they only sought the truth

Two high school students from New Zealand have won a $200,000 court case against GlaxoSmithKline. How'd they do it? They did a science fair project - at age 14 - testing the amount of Vitamin C in various commercial beverages, and found that Ribena (a GSK drink) has almost no detectable amount of the compound; GSK had been advertising that the soft drink was high in Vitamin C.

See! Science can be a lucrative career...so long as there is dishonesty to expose!

it's true

just in case you were depressed about your sex life

Having a dry spell? How about one that lasts for 100 million years? Bdelloid rotifers are apparently the oldest (evolutionarily) species that has reproduced solely by asexual means and has still managed to evolve into multiple fit species; it was previously believed that asexual creatures could evolve through random mutation, but "only into one species and at the cost of its original form." These gross-looking little guys (inset) attach to different parts of water lice; different species have evolved different jaw shapes to ideally exist on a particular part of the louse's body.

And to think...they don't even have porn (!)

A little nugget chemistry

I found this interesting, entertaining, and frightening. Enjoy.

"McNuggets also contain several completely synthetic ingredients, quasiedible substances that ultimately come not from a corn or soybean field but form a petroleum refinery or chemical plant. These chemicals are what make modern processed food possible, by keeping the organic materials in them from going bad or looking strange after months in the freezer or on the road. Listed first are the "leavening agents": sodium aluminum phosphate, mono-calcium phosphate, sodium acid pyrophosphate, and calcium lactate. These are antioxidants added to keep the various animal and vegetable fats involved in a nugget from turning rancid. Then there are "anti-foaming agents" like dimethylpolysiloxene, added to the cooking oil to keep the starches from binding to air molecules, so as to produce foam during the fry. The problem is evidently grave enough to warrant adding a toxic chemical to the food: According to the Handbook of Food Additives, dimethylpolysiloxene is a suspected carcinogen and an established mutagen, tumorigen, and reproductive effector; it's also flammable. But perhaps the most alarming ingredient in a Chicken McNugget is tertiary butylhydroquinone, or TBHQ, an antioxidant derived from petroleum that is either sprayed directly on the nugget or the inside of the box it comes in to "help preserve freshness." According to A Consumer's Dictionary of Food Additives, TBHQ is a form of butane (i.e. lighter fluid) the FDA allows processors to use sparingly in our food: It can comprise no more than 0.02 percent of the oil in a nugget. Which is probably just as well, considering that ingesting a single gram of TBHQ can cause "nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse." Ingesting five grams of TBHQ can kill.”

This is an excerpt from the book The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan.

A little funny to pick you up

Here as funny joke Thiago sent to me. I thought it was appropriate for the butthole blog.

While she was "flying" down the road yesterday (10 miles over the limit), a woman passed over a bridge only to find a cop with a radar gun on the other side lying in wait. The cop pulled her over, walked up to the car, and with that classic patronizing smirk we all know and love, asked,

"What's your hurry?" To which she replied, "I'm late for work." "Oh yeah," said the cop, "what do you do?" "I'm a rectum stretcher," she responded.

The cop stammered, "A what? A rectum stretcher? And just what does a rectum stretcher do?"

"Well," she said, "I start by inserting one finger, then work my way up to two fingers, then three, then four, then with my whole hand in. I
work from side to side until I can get both hands in, and then I slowly but surely stretch it, until it's about 6 feet wide."

"And just what the hell do you do with a 6 foot asshole?" he asked.

You give him a radar gun and park him behind a bridge."

Ticket -----------------------$95.00
Court Costs ----------------$45.00
Look on cops face --------Priceless

Small Things Considered

I don't know how many of you are into microbiology, but Lordy - I am! I got an email today about Small Things Considered, a blog for weird microbiology, maintained by Elio Schaechter, a big-deal microbiologist. Check it out. There's all kinds of freaky happenings from the small world.

NF1 = Cancer or Awesome Sex?

After a great silence, I finally return with a self-congratulatory post.

As it turns out, flies which over express neurofibromin (the gene on which I work) have longer life spans, have more sex and produce more offspring per sexual encouter (greater fecundity, as they put it). Lose the gene, get cancer. Get more of the gene, act like a 19-year-old boy, again.

Oh, snap.

superbugs

BBC news reported on a recent study done at Johns Hopkins and published in PNAS in which transgenic mosquitoes, resistant to malaria, out-competed wild-type mosquitoes when placed together and exposed to malaria-infected food. (The inset picture shows the eyes of one of the transgenic mosquitoes, which were also made to glow with GFP.)

The scientists in charge of the study are aware of the potential ecological, social, ethical, and legal implications of releasing a transgenic animal into the environment, (they don't think it would be possible to do so for at least 10 to 20 years), but it's a pretty exciting prospect and an approach to eradicating disease that I hadn't really considered - instead of treating or curing the disease, genetically alter the carrier organism such that it can no longer carry it. It's a little frightening to think that it's within the realm of possibility to actually manipulate nature in this way...behold, the power of science!

(And FYI...this is post number 69.)

Mac Daddy

This is one of the reasons why I love my Mac. (Another is being able to control my computer with a remote making porn easier to watch) Papers for OS X is a new program similar to iTunes but for research papers. Now they just need to come up with a program to critically read the articles and tell me what I need to know.

screw ncbi

Craig Ventor + google = google genome? yay! Now I want to work for google even more!

Does this seem credible?

effect of gravity on falling bodies

Amazing.

My posts are never about science

I realize we have the xkcd site linked but I had to make sure everyone saw today's cartoon...

eye see

A study at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research claims that eye color is controlled by at least two genes.

This is moderately interesting, but I thought the picture was cool/slightly disconcerting.

So this is cool...

Rubik's cube art - I wonder if they actually solve each cube for the colors they want or if they just take the stickers off and rearrange them...

big muscles = big brains

A study at Columbia Med shows that exercise can actually stimulate the formation of new brain cells in an area of the brain associated with memory. So now when we go to the gym to get huge, we'll be working on our biceps AND our brains!

P.S. - I almost didn't post this, because I didn't want to displace the x-ray BJ. Hi-larious.

hope for pluto!

New Mexico has put forward a bill which, if passed, would re-declare Pluto a legit planet in that state. We're pulling for you, buddy.

x-ray of a kiss

Cool. Source: Geekologie.

sweet dreams are made of this

A study coming out today in Science reports that "the whiff of a familiar scent can help a slumbering brain better remember things that it learned the evening before." Pretty cool.

save a ptarmigan: don't ski

Scientists report on the ecological implications of ski resorts; apparently, the impact on wildlife native to the slopes is greater than once thought.

(I'll be honest...I posted this mostly because I like the word ptarmigan. Oh, the silent p.)

big news (?)

There's an article in the NYT today about neuron firing in zebrafish; an intersting article, especially considering how the study was done (they finagled some fluorescent proteins such that when certain neurons fired, the baby zebrafish lit up in that particular area - cool).

However, my thoughts are more about this: what gets research into the New York Times? Sure, this article is interesting, and sure, the illustration with the zebrafish is quite cute, but...why this over anything else? I'm sure there's been other research published recently that would be equally accessible to the general public, and this particular news in developmental biology would not have stricken me as particularly exciting or relevant for the average Joe...so what made the NYT think so?

I'm certainly not complaining; I think it's great whenever I see science-related news in the media. I just wonder if there's any rhyme or reason to what is 'newsworthy.'

Frog Hump

These frogs are doing their part to try to combat their own extinction. The "Amphibian Ark" is also trying to help. (actual website) Something like 1/3 of the world's amphibian population are at risk of extinction. One contributing factor is a fungus thought to have originated in Africa but has since spread to every other continent. One major factor in this spread was the export and distribution of one African frog species to hospitals all over the world for pregnancy testing. If you injected this frog with a pregnant woman's pee, the frog will lay eggs.

white coat notes

The Boston Globe has a (relatively) new blog on the boston.com website called "White Coat Notes;" it has to do with medical and research news in the Boston area. (Free registration on the site is required). Highlights from recent posts:

- Postdocs around the country rate their institutions as far as whether or not they're good places to work; Boston area hospitals (including HMS) are kept out of the top 27.

- Cambridge is going to have a Science Festival in April; meant for middle and high school-aged kids, but might be fun to check out anyway.


You can read it more at your leisure. In other news, I wrote this post whilst on the toilet.

Beaver Fever

For the first time in 200 years a beaver has been spotted in NYC.

for stacey

guaranteed overnight delivery

In a DHL delivery mix-up, human body parts (a liver and part of a head) were mistakenly sent to a residential home in Michigan. The parts were sent from China and intended for medical research purposes; the delivery man thought the packages were pieces of a table. Hilarious.


There are apparently other packages distributed about the country...maybe 69 Babcock will be another lucky recipient!

stephen hawking in space

So the "Brief History of Time" author is apparently leaving gravity behind, as he wants to take a ride in space (a NYT article about his pre-trip preparations here).

What I found interesting about this article were Mr. Hawkings' statements about space travel and its importance. According to the article, he says that spaceflight is "critical to the future of humanity," and "humanity's ultimate survival depend[s] on colonizing the solar system and beyond."

Honestly? Is it actually considered a real possibility that we could literally colonize another planet? Mr. Hawking makes it sound like doing so is necessary since we're shittifying our planet at an alarming rate...but I wasn't aware that people considered it a possibility to ever "move out" of Earth. Anybody have any thoughts?


Anyway...happy first post of March!