May 13, 2013 | 94 notes

Wrongfully Admitted to Sunbury Asylum In 1945, Maraquita Sargeant, a mother of five young children, was admitted against her will to Sunbury Mental Asylum in Australia. Her youngest child, Tony, has spent the last 50 years of his life searching for answers. Walking the grounds of the now vacant and dilapidated Sunbury, Tony claims his mother was the victim of an era where there were no contraceptives and divorce was not allowed. Having five children already, Maraquita was not willing to give birth again and soon after was admitted. In 1946, she wrote a letter to the governor of Victoria stating she had been “unjustly detained.” The governor responded with a letter to the mental hygiene director and stated the letter “appears to be from a sane person.” The hygiene director’s response can only be described as chilling: “She is definitely insane and if released would be a threat to certain prominent people’s reputations.” With the director alerted to Maraquita’s attempt to write the governor, he shipped her to the Royal Melbourne Hospital where she received a lobotomy—a new and experimental procedure at the time that involved separating the front of her brain from the back. The operation was considered a failure. Maraquita spent her time at Sunbury in the sewing room repairing linen and ironing. Despite the injustice, Maraquita remained optimistic and in 1967 she was released. - Continue reading and watch the video at Smithsonian.com. Ed note: This video was submitted to our In Motion video contest. The deadline to submit your video is May 31. Head over to the contest page for more details.

Wrongfully Admitted to Sunbury Asylum

In 1945, Maraquita Sargeant, a mother of five young children, was admitted against her will to Sunbury Mental Asylum in Australia. Her youngest child, Tony, has spent the last 50 years of his life searching for answers.

Walking the grounds of the now vacant and dilapidated Sunbury, Tony claims his mother was the victim of an era where there were no contraceptives and divorce was not allowed. Having five children already, Maraquita was not willing to give birth again and soon after was admitted. In 1946, she wrote a letter to the governor of Victoria stating she had been “unjustly detained.” The governor responded with a letter to the mental hygiene director and stated the letter “appears to be from a sane person.” The hygiene director’s response can only be described as chilling:

“She is definitely insane and if released would be a threat to certain prominent people’s reputations.”

With the director alerted to Maraquita’s attempt to write the governor, he shipped her to the Royal Melbourne Hospital where she received a lobotomy—a new and experimental procedure at the time that involved separating the front of her brain from the back. The operation was considered a failure. Maraquita spent her time at Sunbury in the sewing room repairing linen and ironing. Despite the injustice, Maraquita remained optimistic and in 1967 she was released. - Continue reading and watch the video at Smithsonian.com.

Ed note: This video was submitted to our In Motion video contest. The deadline to submit your video is May 31. Head over to the contest page for more details.

May 9, 2013 | 73 notes

What Lies Ahead for 3-D Printing? Wandering the brightly lit halls of the 3D Systems’ plant in Rock Hill, South Carolina, I gaze upon objects strange and wondrous. A fully functioning guitar made of nylon. A phalanx of mandibles studded with atrocious-looking teeth. The skeleton of a whale. A five-color, full-scale prototype of a high-heeled shoe. Toy robots. And what appears to be the face of a human fetus. “That was made from an ultrasound image,” Cathy Lewis, the company’s chief marketing officer, tells me, shrugging. This collection of objects shares one feature: All were “printed” by machines that, following instructions from digital files, join together layer upon layer of material—whether metals, ceramics or plastics—until the object’s distinctive shape is realized. The process is called 3-D printing (or additive manufacturing, in industrial parlance) and if you haven’t heard of it by now, you haven’t been paying enough attention to scores of breathless news stories and technology blogs—or to President Barack Obama, who declared in his most recent State of the Union address that 3-D printing “has the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost anything.” While many people only now are hearing about the technology, engineers and designers have been using large and expensive 3-D printers for nearly three decades, making rapid prototypes of parts for aerospace, defense and automotive companies. Over the years, however, digital design software has matured, scanners have become ubiquitous and affordable desktop printers have come within reach of self-starting entrepreneurs, schools and home tinkerers. Technologists boisterously proclaim that 3-D printing will democratize design and free us from the he­gemony of mass manufacturing. But just because anybody’s ideas can take shape doesn’t necessarily mean they should—a notion that struck me in 3D Systems’ lobby, where I saw shelf after shelf of what some people try very hard not to describe as cheap plastic crap: brightly colored miniature vases, phone cases, jewelry, dolls and, inevitably, skulls. (On just one 3-D file-sharing site, I found 101 designs for skull rings and pendants.) The creator of these lobby tchotchkes? The Cube, manufactured by 3D Systems. - Continue reading at Smithsonian.com. Article by Elizabeth Royte Photo by Laurie Rubin

What Lies Ahead for 3-D Printing?

Wandering the brightly lit halls of the 3D Systems’ plant in Rock Hill, South Carolina, I gaze upon objects strange and wondrous. A fully functioning guitar made of nylon. A phalanx of mandibles studded with atrocious-looking teeth. The skeleton of a whale. A five-color, full-scale prototype of a high-heeled shoe. Toy robots. And what appears to be the face of a human fetus. “That was made from an ultrasound image,” Cathy Lewis, the company’s chief marketing officer, tells me, shrugging.

This collection of objects shares one feature: All were “printed” by machines that, following instructions from digital files, join together layer upon layer of material—whether metals, ceramics or plastics—until the object’s distinctive shape is realized. The process is called 3-D printing (or additive manufacturing, in industrial parlance) and if you haven’t heard of it by now, you haven’t been paying enough attention to scores of breathless news stories and technology blogs—or to President Barack Obama, who declared in his most recent State of the Union address that 3-D printing “has the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost anything.”

While many people only now are hearing about the technology, engineers and designers have been using large and expensive 3-D printers for nearly three decades, making rapid prototypes of parts for aerospace, defense and automotive companies. Over the years, however, digital design software has matured, scanners have become ubiquitous and affordable desktop printers have come within reach of self-starting entrepreneurs, schools and home tinkerers. Technologists boisterously proclaim that 3-D printing will democratize design and free us from the he­gemony of mass manufacturing.

But just because anybody’s ideas can take shape doesn’t necessarily mean they should—a notion that struck me in 3D Systems’ lobby, where I saw shelf after shelf of what some people try very hard not to describe as cheap plastic crap: brightly colored miniature vases, phone cases, jewelry, dolls and, inevitably, skulls. (On just one 3-D file-sharing site, I found 101 designs for skull rings and pendants.) The creator of these lobby tchotchkes? The Cube, manufactured by 3D Systems. - Continue reading at Smithsonian.com.

Article by Elizabeth Royte

Photo by Laurie Rubin

December 21, 2012 | 45 notes

Marijuana Isn’t a Pain Killer—It’s a Pain Distracter One of the chief arguments for the legalization of medicinal marijuana is its usefulness as a pain reliever. For many cancer and AIDS patients across the 19 states where medicinal use of the drug has been legalized, it has proven to be a valuable tool in managing chronic pain—in some cases working for patients for which conventional painkillers are ineffective. To determine exactly how cannabis relieves pain, a group of Oxford researchers used healthy volunteers, an MRI machine and doses of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. Their findings, published today in the journal Pain, suggest something counterintuitive: that the drug doesn’t so much reduce pain as make the same level of pain more bearable. - Continue reading at Smithsonian.com. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Coleen Danger.

Marijuana Isn’t a Pain Killer—It’s a Pain Distracter

One of the chief arguments for the legalization of medicinal marijuana is its usefulness as a pain reliever. For many cancer and AIDS patients across the 19 states where medicinal use of the drug has been legalized, it has proven to be a valuable tool in managing chronic pain—in some cases working for patients for which conventional painkillers are ineffective.

To determine exactly how cannabis relieves pain, a group of Oxford researchers used healthy volunteers, an MRI machine and doses of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. Their findings, published today in the journal Pain, suggest something counterintuitive: that the drug doesn’t so much reduce pain as make the same level of pain more bearable. - Continue reading at Smithsonian.com.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Coleen Danger.

December 3, 2012 | 58 notes

Images of Brain Injuries in Athletes A new study of 85 people who had a history of repeated mild head traumas found that 68 of them had evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy. The photographs illustrate the deterioration of the brain. The dark areas of the brain show the spread of chronic traumatic encephalopathy. - Continue reading at the New York Times. Pictured is the brain of Cookie Gilchrist who died in 2011. He played six seasons of professional football. Ed note: Five concussions in one game has parents questioning Pop Warner football.

Images of Brain Injuries in Athletes

A new study of 85 people who had a history of repeated mild head traumas found that 68 of them had evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy. The photographs illustrate the deterioration of the brain.

The dark areas of the brain show the spread of chronic traumatic encephalopathy. - Continue reading at the New York Times.

Pictured is the brain of Cookie Gilchrist who died in 2011. He played six seasons of professional football.

Ed note: Five concussions in one game has parents questioning Pop Warner football.

September 26, 2012 | 24,883 notes

Stunning Science Images that Border on Art This photograph of the surface of a human brain (selected as the grand prize winner) captures the intimate view that a neurosurgeon had while operating on an epileptic patient. “The arteries are bright scarlet with oxygenated blood, the veins deep purple and the ‘grey matter’ of the brain a flushed, delicate pink,” said Alice Roberts, an anatomist and one of the judges, in a press release. “It is quite extraordinary.” - Continue reading at Smithsonian.com. Photo: Robert Ludlow, Wellcome Images Ed note: More stunning images of the human brain.

Stunning Science Images that Border on Art

This photograph of the surface of a human brain (selected as the grand prize winner) captures the intimate view that a neurosurgeon had while operating on an epileptic patient. “The arteries are bright scarlet with oxygenated blood, the veins deep purple and the ‘grey matter’ of the brain a flushed, delicate pink,” said Alice Roberts, an anatomist and one of the judges, in a press release. “It is quite extraordinary.” - Continue reading at Smithsonian.com.

Photo: Robert Ludlow, Wellcome Images

Ed note: More stunning images of the human brain.

May 7, 2012 | 25 notes

The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine Thomas Willis, a 17th-century pioneer of brain science, brewed a drink for apoplexy, or bleeding, that mingled powdered human skull and chocolate. And King Charles II of England sipped “The King’s Drops,” his personal tincture, containing human skull in alcohol. Illustration: Bettmann / Corbis Ed note: Continue reading this gross, yet fascinating article at Smithsonian.com.

The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine

Thomas Willis, a 17th-century pioneer of brain science, brewed a drink for apoplexy, or bleeding, that mingled powdered human skull and chocolate. And King Charles II of England sipped “The King’s Drops,” his personal tincture, containing human skull in alcohol.

Illustration: Bettmann / Corbis

Ed note: Continue reading this gross, yet fascinating article at Smithsonian.com.