I generally avoid intellectual theft, but the material of this post simply aches for the title, which I have stolen from Chuck Shepherd of the venerable, and no longer active, newspaper column News Of The Weird. Onward!
Retraction Watch pointed me at the following sequence involving a research paper. First, the abstract, of which I’ll bold the gob-smacking part.
Controlling the release kinetics from a drug carrier is crucial to maintain a drug’s therapeutic window. We report the use of biodegradable porous silicon microparticles (pSi MPs) loaded with the anticancer drug camphothecin, followed by a plasma polymer overcoating using a loudspeaker plasma reactor. Homogenous “Teflon-like” coatings were achieved by tumbling the particles by playing AC/DC’s song “Thunderstruck”. The overcoating resulted in a markedly slower release of the cytotoxic drug, and this effect correlated positively with the plasma polymer coating times, ranging from 2-fold up to more than 100-fold. Ultimately, upon characterizing and verifying pSi MP production, loading, and coating with analytical methods such as time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry, scanning electron microscopy, thermal gravimetry, water contact angle measurements, and fluorescence microscopy, human neuroblastoma cells were challenged with pSi MPs in an in vitro assay, revealing a significant time delay in cell death onset.
Say what? Is this some sort of karma thing involving head-banging rock? And then this question and response came along:
Does this only work with with the one song from AC/DC or can other music be substituted?
Maybe Fleetwood Mac? Or the folks who did Afternoon Delight, whoever they were?
In this publication we also investigated a range of monotonous frequencies. Each of these frequencies alone did not not produce as good a coating on the particles as the song. We suspect that the changing frequencies of songs provide chaotic mixing of the particles. We did not investigate other songs besides “Thunderstruck” but it might be possible to optimise the particle tumbling with other songs or frequencies. However, it is difficult to imagine having a song that rocks as much as “Thunderstruck”. Dr Thomas Michl conducted this work and would be happy to answer further questions.
Thanks for your question.
Augh!
