Physics Mysteries, Appendix and Parkinson’s, Paralysis Treatment. Nov 2, 2018, Part 2

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🗓️ 2 November 2018

⏱️ 48 minutes

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Summary

Ever wondered why your dog’s back-and-forth shaking is so effective at getting you wet? Or how bugs, birds, and lizards can run across water—but we can’t? Or how about why cockroaches are so darn good at navigating in the dark? Those are just a few of the day-to-day mysteries answered in the new book How to Walk on Water and Climb Up Walls: Animal Movement and the Robots of the Future, by David Hu. Once upon a time, there was very little hope for patients paralyzed by a spinal cord injury. The prevailing wisdom was that unless you could regenerate neurons across the spinal region of the injury these patients would never walk again. Now researchers say that perspective is based on an outdated way of thinking about the role of the spinal cord in movement. A new technique that delivers an electrical signal directly to the spinal cord has given a handful of patients the ability to move again and, as reported in a new study out this week in the journal Nature, has allowed them to walk. You’ve probably heard that you don’t necessarily need your appendix, especially if you’ve had it removed. But the appendix does have a function and scientists are learning more about how it affects our health. The organ plays a role in regulating the immune system, microbiome, and even Parkinson’s disease. A misfolding in the protein called alpha-synuclein has been linked to the disease, and researchers found abnormal clumps of this protein in the appendix. This week, a team of scientists found more evidence for the link. Reporting in the journal Science Translational Medicine, the researchers found that, for Parkinson’s patients, there was a 3.6 year delay in onset of the disease for those who had an appendectomy.

Transcript

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0:57.4	we'll talk about the natural wonders behind everyday things like, how can mosquitoes fly through a
1:03.5	rainstorm without being clobbered by the raindrops? Ever think about that? Well, we will. But first,
1:09.0	once upon a time, there was very little hope that patients paralyzed
1:13.0	by a spinal cord injury would ever walk again. The prevailing wisdom was that unless you could
1:19.5	regenerate neurons across the spinal injury, reestablishing a connection between the brain
1:26.0	and the spinal cord, these patients would never walk.
1:29.1	Well, thankfully, new research is changing that outlook.
1:32.9	A new technique that delivers an electrical signal directly to the spinal cord has given a handful of patients
1:40.0	the ability to not only move again, and as reported in journals Nature and Nature Neuroscience this week,
1:46.9	it even allowed them to walk.
1:49.7	Dr. Susan Harkama, a neuroscientist at the Kentucky Spinal Code Injury Research Center at the University of Louisville,
1:55.8	was the first to use this technique on patients with paralysis, and she joins us now to talk about it.
2:01.5	And just to be...
	...

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