Slashdot Mirror
Natural Gas to Offer Breakthrough in Suspended Animation?
Kingcanute writes "The BBC is reporting that American scientists are claiming that sewer gas may be successful at inducing suspended animation. The results were achieved using mice but further studies are needed" From the article: "The problem with hypothermia is it's not that easy to cool down the human body so if we can find another method to inhibit metabolism that would be very useful"
So, finally a decent theory may be developed as to why farts increase lifespan. (Quick check - ok, farts do contains hydrogen sulfide)
So, this is pretty interesting, but this smells like (LOL, H2S.... get it?) incomplete science in that they appear to have gone to the press without first, doing the real experiments that would tell them more about what is going on here. Simply looking at core body temperature, heart rate and blood pressure will not tell you the status of organ function, nor will it tell you anything about potential organ system damage. Dr. Chris Pomfrett's letter is right on where he questions: "My big question about this work is: is it reducing brain metabolism or simply having a toxic effect on the brain stem?", but he only gets part of it right in his suggestion to perform an electroencephalogram (EEG) as well.
Additional tests can not simply be EEG combined with standard histology as you need to know something about how the tissues are responding in metabolic space, especially as how they are introducing a new small molecular species to the mix. EEG is only going to tell you the global overall status of the tissues, but it too will be altered in ways that may or may not be informative. I would suggest looking at early immediate gene expression profiles for apoptotic pathways and performing experiments designed to actually look at and document the metabolic profiles of these cells/tissues.
I am thinking specifically of some of the techniques we have developed (pictures of some tissues using these techniques can be seen here), but there are many, many other traditional biochemical and metabolic assays that could have been performed for these studies like HPLC, MassSPEC etc...etc....etc....
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I disagree that this is incomplete science. This is the way science works. Scientists do a study, publish their results, and get overexcited about what the implications could be. Other scientists do peer-review, make sure the study is on the level, and suggest what could improve data quality, and further experiments to test/revise current hypotheses. Also, I think you are too quick to blame the scientists behind a study for what is usually oversimplified reporting.
"Natural Gas" is usually interpreted to mean something other that just any gas that occurs in nature, like hydrogen sulfide.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The reason they are not funny is because you all are overdoing it, tripping over each other to tell us how funny it is that swamp gas might be related to a fart.
Apparently the belief is that immense mental power is required to produce a fart joke, hence we should be roflmaoing and lolling choking with our own spit at you.
Flashnews: fart jokes, just like farts themselves, are only funny in moderation. And since they're only funny in moderation, I urge all moderators to mod them down versus mod them funny, and see where the discussion takes us on this, otherwise intesting, article.
Hmm... as a solution to prison overcrowding, perhaps?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
...try running Doom3 on a 386sx with 1MB of RAM
No sir, you're "incredibly stupid" by not reading the full article.
Had you bothered to read it instead of simply going by the short quote, you'd understand that the article has nothing to do with 'cryogenics'.
The quote is from a larger statement where they're referring to inducing hypothermia in patients undergoing cardiac surgery or with severe trauma, where it helped stabilize the metabolism of the victims, which resulted in better outcome on the treatment.
The article itself is aimed at medical uses such as the ones described above. This research has *nothing* to do with space travel, but is geared at preserving organ function in critically ill patients, where hypothermia is regularly induced to slow down organ deterioration.
Now go back to your cave.
"We'll need 2000 crickets, 4 cans of Easy Cheese, and the fluid from 18 glowsticks for this plan to work...." - ph0n1c
Ha! I got a chuckle when I read this:
You guys may not remember this, but the original Buck Rogers story from the comic strips was that Buck was exploring a cave when he was exposed to gases that put him to sleep. When he woke up and emerged from the cave he was in the 25th century.
Breakfast served all day!
However, there are real medical problems that could benefit greatly from drugs that reduce metabolism. For example, people who go into sudden cardiac arrest and are revived can often have irreversible brain damage due to lack of bloodflow to their brains. Essentially, without blood flow, nutrients in the brain are consumed more than they are delivered, and this results in brain damage. Some studies have suggested that packing the head in ice can greatly reduce the risk of brain damage by decreasing the brain's demand for nutrients. However, most ambulances aren't equipped with ice packs specifically for your head, so this isn't used much in the US.
This technique is probably more useful in open surgeries. Sometimes surgeons accidentally or purposefully cut off the blood flow to an organ. If you could reduce that organ's blood needs, perhaps you could avoid life-threatening complications such as acute renal failure after surgery.
The real appeal of this method of suspending animation is that it could be used in trauma cases. Assuming it actually works safely for humans (big if), this method is so easy that it could be applied in the field by paramedics. Someone with a massive heart attack or stroke could possibly be placed into suspended animation until they are in the right location for full diagnosis and treatment. Also, someone with critical organ failure could be suspended for a few days/weeks until the right organ turns up.
I'm sure there will be plenty more reasons once/if the tech proves itself. New Scientist and Science News have been covering this possibility for some now, so this is only news right now if you don't follow the science trades.
... and of course everyone is thinking about sending frozen bodies of austronauts to some remote star, but in reality it should be useful when a soldier is hit in, say, some remote desert and it takes 15 hours to airlift him to more advanced places where an operation can be performed. Source of HS4 can be portable and if his metabolism is three times slower it would feel like an 5 hour flight.
Paul B.
This is a dupe scientific study, not a dupe slashdot post. That post refers to a different instance of a very similar experiment.
Uh, guys, "natural gas" is methane. Not hydrogen sulfide.
http://www.circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/1 09/25/3106
Well, natural gas is a big choice target for the petroleum industry, not simply a by-product.
:)
And the two are very much related, as most natural gas deposits discovered these days are "polluted" with H2S. Lots of money is spent removing this highly toxic gas from CH4 supplies. See sour gas.
Lastly, it's not surprising that H2S slows heart rate, breathing, etc. This is why it kills dozens of people in the petroleum industry every year
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
The lifespan, and quality of life, of the gas releaser may indeed be increased, when compared to gas non-releasers. I believe Dave Barry is an expert in this field of research. His theory is that women tend to be more uptight than men because they tend to "bottle up" their emissions for later release, rather than allowing them to escape in a natural, relaxing manner.