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Those funny false teeth that move on their own -it seems like they’ve been around forever. But they were the invention of Eddie Goldfarb in the 1940s. They were called Yakity-Yak Talking Teeth. Collector’s Weekly has everything you ever needed to know about chattering teeth, from their inspiration, how they work, and how they became a hit. Link -Thanks, Ben!
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A purse snatcher in Severini, Brazil dropped his false teeth while trying to get away from the scene of his crime. Police used the dentures to confirm his identity:
The UOL Internet news portal quotes Oliveira as saying that the homeless man turned the dentures over to police and gave them a physical description matching that of de Jesus.
Oliveira told UOL on Friday that De Jesus at first denied owning the dentures, but then confessed to the crime after they fit perfectly in his partially toothless mouth.
Link -via Stuff | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user Thirteen of Clubs used under Creative Commons license
Dentures that once belonged to Winston Churchill are in the news after fetching £15,200 in an auction.
In his wartime radio broadcasts, Churchill’s distinctive voice was instantly recognisable. He wanted it to stay that way, so he had his dentures designed specifically to preserve his lisp…
“Without them, ‘Fight them on the beaches’ would never have sounded the same. They were vital to the war effort.”
“Churchill used to flick out his dentures when he was angry and throw them across the room… My father used to say he could tell how the war was going by how far they flew.”
Link.
Scientists from the the Tokyo University of Science used mouse stem cells to grow a new tooth that worked like a charm in a mouse’s mouth. The cells were grown in a lab dish until a tiny tooth “bud” formed. It was then transferred to the jaw of a mouse where a tooth had been removed. The new tooth erupted through the gum in about five weeks, and was fully grown in seven.
The researchers, who repeated the experiment many times, also showed that the new, bioengineered teeth were fully-functional.
Dr Kazuhisa Nakao said: ‘Every bio- engineered tooth erupted through the gum and had every tooth component such as dentine, enamel, pulp, blood vessels, nerve fibres, crown and root.’
Importantly, the rodent recipients had no trouble eating.
If the technique can be used in humans, dentures may eventually be obsolete. The tooth shown in the picture also had a green fluorescent gene so it could be seen easily. Link -via Digg
These soaps are really cool, in a disturbing, nursing home kinda way. Apparently, they even have a nice minty scent.
