io9
dystopia
Posts Tagged “
Drugs
”
dystopia
robots
Meet McSleepy, the World's First Robot Anesthesiologist
Anesthesiologists are required to participate in every surgery, standing by to administer drugs and monitor the patient's vital signs while surgeons do their jobs. But now a group of researchers at Montreal's McGill University have invented a device that could replace human anesthesiologists with robots in the next five years. An anesthesia bot called McSleepy has just successfully completed its first surgery, administering drugs to a patient undergoing a tumor removal on his kidney. More »
pharmaceuticals
Antibiotics Can Prevent Bacteria From Becoming Drug-Resistant
You've probably heard that all the antibiotics we take are breeding new generations of drug-resistant bacteria. In fact, many diseases we once killed easily with Penicillin now require mega-doses of super-antibiotics like Cipro. While researchers have known for a long time that bacteria are developing resistance to drugs, they weren't sure how the tiny organisms did it. Now a research team at the University of Illinois has figured it out — and that means we're like to see new, smarter antibiotics (you can see the chemical structure of one such antibiotic, Erythromycin, at left). More »
mad science
Clones Bred to Sniff Drugs
It's hard to find dogs that have just the right set of attributes to sniff for drugs, which is why South Korean Customs officials got their favorite drug-sniffing dog cloned. The seven clones (four are pictured here) have all grown up to be excellent sniffers — though only one in ten dogs usually passes drug-sniff training, all seven passed. All seven dogs are called Toppy, and each cost over $100,000 to clone, plus $40,000 extra to train. Over at Technovelgy, Bill Christensen points out that the cloned drug-sniffers have a precedent in a science fiction whose representation of cloning was so inaccurate that you'll be surprised it got anything right. More »
salvia
Salvia, also known as salvia divinorum, is a smokable hallucinogen that's still legal in most parts of the world. People order it via the internet and smoke tiny quantities to experience what many call an experience so intense that many people call it "spiritual." The high lasts for just a few minutes, and includes intense visual hallucinations and out-of-body sensations. Now a group of researchers with the United States Department of Energy are studying the drug, watching how it affects the brains of non-human primates, to find out if it has any therapeutic value. Here you can see the brains of several monkeys on salvia. Find out what the researchers discovered below.
More »
What Happens to Brains Experiencing "One of the Most Potent Hallucinogens Known"
Salvia, also known as salvia divinorum, is a smokable hallucinogen that's still legal in most parts of the world. People order it via the internet and smoke tiny quantities to experience what many call an experience so intense that many people call it "spiritual." The high lasts for just a few minutes, and includes intense visual hallucinations and out-of-body sensations. Now a group of researchers with the United States Department of Energy are studying the drug, watching how it affects the brains of non-human primates, to find out if it has any therapeutic value. Here you can see the brains of several monkeys on salvia. Find out what the researchers discovered below.
More »
pharmaceuticals
62 Percent of Pill-Popping Scientists Use Ritalin
Today, the results are in for a survey conducted by the scientific journal Nature on "enhancement" drug use among its readers. Turns out 1 in 5 of the 1400 respondents have taken drugs to enhance their performance (i.e., recreationally) rather than to cure a problem. The most popular of these drugs was speedy Ritalin: 62 percent of respondents had used it. It was followed closely by concentration-focusing Provigil (44 percent) and anxiety-reducing beta blockers (15 percent). These scientist drug users were of all ages — in this chart, you can see that drug use for "enhancement" is just as popular among the kids as it is among the seniors. More »
found footage
Aliens Have Cool Light Shows, But The Government Has Better Drugs
People are always so optimistic in B-movies. Like in this sequence from 1954's Killers From Space, when they inject Peter Graves with truth serum and then the colonel says, "Oh, he'll make sense now!" — right before Graves launches into his crazy yarn about googly-eyed Groucho-browed monsters from outer space who brought him back from the dead. And showed him uncanny atomic calculations on the back of TV dinner foil. And made him watch a long montage about clouds and flames and cities in space, and daisies and ... wha, huh? Sorry, the drugs started wearing off. More »
sci fi drugs
Take A Vacation from Your Mind
We already asked you which science fictional drug you'd like to spend a weekend bingeing on, and now The Onion A.V. Club is reminding us there are way more bizarre drugs in science fiction than even we'd remembered. The Onion's list of fictional drugs includes a number of scifi standbys: Soma, Synthehol, Melange, Substance D, Nuke (from Robocop 2), Snow Crash and Mimezine (from Wild Palms.) What's really great, though, is they throw in a few drugs from real-life urban legends... which are just as strange as the ones Philip K. Dick and friends came up with. Image from Japanese cover to The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch. [Onion A.V. Club, thanks to evilfremen]
neuroscience
A New Street Drug That Boosts Your Brain's Ability to Get High
It turns out the gateway drug for amphetamine addiction is a substance provided by your own brain. The culprit protein is called DAT, so named because it is a dopamine transporter — and dopamine is the feel-good, get-motivated neurotransmitter that keeps you happy, hungry, and full of energy. Just as some people are born with the ability to grow larger muscle mass than others, some are born with the ability to squirt more dopamine into their brains because they have a greater-than-average helping of DAT. People with elevated DAT levels are quite literally better at getting high than people with average levels. How do we know? A group of researchers in North Carolina and Pennsylvania recently bred a group of mice to have DAT levels three times above normal and then gave them speed. Here's what happened. More »
pharmaceutical futures
4 Out of 5 Doctors Recommend Marijuana for Your ADHD Kid
Pot could replace Ritalin as the cure for hyperactivity in children. A group of 124,000 physicians is lobbying the government to make it easier for them to study and prescribe marijuana to their patients. Once they've fully studied the drug — something that hasn't happened before — they're anticipating finding a lot of new, legitimate medical uses for the drug. Like calming hyperactive people down. More »
poll
Which Scifi Drug Do You Wish You Could Take?
Science fiction is full of weird made-up drugs, many of which sound way more fun than boring old smack. There are drugs that make you telepathic, let you navigate space-time, or just give you trippy-ass visions. This wealth of options is due to the fact that science fiction fans are all drug fiends, says one famous author. Click through to learn more, and vote on which SF wonder drug you'd rather be tripping balls on right now. More »
superpowers
Fast-Acting Antidote to Cyanide in Pill Form
Now you can reverse the effects of cyanide poisoning with just one pill that takes effect in less than three minutes. It can also make you impervious to the effects of cyanide if you take it less than an hour before being exposed to the deadly poison that's a favorite of terrorists and death camp counselors. Discovered by retired University of Minnesota prof Herbert Nagasawa, the antidote is now being developed as a drug. It uses the body's natural defenses against cyanide to turn people into poison-repelling superheroes. More »
A Drug to Make You Stop Taking Drugs?
A new study reveals that people with addictive personalities also tend to have highly-developed "impulsivity" structures in their brains. Often their impulsive behaviors — and thus their tendencies to eat a zillion drugs — can be curbed with a little dopamine boost. Will we be seeing dopamine-primers and enhancers hitting the market for drug addicts? [Eurekalert]
A new study reveals that people with addictive personalities also tend to have highly-developed "impulsivity" structures in their brains. Often their impulsive behaviors — and thus their tendencies to eat a zillion drugs — can be curbed with a little dopamine boost. Will we be seeing dopamine-primers and enhancers hitting the market for drug addicts? [Eurekalert]
fun with pharmaceuticals
Top Four (Legal) Mind-Performance Enhancement Drugs
You already know about Provigil, also known as "professor's little helper," but what about other favorite performance-enhancing drugs among people who think for a living? According to yesterday's Los Angeles Times, everyone from classical musicians to physicists are gobbling down "attention enhancers" and "fear blockers." So what are the most awesome brain-sharpening drugs? More »
mad science
A Performance-Enhancing Drug for Scientists and Professors
Barry Bonds isn't the only guy trying to better his game with drugs. If you're trying to compete for the best grants and patents in the cut-throat science industry, you might be taking modafinil (AKA Provigil). Named "professor's little helper" in a Nature commentary today, modafinil is a stimulant that its users compare to a double shot of espresso. The best part? It's totally legal, and is available online. Find out more about it from the experts. More »
pharmaceutical fantasies
A Drug That Makes You Gay
Today we learned that scientists can turn fruit flies gay in hours with drugs . But this isn't the first gay-making drug to appear in sensationalized (or fictionalized) science. Last year, a minster with a blog caused a freaky panic by announcing that there's scientific evidence showing that soy beans can feminize you and make you gay. He relied on the (true) information that there's a chemical in soy beans that's similar to estrogen to bolster his argument. (Yes, he has been thoroughly debunked.) But there are other, better gay drugs out there. More »
drugs
