Most phones can take photos and send texts. Now, researchers have developed one that can diagnose disease. Technology Review reports that the new “Cellscope” works like a microscope that straps onto cell phones to analyze spit or blood samples on slides. The contraption can use specialized software to diagnose the samples on the spot, or it can send the images off to specialized centers for further study. Experts believe the technology could prove helpful in remote parts of the world—where health infrastructure is lacking but cell phone coverage is improving—in helping to treat common diseases like tuberculosis and malaria.

Source: Technology Review

Image by  David N. Breslauer et al. , from PLOS1.

Social scientists find it helpful to think of ideas and religions spreading like infectious diseases. Phrases like “going viral” and “tipping points” are often used to describe the spread of memes. Though many religious adherents are loath to admit it, Sam Kean writes for Search Magazine that “genes, germs, and memes of religious ideas all seem to spread through societies in the same way.”

One social scientist takes the idea a step further, saying that real diseases (the kind spread by microbes) help explain the spread of religions. Corey Fincher points out that diseases are more common in places near the equator, and there’s a vast disparity of religions in those regions, too. Up north, in places like Norway, both diseases and religious diversity are less common. Fincher believes that this is not a fluke. People tend to isolate themselves from others to stay away from diseases, and isolation breeds new ideas, so a greater number of diseases would lead to a wider variety of religions.

Even with plenty of research, most people wouldn’t cite disease as the reason for their religious beliefs. But as Harvey Whitehouse, an Oxford University anthropologist points out, “It’s not that what people say is wrong, it’s that it’s often a poor guide to people’s implicit beliefs.

Image by Orange Tuesday, licensed under Creative Commons.

Source: Search Magazine 

Just about every episode of the hit medical drama House MD follows a pattern, as the humor magazine Cracked points out: A patient presents weird symptoms that escalate into a life-or-death situation, House and his team take ridiculous risks to save the patient, and then the patient is saved.

What many viewers don’t know is that the National Institutes of Health has its very own House-like team called the Undiagnosed Diseases Program (UDP). The main idea of the TV show echoes the UDP’s work, but the two don’t have much else in common. The New Scientist interviewed program head William Gahl, who, unlike the TV show's protagonist, seems to be a humble, caring man with a sincere interest in his patients. Plus, real patients usually show up with slow-developing conditions, not the dramatic collapses seen on the show.

The UDP began in May of 2008 and in those seven short months has received over 1000 doctors’ inquiries. The program, according to Gahl, serves two purposes: Not only do the physicians work to diagnose and help patients, they also try to identify new medical conditions in the hopes of making future diagnoses easier for everyone.