No word yet on what the Mazda RX-8 does to a woman's libido...

I always knew there was something to the claim that chicks dig fast sports cars, so images like the one to the left are pure fantasy.  I guess there's no way to glamorize the fact that you're driving a Kia.  From Wired's Autopia blog:

David Moxon subjected 40 men and women to the sounds of a Maserati, Lamborghini and Ferrari, then measured the amount of testosterone in their saliva. He found everyone had higher levels of the stuff -- a measure of their arousal -- after hearing the revving exotics, but the amount the women had was off the charts.

The econobox, however, left everyone colder than a January day in Nome.

I guess Firecracker George was on to something when he got his last car, and must have women literally drooling testosterone when he passes by.  That, or he's a victim of more road rage.

It's the end of the world as we know it (maybe)...

According to this countdown clock, we have a little more than 24 days left before the possible end of the world as we know it. That will be when the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland will go online and crash subatomic particles together using an underground 17-mile ring of magnets in hopes of creating similar conditions that existed just after the Big Bang that created the universe.

If this sounds familiar, it might be because the United States was building a similar project just south of Dallas. The Superconducting Super Collider, unfortunately, ran way over budget and Congress ended up mothballing the entire project after spending over $4 billion already. It now sits empty, occassionally being used as a glorified storage facility or a place for military training exercises. Talk about pork barrel spending.

The collision of these hadron particles is supposed to allow astrophysicists to unlock other unknown mysteries of science that my feeble Cheeto-filled brain doesn't quite understand. But from what I've gleaned, it will either support all the theorized principles of physics or completely dismantle them. HC? Well, maybe I'll wait until the collider is online before I continue to say "physics!"

Two other possibilities exist, too. Nothing at all could happen, and scientists will be left with the most expensive non-working science experiment of all time (which reminds me of that seemingly great tennis ball launcher I built with Fandango back in high school physics class that ended up shooting the ball a measly foot or two). The other theory is that the reaction could be catastrophic. From The New Yorker:

Worries about the end of the planet have shadowed nearly every high-energy experiment. Such concerns were given a boost by Scientific American—presumably inadvertently—in 1999. That summer, the magazine ran a letter to the editor about Brookhaven’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, then nearing completion. The letter suggested that the Brookhaven collider might produce a “mini black hole” that would be drawn toward the center of the earth, thus “devouring the entire planet within minutes.” Frank Wilczek, a physicist who would later win a Nobel Prize, wrote a response for the magazine. Wilczek dismissed the idea of mini black holes devouring the earth, but went on to raise a new possibility: the collider could produce strangelets, a form of matter that some think might exist at the center of neutron stars. In that case, he observed, “one might be concerned about an ‘ice-9’-type transition,” wherein all surrounding matter could be converted into strangelets and the world as we know it would vanish.

Now the majority of scientists have dismissed the idea of mini blackholes and stranglets as a product of the collider project as hogwash. Still, I might be a little extra nice to my sweetie that day before they push the button.

I guess track marks won't necessarily mean you're heroin addict anymore...

There was many a morning when I would down cups of coffee after a rough night like an athlete drinks Gatorade following a dehydrating run and joked that it would be so much easier if they could just hook me up to an IV and give me a slow drip of coffee throughout the day.  Leave it up to the Japanese to get close.

Tenteki10 in Tokyo, Japan may be the first in the latest fad of "health bars" where you can order up your own selection of IV cocktail to provide a nice pick me up for the day.  From Japan Today:

Ten options with different effects and five courses consisting of these options are available. The basic price is 2,000 yen, and customers can request an option or course menu, for an additional charge.

“Many people daily suffer from exhaustion, insomnia and backaches on a daily basis because they don’t take proper care of themselves,” says a doctor at Tenteki10. “They try supplements, home remedies or cheap energy injections. Some of these ailments cannot be healed that way and could possibly develop into more serious illnesses, including depression.”

I'm not sure getting supplements injected straight into the bloodstream is that much better than taking the old fashioned oral route and letting your body absorb it, but I guess in this fast-paced world, every second counts.  That, or people really like needles--OUCH!

If only my dog's poop would have been a good storage element for heat...

Perhaps if Firecracker George and I weren't so busy annoying my old and now long deceased dog with burning his little fuzzy butt using the concentrated energy of the sun via magnifying glasses on bored Sunday afternoons, we might actually be rich today.  

Previous technology to harness the endless radiation eminating from the Sun has focused on solar panels that convert energy into electricity.  This, of course, could provide endless amounts of free energy on a sunny day.  The problem is trying to store up this energy for later use when sunlight isn't in quite such abundance (i.e. at night or in Seattle).  Batteries are highly inefficient and often times rely on materials that are, themselves, somewhat harmful to the environment.

The solution comes from a rather simple idea (from The New York Times):

The idea is to capture the sun’s heat. Heat, unlike electric current, is something that industry knows how to store cost-effectively. For example, a coffee thermos and a laptop computer’s battery store about the same amount of energy, said John S. O’Donnell, executive vice president of a company in the solar thermal business, Ausra. The thermos costs about $5 and the laptop battery $150, he said, and “that’s why solar thermal is going to be the dominant form.”

Solar thermal systems are built to gather heat from the sun, boil water into steam, spin a turbine and make power, as existing solar thermal power plants do — but not immediately. The heat would be stored for hours or even days, like water behind a dam.

A plant that could store its output could pick the time to sell the production based on expected price, as wheat farmers and cattle ranchers do. Ausra, of Palo Alto, Calif., is making components for plants to which thermal storage could be added, if the cost were justified by higher prices after sunset or for production that could be realistically promised even if the weather forecast was iffy. Ausra uses Fresnel lenses, which have a short focal length but focus light intensely, to heat miles of black-painted pipe with a fluid inside.

The picture up top is of a system in Spain.  Dozens of mirrored panels reflect sunlight to a central tower that collects all the thermal energy and transfers it to a tank of molten salt below for storage.  It looks like something out of a James Bond movie.  Actually, that would make a pretty cool ending--diabolical villain trapped in the tower and burned alive by the the focused light of the sun.

I don't know what's been in your mouth...

Considering I eat bunch in communal Chinese settings where dishes are shared rather than hoarded to oneself, I don't get too worked up about the "double dipper." However, some people do, and inspired by George (Costanza, not Firecracker) and that classic episode of Seinfeld, a group from Clemson University studied whether such practices truly are bad for you. From The New York Times:

The team of nine students instructed volunteers to take a bite of a wheat cracker and dip the cracker for three seconds into about a tablespoon of a test dip. They then repeated the process with new crackers, for a total of either three or six double dips per dip sample. The team then analyzed the remaining dip and counted the number of aerobic bacteria in it. They didn’t determine whether any of the bacteria were harmful, and didn’t count anaerobic bacteria, which are harder to culture, or viruses.

There were six test dips: sterile water with three different degrees of acidity, a commercial salsa, a cheese dip and chocolate syrup.

On average, the students found that three to six double dips transferred about 10,000 bacteria from the eater’s mouth to the remaining dip.

Each cracker picked up between one and two grams of dip. That means that sporadic double dipping in a cup of dip would transfer at least 50 to 100 bacteria from one mouth to another with every bite.

The kind of dip made a difference in a couple of ways. The more acidic water samples had somewhat fewer bacteria, and the numbers of bacteria declined with time. But the acidic salsa picked up higher initial numbers of bacteria than the cheese or chocolate, because it was runny. The thicker the dip, the more stuck to the chip, and so the fewer bacteria were left behind in the bowl.

I'm still not convinced that the transfer of bacteria is an adequate end point to study. They admit that you probably should be studying whether those are harmful bacteria that are going from one mouth to the next, or just normal flora. Don't worry, though--I don't double dip.

I think this is how MacGyvers are made...

This kid is either the most popular guy in his class or the most picked on. Me? I'd be at his house EVERYDAY!

Actually, I think a study looking at how much methane Wild Willie releases when he burps would be better...

I guess methane from cow farts isn't the problem. I think they should outfit a little flame that extends from the collar on these cattle--firebreathing cows!

Sweden to Study Belching Cows

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- A Swedish university has received $590,000 in research funds to measure the greenhouse gases released when cows belch.

About 20 cows will participate in the project run by the Swedish University for Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala, about 40 miles north of Stockholm, officials said Monday.

Cattle release methane, a greenhouse gas believed to contribute to global warming, when they digest their food. Researchers believe the level of methane released depends on the type of food the eat.

Project leader Jan Bertilsson said that the cows involved in the study will have different diets and wear a collar device measuring the methane level in the air around them.

He said 95 percent of the methane released by cows comes out through the mouth.

"This type of research is already being conducted in Canada so we will be in contact with Canadian agricultural researchers in the near future," he said.

The research will be funded by a grant from the government's Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning.

You might want to think twice about having that extra beer when you're out with the guys...

I know drinking a bit too much can result in "beer goggles," but who knew such inebriation could potentially have you saying sweet nothings into the ear of the guy sitting next to you at the bar?

Among the team's discoveries is that male fruit flies, which typically court females, also actively court males when they are given a daily dose of ethanol. "We identified three molecules that are crucial for "ethanol-induced courtship disinhibition," Han said. In one of the team's experiments, Han and her students generated transgenic flies whose brain activities regulated by the neurotransmitter dopamine could be turned off temporarily by changing the temperature to 32-degrees C. "Without a temperature change, the transgenic males showed conspicuous inter-male courtship under the influence of ethanol; however, they exhibited negligible inter-male courtship when we changed the temperature to block the transmission of dopamine neurons in the brain," Han said. "This result suggests that dopamine is a key mediator of ethanol-induced inter-male courtship."

A second discovery is that repeated exposure to ethanol causes male flies to engage in more inter-male courtship, a phenomenon known as "behavioral sensitization." "If a behavior like alcohol consumption becomes more pleasurable the more often you do it, you are more likely to keep doing it," Han explained. Because the researchers suspect that behavioral sensitization results from adaptive changes in the brain's cells and molecules induced by chronic alcohol consumption, they plan to use behavioral sensitization as a model for further physiological studies of alcohol-associated behavior and addiction. "This part of our study demonstrates that sexual behavior is not determined only during an organism's development, but it also can be influenced by a post-developmental environmental factor; in this case, recurring exposure to ethanol," Han said. "These findings represent the first demonstration of enduring behavioral changes induced by recurring ethanol exposure in a fly model."

Read more at Science Daily.

I guess my model of the planets wouldn't have gotten too far in this science fair...

Most (or all) of the Kool-Aid Gang would probably admit that we're all just a dumb bunch of cavemen that keep out of trouble thanks to the intelligence and common sense of our better female halves. Perhaps girls are finally realizing their superior intellect, as well. For the first time in history, females took the top prize at the Siemens Competition in Math, Science, and Technology this year. Winning prizes by these super-smart ladies included "creating a molecule that helps block the reproduction of drug-resistant tuberculosis bacteria," "studies of bone growth in zebra fish, whose tail fins grow in spurts, similar to the way children’s bones do," and "research that identified genetic defects that could play a role in the development of Lou Gehrig’s disease."

Comparatively, the "research on combating jet lag" by the only male mentioned in the article sounded much less elegant.

Ugh! Ugh! (Caveman talk)

A few extra calories never hurt anyone, and maybe it will give you an extra year or two on your life...

Sometime in the past couple of years or so, my Body Mass Index (BMI) edged into the obese range, prompting me to get in the pool and back in the gym over the summer. I had grand plans to somehow get myself back to my svelte college BMI that was in the normal range, but alas, I think age, the accompanying decreases in metabolism getting older brings, and my lack of inhibition when it comes to fatty food, is preventing me from getting there. A new study that will be published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, however, may make me feel a bit more satisfied about my overweight frame. From The New York Times:

Linking, for the first time, causes of death to specific weights, they report that overweight people have a lower death rate because they are much less likely to die from a grab bag of diseases that includes Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, infections and lung disease. And that lower risk is not counteracted by increased risks of dying from any other disease, including cancer, diabetes or heart disease.

As a consequence, the group from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute reports, there were more than 100,000 fewer deaths among the overweight in 2004, the most recent year for which data were available, than would have expected if those people had been of normal weight.

Now there's probably more to this study than meets the eye, and I don't think the purpose of this report is to give us all carte blanche to get crazy with cupcakes. Still, I kind of like having a reason to not feel so guilty about that extra slice of pizza I eat every so often.

I guess my wife can't say that I'm that pig-headed...

They say that all sorts of things from how adept you are at spatial relationships to what the proportions of your fingers are to each other can tell a lot about how you developed in the womb, and whether your brain is wired to be more male or female. The BBC has a Sex I.D. quiz you can take that's kind of fun, if you've got some free time. I was hoping to score in the high male range of the spectrum, but as you can see below, I'm right smack in the middle between guys and gals. What that means, I have no idea.

How do you say "HC" in Japanese?

Here's a video for all you physics freaks out there from a Japanese show Fountain of Trivia. What happens when you shoot a ball at 100 km/h from the back of a truck going 100 km/h? It's kind of a lengthy clip, and a bit overly dramatic for the end result:

Wikipedia for the zoology world?

I ran across this video about an Encyclopedia of Life, kind of an online open source opportunity for scientists around the country to catalog the various species of life around the world, and show us how we're all interlinked. It's a pretty grand and amazing undertaking they've proposed that should provide all kinds of opportunities to procrastinate and learn at the same time when it finally goes online sometime in 2008. They even have ideas of hikers having access to this information on PDA's as a highly interactive way of learning about wildlife as they encounter them.

Anywho, take a peek at the video. A sharper version is on the EOL website. It's pretty cool.

Lechuguilla Cave

The past month has been fun for me in many ways, but one of those has been recording the Planet Earth Series on Discovery HD Theater. I have been taking the chance to watch a little bit each day during lunch, and yesterday I got to finish up the series with the final episode. It was on caves, and my thought before watching it was it will be good but not great. Of course this was my thought for the majority of the episodes before watching them, but as I would watch I would be completely overwhelmed by the beauty and the magnitude of what they captured on film. Some of it I had seen before, but it had been staged. Take for instance a great white shark breaching as it takes a seal. I have seen this before, but it was not a real seal, it was a dummy seal being dragged behind the boat so they would know where to film. This series though used new technology to allow continuous filming so they could catch the real thing. It was rather impressive to see such a powerful animal come 15 feet out of the water to get some food. There were also some other incredible scenes like the massive dust storms in the Sahara, or the saddening footage of a pride of lions killing an elephant at night (once again new technology to help film in the dark), or even the sight of a parasitic fungus killing an ant (which I am still somewhat confused about how they filmed this because it had to take a while).

One of the ones that really caught me off guard was in the cave's episode. It was the segment on the Lechuguilla Cave system in New Mexico. The clip I have for you will not be anywhere near as good as in HD, but it is still worth your time. What I found really cool was the part that looks like Superman's crystal cave. You see that in the movies, but you never think that something like that could really exist.

Have you really taken a careful look at your dog's tail recently?

The most emailed article today from The New York Times describes a study from Italy looking into dogs and tail wagging. Based on research demonstrating emotional asymmetry in the brain, they hypothesized that dogs would wag their tail in a predictable direction based on their emotional state.

When the dogs saw their owners, their tails all wagged vigorously with a bias to the right side of their bodies, Dr. Vallortigara said. Their tails wagged moderately, again more to the right, when faced with an unfamiliar human. Looking at the cat, a four-year-old male whose owners volunteered him for the experiment, the dogs’ tails again wagged more to the right but in a lower amplitude.

When the dogs looked at an aggressive, unfamiliar dog — a large Belgian shepherd Malinois — their tails all wagged with a bias to the left side of their bodies.

Thus when dogs were attracted to something, including a benign, approachable cat, their tails wagged right, and when they were fearful, their tails went left, Dr. Vallortigara said. It suggests that the muscles in the right side of the tail reflect positive emotions while the muscles in the left side express negative ones.

I could see this observation being utilized in some Turner and Hooch genre movie. The unsuspecting protagonist is clued into the fact that a person is a villain only by the subtle signal by his trusty pooch.

The Dharma Initiative? Now those Lost tie-ins are getting a little out of hand...

Photo: NASA

So did anyone catch these pictures taken from the Cassini Space Probe orbiting Saturn that were released by NASA a couple of weeks ago? According to the NASA site, this phenomenon isn't new, as it was also seen by Voyager 1 and 2 as they passed the planet, as well. I think the red color above is just a result of the infrared imaging used to capture the picture, but it's still kind of freaky nonetheless.

Of course, when I worried about strange alien life inhabiting Saturn and creating such a geometric shape that surely could only mean impending doom from an extraterrestrial weapon of mass destruction set to destroy the Earth, it turns out that swirling hexagonal shapes actually do occur in nature. HC? Well, I guess it's gotta be PHYSICS!

Penis envy...

Well, I guess it's true. Women really don't care all that much about penises. When asked to find out information about George Brett on a biographical page, men would focus on his face and crotch while women only looked at his face.

This observation was used in a story about news article design and how to create a tighter story with pictures and layouts that do a better job to grab a reader. Probably something a professional writer like Firecracker George might enjoy, and worth a read for everyone if you ever worry that no one is reading your post.

The points I gleaned from it:

• Bullet points help focus your audience.
• Know your audience, i.e. bathroom humor and anything related to Star Wars should be a big sell on this blog.
• If you choose a picture to grab the audiences attention, make sure it's a guy with a big package and a nice smile. If you forget the crotch shot, well, then you're thinking like a girl because men never forget to look at the private anatomy, and then in some twisted way, you're actually homosexual.
  

So I guess this means the next time you're at some club and catch some well groomed guy glancing at your manhood, it's OK. He's not trying to hit on you. He's just being a man. It's what men do. The guy that keeps staring into your eyes, though, well...

What do you think I am, a radio?

This article appeared in John Tierney's column in The New York Times a couple of days ago about the primal origins of human laughter, and starts off with a muffin joke about as funny as everyone's line about the penguin. As you would guess, some would laugh at seemingly unfunny jokes, but why?

The human ha-ha evolved from the rhythmic sound — pant-pant — made by primates like chimpanzees when they tickle and chase one other while playing. Jaak Panksepp, a neuroscientist and psychologist at Washington State University, discovered that rats emit an ultrasonic chirp (inaudible to humans without special equipment) when they’re tickled, and they like the sensation so much they keep coming back for more tickling.

He and Professor Provine figure that the first primate joke — that is, the first action to produce a laugh without physical contact — was the feigned tickle, the same kind of coo-chi-coo move parents make when they thrust their wiggling fingers at a baby. Professor Panksepp thinks the brain has ancient wiring to produce laughter so that young animals learn to play with one another. The laughter stimulates euphoria circuits in the brain and also reassures the other animals that they’re playing, not fighting.

Laughter stimulating euphoria circuits? Sounds like I need some more humor in my life.

The article goes on to theorize that laughter may also be a method used to establish social hierarchies and gain allies if you're low on the totem pole. So don't make fun of that ditzy blonde or clueless guy (which often times is me) when they laugh at your bad jokes--they're just trying to make friends.

Hold on to your crotch, 'cause this is gonna hurt...

Hmmm. I actually posted this a couple of hours ago, but it's not on the blog. Considering I did this at work, I'm kind of worried as to where the original went. Probably accidentally sent it off to my boss or something. Anywho...

I was sitting in the break area eating my lunch today. Instead of the usual Time, People, Redbook, Entertainment Weekly, etc. that's usually scattered across typical break rooms across the land, mine has scientific journals. So today I flipped open an issue of Nature that was on my table to read up on the latest scientific advancements, and stopped at an article describing a study to determine how earwigs decide which of their two penises to use. Yes, two penises. Apparently, this isn't as uncommon a phenomenon as you would think, as various species of arthropods and spiders have dual members. But how do they decide which one to use with the ladies? If you're a certain species of spider, well, you just eat one!

I am how old, again? And are you an expert?

This last week I had the opportunity to open up my wallet and in return find out how old I am. I went through some physical tests that showed my true body age to be 34. Not too bad but it would be nicer if my body age was my actual chronological age. But then I was also told that I could achieve a body age of 22 by doing various things relating to my health. I can improve my weight, eating habits, and flexibility to name a few.

The tests measured all sorts of things, but was designed around telling you how many toxins you have in your body based on your excess water weight. It was all very convincing and scientific sounding. The quick rundown is that your body uses your liver to rid itself of toxins, but when the liver gets overworked it sends the toxins back into your body to be removed later. The toxins get stored around fat cells which then get surrounded by water to protect your body from the stored toxins. Essentially, those fat cells surrounded by water are there to stay until your liver can get back to normal functioning. This becomes weight that you cannot get rid of unless you rid yourself of the toxins in the liver. This is why you see the push for detox diets, foods, supplements, etc. in health stores today. I am inclined through my logic and scientific thinking that this is mostly believable.

We get these toxins from the air, food, water, medicines, stress, and skin. I can believe all of them, but the last one - skin - I at least have to question. I was told by the fitness "expert" that we absorb toxins through our skin. We get it from shampoo, lotions, sunblock, soap, etc. I can believe this, but I still have to raise the question, how much can our skin really absorb? Her take was that if you can sweat out toxins, then the other has to be true that you can absorb them?

I am not here to say that our skin cannot absorb stuff, but my fear is that so many people out there hear something like this and immediately believe it. If you think about how many personal trainers and fitness experts there are, it can be kind of scary to think how much misinformation they could spread. I cannot contract viruses through my skin can I? Can I absorb water through my skin? I could go on and on asking these sorts of questions.

I guess though that ultimately she was doing what she has been trained by the world to do - sell you the fear so she can sell you the product ... for only $308. I am glad I am not a sucker. Now let me get back to my detox green tea and my organic cereal and milk.