I Don't Need Heroin, Running Is My High

Running is one of those things that I never understood. Maybe it's because running makes me want to strangle myself with my shoelaces. Maybe because I'm never late. Maybe it's because I don't believe in a running unless something is chasing you (bears, dogs, cops). So I have never had a runner's high.

However, research has shown the existence of a "runner's high" which can also become addictive. Using rats, scientists have shown that a release of endorphins during running is comparable to opiate use. It is speculated that running can be used as therapy for heroin and morphine addicts.

During long runs, glycogen (which are sources of energy) stores become emptied and glands in the brain release endorphins that allow the person to keep going.

The experiment had 44 male and 40 female rats divided into 4 groups:

• rats with a wheel and food availability 24hrs a day
• rats with no wheel and food availability 24hrs a day
• rats with a wheel and food availability for 1 hr
• rats with no wheel and food availability for 1hr

The rats where subjected to these conditions for several weeks then given a drug used to treat opiate addicts and causes withdrawl symptoms. The theory is that the more endorphins or "high" from exercising would produce more intense withdrawls. Active rats had more withdrawl symptoms than their inactive counterparts. Rats given food for an 1 hr exercised much more and had even a more significant symptoms.

How to Kill Vampires (Mosquitoes)

We all know the itchy and annoying bite of a mosquitoes. Personally, I think they are the scourge of the world has THEY DON'T DO ANYTHING but spread malaria and be obnoxious. Mosquitoes are the Jimmy Fallons of the insect world.

But what's the best way to kill them?

Clap them.

Mosquitoes are very light, so swatting at them with your hand causes an air column which can push them around your hand of death. When you attempt to clap them, each hand is pushing a column of air together causing the insect to become trapped.

Another way is to just smack it against a surface, where again there is no wind flow to carry it away from certain death.

User hints have also recommended wetting your hand and swatting at them so they will stick to you ("Mosquitoes have a high surface area to weight ratio and they are easily trapped on a wet surface. ") or WD-40 and a flame torch.

Big People, Little Brains

A new finding at UCLA has found a link between obesity and brain tissue.

Obese people had 8% lesser brain tissue and appeared 16yrs older than people of normal weights.

Overweight people seem to have half the effects, with 4% lesser brains an appeared to have aged 8 years older.

"Obese people had lost brain tissue in the frontal and temporal lobes, areas of the brain critical for planning and memory, and in the anterior cingulate gyrus (attention and executive functions), hippocampus (long-term memory) and basal ganglia (movement), the researchers said in a statement today. Overweight people showed brain loss in the basal ganglia, the corona radiata, white matter comprised of axons, and the parietal lobe (sensory lobe). "

This means that other than taking a toll on your body, extra weight and fat can deplete your brain making you more susceptible to diseases such as Alzheimer's.

Plutophiles UNITE!

From CNN.com: What's a planet? Debate rages on.

It's been almost three years that the International Astronomical Union declared Pluto a "dwarf planet" causing a ringing heard around the world from people's heads exploding.

Pluto? NOT A PLANET? How am I supposed to finish the saying 'My Eager Mother Just Baked Us Nine'...whats?? (For those of you who didn't the luck of learning this, its to remember the planets in order.)

Although most of us grudgingly accepted this fate, (I mean who are we to argue with the IAU?!) there are people who demand Pluto be recognized to its full potential. Examples include Illinois' senate "adopted a resolution" saying that the celestial body was "unfairly downgraded" and declared March 13th Pluto Day. Why do they care? Because an Illinoian (Illinoisian? Illinoist?) discovered it back in the day.

New Mexico also seems equally distraught, with it's House of Reps calling February 18th 2009 "Pluto is a Planet in New Mexico Day." (The Illinoian discoverer had worked in New Mexico for a long time).

In general Americans seem quite pissed about the IAU's decision with 90% of its criticisms coming from us. A theory on why that is from one astrophysicist is basically that we like icy balls.

"Disney's dog Pluto was sketched the same year the cosmic object was discovered. And Pluto was discovered by an American. So here you have a recipe for Americans falling in love with a planet that really is just a tiny ice ball," Tyson told Time magazine.


There still is debate on the IAU's classification of a planet (must orbit the sun, must be crushed into almost spherical shape by gravity due to its size and must not have anything orbiting its space) and if/how Pluto can be better defined.

Lost? Then You Probably Are Going In Circles

The Circular Reasoning can be found on ScienceNews.org

From the Max Planck Institute in Germany, scientists have found that people tend to walk in circles in unfamiliar terrain. It is hypothesized this is because when people have no clue to direction, they rely on their own body to tell them which way they are going.

This includes "rotational shifts and joint movements" which tell the person where straight this. Since this isn't accurate at all, error makes the person eventually drift to a side.

“You may think that you’re walking in a straight line, but in fact the direction you’re walking in is drifting more and more away from straight ahead, making you walk in circles,” Souman says.

Researchers have found that people start to lose their sense of straight after walking the length of a football field. In one experiment, 3 men were put in the Sahara desert and were told to walk straight. Two walked during the day and one at night with a full moon. It turned out the day-walkers "veered off course but did not go in circles." However, the night man seemed to make several turns, almost walking backwards when the moon hid the clouds.

In another study, 6 college students walked in a German forest which gave no clues to direction. Four walked on a cloudy day and all 4 walked in circles; only 3 of them realized they were doing so. The remaining two walked on a sunny day and went straight only wavering when the sun was hid by the clouds.

In a third study, 15 students were blindfolded and had to walk straight down a field. All but three walked in circles no more than 20m wide.

However, this new research proves to be useful to someone in a horror movie:

In emergency situations, cinematic monster hunters and others may become so panicked that they disregard external heading cues and unintentionally end up back where they started, Souman suggests.

Survival of the fittest?

Let's pretend this is science related:

1. When his 38 caliber revolver failed to fire at his intended victim during a hold-up in Long Beach , California would-be robber James Elliot did something that can only inspire wonder. He peered down the barrel and tried the trigger again. This time it worked...

2. The chef at a hotel in Switzerland lost a finger in a meat cutting machine and after a little shopping around, submitted a claim to his insurance company. The company expecting negligence sent out one of its men to have a look for himself. He tried the machine and he also lost a finger. The chef's claim was approved.

3. A man who shoveled snow for an hour to clear a space for his car during a blizzard in Chicago returned with his vehicle to find a woman had taken the space. Understandably, he shot her.

4. After stopping for drinks at an illegal bar, a Zimbabwean bus driver found that the 20 mental patients he was supposed to be transporting from Harare to Bulawayo had escaped. Not wanting to admit his incompetence, the driver went to a nearby bus stop and offered everyone waiting there a free ride. He then delivered the passengers to the mental hospital, telling the staff that the patients were very excitable and prone to bizarre fantasies... The deception wasn't discovered for 3 days.

5. An American teenager was in the hospital recovering from serious head wounds received from an oncoming train. When asked how he received the injuries, the lad told police that he was simply trying to see how close he could get his head to a moving train before he was hit.

 

6. A man walked into a Louisiana Circle-K, put a $20 bill on the counter, and asked for change. When the clerk opened the cash drawer, the man pulled a gun and asked for all the cash in the register, which the clerk promptly provided. The man took the cash from the clerk and fled, leaving the $20 bill on the counter. The total amount of cash he got from the drawer... $15. [If someone points a gun at you and gives you money, is a crime committed?]

7. Seems an Arkansas guy wanted some beer pretty badly. He decided that he'd just throw a cinder block through a liquor store window, grab some booze, and run. So he lifted the cinder block and heaved it over his head at the window. The cinder block bounced back and hit the would-be thief on the head, knocking him unconscious. The liquor store window was made of Plexiglas. The whole event was caught on videotape.

 

8. As a female shopper exited a New York convenience store, a man grabbed her purse and ran. The clerk called 911 immediately, and the woman was able to give them a detailed description of the snatcher... Within minutes, the police apprehended the snatcher. They put him in the car and drove back to the store. The thief was then taken out of the car and told to stand there for a positive ID. To which he replied, "Yes, officer, that's her. That's the lady I stole the purse from."

9. The Ann Arbor News crime column reported that a man walked into a Burger King in Ypsilanti , Michigan at 5 A.M., flashed a gun, and demanded cash. The clerk turned him down because he said he couldn't open the cash register without a food order. When the man ordered onion rings, the clerk said they weren't available for breakfast. The man, frustrated, walked away.  

10. When a man attempted to siphon gasoline from a motor home parked on a Seattle street, he got much more than he bargained for. Police arrived at the scene to find a very sick man curled up next to a motor home near spilled sewage. A police spokesman said that the man admitted to trying to steal gasoline, but he plugged his siphon hose into the motor home's sewage tank by mistake. The owner of the vehicle declined to press charges saying that it was the best laugh he'd ever had.

We Can Totally Solve Global Warming With Space Mirrors

From TIME.com-Can geoengineering help slow global warming?

Global warming is happening.

And scientists are trying to think of ways to combat it before we all suffocate to death. One way is geoengineering which is basically we are going to cool the earth... somehow. Most of the ideas revolve around controlling the solar radiation coming at us.

Method 1: Shooting sulfur particles into the atmosphere with "artillery" (giant cannons??) or airplanes that will thicken the air, therefore blocking some of the sun
Downside: Must be done continuously. Particles eventually will either disseminate or fall out of the sky. Acid rain-We won't be hot, but we also won't have skin. Change in precipitation patterns.

Method 2:Shoot seawater mists at low clouds to reflect the sun. "Relatively" cheap--about $9billion to combat a "century's worth of global warming"
Downside: Salty clouds? Raining fish?

Method 3: Giant space mirrors. No, seriously.
Downside: Unaligned rogue mirror may laser us in half. But at least it would be less hot right?

As you can see, scientists are....getting there. They have yet to have a definitive answer, but at least we are getting creative.

Baby Blue Eyed Freaks

What does Liv Tyler, Rachel McAdams and Ryan Phillipe have in common?

They are all blue-eyed mutant freaks according to LiveScience.

The Natural color of human irises range from brown, the most common, to blue, which lack pigment. The gene that dictates the color of our eyes also affects hair and skin color. This is why we associate blue eyes, blonde hair or green eyes and red hair.

However, scientists have shown that a genetic mutation is common in all blue eye owners. This mutation is not in the hair-eye-skin color gene itself (technically called OCA2), but in the gene next to it. It then affects OCA2, by literally turning our brown eyes, blue by lessening the amount of pigment in the eyes. This isn't to say that the mutation turns off OCA2; if it did, we'd be albino because we'd have absolutely no pigment.

Illustration:

[neighboring gene]-[OCA2]=unaffected OCA2=pigment=big browns O_O
[mutated neighboring gene]-[OCA-2]= affected OCA2=lesser pigment= baby blues O_O
[somehow messed up OCA2] = turned off OCA2=no pigment at all=crap. you are albino O_O


Now how did they figure this out? Scientists took a bunch of blue-eyed people from all over the world and looked at their mitochondrial DNA, which only comes from your mom. You can imagine that over hundreds of generations, the DNA would have some kind of natural variation in it. However, 799/800 blue eyed people had the same mutation in the same unchanged region of DNA (the 800th person had blue eyes with a brown spot). This means the mutation for blue eyes must be genetically recent--it hasn't been around long enough for variation to be introduced. Also, since all these people share the same region of DNA, there most be a common ancestor...that arose 6-10,000 yrs ago. Scientists imply that before this time, blue eyes simply didn't exist.

Wearing High Heels Makes You Depressed, But You Look So Darn Good.

Researchers found that wearing non high heeled shoes can lower your risk for depression and other neurological disorders as well as possibly be used as therapy for these problems! Read the paper here. So all you need in life to be happy are your flippy floppies, but how is that possible?

The nervous system is extremely complicated and hard to understand even after getting a degree in it, so I will do my best to make this easy to understand. Some basics to know.. signals traveling through the brain as well as from the brain to the body and are sent as electric signals. The central nervous system consists of the brain and the spinal chord and the peripheral nervous system consists of the all the nerves that connect the central nervous system to the rest of the body. There are several tracts that travel from the brain to the body and each is characterized with certain functions i.e. motor, pain, temp, etc.

First we should talk about what depression is.. You have probably seen that Zoloft commercial where the little ball is rolling along frowning, but after taking Zoloft it seems to have regained a happy hop now cured of depression. So, most people know what depression is behaviorally, but what causes it? Within the brain there is a region called the limbic system. The limbic system contains the hippocampus, amygdala, anterior thalamic nuclei, and limbic cortex which directs signals that affect emotion, behavior, long term memory and sense of smell. So the limbic system is involved in hormone release, memory storage and signaling. Severely depressed people are often found to have increased amounts of the hormone cortisol as well as a higher concentration of neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin. So, researchers have not exactly figured out what cellularly defines depression but the activity of the limbic system is a target. (Zoloft works to regulate the amount of serotonin)

How does wearing highheels affect this you ask? Walking is a physical activity and the body monitors the flexion and contractions of the muscles as you walk and sends different signals based on what it perceives the muscle contraction to mean based on experience. So, when you wear highheels the angle between the front part of your foot and your shin makes your foot constantly flexing as if you are on the balls of your feet which is different than the continual flex our foot should feel as you walk. Normal foot flexing, as exhibited while using flat shoes, inhibits the limbic system and stimulates the creation of new neurons (neurogenesis). So when you wear high heels, you have an overactive limbic system- causing you to have crazy emotions, behaviors, etc (maybe releasing hormones making one prone to depression) and you aren't making as many new brain cells. Maybe this explains some things? Why is causes neurogenesis and inhibits the limbic system is a post in itself, but i hope this makes sense.

Don't let this discourage you shoe lovers of the world (cough- Kim- cough).. but put on those flats from time to time!!

Sorry for the long time between posts. I will be posting more frequently! 

BANG YOUR HEAD....for brain wrinkles.

Wired into the Brain

Whenever we think of a brain, we imagine it has a wrinkley mass of.....stuff.

Besides a unique aesthetic look, the wrinkles are related to cognitive abilities, as abnormalities are linked to autism and depression.

However, it turns out all those crevices and crenelations actually help prevent damage.

Other than packing a large surface area into a tiny space, the crinkles absorbs some of the shock from banging your head on the desk, being in a mosh pit, or one mean bar fight. Researchers discovered this through computer models of the brain, which in this case, smooth vs. wrinkled. In the smooth layout, every part of the brain was more susceptible to damage.

China is going to rule the world_reason #54

It's Chinese GATTACA.

In China, researchers are now trying to use DNA testing to predict children's talents and futures. Scientists took a DNA sample from a swabbing of the child's cheek then isolated 7 genes. Further analysis supposedly can reveal the child's athleticism, emotional stability, IQ, focus, memory, etc.

"For about $880, Chinese parents can sign their kids up for the test and five days of summer camp in Chongqing, where the children will be evaluated in various settings from sports to art. The scientific results, combined with observations by experts throughout the week, will be used to make recommendations to parents about what their child should pursue."

So basically, while we are in our 20s going "WTF am I doing with my life?!'' Chinese kids already know by the time they are 10.

"High-Fat Diet May Make You Stupid and Lazy"

From the No, REALLY?! files of science/ livescience.com


Scientists have shown that high fat diets may result in lower cognitive abilities and more difficulty exercising. For 10 days, rats were either given a high fat diet (55% calories as fat) or a low fat diet (7.5% calories as a fat). The findings were as follows:

• After 4 days, fatty rat muscles had difficulty utilizing oxygen, as much as 4x less. This made their hearts have to work harder and increase in size.
• After 9 days, fat rats took longer to finish a maze and made more mistakes than the lean group.
• Build up of uncoupling protein 3 made them less efficient at using oxygen needed to make energy, ie they become lazier.

Although this seems like a big ole DUH, scientists say that this study shows the short term effects of high fat diets, in oppose to the long term consequences that have been drilled into our heads -- obesity, heart disease and diabetes. In other words, "While the finding may not seem a big surprise, the researcher say it might suggest that high-fat diets make humans lazy and stupid."

Science Meets Stupid #2: Can I Eat This Moldy Pizza?

I have always thought that stupidity was natural selection working extra hard. I came across an article on cnn.com telling college students how to decide if something is okay to eat or not.

Okay. If you are in COLLEGE, I would hope you would be able to figure out chunky milk= bad, green fuzzy spots = bad and flies= bad. Here are some actual questions answered in the article:

Can I cut the mold off the bread/cheese and eat the rest?
Do dry packaged foods like ramen or boxed macaroni and cheese last forever?
The pizza from last night has been sitting out on the counter. Can I eat it for breakfast?
Should I drink milk after its use-by date? What about eggs?
Raw chicken always smells funny. How do I know if it's gone bad? Should I drink the water after the expiration date has passed on the bottle?

Sigh.

1. If it has mold...throw it away.
2. If forever means 4yrs in a poorly ventilated dorm room, yes.
3. This is why we have fridges. So things DO NOT sit out on the counter.
4. Smell test.
5. When you get salmonella food poisoning.
6. WATER. DOES. NOT. EXPIRE.

In general, look at it and smell it. Or give it to your roommate for a taste test.

RUN! JELLYFISH ARE GOING TO RULE THE WORLD!!!

There are certain things everyone should know about Mother Nature:
1. Some animals are sort of ugly.
2. Animals are trying to kill us.
3. You don't f*ck with Mother Nature. Seriously.

Case in point, Turritopsis nutricula aka the Immortal Jellyfish.

I'm older than Jesus.

WTF is it? Am I going to run into one? Well, it's a jellyfish. Actually it is a hydrozoan, but it's pretty much a jellyfish. They are normally found in warm tropical waters but is believed to spreading because of ships dumping their water in various ports.

What do they do? They are solitary predators...which is boring. The big deal is that they are theoretically immortal. When they become sexually mature, instead of growing old like the rest of us, they revert back to the polyp stage (in other words, they become babies again). The animals do this via transdifferentiation, which is a fancy way of saying that they can change their cells into a different type of cell. This isn't anything special to certain members of the species either. In laboratory studies, 100% of the jellyfish reverted back to this stage.

What does this mean for me? These animals are only 4-5mm long in diameter meaning you probably won't notice them if they were in front of you. However, you might not have noticed THESE THINGS ARE IMMORTAL. So, it's possible they can continue reproducing but never dying. And possibly combine together in a network to make a big godzilla-jellyfish (Jell-zilla) monster who can kill us all. Although they can't do this NOW, the COULD do it later. Evolution, people. It will kill us all. (Except these jellyfish).

Want to read more on this hiccup in the circle of life??:
Turritopsis nutricula: the world's only 'immortal' creature
Cheating Death: The Immortal Life Cycle of Turritopsis

STOP STARING AT US!

From directly livescience.com

"A British survey finds the average guy stares at 10 different women for a total of 43 minutes of daily ogling. That adds up to nearly a year of time between age 18 and 50, The Telegraph reports.

Women watch, too. In the survey of 3,000 people, women were found to stare at men for more than 20 minutes a day.

A U.S. study last year found — no surprise — that single women will look at a man longer than married women do."

10 Endangered Species That Are Too Ugly To Live by Atom.com

Taken DIRECTLY from Atom.com:

10 Endangered Species That Are Too Ugly To Live

Scientists love to tell us how we're killing the earth with our indulgences. One day its perfectly fine to hunt spotted owls in old growth forest with a hairspray-fueled flamethrower and the next it's a travesty. I don't get it either.

It's bad enough they're robbing us of our simple pleasures, but they're making hard just to function. If you believe the "facts", you can't even hit the gas on your SUV without 312 of these adorable Pygmy Possums spontaneously croaking.

"Never mind our genocide, you have a mini-mall to get to. We understand."

Even the most jaded among us probably felt a twinge of guilt when you considered how our actions impact that doe-eyed critter. They really are endangered, even more so when you factor in the 7 of them I shook to death for my morning workout. However, for every adorable critter we've pushed to the brink of extinction, we're also doing our part to destroy a bunch of butt-ugly ones too.

The hideous face of genetic diversity

If we all do our part to waste natural resources, the ten horrorshows below will soon be a distant memory. It may seem an impossible dream, but as Lao Tzu once said, "A journey of 1,000 miles starts with a single murder."

1. Hybrid Spider Monkey

Also known as the OMGutaun and Sex Doll Monkey, the hybrid spider monkey lives in small, fragmented populations in Colombia and Venezuela. Humans occasionally hunt them for food, but mostly because that surprised look on their face before they get capped is just priceless.

Mankind has been encroaching on their habitat for years for agricultural purposes. This is unfortunate, but, as any aficionado of Venezuelan blow can tell you, it's totally worth it. The government has attempted to stave this off by sponsoring an anti-drug ad campaign, but so far it has only yielded giggles:

2. California Condor

You've probably heard the old adage "A face only a mother could love". The California condor tests that assertion freshly hatched and then pushes the boundaries further with each day it lives:

If it were aborted, would you know the difference?

People are quick to blame pesticides and loss of habitat for the endangerment of this bird, but it has to have occurred to someone that even their own mothers probably deem them too fugly to live.

This condor is unusual in that it is monogamous and pair-bonds for life. It would be even more interesting if anyone believed that a bird looking like this had any chance in playing the field:

3. Axolotl

This first runner-up in the Endangered Animal Most Resembling My Penis With A Fur Collar competition represents the best reason not to trust Al Gore. He's free to bombard us with as many unfortunate truths about global warming as he likes, but when he doesn't mention punting this creature as an ancillary benefit of it, he's just not being 100% honest.

The axolotl not only has to contend with climate changes vanishing their habitat, but many Mexico City locals collect them for pets. It's a great gift for children to whom you wish to impart "I love you, but not enough to buy you puppy."

4. California Freshwater Shrimp

This creature's rather slight build is probably part of a defense strategy. By remaining largely translucent it will certainly not stand out to predators. It's just a shame that evolution left the visible 20% looking like hunchbacked, scaly turd-casing.

Hiding is also part of its M.O. in terms of habitat choice. It prefers to live in the overhanging vegetation and exposed root structures in riverbeds, much of which is disturbed by local industries (mining, timber harvesting, etc.). The real crime is that these disgusting creatures are more than happy to hide away and industrial greed is now forcing me to look at them. Up yours, mining.

5. Helmeted Hornbill

People always joke that the playpus is an odd assortment of parts, yet it somehow retains a unique charm. This bird looks like someone tried to recreate that magic by cobbling some lung tumors and a massive beak-colored zit together. They failed.

The hornbill's casque is considered very valuable as a source "ivory" for carving tools. Not that cutting off the head isn't its own reward.

6. Aye-Aye

This is an aye-aye after a 3-day weekend filled with ample sleep, gourmet cooking, daily Swedish massages, and hatha yoga sessions. It still has the crazed, harried look of a creature recently dragged behind a truck on a road paved with cactus needles.

The nocturnal lemur is thwarted by both diminishing habitat and the locals' belief that it is an omen of death. This silly superstition is based on nothing more than than the fact that the Aye-Aye is entirely unafraid of humans, the perpetual sneering of its rodent-like teeth, that its long skeletal fingers are designed for harvesting grubs, insects, and souls, that its eyes perpetually burn with flickering hellfire, and that someone in the village dies every time an Aye-Aye crosses their path. Silly backwards primitives!

7. Uakari

The uakari, or Poor Cranial Circulation Monkey, lives in trees in western Brazil and eastern Peru. It is also the winner of the aforementioned Endangered Animal Most Resembling My Penis With A Fur Collar competition, but that really says more about my penis than this similarly unattractive creature. No more topical cream orders from the internet for me!

Their name comes from the indigenous term for "Dutchmen", likely a reference to the sunburned faces of European explorers that uncovered their sunny shores. The Europeans took the joke in stride and playfully got them back by tainting all their gifts to the natives with smallpox.

8. Purple Burrowing Frog

This isn't just a pile of sentient mucus, it's a marketing opportunity:

The south Indian habitat of these burrowing frogs is being encroached upon by the growing needs of the coffee crop. If someone told me I was going to be killing a poor defenseless animal just to enjoy my coffee, I might actually feel a twinge of guilt (though I'd probably mistake it for gas...coffee doesn't sit well with me). But if someone told me it was this monstrosity, I'd probably order a carafe to go. Are you pickin up what I'm sending out, Starbucks?

9. Dugongs

It's hard to imagine how a creature like this could possibly be endangered. You would think that a fat, sedentary dim-witted bottom feeder that would be out-maneuvered by your average slug would would sitting pretty at the top of the food chain, but somehow that hasn't manifested.

The dugong may look like a seal struck with an inflammatory allergic reaction, but it is actually a close cousin of the manatee. Similarly, they suffer issues with destruction of habitat through runoff polution, though the dugong is unique in that it is also prized as a source of meat and oil. They are hunted by placing a large net twenty feet in front of them, which will ensnare them upon reaching it 3 days later.

10. Snake Skin Hunter Slug

Slugs aren't generally known for their rakish good looks, so to stand out as repulsive by their standard is really noteworthy. This slug not only emulates the color of vomit, it goes the extra mile to copycat its texture as well.

Not a lot is known about this creature. This is partly due to them being so scarce, partly because no biologist wants to pull the short straw and spend their day studying a yellow turd.

Special thanks to Scientific American and the Endangered Ugly Blog.

Can't spell Research without Search

see more Funny Graphs

Want to have Twins? Go to India.

Yahoo!! for Twins.



In India, the village of Kodinji is home to 230 sets of twins in about population of 15,000.

There are 35-45 twins per live birth, which is four times "than normal."

Multiple births can be attribute to a variety of factors, such as genetics, chemicals, drugs and diet. However, this village lacks exposure to altering chemicals or drugs.

Baffled doctors think this is due to an environmental factor, specifically "it could be something in the water."

You can't get more scientific that that.

When Science Meets Stupid #1: Swine Flu Parties

According to an article by BBC news, people are hosting swine flu parties or intentionally coming into contact with people who have H1N1.

The reasoning is, like children chicken pox parties, they will infer resistance to the flu while having to suffer through the "mild" form, before it becomes stronger in the winter.

If you are willing to go lick someone with swine flu, you are an idiot for the following reasons:

1. If you've had the flu and you've had the chicken pox, you know the flu is much worse. Tired, coughing, sore throat, nausea, congestion outweighs itchy and sitting in a bath tub of oatmeal.
2. Although both chicken pox and swine flu are highly contagious, the risk of swine flu mutation is much higher and much lesser people have immunity. In other words, H1N1 spreads incredibly fast. Our best line of defense right now is currently containment. Putting out a Craigslist ad of swine flu suffers defeats this purpose.
3. More people infected = more risk of mutation = Resident Evil virus = we all dead
4. Chicken pox rarely kills and if so, people fall into one of the groups: immunocompromised, elderly or children. However, those susceptible for H1N1 largely falls within people 25 and younger, not the oldheads. Which means, you are next.
5. "If swine flu spreads of control, who cares right? We have a vaccine." First of all, the vaccine may or may not work, like the regular flu vaccine. It's a guessing game. Also, if you are young and healthy, you will have to wait behind the pregnant, the old and the babies. By that time, you might be dead. (Seriously.)

So people, moral of the story is please don't try to get the flu. Or please get it. Maybe it will cleanse your gene pool.

Chemistry Joke!

Need To Remember Things? Take A Nap.

I love sleeping. Unfortunately, I don't do it enough at night, which leaves me to make more of it up during the day.

Read this, then go nap.

"New research conducted by brain researcher Avi Karni of the University of Haifa in Israel explores the possibility that naps help lock in sometimes fleeting long-term memories. A 90-minute daytime snooze might help the most, the study finds.

"We still don't know the exact mechanism of the memory process that occurs during sleep, but the results of this research suggest the possibility that it is possible to speed up memory consolidation," Karni said. "In the future, we may be able to do it artificially."

Long-term memory refers to memories that stay with us for years, such as "what" memories — a car accident that happened yesterday — or "how to" memories, such as one's learned ability to play the drums or tear it up in a game of soccer.

Karni, who co-authored the study in a recent issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, instructed participants to learn a complex thumb-tapping sequence, then split the study subjects into two groups: one that napped for an hour, and one that didn't. The people who took an afternoon snooze showed sizeable improvement in their performance by that evening.

"After a night's sleep the two groups were at the same level, but the group that slept in the afternoon improved much faster than the group that stayed awake," Karni said.

An additional leg of the study showed just how much faster a 90-minute nap could help lock in long-term memories.

"Daytime sleep can shorten the time 'how to' memory becomes immune to interference and forgetting," Karni said. "Instead of 6 to 8 hours, the brain consolidated the memory during the 90-minute nap."