Eyespy

It's often a matter of perspective in medicine. A patient undergoing rectal examination was overheard to say, "That's where it hurts, doctor, just inside the entrance." The consultant's response followed swiftly, "In medical circles, sir, we prefer to regard that as an exit" (Emergency Medicine Journal 2004 Sep(suppl):2).

It's been a busy few months for snoring scientists. Firstly, they devised a snore cure that entailed strapping a tennis ball to your back, and now doctors in Germany have created a specially adapted dummy that forces a person's tongue behind their teeth as they sleep. With the tongue immobilised, the palate cannot reverberate creating the sounds associated with snoring. The patients also tend to keep their mouths closed when the device is in place (www.ananova.com).

Anyone who is scientifically inclined and has too much time on their hands can now participate in PubMed Whack. Mathew Smith and Christopher Morris from the Welsh School of Pharmacy at Cardiff University have devised this game, which entails entering two search words on the main PubMed search page (www.pubmed.com) with the aim of getting just one cited reference back. Eyespy decided to give it a go and bingo--"boredom remedy" was a PubMed Whack (www.cf.ac.uk/phrmy/PCB/PageLabEvents.htm).

Perfectionist students are more likely to experience headaches, says a study in Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain. The present study indicates a relationship between perfectionism and chronic headache in university students, with those higher in perfectionism experiencing more headaches. This investigation confirmed the relationship between daily hassles and chronic headache in this population. The results also suggest that perfectionists may generate their own stress through their tendency to appraise more situations as hassles. This, in turn, may explain their tendency to experience chronic headaches (www.blackwellpublishing.com).

A US plastic surgeon, the self styled "biggest fat sucker in Texas," has performed liposuction on himself in front of television cameras to promote the potential use of stem cells. Robert Ersek climbed onto the operating table and covered his legs with a drape, injecting himself with local anaesthetic to anaesthetise the left side of his abdomen. He encourages his patients to save their liposuctioned fat from now on for the stem cells that can be harvested in these operations (www.ananova.com).

It's now official--the British are becoming bigger. Size UK--a collaboration between UK government, 17 major UK clothing retailers, academics, and technology companies--have studied more than 10 000 men and women aged 16 to 90 in the past three years. Using a light-based three dimensional scanner, researchers created a three dimensional "point cloud" map of the body. Contrasting their findings with those of the last large scale study of its kind in the 1950s, Size UK has shown that the average woman has increased in height by 5 cm, in bust by 2.5 cm, and by a staggering 16.5 cm around the waist. In addition, the group found that the average UK female weight has increased from 62 to 65 kg. A similar organisation, Size USA, has also gathered data in the United States to show the same trend. However, the average American female weight is 71 kg (www.bodymetrics.com). Sent in by Andrew MacDonald, Oxford.

It's what Eyespy has believed for years--men can suffer from PMT or "periodic male tension." A study by psychologists at Derby University presented at the annual British Psychological Society conference suggests that men may experience similar symptoms to premenstrual women including moodiness, discomfort, and loss of concentration. The researchers asked 100 men and women to complete questions relating to symptoms usually attributed to the menstrual cycle including pain, concentration, behavioural change, physical reactions, water retention, negative feelings, and arousal and control. As yet the researchers have not arrived at a full explanation for the findings, but Eyespy urges women to attribute all male moods as "just PMT" (www.guardian.co.uk).

Eyespy is slightly concerned about the dedicated members of the Pony Club, who like to sport knee high boots with their jodhpurs and wax jackets. The mystery may have been solved. A theory is proposed in a letter in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (2004;97:456-7) that tight knee length boots worn by the cavalry and fashionable society may have caused pressure trauma to saccular popliteal aneurysms, causing sudden rupture. This led to a cluster of deaths registered between 1894 and 1900 as "due to footwear." The aneurysms were apparently commonly caused by repeated flexion and extension of the knee while riding.

For everyone who gets arm ache when they've been using a mouse to guide the cursor all day, there's hope in sight. For all those with vertigo, it's perhaps not so good news. Dubbed a "nouse," a new personal computer control system, invented by Dmitry Gorodnichy, lets users nudge a cursor around the screen with gentle movements of their nose. Blinking the left or right eye twice takes the place of left or right mouse clicks. He hopes it will make using a computer easier for people who have a disability. Tracking software monitors the image from the webcam to work out where a user's nose is pointing, and generates signals that move the cursor round the screen. Meanwhile, motion detection software works out which eye is blinking to simulate a mouse click (www.newscientist.com).