retrospectacle | June 30, 2006This is the weirdest thing I've heard all week. A prisoner in Pakistan woke up last weekend and found a glass lightbulb in his anus, and a 1 and a half hour surgeyr was required to.....er....."unscrew" it.
"We had to take it out intact," said Dr. Farrukh Aftab at Nishtar Hospital. "Had it been broken inside, it would be a very very complicated situation."
Mohammad, who is serving a four-year sentence for making liquor, prohibited for Muslims, said he was shocked when he was first told the cause of his discomfort. He swears he didn't know the bulb was there.
retrospectacle | June 30, 2006RNAi, or RNA interference, is a rapidly developing and powerful tool to achieve gene silencing (turning a gene "off"). Gene silencing shows what happened in a system or organism when that gene is no longer functional. In a recent study, described in a story in Technology Review, female mice lose all interest in sex when a specific gene in the brain is silenced.
(More, including a video of the un-horny mice, below the fold!)
The mating behavior of female mice is heavily influenced by the hormone estrogen--up-regulation of estrogen provokes "lordosis," where the females arch their spines in…
retrospectacle | June 29, 2006Consider this scenario.
A woman walks into a bank, and up to the teller's window. You are the teller. She pulls out a check from her purse, made out to her in the amount of $5,000. She slips it under the teller window, to you, and asks you to cash it for her. You look at the check--its from a casino. Uh oh. You are against gambling in any form whatsoever. You think its immoral and wrong, a sin!! Its against your religion and beliefs to condone such a practice, therefore you refuse to cash the check. Its against your beliefs, so why should you be made complicit in the rampant, sinful gambling…
retrospectacle | June 29, 2006I found an amazing plethora of free-access articles and resource material on stem cells (from the journal Nature). The author of one (Sean Morrison) is a very well-known researcher here at UM Neuroscience.
(Links below the fold).
A glossary for stem-cell biology
Austin Smith
Nuclear reprogramming and pluripotency
Konrad Hochedlinger and Rudolf Jaenisch
Asymmetric and symmetric stem-cell divisions in development and cancer
Sean J. Morrison and Judith Kimble
The stem-cell niche as an entity of action
David T. Scadden
Stem cells, ageing and the quest for immortality
Thomas A. Rando…
retrospectacle | June 29, 2006A list of splendiferous gadgets compiled by yours truly!
Below the fold!
This Space Projector from Mathmos projects a constantly moving image (or chaotic oil swirls) onto walls or ceilings. Think of it as a cheap LCD projector; see it at work. Also from this company, Lunar Eclipse (mimics the night sky) and Tuba, which changes colors depending on ambient sounds.
And how about this nifty video sniffer from Swann? It hooks up to any wireless video cameras with 330ft, and displays them in this handheld device. Good for being able to get the drop on ninjas sneaking up on ya. It picks up audio…
retrospectacle | June 29, 2006The NIDCD reported yesterday the discovery of a protein called protocadherin-15 (PC15)(which is associated with a form of genetic deafness called Usher Syndrome) as the likely player in the initial transduction of sound. As I have discussed here, the cochlea's sensory cells are called hair cells which project "hairs" into fluid spaces that vibrate when sound waves pass through. The "hairs" (called stereocilia) of each hair cell are connected by very important proteins called tip links. These links must be present for the transduction of sound to occur; when stereocilia are deflected, the tip…
retrospectacle | June 29, 2006Stanley Kubrick is my favorite director. Now, you can download the movie that started it all: his seldom-seen 1951 debut "Day of the Fight."
Shot by the 21-year-old filmmaker in 1950, the 16-minute documentary traces a day in the life of boxer Walter Cartier, culminating in his fight with Bobby James. It explores how Cartier psyches himself into readiness for violent behavior. Obviously, this theme resonates throughout Kubrick's career, from Spartacus to Dr. Strangelove to Clockwork Orange to Full Metal Jacket.
This movie is more like a foreboding than a masterpiece, but it is 100% Kubrick…
retrospectacle | June 28, 2006Wanna see a bird just like Pepper entertaing everyone with his speech and mimicry skills? Thanks to Blas for this amazing YouTube movie that is a lot of fun. These birds are amazing talkers, check it out!!!
retrospectacle | June 28, 20061. And it Rained All Night- Tom Yorke
(Radiohead's frontman's solo album "The Eraser" has been leaked. Its Kid A-Ok.)
2. The Only Difference Between Marytrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage- Panic at the Disco
(Fallout Boy's progeny become their betters.)
3. Jenny Was a Friend of Mine- The Killers
(80s New Wave waxes poetic about a murdered lover.)
4. Homme- Brazillian Girls
(Cooler-than-thou sultry salsa with a retro-future sound.)
5. Incinerate- Sonic Youth
(The Youth of yesteryear make contact with the kids of today through a new, catchy album.)
6. Steady As She Goes- The Raconteurs
(Jack…
retrospectacle | June 28, 2006Whilst perusing my latest copy of SEED magazine, I came across an interesting poetry structure not unlike a haiku. What I'm talking about is "the Fib," which is a poetic structure based on the Fibonacci sequence; the lines consist of 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 (and so on) syllables. While SEED published the "fib" poetry of Jason Zuzga, I thought I'd try my hand at them in my very own forum right here.
Shyness
Fish
dive
deeply,
mouths agape,
fins proud and ragged,
filtering the oceans apart
until shimmer-hooked and then flopping in boat bottoms,
when gills heave, gasp, drowning in air; eyes…
retrospectacle | June 28, 2006It's all over the news: elecrtomagnetic fields (EMFs) from cellular phones have been found to excite the brain close to where the phone is being held. As more than 500 million people in the world use cell phones, it is quite important to clarify the extent of the activation and whether it is harmful. (More under the fold.....)
The most recent study was published in July's Annals of Neurology and investigated the effects of EMF exposure on brain physiology for the first time. The authors exposed 15 volunteers to EMF signals from a GSM900 phone for 45 minutes. Motor evoked potentials (MEPs)…
retrospectacle | June 27, 2006
Ok, this isn't Pepper, but it looked so close I just had to post this adorable African Grey.
Sup fools!
retrospectacle | June 27, 2006Reuters (through Yahoo News) reports the discovery of a color-changing snake in the Borneo rainforest. The venomous snake represents an unknown species, and was found by biologists working with the WWF. The ability of reptiles to manipulate their skin pigmentation has been documented before, but is extremely rare in snakes.
"I put the reddish-brown snake in a dark bucket," said Mark Auliya, a reptile expert and a consultant for the group. "When I retrieved it a few minutes later, it was almost entirely white."
(It puts the snake in the basket. It does this whenever it's told.....)
Seriously…
retrospectacle | June 27, 2006Are women in the field of neuroscience still under-represented? Does there exist obstacles to their getting published in top journals? According to a Nature Neuroscience editorial on the subject, the situation is looking up (for them, but not for women).
Only one in five papers published in Nature Neuroscience has a female corresponding author. This number might simply reflect the low representation of women among neuroscientists, but it could also contribute to perpetuating the problem, as high-profile publication influences hiring and promotion decisions.
In response, the journal examined…
retrospectacle | June 26, 2006I'm currently working on a paper regarding learning and memory in honeybees. Actually I've been working on it for about 3 years. It got put on the backburner when I entered graduate school, but I finally decided its time to get this thing published. So, why not give you a little preview of the remix?
The paper's topic is a common and well-studied phenomenon in humans, the serial position effect. In the 1960s, Sperling conducted studies on human sensory storage, demonstrating that people have an extremely accurate memory for visual stimulation although the duration is brief. Essentially,…
retrospectacle | June 26, 2006Abel Pharmboy over at Terra Sigillata (or T-Sig, as I now say) tagged me for a Monday Morning Meme. How can I resist? These things always remind me of the "boy/job/car" games that we girls used to play in middle school.
4 jobs you've had:
1. Waitress at the Olive Garden
2. Surf shop chick (I guess I sold surfboards, but didn't know a thing about them)
3. Photography model
4. Lab technician
4 movies you could watch over & over:
1. Apocalypse Now
2. Being John Malkovich
3. Gone With the Wind
4. Billy Madison
4 places you've lived:
1. Sarasota, Florida
2. Simpsonville, SC
3. Huntsville, AL…
retrospectacle | June 25, 2006I'm a newbie to carnivals, but they seem like a great idea! So go check out the first edition of The Synapse over at Pure Pedantry. I have contributed a few submissions, and the others I've read so far are fascinating. So go get your chai skim cappuccino and learn about brains. You boss will never know you aren't working.
retrospectacle | June 24, 2006What makes a good science teacher? Honestly, I have no idea. Teaching is certainly not my cup of tea, and I thank my stars that UM only asked me to teach one semester. I probably know a lot more about what not to do, given the kind of teachers I had.
Myself, I received a horrible science education in middle and high school. In 7th grade, when I first moved to South Carolina, my new science teacher made me rewrite an essay on genetics because I didn't "explore the likelihood that God can change genetics whenever, so the idea of hereditary traits is largely moot." (More under the fold...)
In…
retrospectacle | June 24, 2006As my esteemed Sciencebloggers Jake, Evolving Thoughts, Bora, and PZ have reported, "Darwin's Turtle" died. Named Harriet (actually Harry, but was found to be female 100 years later so it was changed), the tortoise was picked up in the Galapagos islands by Charles Darwin. It found its way to the Brisbane Zoo, under the dubious yet entertaining auspices of Steve Irwin. It was 176 years old!
My opinion is this: This is no mournful or sorrowful passing. I think its a joyous celebration of life that an ambulatory (albeit slowly) animal lived as long as it did, providing a link to a person who…