Snacks4theBrain!

I’ve finally gone off the deep end, you say. What has sword swallowing got to do with science? Well, turns out, lots!

I attended and (sort of) presented about Health Care resources in Second Life on May 30 at HealthCamp Nashville, held on the campus of David Lipscomb University here in Nashville. If you are interested in the resources I compiled for that presentation you may access them at WallWisher, a Web 2.0 platform for easily collaborating on a topic. I’m not here to talk about my presentation, though, rather to share one of those interesting ways that life can surprise you with fascinating new learning if you’re open to that sort of thing.

The subject at hand is sword swallowing.

HealthCamp Nashville was set up around social/professional networking tools. In fact, I’d become aware of it through Twitter, my tech/teaching/innovation mainstay. The presentations were set up so that each presenter only had 20 minutes, with 5 more to share q and a, then 5 minutes to set up for the next presenter.

I was checking out my presentation room, the “Yellow Room.” Now, the conference had registered 150 or so attendees but only 40 or 50 showed up. Still, I wanted to do the best I could, so I decided to watch a couple presentations in the same room. I “live-blogged” it with CoverItLive and you can read about Larry Lin’s excellent presentation on Healthcare opportunities in China by visiting my personal blog at scottmerrick.net. Toward the end of Larry’s session, a tall, fit looking fellow with long blonde hair entered the room with a bag of swords. He listened attentively and when it was his turn he eased up to the front of the room.

Now, Lin’s presentation had only been experienced by about a half-dozen in the audience. Most of those filtered out in the interim and I was left with only Tim, the session timekeeper (you know, the guy with the two large cards that say “5″ and “1″ that he uses to help keep the sessions on schedule). To the new presenter’s relief, others filtered in and pretty soon we had four or five in the audience. Others came in as the twitter stream hashed #hcn09 seeped out the news that something extraordinary was going on in the Yellow Room.

I wished that I had recorded Dan’s presentation, all built around his 2006 scholarly paper published by the British Medical Journal, “Sword Swallowing and Its Side Effects.” The paper garnered Meyer a coveted (or not:) Ig Nobel award in 2007. These awards are given annually for discoveries “that cannot, or should not, be reproduced,” and are currently announced annually a Harvard University venue to great fanfare. I actually featured Ig Nobel awards ‘way back in podcast number 47 of S4theB!. Just to give you some idea of the company Meyer keeps with this award, here’s the list of 2007 award winners (from Wikipedia):

Aviation: Patricia V. Agostino, Santiago A. Plano and Diego A. Golombek, for discovering that hamsters recover from jetlag more quickly when given Viagra.
Biology: Johanna E.M.H. van Bronswijk, for taking a census of all the mites and other life forms that live in people’s beds.
Chemistry: Mayu Yamamoto for extracting vanilla flavour from cow dung.
Economics: Kuo Cheng Hsieh, for patenting a device to catch bank robbers by ensnaring them in a net.
Linguistics: Juan Manuel Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Nuria Sebastian-Galles, for determining that rats sometimes can’t distinguish between recordings of Japanese and Dutch played backward.
Literature: Glenda Browne, for her study into indexing entries that start with the word “the”.
Medicine: Dan Meyer and Brian Witcombe, for investigating the side-effects of swallowing swords.
Nutrition: Brian Wansink, for investigating people’s appetite for mindless eating by secretly feeding them a self-refilling bowl of soup.
Peace: The United States Air Force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, for suggesting the research and development of a “gay bomb,” which would cause enemy troops to become sexually attracted to each other.
Physics: L. Mahadevan and Enrique Cerda Villablanca for their theoretical study of how sheets become wrinkled.

You get the idea. I was prepared to scoff.

As I watched and listened, something remarkable happened: I was enthralled! Meyer had certainly done his research, and the paper was well-written and fit the mold of every academic paper I’ve read over the years. This man is a good communicator. The president of Sword Swallower’s Internationsl, he’s also, indisputably, a master of sword swallowing, as the video in this post demonstrates.

I talked with Dan after his presentation, told him that I wished I’d recorded his presentation, and incredibly, he handed me the mini-DVD tape that had recorded his 20 minute presentation. I’ll cut the audio as he prepares to do his demonstration, and you can finish with the video at blogs.vanderbilt.edu/s4theb/ !!! Here’s a link to Dan’s excellent website.

And here’s a link to the YouTube video I shot at the presentation!

Music for this show comes from Podsafe Music Network instrumentalist and composer Jean Miquel, working out of Montreal, Quebec and sharing with us his “The Sword of Fire” composition, right in line with Dan Meyer’s predilection for suspenseful music. Dan’s presentation follows!

Snacks4theBrain! episode 84 is right here, or truck on over to iTunes and subscribe!

More links!
Dan’s Twitter account @Halfdan
Dan is available to speak at science/medical events at http://tr.im/scimed
Dan’s “Have Sword Will Travel” podcasts on Itunes
Sword Swallowers Association International
Sword Swallowing x-rays www.swordswallow.com/xrays.php
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Meyer_(performer)
Ig Nobel awards: http://www.improbable.com/ig/

Hola,

Episode 82 of S4theB! shares some information whose source centers around the recurring celebrity of our Episode number 17 subject. At that time (OMG, December 5, 2005! Have we been at this that long?), Dr. William Schaffner was also in the news, driven there by media looking for answers to the then outbreak of bird flu. What? Don’t remember Bird Flu! Okay, that does it! We have to have a DO (that means, of course, “Do Over”). I’m re-sharing the interview from episode 17 for two reasons, 1)because chances are you didn’t get to that podcast back in December, 2005. And 2)because Dr. S. says some things in it that really truly apply to the situations right here, right now.

I’m also posting some links here, which can lead you to many of the recent online articles and video appearances that tap Dr. Schaffner’s expertise in the topic that so thoroughly saturates our airwaves, cables, and iPods these days: Swine Flu.

A quick survey of some article titles may help tickle your curiosity:

Links:
Regular flu shots this fall, maybe swine jab too
AP Release by Lauran Neergaard, May 2, 2009

Stay safe from swine flu with 3 simple steps
USA Today Health & Behavior section, April 30

Current flu outbreak has some similarity to deadly 1918 strain
Stamford Times article by Susanne Rust, May 4

VMC leadership urges calm in the swine flu storm
Vanderbilt Medical Center’s REPORTER

Flu-fighting masks may help, but don’t bet on it
msnbc.com online article April 30

In the process of sorting through the results for the above links, I had a brainstorm: Why not create a custom feed on my personalized Google News page for William Schaffner? I did that, and so can you, if you’re of a mind. You can see mine, complete with each of its 628 search returns (as of the moment of this recording) by clicking here.

Then I went all viddy wit’ it, switching my google search to Video mode. How many resulting links? 49. Here’s a screen grab from the search, and here’s a link to a nifty Veoh.com amalgam of video clips featuring Dr. Schaffner sharing his good doctorly advice.

Finally, I took to the large video services, finding lots of returns on searches for “swine flu Schaffner” in digital print at

And, really finally finally, I searched just for swine flu at msnbc.com, ending up with an interesting list that contained a fascinating brief video coverage of Dr. Carl Brumback, a 95 year-old retiree who “was in charge of Palm Beach County’s response” to the 1976 swine flu outbreak. Dr. Brumback also comments about the 1918 outbreak, which he has lived long enough to recall! This video is here for your viewing enjoyment!

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

People in Business at tennessean.com noted on May 3 that William Schaffner received the James D. Bruce Award for Distinguished Contributions in Preventive Medicine from the American College of Physicians. Schaffner is chair of Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s department of preventive medicine.

Music for this podcast is straight from the Podsafe Music Network and features “Pearls Before Swine” from Oregonian rockers Drunken Prayer and “Swine and Dogs” from the folkies Quebb (pronounced “Kwebb”) out of Southern California. Clever, eh? And lest we forget the contributions Dave Kiefer of Cagey House Music made to the ambient background track for S4theB! 17, here’s a link to his website!

Download episode number 82 of Snacks4theBrain! right here, or visit the downloads page to browse for it and see just what else you may have missed over the past four years!

Until next time!

Hello ya’ll, and yes, we’re looking at episode number 79 of S4theB! I’m lacing this podcast with some really nice acoustic and electric guitar music from Oregonian David Modica, purchased at one of my favorite sources for music, Magnatune.com. You can name your own price for music there, did you know that? Think of it as Priceline for tunes!

The listen today, in addition to the fabulous guitar grooves, is the second half of sophomore presentations from the Vanderbilt Center for Science Outreach’s “Vanderbilt School for Science and Math,” a thriving boost to the Metro Nashville Public Schools’ learning resources that brings 25 high school students to the Vanderbilt University campus one day a week, each, for hands-on, research-grounded, lab-based schooling. You can learn more about the School for Science and Math at its website, theschool.vanderbilt.edu. By the way, in episode 80, I promise we’ll have a Tech Tip tidbit! Due to some longer content lately, I’ve neglected to add those into the mix, an omission I plan to remedy next show, when Snacks4theBrain! turns OCTEGENARIAN!

Let’s get right into this. I need to hear more David Modica. I’ll lead into the presentations with Modica’s “By Your Side,” then afterwards I’ll serve up his haunting version of “Scarbourough Fair.” If you don’t leave with a smile on your face, I’ll refund your money.

Just kidding…

Download S4theB! episode 79 right here, or click Links in the toolbar at top and open up a Podcast Pickle player for quick listenin’!

Hey, there, listeners, welcome to this episode of S4theB! I have some audio from the School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt, and it’s the question and answer portion of last week’s wonderful visit by Nobel Laureate Dr. Stanley Cohen.

Working with Rita Levi-Montalcini (co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in 1986) at Washington University in St. Louis in the 1950s, Cohen isolated nerve growth factor and then went on to discover epidermal growth factor. He continued his research on cellular growth factors after moving to Vanderbilt University in 1959. His research on cellular growth factors has proven fundamental to understanding the development of cancer and designing anti-cancer drugs. (from Wikipedia)

The School for Science and Math is of course the fantastic program offered out of the Vanderbilt Center for Science Outreach which brings 25 students from each grade level of high school from Metro Nashville Public Schools to the Vanderbilt Campus one day a week during the academic school year. I would love to include the entire hour, but that would be more main course than snack, and true to the spirit of Snacks4theBrain! we’ll stick to the tasty morsel Dr. Cohen shared at the end of his visit. You’ll hear the voices of the Professor Emeritus in Biochemistry and those of the students and teachers.

The story that Dr. Cohen shares about investigating the similarity between the enzymes in earthworms and in human livers, how he “watered the lawn all afternooon and come nighttime put a miner’s lamp on his head and crawled around on the ground and collected thousands of worms to study” is enough reward in itself! I also love the attribution of his recognition as 1/3 hard work, 1/3 luck, and 1/3 knowing what to do…because we’re not smart enough to know what we don’t know.” The interchanges are enlightening all around and I am sure that you will thoroughly enjoy the listen.

Bear in mind, if you will, that when you hear Dr. Cohen begin to talk, he’s already spent a half hour describing in intricate detail the foundations of his life’s work. The questions ensue.

Before we get going, I’ll pump up the volume on what you’ve been hearing underneath this little rant, “Grand Prize,” music from the Podsafe Music Network at music.podshow.com from amb26, a very popular ambient artist named Anthony Barnes from the UK, . After Dr. Cohen’s spot I’ll play you out with another prize themed song from music.podshow.com, Ottawa Canada’s Doug Hemstead’s “The Prize.” And don’t leave yet after that, because in my search for songs about prizes–this is after all a Nobel Prize podcast :), I found a lovely mellow song from another Canadian, Hilary Grist. You’ll like it.

Download Snacks4theBrain! episode 77 right here, or click “Links” up top to open a Podcast Pickle player for your listening convenience!

Cheers! And happy holidays, all!!!

Greetings, Snacks listeners!

It’s been too long: For that, my apologies. Your long wait for a new episode of Snacks4theBrain! will, however, prove well worth the patience. For this episode, I share portions of my friend Peggy Sheehy’s presentation at the Second Life Education Community Conference in Tampa, Florida, just a couple weeks ago in mid September! Download episode number 74 right here!

The innovative educational work in 3 dimensional virtual environments is being led by some great teachers, among whom Peggy is globally recognized as a pioneer, if not the pioneer. I met Peggy at her presentation at NECC2007 in Atlanta and was terrifically impressed with everything she had to say, and I’ve watched over the months since as she refined her practices more, made further strides in the technology, and honed her message so that it can now be understood by even the most technology-resistant educator. More and more research is coming in to help support her basic message: Immersive Environments and their creative challenges WORK for students. Guided experiences in these environments work magic for students who might not raise a hand or a voice in the traditional classroom; guided experiences in these environments give students opportunities to experience (and build) relationships with fellow students who may not give them the time or day in a traditional school setting; and guided experiences in these environments can be made secure, fun, and pedagogically sound, with solid (if novel) assessment tools and strong underlying collatoral learning.