Occassionally, and by this I mean very, very rarely, geeks find significant others and get married (in the real world, not Second Life!). When such an noteworthy event happens, blissful geeks have been known to go all out on their wedding cakes, creating frosted confections of such phenomenal nerditude that I had no choice but to reproduce a few here for your gawking pleasure. In addition to the link above (check it out for more cool cakes), I had to do a bit of my own investigating and find some more nerdcakes. (Continued below the fold....) Its-a meeeeeeee........ A circuit-board cake…

I came across a story on Digg.com that describes an interesting dilemma for universities: how to reconcile the needs of their students while maintaining delineations of church and state. Specifically, the University of Michigan-Dearborn (I go to the main campus in Ann Arbor) has come under criticism for plans to install two footbaths, at a cost of $25,000, to accommodate their Muslim students. Muslims are required to wash their feet prior to the five times daily prayers, and non-Muslim students had complained that bathroom sinks were being used for this purpose. This created unsafe, slippery…

Ah Sasha Cohen, pokin' fun at the silly creationists. Its a bit like shooting fish in a barrel isn't it? Heh, still hilarious.

There's a total lunar eclipse which is taking place right before 6am Eastern time, and as nocturnal as I am, there's no way I'll be up in time to see it. So, I've decided to stay up to watch this rare event. A total lunar eclipse is rare: it happens less than once every two years--but since you can't see every lunar eclipse your spot on Earth, the opportunity to see one is even rarer. During a total lunar eclipse, the Earth gets between the Moon and the Sun. The Earth's shadow falls on the full moon, which turns it dark to observers' perceptions. Light bent through the Earth's atmosphere…

The German composer Beethoven, considered one of the most gifted composers of all time, died inexplicably at the age of 57 in 1827. He had been quite sick in the months leading up to his death, and in the past few years, research has determined that Beethoven likely died of lead poisoning. Studies detected toxic levels of lead in his hair and then, two years ago, in Beethoven's bone fragments. Now, Viennese forensic pathologist Christian Reiter has published a paper in the Beethoven Journal claiming that Beethoven's doctor likely inadvertently poisoned the composer with lead-containing balm…

An unfortunate, but amazing case: a 25-year-old schizophrenic man shoved a 14.5-cm-long ballpoint pen through his eye socket, all the way to his cerebellum (in the rear of the brain). Hospital staff found him lying in a pool of blood, and the man told doctors he 'had torn his eyes because it tickled and that 10 years earlier he had shot himself in one eye with an airgun rifle.' His doctors were puzzled: the man slipped quickly into a coma, but there was no sign of serious trauma to the area other than a small hematoma. A CT scan (above) provided more baffling information, which the doctors…

As noted around the science blogosphere, something wicked this way comes. PRISM, or the Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine (created by the Association of American Publishers), is setting up a strawman argument against Open Access publications, claiming that the tradition of peer review is under attack. Open Access, such as PLOS journals and other initiatives, make it easier for people to have access to the research that they, as taxpayers, implicitly fund. Wouldn't you like to know what you are paying for, and whether it benefits your life? Wouldn't you like scientists…

When I threw a going-away party for my friend Lisa on Friday, I made some of that jiggly party staple: jello shots! Little did I realize that some awesome (and bored) sciency-types have a website dedicated to a series of experiments to determine how much vodka can be added to jello shots before they lose their gelainous cohesion. The way that I made mine is "the normal way," where you add 1 cup boiling water to the Jello packet, stir for 2 minutes until the mix is completely dissolved, and then add 1 cup vodka (instead of water). This yields jello shots which are not overwhelmingly…

Last week I blogged about the unique properties of cone snail venom. Now take a took at that venom put to use: I wish I could slow it down enough to see the moment where the snail impales the fish with the venom barb, but its too quick.

Yeah so, I like to be silly sometimes. To check out my other LOLParrots, go here and here!

Popular legend tells us that during the process of mummification, the ancient Egyptians removed the vital organs, including the brain, and placed some of them in jars. The earliest known mummies date to around 3300 BC in Egypt. During the removal of the brain, the bone behind the nose (the cribiform plate) would be broken with a long metal tool. The embalmer would dice the brain into small pieces so it could be pulled out through the nasal passage. They would then refill the skull half-way with either sawdust or a plant-based resin (see below for half-filled skull). Check out this cool…

Before I became interested in hearing research, I thought I was going to spend my career studying Alzheimer's disease (AD), and worked at the Roskamp Institute for Neurodegenerative Disorders at USF. AD is a major enigma in medicine due to the many contributing factors: genetic, lifestyle, and environmental; as well as differing times of onset (early and late) and varying symptoms among affected individuals. The end result is clear though: AD is fatal and affects the brain in drastic ways. AD is characterized by a few pathological hallmarks at the neural level. One is the presence of amyloid-…

$4375.00The Cadaver Calculator - Find out how much your body is worth. From Mingle2 - Free Online Dating Mingle2 - Dating Site Maybe I should have done comparisons of before and after this weekend, and seen how my body depreciated in value. :) I tag Kevin, Steve, Karmen, and RPM.

So the idea was hatched a few months back in our seeeeeeecret SciBlogger back channel, that we really all wanted a vacation and to hang out for hours together in person instead of in the forums. This nebulous idea rapidly crystallized into a time and a place, with a loose schedule draped around long periods of "free time" (aka "bar time"). The place was Union Square in New York City, and we were going to do a few things: have a tour of the SEED offices, a bash at SEED overlord Adam Bly's posh pad, and a Saturday morning brunch which would be a filmed round-table discussion about science and…

So by now some of you may have heard that SEED threw a nice bash for us ScienceBloggers, and a gaggle of us went up to New York City to do whatever it is that online bloggers do when they get together in real life. Well, as to the latter, it involved quite a few rounds of shots and then doing Journey on kareoke. Oh wait, thats just what I did. Heh. Anyway, I just got back late late last night and am officially dead to the world until tomorrow, so I'll be reporting in full about the crazy nerd-soaked weekend I had in New York then. Now for a nap...

The cochlea is the snail-shaped organ that mammals use to perceive and transduce sound, and is located deep in the inner ear. Hair cells lie on a membrane in the cochlea's interior, and sound waves disperse through the fluid-filled spaces which contact the hair cells (for more on this go here). Many people in the field have wondered over the year why the cochlea is shaped the way it is. Is it to conserve space? To better preserve the integrity of sound waves? Recently it has been discovered that the unique coiled shaped of the cochlea boosts its sensitivity to low frequencies, as reported in…

A fantastic, and open-access, review paper just came out on the subject of surgical solutions to obesity which answered a lot of my questions regarding this growing area of treatment. Written by Kral and Naslund, who are both professors of surgery, it begins with the terse opener "Obesity is very prevalent." Well, in America at least, you can say that again. Obesity is often the result of many different factors, but eventually it becomes clear that our bodies did not evolve in an environment of constant, abundant, and caloric-rich food. Human bodies are designed to want to eat, to love to eat…

[This is part of a series I'm doing here on Retrospectacle called 'Science Vault.' Pretty much I'm just going to dig back into the forgotten and moldering annuls of scientific publications to find weird and interesting studies that very likely would never be published or done today (and perhaps never should have.) I'll probably try to do it once a week (and if you have suggestions, please do email me with them.)] Its been nothing but roses lately for us coffee drinkers needing a scientific reason to validate our habit. The past couple weeks have yielded no less than four separate studies on…

The post I wrote last week on the neuroscience of ADHD generated a lot of interest and comments, with one of the main questions in the comments being 'what are the testable neurological correlates' of the condition. Joseph of Corpus Callosum has blogged a quite interesting study on the topic (thanks!) and I suggest you all go take a look.

Cone snail shells are beautiful, but their venom is a potent cocktail used to paralyze passing fish. The venom is a witch's brew of hundreds of novel compounds, many more than are found in snake venom (which has been used by science extensively as well). One compound in particular is a pain killer many times more effective than morphine. The venom apparatus consists of a muscular venom bulb which pushes venom from a gland down a long duct to a chitinous tooth (the pink thing). The tooth is like a little barbed harpoon, which becomes soaked in venom and jabs into prey. Venom is quickly…