This week on Mornings with Carmen, we talked about the Mars Curiosity rover’s unexpected findings, jelly-like batteries that actually work, and how online companies, claiming to be health providers, prey on young men’s worst fears.
Mars: Curiosity Rover finds unexpected crystals
The Mars Curiosity Rover, which has been exploring the planet since 2012, just happened to drive over a rock in an area it was studying. The rock happened to crack open to reveal yellow crystals that the rovers’ instruments showed was pure elemental sulfur. It turns out that there is a field of these yellow crystals.
One of the goals of the Curiosity mission is to see if Mars has ever supported microbial life. It’s been exploring a region that has a lot of interesting properties that indicate water was once flowing there.
Sulfur is one of the elements you’d find if there was microbial life on Mars at some point in the past.
Jelly-like batteries
Scientists at Cambridge University developed a flexible jelly-like battery that is based on how electric eels can stun their prey with electricity. The battery is stretchy, and it maintains its conductivity. It’s really difficult to get both of those things. Usually, the more flexible a material is, the less conductive it is.
This kind of battery has a lot of potential (pardon the pun) of being used in biomedical implants, like brain implants for people with epilepsy or those that need direct drug delivery. This kind of implant is also less likely to be rejected by the body or cause scar tissue compared to using metal-based electrodes.
Online health providers are preying on young men’s worst fears
Since Covid, direct-to-consumer telehealth companies have flourished, but they remain a gray area when it comes to regulation. The problem is many of them have sketchy practices because they are in the business of making money off of people’s insecurities. One target demographic is men who are under 50. These companies will advertise online on Youtube or Twitch or other platforms for things like hair loss, testosterone, anti-anxiety meds, or medicine for ADHD, things that men might be embarrassed to ask about or they want to use as a performance enhancer.
Often the advertisement is something like: “A healthy handsome you is only a click away.”
Men see the ad, go to the site, fill out a questionnaire, maybe talk to a doctor, usually not, and then some drug arrives in the mail.
There are several medical ethics issues with this. For one, some of these problems may be indicative of a serious medical issue, and without a doctor even talking to you, there’s no way to evaluate that. Further, these often men are not told of the side effects, meaning they are not making an informed decision. A lot of men like the convenience and speed at which these meds arrive, but sometimes they get the wrong meds and studies have shown that sometimes the mail-order meds to not have the correct ingredients or proportions listed.