Weird Science--but Useful Too
Imagine having to explain what you do all day at work if you were one of these folks. This week, we’ve run across a researcher who uses an electric banana peel to study why people lose their balance, another who designs underwear to protect seniors from potentially dangerous falls and another who spends his afternoons staring into fishbowls. But it’s all in the name of science.
Scientist Marjorie Woollacott’s electric banana peel device sounds like a slapstick comedian’s dream. But the head of exercise and movement science at the University of Oregon in Eugene actually uses the contraption to study balance in seniors.
The treadmill-like machine has hydraulic plates that slip out from under research subjects to knock them off balance. Straps and harnesses catch them before they get hurt. Imagine the laughs Charlie Chaplin could have gotten with this gadget and a whoopee cushion. Of course, falling isn’t funny to the more than 300,000 Americans who, according to the National Osteoporosis Foundation, suffer broken hips each year.
Falls are a major cause of disability in seniors, and broken hips often trigger a serious decline in health. Woollacott’s research has led to a better understanding of why people--especially older folks--fall, and how to prevent those falls. Balance requires good vision, good inner-ear function, muscle strength and attention, she said. These functions decline as we age, and we are more prone to falls. One of her findings is that weight training, even in patients in their 90s, can strengthen weak muscles. “Simply doing 15 toe and heel raises a day can really help strengthen calves and ankles,” she said.
Don’t Be Shocked by These Panties
Next, we turn to David Torgerson, a British researcher at the University of York, who has designed shock-absorbing underwear with plastic shields sewn in. These hip panties--available in plain for the gents and rose-patterned for the ladies--help break falls that could otherwise break hips, according to a report in HealthScout, an online health information service. Torgerson is testing the garment, called SafeHip, on a couple of hundred British subjects.
What the Human Eye Can’t See, Goldfish Can
And here’s a fish story that caught our eye: Goldfish see better than we do. That’s according to Michael Loop, professor of physiological optics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Apparently, what goldfish have over us is the ability to see ultraviolet and infrared color wavelengths. As humans, our vision stops where ultraviolet and infrared colors begin, he said. How does he know? By using light--and food rewards--on fish, much like Pavlov used bells and food on dogs. (Remember how the dogs started drooling at the mere sound of the bell?)
Loop shines a colored light into a fish tank for five seconds, then gives the fish a little food. After a while, the fish begin to associate the light so strongly with the food that they start trying to eat the light.
By repeating the process with lights of different colors and wavelengths, he can figure out what goldfish see. And what about Fido and Fifi seeing only in black and white? Pure bunk, said Loop. Dogs, cats, other mammals (except monkeys, who see exactly what we see) and rodents see one color for every two we see. Most of us have three cones in our eyes to help us perceive color. These animals, like people who are colorblind, have two cones. So for dogs and colorblind humans, green traffic signals appear white; red and yellow signals look the same. But these critters also see better in the dark than we do.
