The researchers found that the patients who tested positive for alcohol were less likely to die than patients who had no alcohol in their bloodstream. They were also generally younger and had less severe injuries. But patients who had drunk alcohol did suffer more medical complications during their stay in the hospital.

In the study, Ali Salim and his colleagues from the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles looked at 38,019 patients with moderate to severe head injuries. The authors note that it is not clear how ethanol might reduce the risk of death from head injuries, with animal studies showing contradictory results. While several animal studies do show some beneficial effects of having a low level of alcohol in the blood, including a higher chance of survival, these benefits are lost at higher alcohol levels. And other studies actually show alcohol being associated with reduced survival.

Of course, alcohol increases the risk of getting injured in the first place, and the authors of the study point out that they looked at the mortality of patients already in hospital. But head injuries are becoming more common, especially among soldiers. The study raises the possibility of a new treatment for head injuries: in the future, perhaps doctors could save your life by administering a healthy dose of alcohol.

The test was conducted at the 27th "Osnabrücker Baumpflegetagen," one of Germany's most important annual conferences focusing on all aspects of forest husbandry. It featured acclaimed British violinist Matthew Trussler, playing his own Stradivarius, a $2 million instrument, as well as four other violins made by Michael Rhonheimer, a Swiss violin maker. Two of these new violins were made from wood that had been treated with a specially selected fungus by Francis Schwarze, a scientist at Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research.

A jury of experts, as well as the conference attendees, judged the tone quality of the violins, and the ultimate winner was "Opus 58" -- one of the fungus-infected violins. 90 of the 180 attendees voted for it, with the Stradivarius coming in second with 39 votes. 113 members guessed that "Opus 58" was actually the Strad.

The wood in "Opus 58" was treated with a fungus for the longest time: 9 months. Fungal infections are generally thought to damage wood, but results published by Francis Schwarze last year suggested that some types of soft rot fungi reduced the density of the wood, making it lighter and improving its tonal quality, without impairing its firmness. Fungi may thus help artificially replicate the unusually low density of wood that is thought to have occurred in Stradivarius' time. The "Little Ice Age" that occurred at this time brought about long winters and cool summers in Central Europe, causing trees to grow slowly and uniformly and creating wood with great tonal qualities.

Of course, blind listening tests are extremely subjective -- a BBC test conducted in 1974 saw experts identify a modern instrument as a Stradivarius, and fail to identify 2 of 4 instruments played. But wood is the most important factor in determining how a violin sounds, and future fungal violins may provide aspiring musicians with a million-dollar sound at a reasonable price.

[ScienceDaily]

Brain injuries are particularly hard to repair, since injured tissues swell up and can cause additional damage to the cells. So far, treatments have tried to limit this secondary damage by lowering the temperature or relieving the pressure at the site of injury. However, these techniques are often not very effective.

More recently, scientists have considered transplanting donor brain cells into the wound to repair damaged tissue. This method has so far had limited results when treating brain injuries. The donor cells often fail to grow or stimulate repair at the injury site, possibly because of the inflammation and scarring present there. The injury site also typically has very limited blood supply and connective tissue, which might prevent donor cells from getting the nutrients they require.

Dr. Zhang's gel, however, can be loaded with different chemicals to stimulate various biological processes at the site of injury. In previous research done on rats, she was able to use the gel to help re-establish full blood supply at the site of brain injury. This could help create a better environment for donor cells.

In a follow-up study, Dr. Zhang loaded the gel with immature stem cells, as well as the chemicals they needed to develop into full-fledged adult brain cells. When rats with severe brain injuries were treated with this mixture for eight weeks, they showed signs of significant recovery.

The new gel could treat patients at varying stages following injury, and is expected to be ready for testing in humans in about three years.

The researchers, from institutes in Sweden, Spain, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland, use a novel approach to allow robots to be built cheaply and in large quantities. Working on a limited budget, they built an entire robot on a single circuit board.

Single-chip designs have previously been hard to design and manufacture. However, instead of soldering the components together using conventional methods, the researchers used conductive adhesive to attach different modules to a flexible printed circuit board using surface mount technology. They then folded the circuit board to create the robot.

Different modules allow the robot to communicate, move, store energy, and collect data. The tiny robots, less than 4mm in any direction, contain a solar cell on top for power, and vibrating legs, three of which they use to move and one that acts as a touch sensor.

A single robot wouldn't be able to do much by itself. However, the project is based on the concept of I-SWARM (intelligent small-world autonomous robots for micro-manipulation), inspired by the behavior of insects. According to this concept, a large number of these robots, interacting with their environment and able to communicate with each other using infra-red sensors, could mimic the swarm intelligence of insects like ants.

The researchers hope to improve the fabrication techniques, particularly the efficiency of adhesion, and to automate the process of folding the circuit board. With further funding, they aim to mass-produce these tiny robots. Unlike some previous attempts, the researchers hope that their methods will allow them to manufacture enough microbots to truly mimic insect behavior and swarm intelligence.

[via PhysOrg]