It’s BMJ week (again) on NCBI ROFL! After the success of our first BMJ week, we decided to devote another week to fun articles from holiday issues of the British Medical Journal. Enjoy!

Accuracy of comparing bone quality to chocolate bars for patient information purposes: observational study

“Within our area of practice relating to osteoporosis and fragility fracture we have noticed a tendency to compare normal, healthy bone to the finely honeycombed structure of a Crunchie (Cadbury Trebor Bassett; Bournville, Birmingham) chocolate bar and to compare abnormal, osteoporotic bone to the coarser structure of an Aero (Nestle UK; York) bar. Although this explanation is readily appreciated by patients and clinicians it struck us that the comparison may not be completely valid as no work has been published on the fracture potential of each bar… To enable us to provide accurate data to our patients we studied the fracture risk for each chocolate bar.

We randomly purchased 20 chocolate bars (10 Crunchie and 10 Aero) from a reputable high street confectioner; the number of bars was limited by research funds and our rural environment…

The end point of the study was fracture. Firstly, we allowed each bar to topple from its standing height in the centre of a tile. We then dropped each bar horizontally on to the centre of the tile from increasing heights until fracture, defined as a break in the cortex; we did not regard mild deformity as a fracture. The tests were carried out at a temperature of 22C after the bars had had eight hours to reach a steady state temperature. We used a bone densitometer (Discovery-C; Hologic, Bedford, MA) to carry out dual energy x ray absorptiometry (whole body) on one Aero and one Crunchie, with bone mineral density being used as a surrogate for measuring chocolate density. Height was measured with a tape measure (Olympia (5 m/16 ft) Power Return Tape; Olympia (UK); Reading, Berks)…

Our data provide evidence of the disparity between chocolate density and fracture rates. The use of Crunchie and Aero bars to explain bone health and fracture risk to patients, although palatable, is not justified. In practical terms we believe that the findings should contribute to the provision of improved patient information and education by enlightened healthcare professionals. The study serves to remind clinicians that both chocolate density and bone mineral density form but one component of fracture risk. The accurate assessment of fracture risk should ideally take into account other measurable indices that contribute to fracture risk in addition to that provided by chocolate density and bone mineral density.”

Read the full article here.

Image: BMJ

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If you’re at ASM, I just want to let you know I’ll be at the ASM Press Bookstore from 1 pm to 2 pm on Wednesday. The bookstore is on the far right end of the lobby as you’re standing in front of the convention center. If you want to talk about the things I’ll be discussing this afternoon at 5:30 pm, come by. Also, ASM Press has signed copies of Microcosm for sale. See you there!

No one dreams of leaving a lasting carbon footprint on the world when they depart. But if it’s a choice between that and being reduced to a brown soupy liquid and a pile of bones, which option would you take?

The California legislature is considering allowing funeral homes to provide a third alternative to burial or cremation. Instead of hauling out the backhoe or firing up an incinerator to dispose of human remains, funeral directors could offer a method called alkaline hydrolysis or “bio-cremation.” This technique uses hot water, pressure, and sodium- or potassium-hydroxide (the strongly basic chemicals often referred to as lye) to break down the body’s tissues into simple molecules in a matter of a few hours.

Proponents of bio-cremation say it’s the eco-friendly death option. They note that cremation produces air pollution and greenhouse gases, while burials use tons of wood for caskets and involve treating bodies with hazardous embalming chemicals.

Four other states have already approved bio-cremation, but before funeral homes can offer the service, they have to figure out what to do with the environmentally friendly liquid remains. Last week, an undertaking service in Minnesota asked its local city council for permission to pour it down the drain.

Out of respect for the dead, or reverence for the city’s sewer system, or maybe just gut-level disgust, the council rejected the proposal.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Wireless Gravestone Tech Will Broadcast Your Awesomeness to Posterity
Discoblog: “Gravestone Project” Takes Citizen Science to the Cemetery
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DISCOVER: The Future of Death
DISCOVER: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About… Death

Image: iStockphoto

Here. The paper is Coordinated Punishment of Defectors Sustains Cooperation and Can Proliferate When Rare. The blog post highlighted is Punishing Cheaters Promotes the Evolution of Cooperation.

It is probably obvious that I’m not on the internet as much right now. But I’ve been thinking on the topic of this paper for a few days, and plan on putting together a post when I have something interesting to say, and nothing interesting to do off-net.

P.S. We decided to bring Kevin Zelnio back on.

I received an email that appalled me: the Royal Ontario Museum, an otherwise excellent establishment, has invited new age nonsense guru Deepak Chopra to speak there!

Here’s part of the announcement:

World renowned teacher, author and philosopher Deepak Chopra presents his latest concepts in the field of mind-body medicine bridging the technological miracles of the West with the wisdom of the East. He will show you how your highest vision of yourself can be turned into physical reality and discuss how you can become a living cell within the body of a living universe. You don’t join the cosmic dance – you become the dance.

If that doesn’t make sense to you, there’s a good reason for it: it doesn’t make sense.

Chopra is perhaps the largest purveyor of pseudoscientific piffling pablum on the planet, and here is a museum — a science museum — paying him to speak. Non-ironically! Worse, check out how much they’re charging: $25 to $175! You can guess how much they’re lining Chopra’s pockets.

<gag>

The Center for Inquiry (Canada) has written an open letter to the museum, and I think they have handled the situation well. I hope they can distribute a lot of flyers at the event. Of course, people who pay that kind of money to hear such nonsense are unlikely to want to hear arguments against it, but we’ll see.

How far can you beam information instantaneously? Try 10 miles, according to a study in Nature Photonics that pushes the limits of quantum teleportation to its greatest distance yet. At that distance, the scientists say, one can begin to consider the possibility of someday using quantum teleportation to communicate between the ground and a satellite in orbit.

As stories about quantum teleportation usually note, this isn’t the Starship Enterprise’s transporter: The weird quantum phenomenon makes it possible to send information, not matter, across a distance.

It works by entangling two objects, like photons or ions. The first teleportation experiments involved beams of light. Once the objects are entangled, they’re connected by an invisible wave, like a thread or umbilical cord. That means when something is done to one object, it immediately happens to the other object, too. Einstein called this “spooky action at a distance.” [Popular Science]

Previous experiments achieved this phenomenon in photons separated by a distance of hundreds of yards, connected by fiber channels. But the physicists in China blew that distance away, and with 89 percent integrity for the information.

In this particular experiment, researchers maximally entangled two photons using both spatial and polarization modes and sent the one with higher energy through a ten-mile-long free space channel. They found that the distant photon was still able to respond to changes in state of the photon they held onto even at this unprecedented distance. [Ars Technica]

More recent developments in the strange quantum world:

Cryptography: Last month researchers announced a way to make quantum cryptography, a way to encode information that relies on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, 100 times faster than previous experiments could.

Coherence: In quantum coherence, photons can enter a multi-state existence in which they simultaneously travel multiple paths, but then at the end choose only the fastest route (a counter-intuitive talent I wish I possessed). Researchers have found this happens in plants, which helps make photosynthesis so efficient.

Entanglement: This month physicists in Israel managed to entangle five separate photons. That’s not the overall record (which is six). But the scientists say their five entangled photons could only choose one of two paths, and that’s the kind of system that would someday be used in quantum communication or computing.

The quantum state: We don’t witness the oddball behaviors of the quantum world on the scale our naked eyes can see, but in March physicists put the largest object ever into a quantum state.

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Image: Jian-Wei Pan et. al

Stuart Pimm, a leading conservation biologist, is turning out to be a blogger to follow. He’s down in the Delaware Bay right now, studying some of the birds that are migrating unbelievable distances (see my story in today’s Times). Unfortunately, the birds are having a rough time because we’re taking away the food they need to power their long-haul flights: horseshoe crab eggs. Check it out.