If you've ever gotten a horrible tattoo in the past (I'm looking at you as I type, misbegotten Tasmanian Devil), you may soon have the best excuse for it ever: "I didn't know what to get, and it was time for my flu shot."
Soon tribal bands, tramp stamps and ubiquitous flaming skulls could serve as delivery mechanisms for vaccines, as researchers in Germany discovered that tattooing mice with vaccines produced 16 times more antibodies than conventional muscle injections. The scientists think that since a a vibrating tattoo needle produces greater tissue damage than a single needle, it provokes a stronger and faster immune response.
In the near future, tattoos could provide an excellent delivery method for therapeutic vaccines designed to prevent against all types of diseases, including specific types of cancer. Also, you can get that totally rad Ratt tattoo you've always been too shy to splurge on.
Yeah, this isn't The Onion, bro, this is a real science news source. I actually might be almost serious:
A Yale study appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has shown that children imitate the actions of adults who have proven to be untrustworthy, even to the point of excluding obvious solutions to problems.
Were you the kid at the back of the room who made jokes aloud about teacher's harelip? Did you set Hammy the class hamster on fire? Did your lucrative business drawing boobies in pen and ink end in the Great Boy's Bathroom Raid of Ought Six? Well, despair no longer, because all those hours of detention and marks on "your permanent record" don't mean squat: Jackass kids with bad behavior often perform as well in academics as their goody-two-shoes peers.
It may be no surprise to anyone but Michael Bay, but a recent study shows young children have a preference for interactive robots over traditional toys. Now, if you'll allow me one second to put myself into the mind of a toddler, which I do regularly anyway: "Hmmm, let's see....dolly looks pretty in pink and freaking just sits there, while QRIO dances, giggles and comes with an optional land-to-air missile mount. I think I'm going to go with the robot. Mwaaaah! I want a cookie!"
During the first 27 sessions, the robot was responsive to the children, giggling when its head was touched. The children enjoyed interacting with the robot during this period, the team reports.
The researchers then restricted QRIO's behavior to a more predictable, nonresponsive dance routine for 15 sessions, and children's interest declined. At the end of the study, the team reinstated its full repertoire for three sessions, and interest picked up. Programming the robot to respond to the children was key to engaging them, the team reports online 5 November in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Although the debate over the causes of autism is still vexed, arguments over the nature of the disorder itself rage, too. In the November 1 issue of Frontiers In Neuroscience [hat tip to Frontal Cortex for blogging it on 10/25], Henry Markram, Tania Rinaldi and Kamila Markram propose a new unifying theory. They call it “The Intense World Syndrome” and the basic idea is that the core problem in autism is not difficulty recognizing other people’s thoughts and motivations (the “theory of mind” theory), but a hyper-responsive brain that encodes most sensory input as overwhelming.
If you've ever gotten a horrible tattoo in the past (I'm looking at you as I type, misbegotten Tasmanian Devil), you may soon have the best excuse for it ever: "I didn't know what to get, and it was time for my flu shot." 
Were you the kid at the back of the room who made jokes aloud about teacher's harelip? Did you set Hammy the class hamster on fire? Did your lucrative business drawing boobies in pen and ink end in the Great Boy's Bathroom Raid of Ought Six? Well, despair no longer, because all those hours of detention and marks on "your permanent record" don't mean squat: 
