Why should you upholster a tree stump?

I know this isn't science-related, but it was so lame I had to share it. Well I guess it might be science-related in that these people must have some kind of serious lesion in the GOOD THINGS TO DO WITH MY TIME gene.

what???

point that thing away from me!!

The Planet of the Apes may be upon us after all. It seems that chimps in the wild know how to make their own lethal weapons to hunt their next delicious meal. This goes well beyond using a twig as a termite lollipop.

Check it out for a quick summary. If you're so inclined here's the Current Biology report about it.

Bush baby kabob anyone?

and i'm done for the day

robofish!

the jews know what's up

NIH studies in Africa show that circumcision can reduce a man's chances of contracting HIV from heterosexual sex by 65 percent. (The study didn't say anything about dude-dude sex, but I would wager the benefits are comparable).

for the microbiologist in us all

Bacteria can make you some DNA, make you shit your brains out, and now they can apparently reduce the damage from an earthquake. By taking advantage of Bacillus pasteurii and their ability to deposit calcium carbonate in their surroundings, the researchers at UC Davis claim that injecting these buggers into the soil during the construction of a new building can actually help cement the soil beneath the new structure and provide a stronger foundation.


Try not to ingest any of these guys; you very well may literally shit a brick.

buttholes!

tada!


and: welcome Cressida, our newest blogger!

mid-Holocene buffalo chicken tenders (?!)

Well, maybe they hadn't mastered the Buffalo sauce just yet. Nonetheless, an article in Science (NYT synopsis here) reports that chili peppers have been used in cooking for almost 6000 years, predating pottery in some regions.


And six millennia later, they're still delicious.

guitar hero can hone your poopectomy skillz

According to a study done at Beth Isreal Medical Center in New York:

"Video game skills translated into higher scores on a day-and-half-long surgical skills test, and the correlation was much higher than the surgeon's length of training or prior experience in laparoscopic surgery."


Add that to the improvement in visual acuity , and NOT playing GH is just plain silly.

I <3 blogs

there's more to jersey than the smell

Researchers at UMDNJ say they might be well on the way to a cure for autism. Exciting times in the Dirty Jerz.

Now can they fix the traffic on the turnpike?

pi

By request:

http://pi.ytmnd.com/

uh oh

crazy in love

Continuing with the V-day theme, here's an article about research that apparently shows that "being in love causes changes in the brain that are strikingly similar to serious health problems like drug addiction and obsessive-compulsive disorder."


(Alright, alright...I'll slow down on the posting. Geez.)

now that's love

A Valentine's Day gift from scientists.

oh, paradigms

This article was published today in the NYT about a doctoral candidate at the University of Rhode Island who is a 'young earth creationist' (believes the earth is less than 10,000 years old), and yet wrote his dissertation on a reptile that vanished from the earth about 65 million years ago. How could this be, you ask? He's just "separating the different paradigms."

(I don't get it.)

There's an interesting argument presented, though. The people who are fighting the awarding of this dude's Ph.D. are of the mind that "fundamentalists who capitalize on secular credentials 'to miseducate the public' [are] doing a disservice."

How do people feel about this? Is there any place for creationism in science? Is it possible (or rather, is it acceptable) to "separate the paradigms" in order to get a Ph.D.? The article refers almost sarcastically to one man as a "creationist wearing the secular mantle of science;" should creationist scientists be vilified in this way?

Discuss.

chemoticons!

I saw this great post about emoticons for the organic chemistry inclined at the Nature Chemistry Blog:

\/ = Extraction (or extract)
|| = Running a column
[] = Running a TLC
() = Stir/stirbar
C- = Round bottom flask (look sideways) (this one, to be fair, is not much more concise than RBF)
L! = Measuring something (probably liquid)
ooo = reflux/heating in general (get it? It's the bubbles)
XX = Crystallize/crystallization

I love these. Can you guys think of more biology related ones? How about [---] for running a gel, or -<= for pippetting?

Puggie McStacerson

You all should have seen this coming...

OMG

Guitar hero for the Wii!! And no, I don't just mean for small people.

beer goggles: explained

I can't figure out whether or not this is for real, but it's entertaining nonetheless. Some dudes at the University of Manchester have apparently worked out a formula to calculate someone's apparent attractiveness level as a factor of a) the number of alcoholic beverages consumed, b) smokiness of the room, c) the 'luminance' of the person of interest, d) the Snellen visual acuity of the looker, and e) the distance from the person of interest.

Essentially, the beer goggle formula. Hilarious.

good news

An article citing a study in which people who played action video games had improved vision as compared to the control group.

I guess the only question is: does Guitar Hero count as 'action'?

My 2 cents about climate change

I agree and disagree with Scott’s rant about global climate change. The current weird weather is not a direct result of global warming. Instead it is most directly due to El Niño in the pacific and pressure changes over Iceland called the North Atlantic Oscillation. These two natural occurrences have combined to drive the jet stream a little further north for this time of year. This has allowed storms to come and sit over the southern part of the US, explaining all the crazy snow this winter in Colorado and what not. It has also resulted in a milder/warmer winter for the northeast US and northern Europe. However, where I disagree with Scott is that one should take into account the fact that all of this is layered on top of the increase in the average global temperature. (So far the trend is +0.2 degrees every decade) I think that is why people initially started calling it global warming. The average global temperature is increasing. I agree that certain parts of the world will see drastic changes in climate, not all of which will be tropical. However, it is the overall rise in global temperature that is melting glaciers, and threatening to screw with ocean currents leading to an ice age in Europe and all that. The thing that bothers me about the phrase global climate change is that it is used by the Bush administration as a spin tactic to down play the issue. I understand Scott’s logic about the phrase, I just don’t know if the rest of the population sees it that way as well.

My sources for the climate info:

Robert Henson, meteorologist and science writer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, author of "The Rough Guide to Weather"
Gavin Schmidt, climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies

who's your daddy?

A cool article out in Science this week about parthenogenetic stem cell lines, created so surface antigens on the stem cell-derived tissue match those in the host. Awesome.

Incidentally, every time I hear something about parthenogenesis, I think of Jurassic Park.