I had the privelege to talk at SCIFEST09 yesterday, on the theme of this year’s wonderful program. Numerous topics such as Robot Revolution, Supermarket Botany, Bionic You, Flirting the Scientific Way and How You Will Go to the Moon, were presented. You could also get a chance to ride on a Segway! The FILMFEST at the Omnimax theater was showing a variety of magnificent movies. The Van Gogh movie I found of particular interest as a little known fact about his yellow paintings is that they were due to a side effect of a drug. He always painted his physician, Dr Gachet, with a foxglove in his hand. This was because he was receiving enormous doses of digitalis for his epilepsy. While digitalis did not help his epilepsy, it gave him a side effect known as  Xanthopsia (Yellow Vision).

When I read the program, I specifically wanted to attend one by Dr David Peters on the Science of Baseball. Unfortunately it was at the same time as my talk. However, I had the opportunity to meet him at the Extravaganza cocktail party. He is a fascinating person who in his day to day life, works on vibrations in helicopters. In between discussing helicopters, he did manage to point out to me that the President of Harvard banned the curveball when it first came out as being unsportsmanlike. He also mentioned that originally people thought the curveball was an illusion and did not really believe it could move so much.  Not to be outdone, I reminded him that “Pud”  Galvin, who made the  Boston Red Sox pudding in his hands when he pithed for the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1889, took a testicular extract. Thus he became the first baseball player to take steroids. The Washington Post at that time suggested all baseball players should take steroids to improve their game! Manny Ramirez may agree, given the success of the Dodgers over the Cardinals.

We also discussed what had happened to Franklin’s pitching. Dr Peters suggested it was all in his mind. I on the other hand think it was a tired arm that robbed him of his magnificent curveball. On the other hand we could both agree that the demise of the Cardinals was clearly a teamwide failure to get their brain in the game. For this we must blame either the team psychiatrist or the manager and coaches. Personally when I saw Ludwick bating in the number 2 spot, I had no question what was the problem. For those who did not follow the season as closely as I did Ludwick’s magnificence was driving in runs when men were on base.

So what did I tell the wonderful audience I had, that stretched from a youngster in kindergarten to an 81 year old. For the three children in the audience I pointed out that education was highly protective against developing Alzheimer disease. In answer to this the third grader complained that she already got too much homework. I suggested they might want to avoid “smartness in a bottle”, as it appears that many parents in the United Kingdom are now giving their children ritalin at exam times to improve their grades. In the future we may well be testing all students for drugs when they write their SAT or ACT. I also told them that an Australian study had shown that nose picking was associated with Alzheimer disease. For the rest of the audience, the message was exercise, including dancing, and playing a musical instrument protect against dementia. Eating fatty fish and green leafy vegetables, rich in lutein, also seem to help.  One or two alcholic drinks also sharpen the mind, but more cause confusion. I also mentioned that wax in the ears is a major cause of worsening dementia. There is lots we can do to keep our brain in the game.