who often do not quite understand the nature of scientific publication. The main reason for scientists to properly publish their work is so that the rest of the community, especially those experts within the same field of study as the work, can scrutinize the work and evaluate its validity. So having something published does not automatically makes it valid. This is important to remember and understand. It requires scrutiny and verification by other experts in the field, and can sometime takes years. Think of how long of a time period from the moment the Higgs mechanism was proposed till its experimental verification at the LHC.

Therefore, it is imperative that a paper contains all the relevant information used to arrive at its conclusion or result. In this case, it is an experimental paper that produces a result. For it to be evaluated by other experts, it must contain all the necessary information. If you look closely at the end, the authors included their methodology, the exact equipment that they used, the experimental setup, the nature of the data analysis used, etc... etc. In other words, everything is as transparent as possible. It allows for someone else to repeat the experiment, and that is a crucial aspect of experimental science - REPRODUCIBILITY. It is something pseudoscience cannot do!

The third and final aspect of this paper is educational. I'm excited at the various values that they used in this paper, because I can already see myself using them in my general physics lessons. I'm already planning on using many of these numbers and asking my students to calculate (i) the amount of power per unit area based on the exposure time, (ii) the energy per photon of 222 nm light, (iii) the number of photons that impinges on a unit area during the exposure time, etc... etc. This will be perfect especially for the general physics course that I have taught that is aimed at life-science/pre-med majors. I always like taking something current, and very relevant to our times, to use as a material in our lessons. The students can immediately see first-hand that what they are learning is, in fact, very useful and has a direct effect on them beyond just wanting a good grade at the end of the semester.

So yes, I'll be holding on to this paper for quite some time.

Zz.

State of the Art of MRI

This is a very good article from Physics Today on the history and development of Magnetic Resonance Imaging, which has become ubiquitous in medical diagnostics. Of course, this came out of the discovery of the nuclear magnetic resonance phenomenon, a technique that itself came out of our understanding of quantum mechanics.

When you read this article, pay attention to how it is continuing to be developed, to evolve, and its continuing improvement. Medical physicists are still actively improving this, and other aspect of the medical field by incorporating things that physicists already know and use. Without advancement in physics, both theoretically and experimentally, there is nothing to trickle down from to the medical field.

Zz.

First Human Scanned By Spectral X-Ray Scanner

Chalk this up to an application of high-energy physics in the medical diagnostic field. The first human has been scanned by a new type of x-ray scanner (registration required to read article at this moment).

The MARS scanner uses Medipix3 technology developed at CERN to produce multi-energy images with high spatial resolution and low noise. Medipix is a family of read-out chips originally developed for the Large Hadron Collider and modified for medical applications.

The Medipix3 detector measures the energy of each X-ray photon as it is detected. This spectral information is used to produce 3D images that show the individual constituents of the imaged tissue, providing significantly improved diagnostic information.

I'll repeat this, maybe to those not in the choir, that many of the esoteric experiments that you think have no relevance to your everyday lives, may turn out to be the ones that might save your lives, or the lives of your loved ones, down the road. So think about this when you talk to your elected political representatives when it comes to funding basic science.

Zz.

Graphene Might Could Kill Off Cancer Cells

Here's another example of how something that came out of physics is now finding an application in other fields, namely the medical field. Graphene, which was discovered quite a while back and won its two discoverers the Nobel Prize in Physics, has now found a possible application at fighting cancer.

It began with a theory -- scientists at the University of California knew graphene could convert light into electricity, and wondered whether that electricity had the capacity to stimulate human cells. Graphene is extremely sensitive to light (1,000 times more than traditional digital cameras and smartphones) and after experimenting with different light intensities, Alex Savchenko and his team discovered that cells could indeed be stimulated via optical graphene stimulation."

I was looking at the microscope's computer screen and I'm turning the knob for light intensity and I see the cells start beating faster," he said. "I showed that to our grad students and they were yelling and jumping and asking if they could turn the knob. We had never seen this possibility of controlling cell contraction."

The source paper can be found here, and it is open-access.

Again, this is why it is vital that funding in basic physics continues at a healthy pace. Even if you do not see the immediate application or benefit from many of these seemingly esoteric research, you just never know when any of the discovery and knowledge that are gained from such areas will turn into something that could save people's lives. We have seen such examples NUMEROUS times throughout history. Unfortunately, people are often ignorant at the origin of many of the benefits that they now take for granted.

Zz.

Teaching Intro Physics To Life Science Students

Teaching intro General Physics to Life Science/Bio students is something I do regularly. And it can be quite challenging because, in my case, calculus is not required and isn't used in the lesson. So there are many things that can't be easily derived from scratch.

I've resolved, a long time ago, that the approach to teaching such a class has to be different than the approach to teaching the calculus-based class, which is often populated by physics, chemistry, and engineering majors. In my experience, the average math skill is lower in the non-calc-based general physics class, which isn't too surprising. But more challenging than that, there is less of an interest and inclination towards the physics subject from such students. Most, if not all, of the Life Science/Bio students are in the class because they have to, and some even have an active dislike of the subject matter.

So it is definitely a challenge to not only convey the material in an understandable manner, but also to perk up their interest in the material so that they will do well in the course. It is why I tend to read papers like this one, which studied the correlation between life science students' interest, attitudes, and performance in a general physics class.[1] In particular, I'm always interested in using examples from biology/medicine to illustrate the particular physics topics that we cover in a lecture. As concluded in this paper, tailoring the subject matter to overlap with what the students are majoring in can affect not only the interest in the subject, but also their performance. This is a no-brainer for many of us, but this paper clearly shows the correlation.

BTW, it helps if the text being used is also geared towards the life science students.  The one that I had used before is "College Physics" by Giambattista, Richardson, and Richardson. I like the part where at the beginning of each chapter, it lists out some of the relevant applications in biology, medicine, etc. I just wish that the text has more examples from such areas, and more homework exercises in those areas, the way the paper described the examples and problems that were used in the course.

Zz.

[1] C.H. Crouch et al. Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. v.14, 010111 (2018).

Therapeutic Particles

No, this is not some mumbo-jumbo New Age stuff.

While this technique has become more common, and there are already several places here in the US that are researching this, this is a nice article to introduce to you the current state-of-the-art in using charged particles in medicine, especially in treating and attacking cancer. It appears that the use of carbon ions is definitely catching up in popularity over the current use of protons.

When you read this article, pay attention to the fact that this is an outcome of our understanding of particle accelerators, that this is a particle accelerator applications, and that high-energy physics experimental facilities are often the ones that either initiated the project, or are hosting it. So next time someone asks you the practical applications of particle accelerators or particle physics, point to this.

Zz.

How Does Proton Radiation Therapy Work?

Here's a video from Don Lincoln on a physicist's view of proton radiation therapy in attacking a tumor.



If you want a more detailed and technical information on proton therapy, you may access a more in-depth paper here. This, btw, is another example of the application of accelerator physics and elementary particle physics, in case you didn't know.

Zz.

Raman Spectroscopy Used To Detect Skin Cancer

I found this piece of news while reading the Flash Physics section on Physics World. And if you've followed this blog for a while, you know that I will highlight this without any shame.

Chalk this up to another important application of something that came out of physics research and subsequently finds a usefulness in medical diagnostics. Many of us in Material Science/Condensed Matter Physics/Chemistry are aware of Raman spectroscopy techniques in the study of molecules and materials. It has been a common technique in these areas of study for many, many years since its first proposal in.... get this.... 1929![1]

So already it is a very useful technique in chemistry and material science. But now it has found another application, in medical diagnostics. It turns out that this same technique can be used to find hard-to-detect skin cancer.[2]

Abstract: Melanoma is the most deadly form of skin cancer with a yearly global incidence over 232,000 patients. Individuals with fair skin and red hair exhibit the highest risk for developing melanoma, with evidence suggesting the red/blond pigment known as pheomelanin may elevate melanoma risk through both UV radiation-dependent and -independent mechanisms. Although the ability to identify, characterize, and monitor pheomelanin within skin is vital for improving our understanding of the underlying biology of these lesions, no tools exist for real-time, in vivo detection of the pigment. Here we show that the distribution of pheomelanin in cells and tissues can be visually characterized non-destructively and noninvasively in vivo with coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) microscopy, a label-free vibrational imaging technique. We validated our CARS imaging strategy in vitro to in vivo with synthetic pheomelanin, isolated melanocytes, and the Mc1r^e/e, red-haired mouse model. Nests of pheomelanotic melanocytes were observed in the red-haired animals, but not in the genetically matched Mc1r^e/e; Tyr^c/c (“albino-red-haired”) mice. Importantly, samples from human amelanotic melanomas subjected to CARS imaging exhibited strong pheomelanotic signals. This is the first time, to our knowledge, that pheomelanin has been visualized and spatially localized in melanocytes, skin, and human amelanotic melanomas.

This is another example where experimental technique in physics EVENTUALLY finds applications elsewhere. I've highlighted other examples of this, with this being the most recent one before this post. Also note the "gestation" period between when this method was first proposed, and then when it became common in physics, to when it found other applications outside of its original main use. This is not new. Look at how long between when NMR became a common technique to when it evolved into MRI. Medical technology would not have evolved and advanced without a much earlier advancement in physics and physics experiments!

What I'm trying to emphasize here is that you may not feel the pain NOW when you cut funding to basic science research. But the pain WILL be felt later, by your children and grandchildren, because it takes years for what we work on now to become a useful technique elsewhere. That physics that we used to detect some esoteric particles that you don't care about may just one day be the diagnostic tool that saves someone's life!

Zz.

[1]C.V. Raman and K.S. Krishnan, The optical analog of the Compton effect, Nature 121, 711 (1928); G. Landsberg and L. Mandelstam, A novel effect of light scattering in crystals, Naturwissenschaften 16, 557 (1928); C.V. Raman and K.S. Khrishnan, The production of new radiations by light scattering, Proc. Roy. Soc. (London) 122, 23, (1929).
[2] H. Wang et al., Scientific Reports 6, Article number: 37986 (2016). Paper is open access.

Brain Region Responsible For Understanding Physics?

A group of researchers seem to think that they have found the region of the brain responsible for "understanding physics".

With both sets of experiments, the researchers found that when the subjects tried predicting physical outcomes, activity was most responsive in the premotor cortex and supplementary motor region of the brain: an area described as the brain’s action-planning region.

“Our findings suggest that physical intuition and action planning are intimately linked in the brain,” said Fischer. “We believe this might be because infants learn physics models of the world as they hone their motor skills, handling objects to learn how they behave. Also, to reach out and grab something in the right place with the right amount of force, we need real-time physical understanding.”

But is this really "understanding physics", though?

Zz.

What Has Nuclear Physics Given Us?

I suppose I don't need to preach to the choir, but this is a nice, easy-to-read article if you ever encounter another person who is ignorant about how we have benefited from the study of nuclear physics.

A century is a long time in science, and things move quickly. It wasn’t long ago that we all had particle accelerators in our homes – the cathode ray tubes in our televisions. These have been superseded by LCD, LED and plasma displays, which are founded on our development of quantum technologies.

Perhaps the most prevalent application of particle accelerators today is in hospitals in the form of radiotherapy machines for the treatment of cancer.

In addition, Nuclear physics is the key to more or less all diagnostic imaging such as such X-ray, PET, CT, MRI, NMR, SPECT and other techniques that allow us to look inside the body without resorting to the knife.

If you’ve ever benefitted from one of these, thanks are due to many people, not least the nuclear physics pioneers who just wondered “what is this stuff?” and “what if…?”.

Certainly many aspects of nuclear physics overlaps with high-energy/particle physics, especially in the development of particle accelerators. But it is still worth noting that what started off as an area of study that had no obvious practical application has produced many indispensable necessities that are a part of our lives. This needs to be repeated many times for people  who simply do not see the value of basic, fundamental research.

Zz.

The Physics of Proton Therapy

If you have read the news, you would have heard of the issues surrounding the parents of a sick child desperately seeking to have their son undergo a proton therapy.

Jon Butterworth has a nice article for the general public on the physics of proton therapy, and especially why it is different than other forms. When you are reading this, please note that this medical treatment came DIRECTLY out of our knowledge of experimental high energy physics, y'know, the physics that many people could not see the use of. So next time when someone questions the applications and benefits of funding this area, you point to him/her this article!

Zz.

Role of Physics in Medicine

This is a good article that reviews Lancet's special issue on Physics and Medicine.

While many of us, and especially those who are in this field, are aware of this, the article is more useful when it is preached to those who are not in the choir. The general public, and especially the politicians that determine fundings, need to be told of this FACT. While the knowledge that is gained out of apparently "useless" subject area such as high energy physics, elementary particle physics, astrophysics, etc. are themselves interesting and important, the EXPERIMENTAL techniques and the technology that are pushed to do these studies are paving the way for applications in other areas, including medicine. Your x-rays, MRI, proton therapy, PET-scans, etc., all came out of the advances made to perform these high energy physics/astrophysics/etc. experiments!

High energy physics, especially, continues to push detector technology. Unlike many areas of physics where experimentalists buy equipment off the shelf, and therefore their ability to do many of these experiments depends on what is commercially available, high energy physicists/astrophysicists often have to BUILD and DEVELOP their own detectors. The area of detector physics deals with a lot of applications that are targeted at detecting single-photon pulses of Cerenkov light from, say, a neutrino interacting with a tank of water, or a calorimeter for particle physics collider, etc. Many of the knowledge gained in producing these detectors will eventually make it into other areas, including medicine.

What this means is that, reduced funding in areas which you think has no effect on you is simply going to affect the future of your well-being, and the well-being of your children and grandchildren. It takes years for such knowledge to trickle down to useful applications, and one is simply ruining the seeds that one should be planting now.

Zz.

Astronomy And Potential New Cancer Treatement

One of the many complaints that we often get from ignorant people is the question on why physics don't help to find the cure for cancer. We get such complaints whenever the topic is on the funding for high energy physics, for astronomy/astrophysics, etc.. etc., i.e. when people simply can't see how such funding has any direct impact on their lives.

Of course, anyone who knows anything about these fields can tell you that while there many not be any obvious and direct impact on our lives from the subject matter of these fields, the advancement and technology brought about due to progress in these fields certainly have a direct and immediate impacts on our lives. The advancement in particle accelerators alone can account for a huge selling point as a direct benefit from high energy physics.

Interestingly enough, here's another one, and it comes from the field of astronomy. Knowledge from astronomy may offer a way treat cancer!

In studying how chemical elements emit and absorb radiation inside stars and around black holes, the astronomers discovered that heavy metals such as iron emit low-energy electrons when exposed to X-rays at specific energies.

Their discovery raises the possibility that implants made from certain heavy elements could enable doctors to obliterate tumors with low-energy electrons, while exposing healthy tissue to much less radiation than is possible today. Similar implants could enhance medical diagnostic imaging.

So, in addition to the advances made in detector physics that also benefits the public, here's another aspect from astronomy that could have a direct impact on our lives.

The moral of the story here is that, one never knows how a particular knowledge or field of study may contribute to our lives. When politicians belittle certain aspect of research which they could not understand or have little realization on the significance, they could have easily jeopardized something that could be important. Something that may appear esoteric has been shown to have a significant impact later on. One needs to only look at the history of quantum mechanics.

Zz.

Particle Physics Fights Cancer

Jennifer Ouellette has a wonderful article on a new method to fight cancer, using knowledge that we gained from high energy/particle physics. In this case, one is using an imaging technique from a Cerenkov radiation.

This is just one more example of the benefits one obtain (and taken for granted) from so-called esoteric fields such as elementary particle/high energy physics. I've mentioned earlier about such benefits that many people are not aware of. This is in addition to the fact that basic knowledge is so valuable, even when we initially do not realize its potential benefits and application later on. And let's not forget that out of all of this is the advancement in accelerator physics that continues to produce numerous crucial benefits.

Zz.

Physic

No, I didn't misspell the word "physics".

A while back, I wrote about physicists some time being mistakenly called as "physicians", and the confusion that some people have about "physicist", "physicians", and "physical". This article traces the origin and evolution of the word "physic", from which both "physician" and "physics" come from, even though they both diverges into very different areas.

In order to explain the meaning of physician, we must begin with the Latin word, physicum or physicus, and the French word, physique. All of these words mean remedy. In 1212, the Anglo-Normans appropriated these words to coin the word fisike or physic. Even though it is rarely used today, physic can still be found in any English dictionary to define medicine or remedy.

Things get rather complicated when we talk about the branch of science we now call physics. Beginning in the 1300s, physic also began to be used to describe natural science but the meaning would be made obvious by how it was used in a sentence. For example, "Sir Isaac Newton took physic for his stomach pain" is quite different from "Sir Isaac Newton undertook the study of physic to explain the concept of gravity." In 1500, the Germans began calling physical science, Physik, while English-speaking people added an "s," hence physics, to distinguish it from their word for medical remedies.

Well, there ya go. Obviously, physicists and physicians were twins separated at birth! :)

Zz.

More Evidence The Public Can't Tell The Difference Between Scientific and Anecdotal Evidence

If you've wanted any considerable length of TV (especially in the US), you might have encountered the commercial by a company called Power Balance. The commercial claims that wearing the bracelet made by the company (which somehow has a "frequency" that matches your body), you could improve your health, your balance, your well-being, etc. It showed several sport and entertainment celebrities wearing such bracelet and several "ordinary" people who swore by them.

Well of course, none of these claims have any scientific backing. In fact, the company itself admitted that it has no scientific evidence to support its claim!

It may be for him, but Australian authorities say the California-based company behind the wildly popular wristbands and pendants has no business claiming that they improve balance, strength and flexibility.

And they even got Power Balance to admit it.

The company wrote: "We admit that there is no credible scientific evidence that supports our claims." It also agreed to give refunds to customers who believe they were cheated.

But yet, they get people who would swear by them:

The company unleashed a torrent of its own tweets, playing off the word "admit."

In one, it said: "Power Balance Admits products have been worn during the last world series, nba finals and super bowl champions!"

Fans insist the bands have helped their game.

"Our trainers swear by it," Phoenix Suns forward Jared Dudley wrote in a message posted on his Twitter page.

The company began selling bracelets in 2007 embedded with holograms that were purportedly designed to interact with the body's natural energy flow.

Since then, the colorful wristbands, which sell for $29.95, have become ubiquitous, donned by Los Angeles Lakers' Lamar Odom and English celebrity soccer star David Beckham.

They have also been worn by celebrities, including actors Robert De Niro and Gerard Butler.

Well, first of all, let's get this out of the way. Just because some celebrity wears it, it is completely irrelevant on evidence that it works. In fact, it has totally nothing to do with it. Having celebrities wearing it isn't evidence - it is a PROMOTION! So why should we be impressed by it? We shouldn't, but unfortunately, many are, and that's why these celebrities are used, or even paid, to wear such things.

Secondly, what if I give them some fake ones? Will it still work the same way they THINK it should work?

A Wisconsin professor ran similar tests comparing the performance of 42 athletes wearing Power Balance wristbands and silicon versions from Wal-Mart and said he found no difference.

Athletes were more likely to perform better wearing the second bracelet they put on, largely because they knew what to expect from the trial, said John Porcari, professor of exercise and sport science at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.

"I think it is a scam," he said. "It has absolutely nothing to do with the bracelets. It is all in people's heads."

This, of course, is the infamous placebo effect! It is why when there is a proper clinical trial study, one always do a control group with placebo to see if the effect of the real thing is significantly above the placebo group! If not, one cannot tell if the positive effect is actually due to the real thing itself, or the placebo. This is the main test in which homeopathy drugs have trouble overcoming.

It takes a lot of testing for something to be considered to be valid. Anecdotal evidence such as this does NOT indicate that the product's claim is valid. The public needs to learn such difference and not be taken in by the same snake-oil scam. But then again, how much can you do to save the public from themselves?

Zz.

Science Fights Back Against A Homeopath Fight-Back

I read this blog entry, and I find the same fight that I've been waging against physics quacks. And since this is a truly wonderful argument against a pseudoscience, I am more than happy to give this blog entry ample air time on here.

This is a response to a response. The author had thoroughly argued against a peer-reviewed paper that purportedly claimed to have seen a positive impact of homeopathy. Both the author, and another, have severely criticized the paper for several shortcomings. But it appears that these criticisms irked a writer at a homeopathy website (surprise!). What you can read is not only a rebuttal, but also a very pointed attack against pseudoscience in general.

The issue that keeps coming back is the fact that many people cannot tell the difference between anecdotal evidence and scientific evidence. They also cannot reason why an anecdotal evidence is insufficient to claim validity of something. To me, that is the fundamental reason why we are having this discussion, and on why pseudoscience flourishes.

It would be interesting to see if this paper will get a ton of rebuttals in the coming months.

Zz.