Science by Seltzer

Pound for pound, the spokes in a spider’s web beat steel fibers on all counts. “Dragline” silk is stronger (has better tensile strength) and is obviously better at stretching than steel. If fabric could be made from spider silk, body armor would be more protective and parachutes would be lighter and their cords stretchier. Medically, sutures made of spider silk could be thinner and stronger, and have low immunogenicity.

But spider farms for harvesting silk don’t exist because spiders are territorial and cannibalistic. A garment made by human ‘milking’ millions of spiders in Madagascar has been displayed in several museums, but this method is obviously not a commercial possibility.

Therefore, for decades materials scientists have been trying to make a synthetic spider silk that can duplicate the real thing.¹ Scientists, for example, succeeded by genetic manipulation to have one kind of spider silk secreted into goat milk. Unfortunately, the actual amount of silk produced was too low to be commercially viable.

Continue reading Synthetic Spider Silk: Getting Closer to the Real Thing

Weekly, even daily, news media feature stories on the current opioid addiction crisis. At present, deaths from overdose of heroin, fentanyl, and similar drugs outnumber deaths from either gun injuries or auto accidents.

Often the stories read something like this fictitious example:

‘Alice’ was a single mother, working at a restaurant to support her two small children. When she hurt her back lifting crates of beer, her doctor gave her a prescription for 100 tablets of oxycodone. The medicine relieved the pain, but when the pills were all taken, she still had some pain, and also began suffering the symptoms of withdrawal. Weak from nausea and diarrhea, she was able to obtain some oxycodone pills at an outrageous price. An acquaintance told her that heroin was much less expensive and would keep her pain and withdrawal at bay. With time, she needed higher doses of the heroin to keep feeling decent, and eventually her life was consumed by her heroin habit. Her family spent all their savings on drug treatment programs, none of which worked for long. Unfortunately, her final heroin injection contained the very potent contaminant fentanyl, and she died of an overdose.

Heroin Addiction Today

Today about 75% of people with an addiction to heroin started taking opioid drugs as prescription medicines, according to Dr. R. Corey Waller of Health Management Associates, and many others. That statistic provides compelling evidence that the addiction story of the present is more complicated than weak will or unrestrained pleasure seeking. Most clinical and basic researchers are agreed that addiction is a chronic disease of the brain and should be treated on a physiological basis.

How do opioids work in the brain?

The Pleasure Pathway

Neuroscientists have known how addictive drugs like heroin work in the brain for several decades.

The normal brain has a checks and balance system for feelings of well-being. When nothing special is happening, a trickle of the neurotransmitting molecule dopamine is released by neurons in a certain area of the midbrain called the ventral tegmental area.  Dopamine is the main neurotransmitter responsible for feelings of well-being and positive motivation. Continue reading Brain Function and the Opioid Crisis

This blog piece on Dr. Christine Floss was completed days before her sudden death. It only covers part of her research into the origin of the solar system, but tries to give a sense of the excitement she had in piecing together a picture of our neighborhood in the galaxy just before the formation of our solar system.

When she was first offered the chance to go to Antarctica on a NASA-sponsored expedition to collect meteorites, Christine Floss turned it down. She had children at home, and camping on ice was not on her bucket list. But three years ago NASA invited her again, and her now grown daughters convinced her that she would regret missing the experience.

Floss, a Research Professor of Physics at Washington University, can usually be found in her laboratory working with some of the world’s most advanced instruments to analyze tiny ancient mineral fragments on an atomic level. Her lab is a center for the study of extremely rare samples of the dust cloud that formed our solar system. These presolar grains are occasionally found incorporated into primitive meteorites.

The Antarctic Search for Meteorites (ANSMET) is an annual event that NASA has sponsored since the 1970’s. The aim is to collect as many meteorites of all kinds as possible. “It is a service project, “ explains Floss.

For about a month she and seven fellow adventurers slept in an unheated tent, cooked frozen rations on a Coleman stove in the tent, and spent their days riding Ski-Doos on the blue glacial ice looking for meteorites. Sometimes they would walk the glacial moraines, also rich sources of rocks from outer space. It was one of the high points of her life, she says, even though there was plenty of grousing about the uncomfortable conditions at the time.

Continue reading Astronomy with a Microscope