SciTechBits – Interesting Bits of Science & Technoglogy Served For You!

Can a toilet save your life? It might be able to if you have health problems. From Japan, the land of high-tech toilets, a new toilet provides the benefits of a doctor’s visit every time you use it.

According to ChinaDaily, the newest Japanese high-tech toilet “offers its users an instant health check-up every time they answer the call of nature.” The “Intelligent Toilet” was designed by Daiwa House with the elderly in mind. It “provides urine analysis, takes the user’s blood pressure and body temperature, and measures their weight with an inbuilt floor scale.” The readout comes up on a wall-mounted computer screen next to the smart toilet. It also has an armband to monitor blood pressure.

Fritz Kahn a doctor born in Germany produced several illustrations (1920s) that explained the human physiology using operations of machines. It was a wonderful imagination to think of the human anatomy as a various mechanical components. These illustrations have provided great insight in a simplistic way to understand the human physiology. Recently, Henning Lederer a graphics artist and animator attempted to use modern techniques to convert & adapt the work of Kahn into an interactive product.

Given below is an animation created by Lederer and the original poster (Der Mensch als Industriepalast [Man as Industrial Palace]) created by Kahn in 1926.

Feb 4, 2010 marked the World Cancer Day. The message got out to the world was all in sync – a good percentage of cancers are preventable.


Cancer is a leading cause of death, contributing to about one in every eight deaths worldwide and that is HIV, malaria and TB combined. While the fear for this killer is omnipresent, awareness about prevention is not. While cancer by itself is noncommunicable, about twenty-one percent of cancers are due to infections. Cervical and liver cancers are mainly due to such infections.

Research and media have been significantly focused on Green Tea, highlighting its health benefits. Black Tea (the regular tea consumed at homes) has now been researched and proved that it can directly influence the lifespan. Specifically, experiments on fruit flies have shown that, more than 4% extension of lifespan is possible.

Gerontology researchers have been increasingly addressing the relationship between diet and aging. It is shown that moderate calorie restriction or altering the composition of nutrients in the diet affects the lifespan and aging of organisms.

Dietary antioxidants have become popular supplements in prevention of aging. Briefly, oxygen we intake generates ‘reactive oxygen species’ (ROS), which is one of the causes for aging. Dietary antioxidants work towards scavenging the ROS in cells and build a defense base to limit the formation of new free radicals and slow down the ageing process.

As people get older, their arms and legs become thinner, making them weak with more chances for falls and fractures.  Research is now showing why this is happening and how to handle it.

Researchers from Nottingham have been researching about this and had already shown that the food intake by the elderly cannot convert to muscles as fast as in their younger counter parts. Newer research by the same team, has now found that the suppression of muscle breakdown, which also happens during feeding, is blunted with age. They belive that a ‘double whammy’ affects people aged over 65. However the team think that weight training may “rejuvenate” muscle blood flow and help retain muscle for older people.

When they eat they don’t build enough muscle with the protein in food; also, the insulin fails to shut down the muscle breakdown that rises between meals and overnight. Normally, in young people, insulin acts to slow muscle breakdown. Common to these problems may be a failure to deliver nutrients and hormones to muscle because of a poorer blood supply.