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• Gynecologists interviewed by The New York Times for an April report said they were baffled by the recent increase in teenage girls demanding cosmetic surgery on the external folds of their vulvas -- since there is rarely a medical need and the safety of the operation on young girls has not been demonstrated.
Some doctors called the "need" just an extreme example of teen girls' beauty obsessions and suggested the presence in some girls of the psychiatric malady of "body dysmorphic disorder," in which a person imagines or exaggerates a physical characteristic.
(The phenomenon is different from the "vaginal rejuvenation" requested by older women, especially after childbirth, because that involves tightening internal tissue.) [New York Times, 4-26-2016]
• Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign announced they had recently (a first, they claimed) transmitted high-speed digital data through slabs of pork loin and beef liver.
The signal cleared the muscle and gristle so cleanly that it permitted streaming of high-definition video -- enough to watch Netflix, said the lead researcher. (Actually, the advance is crucial in that it allows a patient to swallow a transmitter and for physicians to monitor inner workings of the body in real time and externally control implanted devices such as cranial sensors and defibrillators.) [Engineering at Illinois press release, 4-18-2016]
