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Synthesis

Newscripts

Maggots Are Creeping Back, Car Whistles Help Animals, Fahrenheit Zero, White Suit Recalls Movie

by BY K. M. REESE
September 6, 2004 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 82, Issue 36

Maggots are creeping back

Maggots have been creeping into the news lately, and a current rundown appears in the September issue of International Health Care Journal, Bristol, England. The report says, "Maggots perform a function that is invaluable when dealing with wounds that refuse to heal after conventional treatment, as they eat away the dead flesh."

The journal says that some physicians, such as Ronald Sherman of an unspecified locale, have sworn by maggots since the early 1990s. In January 2004, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration approved the maggot as a means of cleaning wounds. The maggot was the first live animal to gain FDA approval. Since then, wound clinics in the U.S. have been given maggots to test on patients where other treatment hasn't worked.

Webster defines maggot in part as "1. a soft-bodied legless grub that is the larva of a dipterous insect (as the housefly)."

Sherman says maggots do more than just eat away the rot during the two or three days they live within a wound. They also produce substances that kill bacteria and stimulate growth of healthy tissue.

Still, the journal goes on, "however useful the maggots are for cleaning wounds . . . a huge shift in the public opinion" will be needed to make them acceptable to patients and hospital administrators. According to physician Robert Kisner, who directs the University of Miami Cedars Wound Center, "It takes work to convince people, but [maggots] probably [will] be easier to use now that they're FDA-approved, and we'll talk about it more and think about it more."

 

Car whistles help animals

AAA World for September/October reports that "having your car whistle while you drive may help prevent accidents in rural areas where deer and other animals, not just cars, roam the highways." Car-deer collisions in the U.S. account for 1.5 million accidents annually, according to a study released in 2003 by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

Car whistles are mounted on the front bumper of the vehicle and emit an ultrasonic whistle that people can't hear. Deer can hear the sound, however. It's intended to warn them of a vehicle's approach from as far as a quarter of a mile away.

Results of the car whistle, AAA World reports, "are more anecdotal than scientific." Many users swear by the devices, however. Deer whistles are used, for example, by the Nebraska State Patrol and Iowa State Patrol. The devices cost less than $50, and users figure that "the whistle is worth the price if it reduces the risk of an accident even a little."

 

Fahrenheit zero

A story about kids making ice cream (C&EN, July 26, page 56) said that one of them, until reaching college, didn't realize "that the zero point on the Fahrenheit scale was defined by that ice-salt mixture that let him and his brother crank out ice cream." Robert T. Anselmi of Littleton, Colo., says that's wrong. He says, "Fahrenheit defined 100 °F as the hottest it got in Berlin in the summer and 0 °F as the coldest it got in the winter in Berlin on the year he was calibrating his thermometer."

 

White suit recalls movie

James D. Bushnell writes from Berkeley Heights, N.J., that he was amused by "Clothes stay clean" (C&EN, Aug. 9, page 48), which said that scientists at Hong Kong Polytechnic University "are developing a fabric that never needs washing. Just step outside, and ultraviolet rays from the sun will zap away dirt, pollutants, and microorganisms."

Bushnell says, "This idea is something like 50 years old." He recalls that the topic was the theme of a British movie comedy, "The Man in the White Suit," starring Alec Guinness. The theme: A marvelous white fabric had been developed that not only did not wear out but never got dirty.

The inventors and investors, Bushnell recalls, thought they had hit the jackpot. Dry cleaners, however, protested that the suit would put them out of business. Clothing stores, moreover, would sell only one suit. Thus the product, Bushnell says, proved to be "a bust commercially." Except, that is, for Guinness and movie theaters, who apparently did well with it.

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