Word: skin
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Almost as long as humans have used offensive weapons, they've thought defensively as well. The very first types of armor were animal hides that cushioned the blows of clubs. Chinese warriors in the 11th century B.C. clad themselves in rhinoceros skin; ancient Greek warriors carried round, flat shields of bronze, reinforced with layers of hide and wax. In medieval Europe, knights and lords rode to battle in chain mail, a heavy, fantastically expensive armor forged from thousands of tiny links of steel. By the mid-14th century, advances in technology - namely, the high-velocity crossbow and longbow - necessitated steel...
...connection. And that ignorance can have serious medical consequences. The common itch isn't so benign in many conditions, including shingles and AIDS, which can cause uncomfortably severe itching. Sometimes itching can occur inexplicably, without any apparent physical cause, and a patient's unchecked scratching can lead to excessive skin damage or worse. (Read "The Year in Medicine 2008: From...
...study published today in the journal Nature Neuroscience offers some hope of lasting relief. A group of neuroscientists led by Glenn Giesler at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, hypothesized that the mechanism by which scratching relieves an itch takes place not along the nerve fibers of itchy skin but deep within the central nervous system - specifically, in the spinothalamic tract (STT) neurons in the spinal cord, which transmit information about pain, temperature and touch to the brain. (Previous studies have shown that STT neurons can be activated with the application of an itch-producing chemical like histamine and that...
...dropped rapidly. That sudden drop-off in firing is the neurological equivalent of the relief felt after a good scratch, indicating that scratching seemed to calm the nerves and therefore relieve the itch. The findings supported the researchers' initial hunch that the itch sensation was not located along the skin of the monkeys' legs where histamine had been injected and that relief did not occur where the metal claw was scratching. Rather, both sensations were rooted in the spinal cord. (See pictures of an X-ray studio...
...even on those poor experimental bunnies' ears and I'm convinced. You can be dubious about global warming if you want - but not about cigarettes. They absolutely do cause cancer, vascular and lung disease - the things that kill most of us. I've watched scores quit too, seen their skin get pinker, their wounds heal faster, their lungs work better. It's true: No matter when they quit they're better...