From Scientific American, a quick discussion on a report that recently came out indicating that a key compound in soy bean called phytoestrogens, mimics the female hormone estrogen. Estrogen has been shown to reduce testosterone levels in men.

In this study, half a serving of soy, on average, lowered sperm counts by 34 million per milliliter compared to those that ‘abstained’ from soy.

Is it odd for a silicon vendor like Intel to get into the medical device business that they have to market and service as opposed to allowing another OEM to rebrand or license Intel’s IP?

I guess I need to look into this a little more, but that’s exactly what Intel has done. The device just received FDA approval and is called the “Intel Health Guide”. It’s considered a personal health system or a care management tool for healthcare professionals who manage patients with chronic conditions.

Essentially, your doctor sends you home with this, the patient can have the device take readings from the in-home patient (like blood pressure), then uploads the results to the Dr. who has a device or software on the backend to make assessments of the patient’s state.

I can definitely see a great use for this, especially for the elderly, but I would like to know the cost and what kind of revenue stream they’ll see from it since this is a gamble on their part.

I’m not so sure if this is a good thing to report on or if it could spell doom for the human species in the long run. But the BBC is reporting that scientists have found a workaround to the problem of the human body rejecting animal parts used in transplants.

The Wall Street Journal’s Health blog researches some of the more interesting medical diagnostic codes to help track injuries throughout the world. For instance, if you’re injured by a spacecraft, that’s ICD-9 code E845.

And the extended definition notes that the code includes “launching pad accident,” but excludes “effects of weightlessness in spacecraft,” which has its own code (E928.0). And with a little sleuthing they found a reference to the need for these spacecraft codes go all the way back to 1966. No doubt due to the heightened awareness of the space race.

More interesting codes:

• injury by nuclear weapons - E979.5
• by paintball gun - E922.5
• by atomic power plant malfunction in watercraft - E838
• by ski-lift with gondola - E847

According to a new psychological study reported in Nature, a car bumper sticker as innocuous as “Jesus Saves” or “My honor student is a cam whore” are among a few of the indications that the driver is more susceptible to road rage than drivers with no bumper stickers or other bling to personalize the vehicle. So those people with dashboard toys or custom paint jobs for instance are subconsciously marking their car as a very personal space or property.

Coupled with the fact that roads are being over populated will lead to the normal human instinct of increased territorial aggression (this applies to other animals suffering from over population as well). They are more apt to take offense at even the slightest infringement upon what they deem as their space on the road when other drivers are too close or cut them off. Their feeling of having a personal space violated can cause the territorial individual to respond with aggression, hence road rage.

My theory based on that study then goes that if you’re going to cut someone off, take a peek at their car first and only go after the timid or more passive, less territorial drivers, with no car adornments. Those are the people treating the vehicle as a pure means of transportation between two points and less likely to retaliate.