Scientific American: Keyword Pain

In the mid-2000s, when scientists questioned whether the campaign to rid the world of polio could succeed, skeptics pointed to a problem that some called PAIN .

Nobody likes getting shots. But what if you could make the needles so tiny that they broke the skin painlessly? Engineers from Tufts University have created such micro-needles--made from the major protein in silk, fibroin. The work is in the journal Advanced Functional Materials .[Konstantinos Tsioris et al., " Fabrication of Silk Micro-Needles for Controlled-Release Drug Delivery "]

You may have never personally caught sight of Jesus Christ’s face in a potato chip, but you have likely succumbed to an equally improbable belief at some point in your life. Many people claim that ghosts exist or that their dreams can predict the future. Some individuals even think they have seen the face of the Virgin Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich and Mother Teresa in a cinnamon bun.

Spiciness is a chili pepper's best defense against seed-attacking microbes. But not all chilies are hot. Because producing that heat comes at a price. So says a study in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B . [David C. Haak et al., " Why are not all chilies hot? A trade-off limits pungency "]

We recognize Robert Louis Stevenson’s Long John Silver by his commanding presence, his stoicism and the absence of his left leg, cut off below the hip. Although we think we know the roguish Silver, characters such as he are not of this world, as Stevenson himself admitted in Longman’s Magazine in 1884. He described fictional characters as being like circles--abstractions. Scientists use circles to solve problems in physics, and writers and readers likewise use fictional characters to think about people in the social world.

People with diabetes may have to endure multiple, painful finger sticks every day to get blood samples for testing. But a new glucose test may do away with the pain even as it brings on the tears. Because the test uses tears instead of blood to measure glucose levels. The report is in the journal Analytical Chemistry . [Qinyi Yan et al., " Measurement of Tear Glucose Levels with Amperometric Glucose Biosensor/Capillary Tube Configuration "]

Many women are popping the pill for more than its pregnancy-prevention benefit, according to a study by the Guttmacher Institute. The study finds 33 percent of U.S. teens and 14 percent of all U.S. women taking the oral contraceptive are doing so solely to treat menstrual cramps or for another purpose not related to birth control.

In 1961 Stanley Milgram embarked on a research program that would change psychology forever. Fueled by a desire to understand how ordinary Germans had managed to participate in the horrors of the Holocaust, Milgram decided to investigate when and why people obey authority. To do so, he developed an ingenious experimental paradigm that revealed the surprising degree to which ordinary individuals are willing to inflict pain on others.

Half a century later Milgram’s obedience studies still resonate. They showed that it does not take a disturbed personality to harm others. Healthy, well-adjusted people are willing to administer lethal electric shocks to another person when told to do so by an authority figure. Milgram’s findings convulsed the world of psychology and horrified the world at large. His work also left pressing questions about the nature of conformity unanswered. Ethical concerns have prompted psychologists to spend decades struggling to design equally powerful experiments without inflicting distress on the participants.