DAMMIT IT'S FAKE: Coming (forty-two times) and Going

I'm sorry to post something that's fake, but I accidentally spent a lot of time writing jokes for a fake news story and thought it might be entertaining. So here's a evening non-science bonus post

I didn't even doctor this image; it's from the Christine O'Donnell Merch Page

Translated from a Spanish-language news site:

A Brazilian teenager died Friday after masturbating 42 times in a row without a break, police in Brazil.

Authorities said the boy apparently beat a record set out after midnight and began to masturbate non-stop for 42 consecutive times.

Upon confirmation of his death, investigators found in his possession more than a million pornographic videos and 600 000 pictures of nude or scantily clad.

A roommate confessed to the teen liked each other all kinds of women, "fat, skinny, tall, petite, studied, unemployed, color white, all were to his liking, just saw one and made ​​him want to masturbate" he explained.

After writing about half of this post, I realized the ORIGINAL article came from a rather real-looking Spanish language fake news site. Having to copy and paste something from a website into Google Translate apparently erases any trace of skeptical processing from my brain. The fake article was devoid of fake details, and I kept trying to decide if it was due to cardiac arrest from over-exertion (unlikely in an otherwise healthy teen) or dehydration.

Here's a disturbing Wikipedia article that is (much less safe-for-work than this site) on actual autoerotic fatalities.

To break a similar record, let's see FOR THE SAKE OF SCIENCE how many one-liners I (with help from the Evolving Scientist blog-squad) can write about this before I keel over (the answer is 41):

Hydrogen Fuel From Sunlight

Splittin' molecules and takin' names, bitches!

A team of computational scientists from our very own University of Kentucky (GO CATS!)  in collaboration with the University of Louisville have come up with a way to generate hydrogen fuel from water using sunlight.  There findings published in Physical Review B show that the seemingly straightforward, but currently energy intensive, process of splitting water molecules into its chemical components can be achieved using a new metal alloy catalyst.  The authors show that the new alloy, gallium nitrate (GaN) with 2% substitution of antimony (Sb), has the right electrical properties that allow solar energy to hydrolyze water into hydrogen and oxygen through photoelectrochemical (PEC) splitting of water.

"Previous research on PEC has focused on complex materials," Menon said. "We decided to go against the conventional wisdom and start with some easy-to-produce materials, even if they lacked the right arrangement of electrons to meet PEC criteria. Our goal was to see if a minimal 'tweaking' of the electronic arrangement in these materials would accomplish the desired results."

Sh*t for brains: Gut bacteria can change the way we feel

The picture of well-being and normalcy, brought to you by probiotics.

It's well-known - but often overlooked - that the human body is teeming with bacteria (you have 10x more bacteria in/on your body than you do your own cells!).  And the idea that these bacteria do more than just hang out isn't an old one.  But we're not talking about the bacteria that cause problems; recent studies in the past year have shown that bacteria can be helpful, and not just locally.  Earlier this year, it was shown that mice that were "germ-free" were less anxious, more daring, and more active.  When pregnant mice were exposed to gut microbes, the offspring became less active and more anxious, suggesting a role in behavioural programming.  But those animals were "germ-free".  And why did I plug Activia when they're obviously not paying me to do so?

Read on, science fiends, read on.

Bill Nye, still awesome, still going on Fox

Why? Why in the Hell, does Billy Nye go on Faux News? It's a waste of his time. Although I do love how smart he looks compared to the "News Anchor" and he really lands his points well with the, dogs have sex with dogs so racism doesn't make scientific sense argument. 

[via MEDIAite, H/T media matters]

The Matrix will Never Happen

The fine folks over at Cornell's Creative Machines Lab took time out of their busy blackballing schedules and allowed two computers to talk to one another. Apparently to call something with artificial intelligence a "robot" is SUPER offensive, the more politically correct term is 'unicorn'.

[via Braiker; H/T io9]

#conching

Here's a Lisa Frank TrapperKeeper I would be proud to carry

First humans started planking, or having themselves photographed while lying down flat in unlikely places, and then the inexplicable internet trend expanded to cone-ing, owling, toothpicking and more.

Apparently vocalizations aren't the only unique learned behavior humans share with cetaceans: bottlenose dolphins stated taking fish captured in conch shells to the surface of the ocean, shaking the shell to remove the water and allow the fish to slide into their mouths, or "conching," back in 2007. Witnessing a good conching session used to be a relatively rare occurrence-- this year researcher Simon Allen and his team have photographed the activity 6 or 7 times. I got caught playing with a conch once, and let's just say the report didn't end up in such a journal as Marine Mammal Science.

Conching could be spreading throughout dolphin community in the Shark Bay area in the old-school social networking style--through observation and imitation of the behavior. They also don't know if the dolphins are capturing the fish in the shells themselves or if the fish are just chilling in their like an accidental to-go box. Allen is prudently urging anyone to refrain from jumping to any bold conclusions and was just mentioning his observations. I just think it's good for dolphins to be back in the positive light again, after the exposé of their creepier, rapey behavior. Hopefully Scott Adams doesn't delve much into ethology, but it's obvious he doesn't delve much into anything.

Maybe the dolphins are just acting out their favorite scenes from Lord of the Flies?

[via physorg.com, h/t Wired]

Hit the jump to see some internet hipsters getting in early on the conching craze:

Great Moments in Proper Punctuation

This decal can be yours for a mere $4 over at Cafe Press. No word on if you are getting charged for the two extra (.) however.

The Music Podcast

Turn off the static you're listening to on your i-Doser track and cop the new Evolving Scientist Podcast. This week we talk all things music related, including:

Musical DNA & Proteins
Your baby listening to classical music
I-Doser makes Clifford high.

As always, listen on iTunes, the external site or embedded below:

Freudian Sniff

Does everyone realize that House, MD is Sherlock Holmes retold in a modern hospital? Watson is Wilson, violin playing to guitar, Victorian con-men are heavy metals causing every sort of side effect-- and Sherlock's coke habit is Dr. House's vicodin addiction.

That's right, Sherlock Holmes's characteristic hat and pipe could just as easily be a rolled up dollar bill.

Fictional characters aside, two books from this year discuss real-world chalked up brainiacs: Sigmund Freud and William Halsted (An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine, and Freud on Coke). Halsted was a famous surgeon who popularized aseptic technique in human surgeries, and invented a number of surgeries such as the radical mastectomy as a breast cancer treatment.

In the late 1880s, cocaine was considered a miracle drug, and thought to be harmless. Physicians also had large access to it during this time, thus the heavy use by Sigmund and Halsted. Freud believed that cocaine could alleviate morphine addiction.

That's right, the person who built the pillars of modern psychology was himself in the depth of white palace (my favorite term for ye-- I had to work that in here somehow).

Ride the rails! Take another toot after the jump:

Women, Men don't want to tell you about our problems.

And in other news, the world is round, Kate Upton is attractive and bacon is tasty.

"I just feel like if we talk about it.." *I wonder if I should sit Tom Brady this week*

 Researchers at Mizzou asked a group of college kids reasons they may not want to open up about their issues. Woman and men each stated that they were embarrassed by opening up or that they felt weak for doing so in equal numbers, but a majority of men said that they view discussing problems as a waste of time.

"An implication is that parents should encourage their children to adopt a middle ground when discussing problems. For boys, it would be helpful to explain that, at least for some problems, some of the time, talking about their problems is not a waste of time. Yet, parents also should realize that they may be 'barking up the wrong tree' if they think that making boys feel safer will make them confide. Instead, helping boys see some utility in talking about problems may be more effective," Rose said. "On the other hand, many girls are at risk for excessive problem talk, which is linked with depression and anxiety, so girls should know that talking about problems isn't the only way to cope."

 Just make sure the father is the one doing all the talking to the son, otherwise he probably won't listen.

How to Keep Us from Making Fun of Your Paper

Let's talk a little shop here.

Dustin and I, and the rest of your Evolving Scientist Blog Squad, often take great pride in highlighting flubs and poor design in research papers. Not many people (including graduate students) realize how many hats a modern scientist must wear beyond performing experiments: a businessperson in ascertaining funding, a writer in preparing manuscripts, a graphic designer in preparing figures for your papers and PowerPoint-based talks, politician with your institute, teacher with classes and those training in your lab, and other stuff I'm sure I've never even thought about.

There's a new paper out today that focuses on basic design of figures that anyone who is obligated to publish their research should cop: "A Brief Guide to Designing Effective Figures for the Scientific Paper"

The image above comes from the paper, Panel A shows a god-awful figure reminiscent of some science blog web-design elements I encountered when improving the look of the site. The figure is then made more useful and appealing as you go to Panel B and C.

The digital age is changing the way science is presented, be it the image editing power of Photoshop, online publishing of journals, and the noble undertaking of popular-science blogging by sexually adept young folk such as us. If you're reading this, you're obviously already hip to keen design via the smooth code styling under the hood here at the Evolving Scientist. Science is often publicly funded, therefore the findings resulting from such funding shouldn't be muddled by a 1990s Angelfire website's design template.

So please: no more Comic Sans in your figures, PowerPoints, or websites.

Microbe Domestication: The Transatlantic Lager!

The art and process of fermenting sugary liquids into everyone’s favorite alcoholic drink has been around since the 6^th century BC (referenced in ancient Sumerian records) making it one of the world’s oldest beverages.  And their emergence matches up with the domestication of plants and other animals, and has been center-stage to the expansion of human society and social gatherings. 

Cheers! 

"The first draught serveth for health, the second for pleasure, the third for shame, the fourth for madness."  (Sir Walter Raleigh).  I didn't have any home brew available and even though it's not a lager, it's still my favorite.

 Traditionally a German beer, lagers arose during the 15^th century.  However it’s key ingredient, the humble lager yeast, actually originated from halfway around the world.  In the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (possible pay-wall alert) a group of researchers have traced the evolutionary history of the common lager yeast, Saccharomyces pastorianus (known to some as S. carlsbergensis) back to an unknown wild species native to the Patagonian forests of Argentina, S. eubayanus.  This new species genetically matches a previously unknown genomic component of S. pastorianus, and other commercial hybrid Saccharomyces species only found and used in modern brewing.  Furthermore, the authors give us a model as to how modern lager yeast evolution and microbe domestication occurred.

Yup, you read correctly.  German lager yeast evolved from hitchhiking Argentine ancestors.   Science + beer = awesome!

The Science Of Dance, Or More Accurately, I Suck at Dancing, and So Do These Guys.

Nobody puts Baby in the corner...UNLESS Baby totally needs to be called out for dancing poorly during a dance-based research study

Courtship is often initiated by dance.  This includes many species from flies and honeybees to birds and even humans.  It’s not exactly breaking news that we often have preferences and judgments concerning a person’s dance moves and often extrapolate these judgments to other things about them (Could you size up their confidence level? Their general degree of physical fitness? Assumptions that they may or may not be compatible with you physically or romantically?)  These conclusions that we draw from a person’s dancing style can influence how we view a person, including how attractive we find them.  Researchers at Northumbria University in Newcastle decided to test the idea in humans that certain movements used in male dancing could impress females more than others.  Nick Neave and other researchers involved gathered a group of thirty male volunteers, then played music and asked them to dance as if they were in a nightclub.  Their moves were captured by means of motion-capture technology (similar to the techniques used to make digital characters in movies) and made computer “avatars” of each man, so that their looks would not influence how the dancing was perceived.  Heterosexual females were gathered into a group and asked to point out which dancing styles displayed by the avatars they thought were the best, and hence, were more attracted to.  The results of this study are summarized below, along with ways to grab their attention, should you run into one of these studs:

UPDATE: Mr. Seaton Goes to Shelbyville

They say lawyers cost an arm and a leg.

Quick update on my riveting, not-really-all-that-sciencey local story of the Unwitting Penis Amputee:

He lost.

This whole fiasco would make for a great country and western ballad.

John Bobbitt, Ken Carson and Government Issue (G.I.) Petty Officer Joe all expressed their sympathies.

Puff, puff, give to TGAC: The Cannibus Sequence!

Capital T oh yes, I'm fresh, C, double-A G. ooo wee!

An Amsterdam (har har-- but yes, really.) company named Medicinal Genomics took a large supply of Funyuns and a shotgun sequencing machine and sorted out the 400 Mb genome of Cannibus sativa, the most famous species of marijuana used recreationally and therapeutically.

This genome is about 1/3 the size of the human genome, but 3 times as large as science's go-to plant, thale cress Arabidopsis thaliana. If you've had a genetics course, you know that genome size doesn't necessarily match up with organism complexity, but it is interesting to compare what has happened to a species's genome throughout evolutionary history.

For instance, the Cannibus sativa genome appears to have more variations between individuals (Plant A may be more different in its genome than Plant B), then its evolutionary cousin, Cannibus indica (Don't worry, Medicinal Genomics is on the case here, as well).You can take that fact to the streets! Wait until the Freakanomics people get a hold of how this news affects the drug trade. To the uninitiated, I have read that Cannibus sativa is the species of marijuana that leaves you with a "high," a cerebral feeling, while indica strains such as Kush mostly leaves users with more "body" associated feelings, or a "stoned" sensation.

Beyond facts like comparative genomics, a sequenced genome is rather useless to most science until it is annotated: the parts that code for proteins are separated out from the non-coding regions. Knowing the clientele, I doubt they'll ever really get around to it. Once THAT is done, then Medicinal Genomics and pharmacological companies can attempt to understand better the enigmatic cannabinaoid proteins that have the medicinal effects, such as anti-nausea, pain relief and appetite stimulation, for which marijuana is famous. That's right, like, the corporations are going to try and like, put a PRICE on something that grows wild and free in the like FERTILE PEAT of mother Earth MAN and distill it down into a PILL. what's their name like ANSLINGER CORPORATION look it up educate yourself, pull the wool from your EYES MAN   !

Oh, for PETE'S sake!!

Remember how we talked about Jack Horner, the Curator of Paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies?  To sum up, he visited Lexington a while back and gave a talk on his most recent pursuit:  building a dinosaur from a chicken.  "Dr." Horner has it in his head that if he can turn on the "hand gene", "tail gene", and "tooth gene" in a chick embryo, he'll have a "chickenosaurus".  He only wants one, and he "doesn't care how they do it", he "just wants to do it."  (Taken from his Q&A at the talk he gave).

That guy.  Yeah...

He wants to make this.  Yeah..

Oh, there's more.  If you dare.

Go take a test

Faye Flam is a great example of alliteration science writer over at philly.com, and today she posted an evolution quiz which turns out to be a great way to waste about ten minutes of your time. Don't expect any difficult chi-square/ Hardy-Weinberg stuff, just your basic 'This is what's in the news lately'. Also I got a 13 out of 15, I'm not up to date on the latest in baboon stress and urine smells.

Blogger No Love

From time to time I try and seek out blogs that are both scientific and interesting. This blog is neither of those. I stumbled upon a blog called, The Art of Making a Baby. The blog seems to be one large ego stroke for Elena insert last name here. What is suppose to be a blog about one woman's experience of going through the trials of trying to get pregnant, the progression through pregnancy and beginnings of parenthood is nothing but pictures of her in a bra and insane mumblings of someone with too much time on their hands. 

"Dustin, why are you even talking about this on a science blog? Who cares if this woman is documenting herself in bra pregnancy for all the world to see?" Well my friend, it's because she talks science, BAD, AWFUL science. To the layperson, genetics, molecular biology or maybe even science in  general are fields that are out of their grasps and that they may never understand. I admire someone who is obviously devoted in learning about such topics in order to aid in their pregnancy, so that hopefully their baby is healthy. With that said, if you are going to make an attempt to learn about the topics, make sure you are looking at CURRENT research and fully understand each topic you look into, especially if you are going to BLOG ABOUT IT LATER.

John Tyler has grandchildren that are still kicking it.

Tippecanoe and Tyler too! Suck it Van Buren!

I heard this little trivial bit of news this morning and have thought all day about how to tie it into our blog, but I'm not feeling looking up a ton of information about octogenarians and the science behind long lived organisms, so I'll just drop the basics on you.
John Tyler only became the tenth president of the US because the genius before him gave a two-hour long speech in the freezing DC cold in 1841. Once president however, he would become infamous for being the first president to have impeachment proceedings began against him and for the 'peacemaker', the worlds largest naval gun, so named because it took out more friendlies than enemies. What you may not know however, is that our tenth prez has grandchildren, and not just any grandchildren, living, breathing, tax paying, reality-TV watching grandchildren.

Anyone who visits the Perry household will immediately notice the collection of black and white photos the wife and I have hung on our wall. The one I love to show off the most is what I call my "five-generation" photo. In it are Nolan Hamilton (b.1899-1993) my great-great grandfather, my great-grandfather Forman Hamilton (b.1924), my grandmother Brenda Perry (b.1944), my old man DeWayne Perry (b.1962) and a young handsome man named Dustin (b. 1984). Having the ability to get five-generations in a single photo is a difficult thing to do, but to have three generations span from 1790-2011, nearly impossible is my thought. Somehow the Tyler family has managed to do this, which I find amazing.

Also, undergrads at William and Mary stop doing it on the Tyler statues, the family doesn't like that.

Great Moments in Potentially Non-consentual Amputation

"Doc, don't they all kind of look like that?"

Dateline: Shelbyville, KY

Fellow Kentuckian Philip Seaton says his penis, that was "so riddled with deadly penile cancer it resembled rotten cauliflower" was removed without his consent.

I would rather have a University of Kentucky logo lasered onto my uterus.

In other news.. I can get cancer there!? Please, no Dick Cancer Awareness Month. My apologies to the 1 in 100,000 men; I will not put that magnet on my car.

[Jackson Sun, h/t deadspin]

The Alcohol Podcast

Jiffin and his Fleaker, classy

This week we crack open a can or 18 and explore alcohol sensitivity and the factors that contribute to it. Join us as we discuss cheapdate, and how different races of people can handle their booze. Fair warning, we did drink during the recording so the show really goes off the rails around the 25 minute mark and never comes back. You may or may not learn anything from this, but it is damn entertaining. As always download, subscribe on iTunes, listen on the external site or embedded below:

LIVE BLOG

Live Blog Tonight..

We'll be doing the normal thing tonight, live blogging Curiosity starting around 7:45pm est. See you then.

Rick Perry lying to children and unclear how real education works

I caught this today through a USA Today article.  It's a video of GOP candidate Rick Perry answering a question from a little boy about the age of the earth and evolution.  Needless to say, it made Justin mad...


Never underestimate the predictably of stupidity.  Yup, this is your typical anti-science politician nonsensical response.  Complete and utter garbage, and the other GOP candidates are the same way.   This person took the words right out of my mouth...

"I hear your mom was asking about evolution," Perry said today. "That's a theory that is out there -- and it's got some gaps in it."

Perry then told the boy: "In Texas, we teach both creationism and evolution. I figure you're smart enough to figure out which one is right."

Yep, that's how schools work. You tell kids some things that are true and some things that are made up and you trust that the children will be "smart enough" to figure it out. "America's first three presidents were George Washington, John Adams and the Green Lantern. Good luck on your AP History test."

There's not much new to say from what I've written in the past here and here, except....

Leeloo's Breed Ancestory Contest Winners!

Much to our surprise, Leeloo is 25% Argentine Dogo, 25% Boxer, 25% Bassett Hound and the rest is composed of a mix that is suspected to be mostly Doberman.  As mentioned on the podcast, most of these results would be very hard to guess, so anyone who proposed any of the breeds is considered a contest winner.  After sorting through the comments, I saw that there were two people who mentioned that Leeloo may be part Boxer: Sara and Elijah D.  (If I forgot someone or overlooked anyone accidentally, PLEASE let us know!)

Congrats to our contest winners: Email Dustin at dwperr2@gmail.com to coordinate receiving your Evolving Scientist swag (yay for free stuff for you!)  Jiffin is currently in the process of organizing and ordering your swag, so though it won't be ready for you immediately, he is working on it.       

I've also gone ahead and posted the actual Breed Report Below, so you can look it over if you're interested.   Happy Friday! :)

I wish I could throw an orange at Jenny McCarthy

Language is a little NSFW

And when we're done...I don't wanna feel these electrodes all ova me

Sorry for the Kelly Rowland reference to those who aren't into trendy hip hop - but that just so happened to be the song playing in my head when I read this recent article in Science that apparently blew up the blogosphere over the weekend.  The issue at hand:  how to make biomonitoring systems less cumbersome and easier to manage.  After digging around a bit, I learned that EEGs (electroencephalograms - brain recordings) and EKGs (electrocardiograms - heart recordings) haven't changed all that much since they were first developed.

Ok, setting voltage to 1,000.  Um...if you have to sneeze, you might want to do that now - otherwise you might die.

 Sure, we have smaller pads that attach to the skin and more sensitive machines to pick up the little things that may end up killing us (maybe), but the actual mode of getting these recordings - things like attaching arrays of wires onto the scalp or multiple jelly-soaked pads onto your chest - are still pretty much the same.  A group of enterprising scientists decided to change all that, and what they've come up with is pretty amazing.

Hit it and THEN quit it (the jump, that is)

Dish full of A$$*@le

I swear, science is the gift that keeps on giving. In a world in which we have mice with ears on their backs, it was only a matter of time before we had mice with human asses. As with most body parts as we get older, things begin to breakdown, including parts due south. Enter human replacement parts. Research performed at the University of Michigan, in collaboration with researchers at Emory, seeks to help those who would rather stay sitting, than running. Raghavan et al. reported in the most recent issue of Gastroenterology that they successfully grew and implanted a fully functional human anal sphincter in a mouse.

Perpetrator of incontinence 

Does that picture remind anyone else of this?

What is interesting to note is that the O-ring was built from both muscle and nerve cells, so that the artificial log gate-keeper would come 'pre-wired' for it's placement once implanted into the body. Also once implanted, the sphincter was able to form it's own blood supply, which may or may not have been on the top of it's list of things to do, depending on how anal the sphincter was. Current methods of repair include grafts from skeletal muscle, injected silicone or implantation of a mechanical device. None of which have been completely successful at fixing the issue. Implantation of a engineered sphincter built from ones own cells is greatly preferable for a variety of reasons, including having native function and that cultured tissue from a person's own body will not be rejected upon implantation. The next step is taking the insights gained from the mouse model and begin clinical trials in human patients.

As always, cheers to Raghavan and the rest of the group.

Still waiting to hear word on whether or not the makers of the Jenna Haze Fleshlight(probably NSFW) are interested in investing in this technology.  Ed. note:  DEFINITELY NOT SAFE FOR WORK...unless you work at a porn shop.

I, Robot Fish

Image: physorg.com

Between October 2005 and June 2007, an interesting feature was swimming in the tanks of London Aquarium.  This robotic fish created in the lab of Huosheng Hu at Essex University in England has since captured the interest of thousands of beholders worldwide.  At $29,000 a piece, they are an expensive piece of equipment, and would probably leave anyone unfamiliar with the project wondering what the purpose was of creating such a costly robot fish.  The practicality comes into play in that these fish will serve as marine pollution monitors.  They have sensors that can detect pollutant abnormalities in the water, which is highly useful to gather information to quickly ameliorate situations like excessive fertilizer runoff, chemical spills or oil leaks, among other things.  These fish are also supposed to be equipped with a wireless internet signal, allowing them to relay the information they gather back to scientists on the surface.  Additionally, they are able to function rather autonomously, and are able swim to an appropriate location to recharge their battery when it becomes low.  Sensors for guidance are able to allow these fish to avoid obstacles while navigating their marine environment, and being a large size of supposedly five feet in length, they are expected to rarely become tangled in fishing nets.  It has been previously mentioned that sometime in 2011, a school of these robotic fish will be released into the port of Gijón, off the coast of Spain.  I don’t know about you, but I’m still waiting to hear more about this.  

So while we’re waiting, let’s talk a little more about the ideas behind this robot fish.  First off, its swimming movements are strikingly similar to a real fish, and as you would expect, that’s because the design is based off a real fish—a carp, to be precise—a process known as biomimicry.  

See a clip of it swimming after the jump!

Pawlenty makes a claim about climate change that is FALSE

Doesn't show teeth in smiles?

With the Republican race for the Presidential nomination heating up, we are hearing crazier an crazier things from the Right. For some reason, some on the Right have a distrust of those of us in the scientific community. None of this makes any sense to me, as I don't walk into the doctor's office and challenge his/her expertise in making a diagnosis, nor do I question the repair person fixing my computer, all of those people know more than I do. Now I would never claim that the Left is more intelligent than those on the Right, that's just what the evidence shows (Apparently Democrats on the low in end of the IQ, were on the extreme low end however, somewhere near eating paint, but the high IQs were also extreme, Republicans live in the middle, for once), but in recent years anti-intellectualism and a distrust for those in-the-know is the chic thing to do.

What is even more infuriating is that politicians will make scientific claims that are easily falsified. Take for example everyone's favorite Pawlenty, Tim. Before Tim dropped out of the race because he discovered he looked like an older, more boring version of Reese Witherspoon's love interest in 'Sweet Home Alabama', he was giving various interviews around the country and in Tampa, Pawlenty was questioned on Climate Change.

"Well, there’s definitely climate change. The more interesting question is how much is a result of natural causes and how much, if any, is attributable to human behavior. And that’s what the scientific dispute is about," said Pawlenty. "It’s something we have to look to the science on. The weight of the evidence is that most of it, maybe all of it, is because of natural causes... There’s lots of layers to it. But at least as to any potential man-made contribution to it, it’s fair to say the science is in dispute."

Luckily, the nice people over at PolitiFact of the 'Pants on Fire' fame looked at this quote and broke it down. Of course, the reality that 98% of climate scientist agree that human actions have contributed to climate change is sure to change the hearts and minds of an entire nation....holding my breath.....No what they are more likely to latch onto is the study where 18% of scientists (from a wide range of degrees and backgrounds, not just climate scientists) don't think that humans impact climate change and call that 'dispute'. I say if the weatherman says there is an 82% chance of rain, I'm grabbing my umbrella.

The Smound and the Furry

I usually time my Sunday visit to my field site so I can listen to the delightful pretense of Lynne Rosseto Kasper’s radio show the Splendid Table.

This week’s episode taught me how I could use some of my cherry preserves I canned earlier this year in combination with South-East or South Asian spices to make a chutney that would taste great on a roasted sweet potato wedge. This information was very useful until I realized my kitchen did not contain self-canned fruits,  but rather beer, yogurt, and the supplies for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. As I started mixing my store-brand grape jelly chutney with some Old Bay seasoning I found behind a bag of stale pretzels, she interviewed Daniel Wesson PhD., about his paper from early last year: “Smelling Sounds: Olfactory–Auditory Sensory Convergence in the Olfactory Tubercle.” (Interview embedded after the jump)

Wesson’s research mostly focuses on olfaction, in particular how loss of olfactory response may be a non-invasive indicator of Alzeheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. His lab would anesthetize mice, and insert electrodes into the part of the mouse’s brain known as the olfactory tubercule, located in the basal forebrain, and record the electrical activity of the nerve cells therein.

 WHAT DID HE FIND!? Appuyez-vous sur le saut

LIVE BLOG

Makin babies...one step at a time

"Victory is mi...wait, what?  What do mean we're artificial?"

Last week saw a landmark research paper published in Cell where scientists in Japan report the successful conversion of embryonic stem cells into sperm cells.  Taking an old-school approach (or at least seemingly so), these scientists found the combination of nutrients that was just right to make cells that are more like epiblasts, or cells that go on to become all three different layers of an embryo.  From there, they directed the cells to be more like primordial germ cells, the cells that eventually become either sperm or eggs.  Just like before, this required adding specific proteins/nutrients into the cocktail.

In the end, stem cell biology can be summed up by the above picture

So what next?  Well, to see if the cells could actually become viable sperm, the group injected the cells into the testes of mice (I'll wait for our male audience to stop cringing) and waited about 10 weeks.  Some of the injections resulted in nothing, but a few resulted in viable sperm production, and there were no teratomas (tumors commonly seen in stem cell injections) formed.  When these transformed sperm were injected into unfertilized eggs and implanted into foster mothers, the offspring were healthy and fertile themselves!  

Studies like this one have a lot of what I like to call "science-y easter eggs"  because of all the tools that were developed in order to get to the final product.  The obvious benefits to a study like this in the field of fertility research are pretty obvious, but there's also a lot of information that can be gleaned from the cells that were reprogrammed to get to the final stage.  The field of stem cell biology has waned a little in the past couple of years, but I think we're going to see a lot of activity inspired by this study and others like it.

Live Blog Tonight

Join us tonight at 7:45. We'll be live bloggin' Curiosity again. We'll talk about Aliens.

PODCAST EPISODE 8: The Body Anamoly Episode

We had a very loose theme this week and discussed:

• An earless rabbit found near the scene of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, as well as rapid evolutionary loss of PCB sensitivity in Hudson River fish
• A genetic mutation where people lack fingerprints
• A Brazilian woman with a curious foot lesion

I also make my most high-brow joke of my entire podcasting career. Tune in next week as we get drunk, I throw sophistication to the wind and probably attempt to steer all conversations to hand jobs some more: The Alcohol Science Episode!

Get this week's via iTunes subscription, the external site, download, or spin that track right here:

The sound is a little wonky this week, our sincere apologies! Do enjoy!

I love Sharks

Science is awesome, and will cure cancer

I wish I could begin this post by giving a huge middle finger to all creationist out there who have zero understanding of science, but still will gladly take the perks of hours of research performed by bad ass scientists. Enough with that, lets dive into some meaty science.

In an article published yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers at Penn have created a modified form of HIV to transduce DNA into a patients own cultured T-cells so that those cells produce a chimeric antigen receptor, that can seek out and kill cancerous cells that cause chroniclymphocytic leukemia (CLL), which is the most common form of the disease. I'll just wait while you sit and think about how awesome that really is.

Evolution causes....

....evil ground eating termites that have special powers giving them enough strength to make rocks crumble. Evolution is also a huge fan of porn and same-sex marriage.

We're All Professionals Here!

A friend had emailed me a picture this morning...

The matrix may be confusing at first, if so, read from the top to the side.  For example, "a technician seen by an undergraduate" = woman holding baby (noble servant).  Or, "PhD student seen by a technician" = a bunch of children.  Yeah, sorry grad students/ Teaching Assistants (if you work in an teaching lab), grad life tends to transform you into children from time to time, but we technicians love you any way.

Oh the naive world of science undergraduates... we (the blog team and I) were there at one time.  However, spend enough time in the field, and you can relate to this picture (on a visceral level perhaps).  The whole thing is both are pretty funny and almost spot on accurate, especially the technician panel.  And I know my fellow bloggers and cohorts would also agree about the PhD or Post Doc panel.

Great Moments in Science Font Choice

From "Sound-induced brain activity depends on stimulus subjective salience in female zebra finches:"

Because when you want people to take your graphs seriously, reach for Comic Sans™: the typeface for all professionals.

Does Dan Gilbert edit this journal?

Stephen Colbert talks Science

Last night's episode of "The Colbert Report" was science HEAVY. The first segment featured Rush Limbaugh saying that heat indexes were government manufactured and spongebob.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Also, after first getting scooped by Colbert, I get my revenge as he just now gets to my Google post.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

That Thing Lives THERE?

Party Time!  Explosive Space Modulators are strictly prohibited.

Astrobiologists must be throwing a party right now, with noise-makers, balloons and everything.  And if you’re one of them reading this, give me your address and I’ll come over with an ice cream cake and a disc of trendy beats- I like parties.  The reason for all this excitement is that within the past couple years, there have been multiple discoveries of organisms living in absurdly uninhabitable places and conditions, showing that some life doesn’t need the exact strict requirements to survive that we originally assumed.  What this means is that extraterrestrial life is looking more and more plausible.  I’ve listed some of these discoveries below:     

1) A certain species of bacteria (Halomonas titanicae) is eating the RMS Titanic.  It’s estimated that in 15 to 20 years, all that will remain of the shipwreck is a rust stain, due to the bacteria that are accelerating the ship’s disintegration by eating its metal and leaving “rusticles” (icicle-like rust deposits) in its place.  The rusticle structures are porous and easily break apart into a fine powder.  The bacterium was discovered after being isolated from a rusticle sample gathered by an aquatic robot.  Henrietta Mann, lead researcher of the project, stated that it’s not yet known whether Halomonas titanicae arrived aboard the RMS Titanic before or after it sank.  

My heart will go on and on, Jack...but this ship won't.  Especially after Halomonas titanicae gets ahold of it.  

Image: Favim.com

"Out of the consortium of microbes, whose actions are responsible for the formation of rusticles on the Titanic wreck, Halomonas titanicae is the first to be fully characterized and named. How many more novel species are living within the rusticles? How did they get there or did they evolve within this artificially created mini-ecosystem?" Bhavleen Kaur, science educator at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto, said to Discovery News. 

Rusticles.

Image: Discovery News