That pope — whats his name? Popey Poperton the Popeteenth? — says the darndest things. Our know-it-all Big Brother just reported on his latest hilarious proclamations. This time, he railed against the evils of stem cells and cloning — well, I'll let him tell you, it's so much funnier when he says it:
Practices like freezing embryos, suppression of embryos in multiple pregnancies, embryonic stem cell research, the prospect of human cloning and artificial insemination outside the body had "shattered the barriers meant to protect human dignity," he said.
"When human beings in the weakest and most defenseless state of their existence are selected, abandoned, killed or used as pure 'biological material,' how can one deny that they are being treated not as 'someone' but as 'something,"' he said.
Such practices "questioned the very concept of the dignity of man," he said in the speech to the department known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Man, is he the next Louie Anderson or what? Get this guy a hot wife and a sitcom on CBS!
For all the men out there who just aren't ready to go under the knife, this plug is for you. Researchers in Australian researchers are designing a radio-controlled implant to keep the little guys from reproducing.
Rather than the likely permanent effects of a vasectomy, the radio-controlled implant can be turned on and off with a remote control.
"It will be like turning a TV on and off with a remote control," said team founder Derek Abbott, "except that the remote will probably be locked away in your local doctor's office to safeguard against accidental pregnancy or potential misuse of the device."
Although this method sounds like a go, a remote-controlled sperm plug is several years away from being put to use in the bedroom.
The Details:
Once again the space types are trying to decide which parts of our decrepit Shuttle are reasonably safe to leave broken for launch, and which are... not. Currently they're assessing "a bent coolant hose." Program manager Wayne Hale says it's no biggie, but engineers are checking out a hose from the shuttle Discovery that was bent in the same way, just in case.
Stanford engineers have produced a silicon chip built on carbon nanotube wires that conduct digital information at the speed of commercial computers.
"This is the first time anyone has been able to show digital signals going through nanotubes at 1 gigahertz [a billion times a second]," Stanford professor of electrical engineering H.-S. Philip Wong said in a statement "There had been a lot of expectations that nanotubes could do this, but no experimental proof so far."
I know, I know, my old, decrepit work computer is already chugging along at 3.2Ghz and I still can't stand it. So what's the big deal?
Every weekday, Sigma Xi,
the Scientific Research Society, picks the raddest articles from the
mainstream media so we don't have to. Open wide: Today's Science in the News is piping hot.
from National Geographic News: (Associated Press) - A large spy satellite expected to fall to Earth in late February or early March could hit
North America, an official said Tuesday. The U.S. military is developing contingency plans to deal with that possibility, Air Force Gen. Victor "Gene"
Renuart, Jr., who heads U.S. Northern Command, told The Associated Press on Tuesday. The size of the satellite suggests that some number of pieces will not
burn up as the orbiting vehicle re-enters the Earth's atmosphere - and will hit the ground. "We're aware that this satellite is out there," Renuart said.
"We're aware it is a fairly substantial size. And we know there is at least some percentage [of it] that it could land on ground as opposed to in the water."
My girlfriend always said I was useless, but this is ridiculous: British scientists at the University of Newcastle have coaxed female embryonic stem cells to develop into primitive sperm cells. They'd previously done it with male bone marrow cells, but this new development opens up the door to lesbian couples having children that share genes from both parents.
That same University of Newcastle team is applying for permission to turn female bone marrow into sperm cells, which one lesbian partner could donate to be turned into stem cells, which would then be used to impregnate the other partner. The next step for Prof. Karim Nayernia and team is to encourage the sperm to undergo meiosis to ensure they have enough genetic material to fertilize an egg. Nayernia first flirted with the possibility of deriving sperm from stem cells when he used sperm taken from male embryonic stem cells to fertilize mice to produce seven offspring, six of which survived to adulthood, though they did suffer from side effects.
“I think, in principle, it will be scientifically possible,” Prof Nayernia told New Scientist.
But Prof. Nayernia's methods aren't without technical and ethical detractors.
No, that's not what they're calling Christian Bale. At least, not that I know of.
"To everyone interested in bat conservation," was the subject line of a letter I turned up in a Google search this morning. So I read it—because, really, who isn't interested in bat conservation?
Don't answer that. Anyhow, it's the story that has Bruce Wayne in tears. Apparently, a somewhat mysterious fungal pathogen is wiping out bat colonies throughout the Northeast. It's called White Nose Syndrome (WNS), because the disease leaves a white moldy-looking ring around an infected bat's nose (insert off-color joke here).
Every weekday, Sigma Xi,
the Scientific Research Society, picks the raddest articles from the
mainstream media so we don't have to. Open wide: Today's Science in the News is piping hot.
from the Philadelphia Inquirer: As if gray hair, brittle bones and wrinkles weren't bad enough, scientists say that as you age, the very DNA in your trillions of cells starts to fray, unravel and disintegrate. Now there may be something you can do to slow the inevitable - exercise. A study published [Monday] hints that fitness buffs appear to have "younger" DNA than the chronically sedentary. The finding could help scientists understand the effects of exercise and aging at a molecular level. In theory, it might also motivate people to get off the couch. "This is a provocative paper and an interesting piece of research," said Jack Guralnik, an epidemiologist at the National Institute on Aging who wrote an editorial that accompanied the research report in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
China won the right to host the 2008 Summer Olympics after overcoming political worries, environmental concerns and a knockdown-drag-out fight with Paris. China declared of Paris that "certain urban areas leave something to be desired when it comes to cleanliness. In particular, errant dogs and rabid dogs are increasingly numerous." Claude Bebear, the head of the Paris Olympic bid committee, shot back with "dogs are dogs...they do the same thing everywhere... It's just that there are no dogs in China - because they eat them." BURN!
So after that flame war, there's no way in hell China's going to let a little thing like water ruin the opening-day festivities: They've had some success in preventing light rain, as we've previously reported.
But at the same time that China is attempting to stop H2O from falling from the sky, they've also constructed a groundbreaking structure inspired by water bubbles (pictured above). The Beijing National Aquatics Center, or Water Cube, as it's affectionately called, is covered in 100,000 square meters of iridescent, Teflon-like plastic called ETFE. ETFE is only 0.08 of an inch think, but it can hold up to 300 times its weight. The Water Cube is said to mimic nature's way of filling space most efficiently — with bubbles — while also absorbing solar heat to warm the building and the pool. It's said to be one of the most sustainable buildings in the increasingly environmentally-aware China, who want to look good for the world come August.
Anybody who's played through the mind-bendingly brilliant, first-person puzzle game Portal came to a final confrontation with the devious AI computer who taunted you throughout your tasks, GlaDOS. If you haven't played, stop whatever you are doing and buy it, steal it or otherwise get your hands on it.
OK, now that that's out of the way: The Japanese (of-freaking-course) have invented a pollen-monitoring robot (pictured left) that bears a striking resemblance to your final enemy in the game. 200 of these ball-headed 'Pollen Robots' will hang outside volunteers' homes in Tokyo, monitoring pollen levels and sending the data back to headquarters of the Weathernews, Inc., where an online pollen map can notify hay fever sufferers of the most affected areas in town. Creepiest of all, a pair of eyes will glow white, blue, green, red or purple to indicate the level of Japanese cedar and cypress pollen in the air.
Someone once called me "cute as a mole-rat," and I thanked them for the complement. Then I found out what mole-rats looked like, and I cried in the shower for a few days.
But I shouldn't have been so hasty to dismiss my homely likeness: The African naked mole-rat is immune to certain types of pain.They respond to mechanical pain like pinching, but don't respond to pain caused by capsaicin (the hot element in chili peppers), hot objects, and even burns from acid.
Thomas Park of the University of Illinois at Chicago, Gary Lewin at the Max-Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin, Germany, and their colleagues discovered that mole-rats lack substance P, a compound that transmits information relating to chronic pain in between nerve cells. The team hopes to apply this discovery in gene therapy to help humans who suffer from chronic pain.
“Instead of going to the pain region of the spinal cord as we would expect, the nerves that lead from acid and capsaicin sensors go to the touch region,” says Park. “And their nerve fibres do not respond to acid at all.”
For this post, I’d like to discuss a subject very close to my heart: strip clubs. Like many a frequent and busy-handed patron, I can tell you the location of every theater of flesh within thirty miles of my doorstep. But if I find myself in a distant city, I’m completely at a loss, and as a result, inconsolable.
Well, now it’s GPS technology to the rescue! Always a neat gizmo to be sure, GPS has finally realized its full potential through NUDAR, which, once downloaded onto your existing unit, will locate every place and event where boobs and butts aren’t locked away in sartorial confines. You can either type in the name of a breastination to which you’ll be flawlessly guided, or just tumescently trawl around town and NUDAR will alert you to any emporium of public nudity within a .2 mile radius.
While rappers around the world are obsessed with making it rain every month on time, Beijing just wants it to stop. In a "when you have a hammer the whole world looks like a nail" situation, the Beijing Meteorological Bureau has been assigned the job of preventing rain during the upcoming Olympics because, at least in part, there's no roof on the fancy new Bird's Nest stadium. And it's working. Mostly.
"Our experiments with rain mitigation have been aimed at light rain," Zhang Qian, head of weather manipulation at the bureau, told a conference. "With heavy rain it is more difficult. The results with light rain have been satisfactory."
That's right, don't worry about the poison air. Just stop the rain.
Every weekday, Sigma Xi,
the Scientific Research Society, picks the raddest articles from the
mainstream media so we don't have to. Open wide: Today's Science in the News is piping hot.
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required): Doctors and parents have long been left to guess at which children with a diagnosis of
attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, will go on to become adults with significant attention problems, how well they will navigate the
challenges of adulthood and whether early recognition of -- and medication for -- their condition will make any difference in the trajectory of their lives.
Now a series of studies following 457 Finnish children from birth to ages 16 to 18 offers a glimpse of how the primary symptoms of ADHD typically evolve. At
the same time, the studies raise provocative questions about the long-term effect of treating those symptoms with medication.
In 1919, fifty years after the yellow fever epidemic drove away much of Tampa’s population and a decade prior to the apex of the city's cigar industry, six young men were arrested for fishing out of season. Though impoverished anglers, they persuaded the area’s hottest young criminal defense attorney to represent them. The fee: a fish dinner. The ensuing case not only portended a brilliant legal and political career, it spawned an ichthyological footnote that well reflects the strange and often anarchic times of Tampa Bay in the early 20th century.
Partial to scotch and smoking, Patrick Crisp Whitaker, Sr. never made it past eighth grade, hiring a friend to forge his high school diploma in order to get into Georgetown law school. Once established, he performed at trials with the flair of a master showman, attracting hordes of curious spectators, and once, according to legend, commanded a jury’s attention by removing his false teeth during an opening statement. Before trading the courtroom for a seat on the state Senate, Whitaker is said to have deprived Old Sparky of more condemned men than any other lawyer in the history of Florida.
Some of us just can't get any satisfaction out of life, so we do it by blasting 8-year-olds in online FPS games like Halo, Team Fortress, or Call of Duty. Problem is, those little bastards are getting pretty good. What's an older gamer to do when he feels his reflexes aren't as quick as they should be? Why swallow a pill of course!
Just like any other modern malady, shite gaming can be treated with meds — or so claim the makers of FpsBrain, the first performance-enhancing pill for gamers. The German-made product claims to provide a “remarkable increase in perception and reaction capacities,” and to "enhance their mental performance and their work efficieny [sic],” and it's backed by a “a 110% money-back guarantee.” Sounds like I can use this for a lot of things other than blasting aliens. What's to lose?
In the last few years, astronomers have identified 10 “hypervelocity” stars, which race away from the Milky Way at 10 times the speed of normal stars. Nine of these burning bullets are believed to have originated in our own galaxy. What about #10?
Yesterday, astronomers from the Carnegie Institution and Queen’s University Belfast announced that the stellar stranger isn’t from around here. The star is believed to be only about 35 million years old, but it’s about 100 million years away from the center of our galaxy. (They’re calling this the “paradox of youth.”) They estimate that the star is moving at about 1.6 million miles per hour.
How to explain the conflict between its time and position? The stargazers came up with two theories and finally settled on this one: they believe the young star “recently” escaped from the Large Magellanic Cloud (one of our nearest neighboring galaxies).
“Escaped” is probably the wrong word here—“violently expelled” is more like it.
You may have heard about U2 3D, the gimmicky concert film that killed at Sundance. But did you know that National Geographic produced it? What does promoting a shark-jumping arena rock band have to do with "inspiring people care about the planet", anyway?
Lots of us have trouble concentrating on specific tasks for a focused period of time; I know whenever I'm performing community service (it happens a lot), any stray bird or shiny object distracts me enough to get me punished by my chain gang.
Annalee Newitz at sci-fi blog io9 posits that in the near future, temporary autism could serve as a solution: Basically, people take a pill to induce autism when they want to shut out the outside world and focus obsessively on work, and then take another pill to bring them out of their autistic state when they're ready to stop being savants. She cites work undertaken by German scientists in inducing autism in rats and reversal of autistic symptoms in mice done by researchers at MIT as inspiration for her predictions.
Even wilder, she suggests people may pursue "recreational autism" to "take a break from having messy emotions about other people decide to unplug and enter a state where human relationships are no more important than inanimate objects."
OK, fine, I have a problem, I admit it: I'm in love with fire. It was forged when my pyromaniac father regaled me of his youth burning things he shouldn't. Luckily, I didn't have a chemistry teacher like Mr. Sully to nurture it even further. But man, do I wish I did.
Some high school chemistry teachers will go so far as to set one thing on fire, but Mr. Sully positively pwns all of them with his rainbow display:
Research published in Current Biology suggests that one reason we don't get hooked on on our endogenous "heroin" (endorphins and enkephalins) is that these natural ligands for the opioid receptor activate what can be seen as an "on/off" switch for the system, while morphine does not.
Consequently, the scientists engineered mice in which morphine does produce this effect-- and lo and behold, the mice were able to get pain relief from morphine, but developed less tolerance and fewer symptoms of withdrawal.
Today's 60 Second Science Podcast is brought to you by the good-looking sales associates at Abercrombie & Fitch, not the hideous ones they keep in the stockroom:
But they may have gone too far this time: Canadia (the 'i' is silent) is closing the position of national science adviser after current adviser Arthur Carty retires on March 1st. Several of the country's scientists are understandably concerned, including Queen's University ecology professor John Smol:
"Having someone in a position to advise the prime minister or a cabinet minister gave me more confidence in the process," Smol said. "There's so little of this contact between the scientific community and politicians. If you remove one of those major contacts, I don't see it as a positive thing."
Decorating my apartment was simple — there was already so much graffiti from the crack heads and crust punks who lived here before me that it pretty much took care of itself. Now I have the privilege of possessing an original "Nutinya" as well as a first-print "I did Skeez's mom fer monee" on my wall, complete with visual anatomical references. Both are very rare.
Once you've chosen your style and color set online, DNA 11 sends you a hyper-stylized "collection kit" with detailed instructions on how to collect your DNA sample that they will eventually use to extract your particular sequence. You then send them back the collection kit via a pre-addressed envelope, and art minions at DNA 11 "1. Extract your DNA and run it on a gel. 2. Capture a perfect, raw digital image from the gel. 3. Destroy your DNA sample," presumably so no gene thieves can make evil clones of you.
Then they digitally enhance and print your DNA artwork on a "high-quality canvas with our in-house Giclee printer," varnish, frame, provide a certificate of authenticity, and send your new piece of narcissistic artwork to you in a crush-proof package.
That pope — whats his name? Popey Poperton the Popeteenth? — says the darndest things. Our know-it-all Big Brother just reported on his latest hilarious proclamations. This time, he railed against the evils of stem cells and cloning — well, I'll let him tell you, it's so much funnier when he says it:
My girlfriend always said I was useless, but this is ridiculous: British scientists at the University of Newcastle have
No, that's not what they're calling Christian Bale. At least, not that I know of.
China won the right to host the 2008 Summer Olympics after overcoming political worries, environmental concerns and a 
Anybody who's played through the mind-bendingly brilliant, first-person puzzle game 
Someone once called me "cute as a mole-rat," and I thanked them for the complement. Then I found out what mole-rats looked like, and I cried in the shower for a few days.
Some of us just can't get any satisfaction out of life, so we do it by blasting 8-year-olds in online FPS games like Halo, Team Fortress, or Call of Duty. Problem is, those little bastards are getting pretty good. What's an older gamer to do when he feels his reflexes aren't as quick as they should be? Why swallow a pill of course!
In the last few years, astronomers have identified 10 “hypervelocity” stars, which race away from the Milky Way at 10 times the speed of normal stars. Nine of these burning bullets are believed to have originated in our own galaxy. What about #10?
Lots of us have trouble concentrating on specific tasks for a focused period of time; I know whenever I'm performing community service (it happens a lot), any stray bird or shiny object distracts me enough to get 
Canada, oh, Canada: Our do-gooder big brother just can't seem to get it right. Usually he's 
