Tag Archives: Body & Mind

Gender Bender in NYC

New York City is moving ahead with a proposed change in the rules of birth certificates. After much campaigning from activists who argue that gender is not merely physical, NYC will soon start letting people change their gender on their birth certificates (NYT link, to bypass registration try bugmenot). Reader mkb also points out this article .

Once it’s approved people will no longer have to have sex-change surgery to proclaim what gender they are.

“If approved, the new rule would put New York at the forefront of efforts to redefine gender. A handful of states do not require surgery for such birth certificate changes, but in some of those cases patients are still not allowed to make the change without showing a physiological shift to the opposite gender.”

Thanks, mkb!

AIDS Fighting AIDS

A new, but very small, study has found that AIDS can be used to fight AIDS like a vaccine. The US experimenters used gene therapy techniques to tackle AIDS in the five test patients. The results are promising and “hint at something much more,” according to Dr. Carl June of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

The article points out in the second paragraph that AIDS has no cure, something that many articles fail to do when talking about proposed new ‘cures’ for HIV/AIDS. So that acknowledgment is good, because there is (for some bizarre reason) people who think that HIV/AIDS can be cured. This article talks about fighting AIDS, and in doing so also fights ignorance.

Lifestraw a Life Saver

he looks highGlobally, about 6,000 people a day die from water-borne disease. These are preventable deaths but, in many places it is too expensive to provide clean water for everyone and as a result people contract water-borne diseases. A fancy new drinking straw can stop 99.99% of parasites and bacteria from drinking water.

It’s called the Lifestraw and is currently being tested in the field. It is not as small as your average straw, but it’s small enough to wear around your neck. The manufacturing costs are low too – only $3 per unit. 70,000 units were handed out to earthquake victims in Kashmir last year. More testing is needed, but this is off to a very promising start!

Thanks, Kathryn!

Sonic Fabric

dressEver wanted to wear your favourite bands, well how about their album? Now you can!

Sonic Fabric is a a fabric woven out of old audio cassettes. The great part is not just that reuses otherwise trashed material, but that it can still be used to play music. Since the fabric retains the audio signature all you have to do is run a tape head over it.

One of the members of the band Phish has even worn one on stage and “played” it live.

Gas: A Real Knockout

Some researchers have found that stinky sewer gas can really knock you out. They found that they could put mice into a state of near suspended-animation by exposing them to the smell.

“Hydrogen sulphide, a toxic gas that smells of rotten eggs, occurs naturally in swamps, springs and volcanoes.

But in mice, it was found to slow down heart rate and breathing and decrease body temperature, while keeping a normal blood pressure.”