Don't Injure Yourself This Holiday Season.

http://akalol.wordpress.com/2008/11/04/wrap-rage-comes-of-age/

In a July 2009 poll of adult Pennsylvanians, about 17% have been injured attempting to open factory packaging (not giftwrap) in which they needed medical attention.

In 2001, the Census Bureau said that twice has many people are hurt during wrap rage than skateboards or swimming pools.

As a result, ScienceDaily gives the following tips:

1. If you use a knife or something sharp cut away from your body.
2. Use blunt end scissors.
3. Wear protective gloves.
4. Avoid opening tough packaging in crowded areas.
5. Don't use your legs to keep a product stable.

This entire article tells me two things. Either packages are becoming way too hard to open OR we are impatient raging idiots we can't think "Hmm maybe stabbing this plastic case in my lap is a bad idea."

Pennsylvania Medical Society (2009, December 6). Wrap rage: A holiday injury waiting to happen. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 6, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091205175658.htm

Carnivorous Plants Could Be In Your Backyard

http://craziestgadgets.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/life-size-super-mario-plant.jpg

Although man-eating plants have been long debunked, carnivorous plants do exist. The most famous are the venus fly traps, but others include the pitcher plant and bromeliads. These plants eat insects in order to make up for nutrient deficiencies.

We would think that plants either eat insects or not. However, researchers believe this should be a sliding scale of carnivorous-ness. For example, petunias and potatoes have sticky hairs that catch insects, but do not digest them. They suggest that murderous plants are much more common and might digest the breakdown of their victims.

Wiley-Blackwell (2009, December 5). 'Killer petunias' should join the ranks of carnivorous plants, scientists propose. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 6, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091204103747.htm

Feeding the Birds Feeds Their Evolution

http://www.loughallenbasin.com/birds.html

Humans undeniably make a huge impact on the world. We are shaping the Earth's climate, its habitats and ultimately their inhabitants.

But did you ever think something as simple as throwing some crumbs to our feathered friends are driving their evolution? Probably not. Some birds have become so dependent on humans for food that is has changed their migratory pattern and their wing shapes.

Over 3.5 years, scientists in Germany studied the migratory patterns of birds called blackcaps. The birds has split into two groups with significant different routes. One set of birds migrated from Central Europe to southwestern Spain, the other to northwestern UK.

The newer pattern to the UK is shorter than to Spain. As a result, these lazier birds have rounder wings that give better maneuverability, but makes them ill-equiped for flying long distances. Their bills are also more narrow than their Spanish-destined counterparts who eat large fruit.

Surprisingly, these birds are raised in the same forest side by side but do not interbreed. The split into two distinct populations occurred in less than 30 generations.

Break Out The Face Masks: Swine Flu Has Mutated

With all the hysteria concerning H1N1 aka swine flu, prepare for people to start barricading themselves in their houses:

Chine has detected 8 cases if swine flu mutation, according to a health official.

Luckily, the strain found by China has an "isolated spread in the mainland" and is still susceptible to drugs and preventable by vaccine. Other information about the mutated strain--cases or deaths associated, where it was found, etc. has not been released.

The World Heath Organization (WHO) announced last week they were looking into a variant of the flu that may have caused two deaths and a severe case in Norway. This mutation isn't new--it has been found all over the world and in both mild and severe cases. However, Norway's Institute of Public Health announced this mutation may cause more severe disease by effectively infecting the deeper tissues in the airway.

The evolution and therefore mutation of viruses is not unusual. Viruses replicate incredibly fast and can infect many people easily. They must also be continuously evolving to stay ahead of the host cells. In particular RNA viruses have a high rate of mutation because they lack a way to correct any mutations. DNA replication has an enzyme that can go back, find and correct mutations that might have occured. To give you an sense of mutation rates, here are some stats according to Wikipedia (so take it with a grain of salt?):

-Eukaryotes (ex: humans, plants, animals) -.0010 to .00001 per base per generation

-Bacteria- .00000001 per base per generation

-DNA viruses (ex herpes virus, smallpox virus, human papillomavirus-HPV)- .000001 to .00000001 per base per generation

-RNA viruses (hepatitis, HIV, influenza, Norwalk virus)-.001 to .00001 per base per generation

Al Gore Stands Up For Climate Change

Al Gore, champion for climate change, decides to change the way he is promoting a greener future:

We should all start being a little green crazy.

O...M..G..-Comatose Man Was Actually Conscious For 23 years

Imagine being completely paralyzed in your body but fully conscious. You can hear everything going around you but you have no way to signal to the outside world that you are awake. This man did that (or rather nothing) for 23 years.

The man was involved in a 1983 car crash and diagnosed as being in a coma. Initial brain scans failed to pick-up his conscious brain activity. Both his family and caregivers attempted to communicate with him, but eventually gave up and assumed his vegetative state was permanent. Over the years, the doctors used the internationally used Glasgow Coma Scale to assess his condition. It tests eye, verbal and motor assessments to determine brain function, however, doctors still failed to miss signs his brain was fully functioning. Just three years ago, doctors used a "state of the art scanning system" that detected his consciousness.

Steven Laureys, a neurologist in Belgium says that of 44 diagnosed comatose patients he examined, 18 showed responses to communication. In about 40% of vegetative cases, closer examination shows a certain level of consciousness. He has also published a paper on the misdiagnoses of vegetative states.

This is not only TERRIFYING for the patient to be considered unresponsive by the outside world, but shines a new perspective on the decision for people who are considered comatose and are taken off life support. Eep.

It is coming people..

image source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/science/03tier.html

For those of you who know me.. I am paranoid by a few things that are maybe slightly irrational. One: China controls the weather.. and may one day use it to control the world. Two: We make no sense if every reaction wants to achieve Entropy. Three, and most importantly for today, we are going to put ourselves in a matrix (UNLESS WE ARE ALREADY IN ONE!?). Okay.. point of today's entry is that Intel has announced that by 2020 chips in our brains will control computer.. not keyboards and computer mice (is that the plural of this kind of mouse?). The article is found here.

Basically, Researchers at Intel's research lab in Pittsburgh are attempting to decode brain waves and tagging them to meaning so someone could surf the Internet by the power of thought. The brain is too complicated for that you say? Well.. it does work the same way a computer does in many ways.. just a series of inputs and consequential outputs. The article details that when a person thinks about a bear or hears a bear growl.. similar brain waves and brain activity occurs. The chip would be surgically implanted and it would harness the power of your brain waves.

Sounds cool? But let us think about this for a minute. Pros.. education would be a Montessori school of wondrous exploration for the next generation. The concept that a child could explore every thought is intriguing and would produce a lot of very gifted people. Second, it would be absurd how much faster you could research something. For me.. I am a visual learner, and if I could just imagine what I was thinking of instead of verbalizing.. I would be in good business.
Cons.. this is a surgery plugging you into the Internet at all times. I like turning the computer off and reading.. if you had a surgery, I wonder if it would feel the same turning the computer off. Second, You think kids have no attention span? When there is so much information out there to explore and free TV online.. could you ever really focus on one thing? I am not sure I could. Third, there is equally as much bad information available to consume someone life online that is not productive.. deliciously trashy celebrity gossip.. crazy people's new religions.. etc. Would people ever come outside for the light of day.. the list goes on.

The article does bring up a good point that years ago if you said everyone would have a cell phone on them all the time, you would be looked at strangely and not conceive it as true. Cell phones are basically tiny computers with the iPhone's and g1's in the world. It is unavoidable to stop progress, and it may be inevitable to avoid embracing curiosity of a machine-human intelligence combination.. but I want to make mistakes and over sleep! I don't want to be a machine. Maybe I am alone. Here are some more articles for those interested. One, Two, and Three.