Water from Michael Pritchard’s fishtank certainly came straight from his garden pond. The green gunk looked and smelled like something which should never be ingested on any terms. ‘It’s got fish poo and everything in there.’ However, after pumping the questionable liquid through his lightweight, handheld water bottle, it came out crystal clear. He even persuaded onlookers to taste it, swigging it with confidence himself.

The Lifesaver bottle was on display at the National Army Museum in Chelsea at a show of military technology. A pump mechanism forces the dirty water through a narrow coiled tube inside the device, small enough to filter bacteria and viruses. It has been verified by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and meets World Health Organisation drinking water standards.

‘The main reason I invented [the Lifesaver bottle] was for the aid market, the disaster market’, said Pritchard. ‘Once a hurricane or earthquake hits, one of the most pressing logistical needs is to provide clean drinking water to the victims…A transport plane can typically hold enough bottled water for 800 people for a month. The same plane can carry 125,000 Lifesaver bottles. At one bottle per family, that’s enough to keep half a million people in drinking water for 16 months.’

In 1955, being the perfect wife meant having dinner ready, a warming smile to greet your husband, and a ribbon in your hair. However, the classic Good Wife’s Guide of 1955 is well past its sell-by date when it comes to modern men and women. A survey in this year’s Daily Mail Ideal Home Show found that women who stand up to their husbands, have a strong understanding of household finances, and enjoy a drink have the happiest spouses.

The study questioned men on their perfect wife, finding that two-thirds of men longed for a woman who could manage money. Unsurprisingly, food remains the way to a man’s heart with 48 per cent of men admitting that they considered cooking a top priority in a perfect wife. But cake-making skills still left all but 9 per cent cold.

Interestingly, one in four women believed that men look for a wife who knows about sport, with only 10 per cent of men thinking this was important. It also turns out that a mere 39 per cent of men dislike being dragged around shops, compared to the whopping 72 per cent of women that guessed that all men hate shopping. Four in ten women thought their male counterparts would hate questions like, ‘does this make my bum look big?’ But only 24 per cent found it irritating! We wonder how far they will go…

Most married men want to know how to get more sex. Well, the answer may dampen their excitement. Recent research suggests that doing the housework is the best way to rekindle the marital flame. Dusting, vacuuming, taking the rubbish out and even doing the washing up can lead to increased ‘chore-play’.

US studies show that men’s contribution to housework has doubled since the 1960s from about 15 per cent to more than 30 per cent of the total. ‘Equal sharing of housework is associated with higher levels of marital satisfaction – and sometimes more sex too’, said Joshua Coleman, psychologist and senior Fellow at the Council on Contemporary Families, which commissioned the report. ‘Wives report greater feelings of sexual interest and affection for husbands who participate in housework.’

This news may not come as a surprise for many women. It’s difficult to feel erotic abandon when you’re exhausted from doing the washing and cleaning solo. A little help goes a long way. One group called the Cambridge Women’s Pornography Co-operative recently brought out a book titled Porn for Women, featuring pictures of muscled, apron-wearing men doing household chores such as washing the dishes. With no more wild boars to wrestle, or musk deep to hunt across the tundra, raising a sweat with the hoover really does impress the ladies.

When Edina from Absolutely Fabulous decides to lose weight, her daughter Saffy’s suggestion seems sensible: ‘Look, mum. All you’ve got to do is eat less and take a bit of excercise.’ Edina shoots back, ‘Sweetie, if it was that easy, everyone would be doing it.’ Somehow we all know what she means.

We are all suspicious of the different dieting methods out there, yet the diet industry is worth at least £1bn a year. One of the new fads on the block is colonic cleansing. Apparently, many people carry a huge amount of weight in their colon due to old impacted faeces [!!!], which the detox process aims to remove. Some clients lose as much as a stone in a week.
However, it’s the likelihood of gaining the weight back too easily which makes losing it so depressing. The recidivism rate for most diets is, unfortunately, horrendous: do you know anyone who lost stones from only eating grapefruit and actually managed to keep it off?

Losing weight from complicated and expensive diets finally fails to make the difference we really need. Maybe Saffy was right. Many people do shed weight and keep it off for decades. But these people’s stories don’t get heard very loudly, because in the end, there is no secret. It’s not what we get out of our bums; it’s what we get when we get off them!

The South American ‘paradoxical frog’, which dwells in the lagoons of the Amazon, could prove to be a lifesaver for millions suffering from diabetes. The frog has a slimy skin that secretes a substance able to stimulate the release of insulin, the hormone deficient in diabetes patients. It gets its name from its incredible ability to decrease in size as it grows older.

Scientists found that the frog’s peptide, a protein-building block known as pseudin-2, increased release of insulin in cultured cells by 50 per cent. Currently there are 2.3 million diagnosed diabetes sufferers in the UK, most with Type 2, which is strongly associated with lifestyle factors and usually occurs in middle age.

The skin secretions of frogs and other amphibians are being investigated as a rich resource of biological agents that could lead to new drugs. However, more tests are required before the therapy can be carried out on humans. Shakespeare’s witches may have had it right when they stirred a stew of ‘toe of frog’ and ‘eye of newt’…

Scientists are carrying out a DNA test on what may be the only polar bear remains ever discovered in Britain. The skull, found in caves in the Highlands in the 1920s, is now displayed at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. Genetics experts from Trinity College, Dublin will analyse the skull in the hope of unlocking secrets of its environment, diet and behaviour 18,000 years ago, at the peak of the last Ice Age.

Ceiridwen Edwards, a researcher at Trinity College’s Smurfit Institute of Genetics, said she believed the tests would show that the animal had a terrestrial diet, living on reindeer rather than seals. ‘That raises questions about why the diet of polar bears has since changed’, said Edwards. Radiocarbon dating has ruled out the possibility of the skull being a cave bear or brown bear.

The caves, at Inchnadamph in Assynt, contained other animal remains, including arctic fox, wolf, reindeer, northern lynx and even four humans who lived up to 4,700 years ago.

Placebos can be just as effective as anti-depressants. Five years ago, Italian researchers carried out tests on patients recovering from serious operations, needing morphine to dull their pain and diazepam to calm their nerves. Patients received their medicine automatically through intra-venous drips, but were not told when the drugs were being administered. The scientists found that not being told that they were receiving morphine cut the effect of pain relief on the patients in half. Those who were given diazepam without being told did not get calmer at all.

The placebo response is extremely powerful. If we believe we are getting heavy treatment then we automatically feel better, even if there is nothing in the medication at all. The larger and more dramatic we perceive the intervention to be, the greater the impact. For this reason, placebo morphine is far stronger as pain relief than placebo aspirin – though both contain no medicine.

Last week, Irving Kirsch, professor of psychology at the University of Hull, and his team, discovered that leading brands of modern anti-depressants work only slightly better than placebos in all but the most serious cases of depression. Reports concluded that anti-depressants may be useless, but that response to placebos was exceptionally large. However, this does not indicate the failure of anti-depressants, but more the potential for placebos to work very well.

The placebo effect is not just confined to medicines. Sham operations for angina and knee surgery, where the knee is only punctured, is just as successful as the real thing. According to one study, painting warts with brightly coloured dye and telling them their warts will go when the dye wears off is also effective.

It is remarkable that such fakery should be so powerful. The placebo effect means up to 75 per cent of patients improve on a dummy pill, sometimes for years at a time. So how does it work? There are many theories circulating, including Boston psychologist and physician, Dr Richard Kradin’s notion that the key to the placebo effect lies in the relationship between patient and doctor, or therapist. A leading researcher in the field, Kradin’s book The Placebo Response and the Power of Unconscious Healing argues that even a trusted friend can trigger the placebo response. ‘It needs to be someone who you trust, who you have some confidence in and who proposes they have something to offer you. For many people that’s enough.’

However, placebos work best for conditions with a subjective element to them – depression, anxiety, irritable bowel syndrome and pain. It can’t cure sugar blood levels, a broken leg, or pneumonia – although Dr Kradin believes spontaneous remission may be down to placebos. ‘Doctors need to be aware that how they interact with their patients has a great deal to do with the outcomes they are going to get.’ Maybe placebos are just the trick.

A study of centenarians has uncovered mutations in a gene that may lead to the development of anti-aging pills. Researchers looked at the hormone ‘insulin-like growth factor’, IGF-1, discovering that mutated genes affect longevity by producing a protein that interferes with cell response to IGF-1.

The risk of getting a stroke increases in spring, new research has found. In a study of Japanese adults who suffered strokes between 1988 and 2001, the risk of having a stroke in spring was one-quarter higher than it was in the summer in men, women, young and old alike. The study revealed that strokes were most likely in March, April and May, despite other known risk factors such as smoking, diabetes and high blood pressure.

‘The mechanisms underlying seasonal variation of strokes are not fully understood’, wrote Dr Tanvir Chowdhury Turin of Shiga University of Medical Science, Japan. However, researchers noted that blood pressure undergoes a similar seasonal variation and blood is more prone to clotting during colder months. This is because blood cholesterol levels and certain blood proteins also tend to be higher at that time of year.

The risk of gout increases substantially with more than two cans of cola or lemonade a day, research has found. The inflammation and painful swelling of the big toe or lower limbs, which characterises gout, was the scourge of many in the 17th and 18th centuries. However, the problem is still rife today, with one in 200 men between the age of 30 and 60 experiencing discomfort.

out is caused by a crystallisation of uric acid in the joints. Normally a harmless waste product