Neanderthal teeth; anemia risk; China's history

Cool news! So every weekday morning during the academic year, Harvard e-mails a briefing called the Harvard Gazette to all students and faculty at the College. The daily Harvard Gazette always appears in the same format, with three featured articles appearing under 'Today's Headlines'.

Unrelated, but I almost always receive this e-mail at 7:01 in the morning, never earlier, but sometimes a couple of minutes later.

Anyhow, the very first feature under 'Today's Headlines' in the issue dated 11/16/20 is titled Teeth Marks!

"An examination of teeth from 11 Neanderthal and early human fossils shows that modern humans are slower than our ancestors to reach full maturity. The finding suggests that our slow development and long childhood are recent and unique to our own species, and may have given early humans an evolutionary advantage over Neanderthals."

Apparently, a longer childhood is a recent evolutionary development, as indicated by the fact that a young Neanderthal's rate of teeth growth and development was significantly faster than of the closest-to-modern humans that lived almost one hundred thousand years ago.

Ultimately, this (and I'm sure a number of other related indicators including proportional cranial size relative to the body) led to an evolutionary advantage of our human ancestors over Neanderthals. From my understanding, longer childhoods essentially prolong a number of crucial behavioral and cognitive developmental periods.

Interesting!

Also ... my post title = the subject of the Gazette e-mail -- strange, I know! To my knowledge, Neanderthal teeth, anemia risk, and China's history are largely unrelated.

Here's the full link to the article!

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/11/neanderthal-teeth/

Eric

Tooth and nail (idioms #3)

Tooth and nail usually follows the word fight or some similar verb.

To fight tooth and nail is to fight with all your might, almost viciously. This comes from the idea of fighting with all your teeth and all of your nails, which I guess would be a fair idea if you had sharp fangs or piercing claws.

i.e. She valiantly fought tooth and nail at CVS for that last box of Crest Whitestrips, but her recently manicured claws and braces-decorated-teeth prevented her success.

My thinking is that fighting tooth and nail implies someone really duking it out without restraint (and manners, duh), invoking something rather primal and beast-like. Thus tooth and nail would bode quite well if you had foot-long tusks or the fangs of a sabertooth tiger.

Alas we're humans and should probably only fight tooth and nail with other humans.

An intelligent individual realizing that fighting tooth and nail with this creature would probably be a bad idea.

Photo cred to the movie, 10,000 BC! (An interesting movie to say the least!)

Eric

Elasticity

So the nerd in me is taking a class this semester called Physical Sciences 2: Mechanics, Elasticity, Fluids, and Diffusion (also known as PS 2), or basically the first semester of a year of physics!

Anyways, today's lecture was on elasticity. I can summarize ninety minutes of lecture (beginning at 9:30am ... which is quite early on my schedule) and a notebook of equations for you by saying that all solids essentially obey Hooke's law for small deformations. If we deform a solid slightly, this will lead to a linear restoring force, which is equivalent to that derived from simple harmonic oscillation, aka a spring!

So basically, at a very fundamental and slightly perturbed level, everything acts like a spring.

Thus, all solids have some sort of elasticity! Coming back to Hooke's law, we can generalize it by using stress, strain, and something called Young's modulus. Young's modulus is like a spring constant, but it depends only on the material and NOT the size or shape.

So the reason why I thought I'd bring this up is because the professor discussed the Young's modulus some examples of various biological and technological materials.

Teeth (dentine) has a Young's modulus of 1.5 x 10^10 Pascals.

That probably means nothing to you.

So for reference, bone has a slightly higher Young's modulus of 1.7 x 10^10 Pascals,  and steel has a Young's modulus of 2 x 10^11 Pascals.

Collagen (tendon) has a Young's modulus of 2 x 10^9 Pascals, and Elastin (skin) has a Young's modulus of 4 x 10^5 Pascals.

Take home message: if we were to make a spring composed of your (or my) teeth, it would be more springy than a spring made of your hip bone or your SUV, but less springy than one made of your skin.

Intuitive? Somewhat!
Biological? YES!

Eric

Election results!

So the results are in ...

I'm now Treasurer of the Harvard Pre-Dental Society!

And YES the Pre-Dental Society is in fact officially reinstated after a relatively long hiatus (a couple of years).

See my previous post about Harvard's Pre-Dental Society!

I'll continue to blog about the events we will host and the services we will provide to the university as well as to Cambridge community - stay tuned :)

Eric

The Harvard Pre-Dental Society - reinstated!

On Saturday, September the 11th, 2010, the Harvard community experienced a small-scale renaissance (VERY small-scale) - the reinstatement of the Harvard Pre-Dental Society!

That's right folks - earlier today a group of determined and enthusiastic individuals sharing the same career plans assembled themselves and discussed the plans, goals, and future of one of Harvard's three pre-professional student organizations. In this gathering birthed a number of ideas for the year including a dental research symposium and community outreach through flossing/brushing education for grade-school students in Boston.

Although this group is relatively modest in size, I DO see a ton of potential and momentum in us members alone, not to mention the additional faculty support. Here's to an exciting year!

PS - There will be elections for board positions at some point next week, and I'm definitely interested in running for a position to play an immediate and active role in the pre-dental society's revival and education/research initiatives. Board member or not, I'll be sure to keep posting about our group's accomplishments and ideas!

Eric

LAX

Before I head off to LAX en route to Boston (I can't believe school is starting so soon!), I thought I'd share a photo that my sister took of me at my final visit to our dentist's this summer.

Good times at the dentist's



Eric

SAT Question of the Day

Backtracking to the post that I just posted a few hours ago, I want to expand on the whole analogy idea having just walked in on my sister studying for ... the SATs!

Those were definitely the days: Reading, Writing, and Math.

Today it's: Molecular and Cellular Biology, Global Health and Health Policy.

So after doing some analogy-thinking, I realized that Toothbrush and Tooth isn't that spectacular of a word-combination. It's actually surprisingly non-intuitive and linguistically awkward (in my opinion) to sync two words where the second word is contained within the first word.

For instance:

A) Bedsheets and Bed
B) Microsoft and Micro
C) Christmas and Christ
D) Breadcrumbs and Bread
E) Toothbrush and Tooth

Q: Which pair belongs in your mouth?

EXACTLY. The SATs were teeming with questions like this. Now go write an essay on "A wise man once said that 1 + 1 = 2" and be sure to take a clear stance, four paragraphs please! What is the answer that they're looking for?! Which one(s) am I supposed to bubble in?

Prince-Kap Review Answer: Like in any multiple choice question, the answer is right before your eyes. (oh really, Prince-Kap Review? I never knew multiple choice questions could be so intuitive!)

Also, keep in mind that because there are 5 answers, if you randomly guess, that's 1/5 or a 20% chance that you'll get this question right. (I'm studying this section because my verbal score needs improvement, not my quantitative reasoning!)

Let's go through the answers for those of you who don't know the answer. (...)

A) Bedsheets and Bed - does this belong in one's mouth? Not normally. So we can be safe to cross this out, for now. Actually, if the other answers don't make sense, keep this on your radar. Iffy mark.

B) Microsoft and Micro - do you see these things chilling in your roommate's mouth? (Wait, is 'Micro' even an object?)

C) Christmas and Christ - I was told that the SAT never talks about religion or faith. At all. So SKIP!

D) Breadcrumbs and Bread - hmmm, I think this is a reasonable answer, let's put a golden star next to it and come back later in case there are no other good answers.

E) Toothbrush and Tooth - hmmmmmmm, now THIS is also a reasonable answer.

Final answer: now that you've reduced your pool of 5 answers to 2 answers, you now have a 1/2 or 50-50 chance of guessing the correct answer. Congratulations!

(Dilemma! Don't leave me hanging, Prince-Kap Review! I paid all this money for a 50-50 chance?)

Well, because my name begins with an E (but more importantly I haven't bubbled in any E's since the first math section) I guess I'll pick E) Toothbrush and Tooth



Eric

Classic Beauty

Like boy and girl, cookies and milk, Facebook and Twitter, Harvard and Yale, Eric and cool, Eric and awesome, (I'm rather thankful that analogies were removed from the SATs a couple of years before I took them) I present to you ...

Toothbrush and Tooth (+ Eric)

Enjoying once in a lifetime opportunity

Eric

Today at the Dentist's ... with my sister!

It's definitely been a few months since I last shadowed and worked at my current dentist's practice, so coming back today, but this time as a patient (!!), was definitely a bit ... interesting? (If you know me in person, I have a tendency to abuse the word 'interesting' whenever I can't think of some adequate, appropriate, or acceptable adjective). Regardless, here I was today with my younger sister for our bi-annual check-up/cleaning.

After experiencing multiple yet similar "Ohhh how have you been?" moments with the secretary and hygienists, it was my turn to go in and see The Man.

Our conversation went something like this:

[Eric walks into the doctor's office. The doctor turns around, expectantly of course.]
"Why hello, Eric!"
"Hey Dr. Liu!"
"I was looking forward to your coming back. How was your summer back in Cambridge?"
"Tremendously busy yet exciting --"
"OMG what happened to your teeth?!"

Actually, that last part didn't quite happen.

Rather boringly, my teeth didn't change much from six months prior. There were still thirty-two of them, and they were still arranged in that interesting symmetrical U shape. I still had a slight overbite (the majority of Americans do). No new holes; no needed fillings. No life-threatening - er orally threatening - conditions, nasty infections, bloody gums, rotting teeth ...

Anyways, after my routine and regularly normal cleaning came my sister's turn. For some reason she always has (relatively) more drastic experiences at the dentist's than I do. And by drastic I mean that she had an apparent SCS.

This time her regular cleaning check-up quickly decayed into a small cavity situation (SCS, as I like to call it). Nothing too serious.

My sister pleasantly getting her cavity filled

By the end of the hour my sister and I left Dr. Liu's not only with free samples of Colgate toothpaste, but also with two sets of fresh minty teeth and - most significantly - one new composite filling.

*For future reference I will NEVER post photos of the patients who come in when I am shadowing/working at the dentist's, unless they 1) allow me to and 2) approve of their (hopefully) flattering photos. (Thanks, sister who I love so much!)


Eric

How to whiten your teeth on Photoshop!

FINE so I know some people think it's immoral to (drastically) alter photos of how we look and all. But while I agree that it's evidently not a fantastic idea to nurture adolescent development with heavy doses of celebrity/athletic/presidential photos taken with perfect lighting, perfect angles, perfect poses, a $2000 camera lens, and who knows how much re-touching or (in some cases) complete head replacement on top a different body, just a little bit of artificial Adobe teeth whitening can't hurt anyone, can it??

Well if you don't buy it, just think of photo-shopping your teeth as the equivalent of having already whitened them before you took the photo. Or you can think about changing the color of your teeth as the equivalent of changing your hair color by dyeing it, or of changing your skin tone by getting a tan (fake or real) - same concept, agreed? WOW. Let's all just praise technology and mankind for a second.

Regardless, here is a quick and easy tutorial of how to get that platonic ideal - those perfect pearly whites - via Photoshop.

1) Bring up your selected photo and zoom in close to the mouth/smile area.

2) On the left-hand tool bar about half-way from the top you'll find an icon that resembles a lollipop (the DODGE tool) or a hand (the BURN tool).

3) Right click on this icon and select the DODGE tool.

4) Now at the top of the screen it shows you the specificity with which you can use the DODGE tool, which essentially lightens any color, including the color of your teeth (hopefully this color isn't too yellow).

- You can select the brush size corresponding to the size of your teeth
- You can select Highlights, Midtones, or Shadows under range to choose the depth of the whitening.
- You can select exposure from 0 to 100% to pick how drastic you want to whiten/lighten your teeth.

5) Left click on the portions of the photo (presumably your teeth) that you want to make whiter and brighter.

6) Upload your smile-perfect photo on Flickr, Twitter, LinkedIn, eHarmony, Match.com, or whatever website your friends/potential dates will see you and can comment on.

Warning: DO NOT OVERDO IT, or else it will look like you put something obnoxiously white and bright in your mouth (unless this is the hot porcelain look you're aiming for..). also keep in mind that if and when your hot date finally meets you in person as Chez Expensif and strangely focuses at your mouth the whole time, it's probably because they're trying to digest exactly why your teeth look so black in person.

So here is a before, after, and extreme that I just did on a friend just to show you:

Before (top), After (middle), Extreme (bottom)

Eric

Salt!

Yesterday was a fantastic day for a cluple of reasons.

1) I saw the premier(e) Friday showing of the Angelina Jolie action-flick SALT!! SALT really was a great film despite the fact that Jolie has already starred in a host of similar butt-kicking movies, namely Tomb Raider and more recently, Wanted. What (I think) kind of distinguishes SALT from her other action flicks though is that she is never purposely dressed or made to appear overtly seductive, sexy, etc, as SALT seems to rely purely on tricky stunts, Hollywood action, and a number of predictable plot twists and curveballs.

2) Bust more related to teeth... one of my good friends with whom I watched SALT has decided to set her sights on Dental School! This is pretty exciting for me because there are only a handful of pre-dental students here at Harvard (case-in-point: the disappearance and random re-appearances of the Harvard Pre-Dental Society), and now I have a good friend with whom to work together to reach our common goal. It also feels good knowing that you influenced and really helped someone decide the course of their career-path (you're welcome Helen :D ). Good stuff.

Great day!

Also, fun fact, Angelina Jolie grew up and went to high school in my hometown in LA!

From the set of SALT (btw she has nice teeth yah?)

Eric

10 New Ways to Look Tan this Winter

Sometimes I feel that Americans (aka myself) are obsessed not only with the platonic ideal, but also with that perfect sun-kissed tan. Maybe for that reason alone I'll also start a blog about tanning.

Actually I probably won't ever do that, but just in case I change my mind in the future, I'll go ahead and reserve a creative domain just for tanning - maybe something different like tanningobsession.blogspot.com.

ANYWAYS, here is a piece I wrote in the fall of 2009 back when I comped SatireV (and yes I'm still in it!). I'm thinking of writing a similar piece but about teeth, naturally. I'm taking inspiration mostly from #2 on my list of how to look tan this winter.

Enjoy!


10 New Ways to Look Tan This Winter

1. Get into a nasty fight. Bruises always fade nicely.

2. Rinse your mouth every morning with Clorox. Extra concentrated. Your newly bleached teeth will contrast your skin.

3. Ask your friends if they like your new tan (even though we know you really don’t have one). Fool them with your confidence!

4. Accumulate enough blackheads so you look decently dark from far away.

5. Don’t hang out with your black, Hispanic, Asian, or Indian friends. Especially if you are white.

6. Who said that eye shadow was only for your eyes?

7. Don’t shower for 5 days. The accumulated dirt on your skin will trick your friends.

8. Reverse skin rejuvenation – glue dust onto your face. Did you know that dust is made up of dead skin cells?

9. Strip outside during the first blizzard. Frostbite will surely add some darker tones.

10. Get a hair transplant from your leg to your face. Now trim – don’t shave. Bonus points for added facial warmth. Extra bonus points if you’re a girl.


Eric

What (NOT) to eat/drink to keep your teeth white!

So I'm really excited because this is my first post actually related to the name of my blog!

A large part of teeth whitening is in fact the prevention of discoloration and the maintenance of currently white teeth.

In the future I will talk about all the non-natural ways of whitening your teeth - whitestrips, particular pastes, whitening kits, etc - but for now here are some things to keep in mind at your next meal or the next time you order that grande caramel macchiato from Starbucks.

1) A great number of beloved/routine/favorite American drinks stain tooth enamel. Coffee is the main culprit here, especially black coffee. Although I consider myself purely a social drinker when it comes to coffee (particularly iced coffee), TONS of people I know incorporate cups and cups of it into their morning and evening rituals. If you can't possibly cut down on coffee, try drinking it through a straw (iced coffee of course! please don't burn your throats) to avoid contact with the front of your teeth. Also, the darker the coffee, the more it dims your smile. Add some milk to your cup o' joe to lessen the effects!

2) Red wine also stains your teeth. An easy answer is to use a straw so that it bypasses your teeth. But yeah we all know how silly you would look sipping on that cabernet sauvignon through a straw on your Saturday night date or at your cousin's wedding. To avoid looking too dorky, discretely swish your mouth with water after you finish your glass (getting caught playing with water in your mouth is arguably less embarrassing than your hot date completely judging you for using a straw). Plus, you can hedge your bets that your buzzed family will be too distracted to catch you in the act - so swish away!

3) Dark sodas and fruit juices, especially cranberry and grape juice, will also cause teeth discoloration. Not only are these drinks already on the D-list for being extremely high in sugar, but also they may erode your enamel. Less (or NO) soda please!

All of these drinks stain your teeth slowly. Unfortunately, these stains become more and more noticeable as we age (a one-way train-ride, sorry kids!).

One of the BEST things you can do to keep your teeth white is of course daily maintenance. Now go brush your pearly whites!!

A general rule of thumb: anything that can cause a stubborn stain on a white cotton T-shirt most likely can stain your teeth.

Make sure your date doesn't see you like this! (see below)
or even worse, her blouse could be your front teeth. (solution = straw)!



photo from Douglass Green

Eric

The Tooth Fairy

So one of my little cousins had recently lost one of her first baby teeth and was SUPER excited that she called me to tell me all about it!! (She's five years old and utterly adorable).

Besides the fact of having a little hole in her smile, she couldn't stop raving about two VERY important things:

1) The Tooth Fairy
2) The dollar bills that the Tooth Fairy would leave behind under the pillow in exchange for the tooth

"The Tooth Fairy gives you DOLLAR BILLS?!?!" was my immediate reaction. Since when does she leave you anything more than a quarter?!

Many moons ago back when I was a little kid growing up in the 90s (nineteen 90s), if I was to expect a whole dollar bill under my pillow in the morning I would either have to scribble a note of desperation (these were limited because after my third note the Tooth Fairy disregarded my requests) or yank out four teeth during recess on the playground. Whether these yanked teeth were actually from my own mouth didn't cross my mind, or stop me.

But anyways, after I warned my little cousin not to be too greedy (anything more than one greenback is IRS deductible) when it comes to accepting gifts from mythological creatures such as the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, the Thanksgiving Turkey, or the Jewish Menorah, I started thinking about the origins of the Tooth Fairy. I also wondered briefly if inflation had anything to do with the increasing Tooth Fairy premiums.

After some brief yet hardcore research (shout-outs to Wikipedia and my middle school French textbook), here are my findings:

"La Petite Souris" or "the little mouse" is a French mouse that would scurry from pillow to pillow replacing children's teeth with small amounts of money overnight.

This tooth-collecting mouse most likely stems from an 18th century French fairy tale called "La Bonne Petite Souris," where a mouse changes into a fairy - or perhaps it's the other way around - to help a Queen defeat an evil King by hiding under his pillow at night and knocking out all of his chompers. Cool mouse!!

In other cultures, baby teeth are given/fed to animals so that the new teeth that come in will resemble that animal's tooth (think incisors and dogs).

Regardless of its origins, the Tooth Fairy is just a young child's distraction from the countless trials and tribulations of teenage and young-adult teeth - BRACES, WISDOOM TEETH REMOVAL, ROOT CANALS, JAW SURGERY. It's just another coming-of-age story.


Eric

By the skin of your teeth (idioms #1)

To do something by the skin of your teeth is to barely achieve or accomplish something almost to the point of failure.

i.e. She may have passed the first midterm of organic chemistry by the skin of her teeth, but only divine intervention can save her butt on tomorrow's final!

Not surprisingly organic chemistry is an infamous right of passage for many a spirited or disenfranchised pre-dental and pre-med student, but even more (un)shockingly, human teeth don't actually have skin.

!!!

That's right folks! The tooth consists of FOUR major tissues, none of which is the epidermis.

Here they are:

1) Tooth enamel - the visible part of your tooth. Can range from brown to yellow to grayish-white in color. Also the hardest part of your body!
2) Dentin - found underneath the enamel but surrounds the pulp. Most of a tooth is composed of this stuff.
3) Pulp - the center part of the tooth. Consists of nerves and living connective tissue. A root canal removes this stuff.
4) Cementum - covers the root/non-visible part of your teeth.



Thanks to the NIH for the hot pic

Eric

The Platonic Ideal

platonic ideal (n.) - The notion, desire, and/or obsession for perfectly straight, whitened, and proportionately sized teeth.

Eric

Hey there!

Hey there! To be honest, one of the reasons why I'm starting this blog besides my interest in all things teeth is because a few of my friends at university have made some pretty gnarly sites of their own. They're chill people. And they have cool sites. Seriously!!

To be honest again, from the time I began this entry a brief while ago to NOW (it's currently 4:08 am in socal), I admit that I have checked out my teeth in the mirror. I have 32 of them. Yes! that means I've been lucky enough to keep all four of my wisdom teeth, and I would say they're somewhat aligned in this pretty awesome U shape. Oh, and they're not horrendously yellow!

This brings me to another reason why I'm starting this blog.
I admit that I have this platonic ideal for perfect pearly whites. I know I just completely massacred the usage/meaning of 'platonic ideal'. But so do thousands and thousands (and possibly millions) of Americans. I mean that these thousands and thousands of Americans also share this platonic ideal, but I'm sure many of them butcher its usage too.

I can tell you now that this blog will have a number of entries.

This number may be small.

Some entries will just encapsulate my seemingly/clearly random musings/experiences/ridiculous moments with teeth, while other entries may be a bit more serious where I'll ramble about disparities in oral health, social stratification as a result of good and bad teeth, Dentists Without Borders (YES they exist! dentists ARE doctors!!), the impression your good or bad teeth give to your peers/employers/first dates, and the media's glorification of the platonic ideal.

To avoid any confusion and the inevitable snarky thoughts of "oh this meathead doesn't know what the platonic ideal REALLY is," from now on, my (self-proclaimed) definition of the platonic ideal will refer to people wanting perfectly straight, whitened, and decently sized teeth.

Sweet! I'm actually exhausted right now. But another reason why I birthed er am birthing this blog is because of some sudden spur of passion.

Here's to this passion lasting and bursting randomly (in a good way) for the future and to spectacular oral hygiene!

Eric

Coming soon!

My coooooool blog is coming soon!

(as soon as I finish the third orgo midterm)

Eric