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Worst press release I've ever read

This is seriously the worst press release I've ever read. It doesn't say how the research was done, it doesn't have the results from the research, it is poorly written (run on sentences?!), and it is pointless. Why was this even released? Does EurekAlerts even have any criteria for releasing press releases? I do know they have criteria for who counts as a journalist - and it certainly isn't bloggers (we can't get embargoed articles from them - but we can from PLOS) Anyway... here's the release.

Millionth Comment Meet-up in Vancouver

Here ye, here ye! For those of you in the Vancouver neighborhood, Dave Ng (from World's Fair) and I are hosting an event to celebrate ScienceBlogs millionth comment on Thursday, September 18th, from 6pm at Koerner's Pub (on UBC's campus). Come by! We have a little pocket money from SEED, which means you should come even if you're broke. Dave set up a Facebook event page just so that we have a general sense of how many folks might show up. Hope to see you in a week!

Sea Monsters Lurk in Your Gut

When we picture monsters from the deep, most envision colossal sea beasts ready to drag the unsuspecting sailor to abyss. In actuality the sea beasts are at the other end of the size spectrum. Those viscous, nasty bacteria that line your digestive tract that could send you to your grave originated from deep-sea bacteria. A Japanese group report in PNAS that the two groups of bacteria share several genes allowing both to survive inhospitable habitats allowing them to flourish from temperatures between 39-158 degrees Fahrenheit.

TGIF: Mermaid Suit

Do you ever get bored when you're scuba diving on a Caribbean shipwreck, and wish you had a Mermaid guide to show you around? Thanks to the fabulous new mer-suit technology from Otter Bay your wish may come true. Seashells not included. The video is one of a series from UWvideographer at YouTube. Who knows why mermaids wear seashells, anyway? * Answer below the fold. *Because B shells are too small and D shells are too big.... bwaaaahahahahaha. Happy Leap Day. What do you expect from a mermaid joke?

iPhone in a rocket

My brother found this, but he is too afraid of the internet to post something in the comments on my previous post about acceleration and the iphone. It turns out that this too awesome to just be in a comment. It deserves its own note. Anyway, I was looking for acceleration data from the iPhone and this guy put one in his model rocket. iPhone Rocket Launch and Interview (from MobileOrchard.com) from Mobile Orchard on Vimeo. Here is some more detail (with graphs!) about the iPhone model rocket.

Chuck Grassley's feet of clay

We've been rather kind to Senator Charles (Chuck) Grassley in the past. Yes, he's a right wing Republican with some really odious ideas, ideas for which he deserves to be criticized. But he's also been a champion of the Federal False Claims Act which has encouraged and protected whistleblowers to reveal how corporations have taken the taxpayer for a ride, something for which he deserves credit. Lately he has been on a tear about the ways Big Pharma has been buying influence with high profile medical professionals, with the direct implication that this has skewed their practice, their research…

Electronics production in Batam, Indonesia: "OSH is the most important. If we are sick we cannot earn our salaries."

by Elizabeth Grossman Batam, one of Indonesia's Riau Islands, sits across the smog-choked strait from Singapore, just one degree north of the equator. On October 21 and 22, the days that I'm there, newspaper headlines announce that Singapore is experiencing its worst air pollution since 2006 due to fires, most likely from illegal forest clearing in Sumatra. From a high point above the harbor where we go to see the view, the ship traffic below is mostly obscured by gray haze. A tourist brochure extols the island's natural features, but what's most evident is rampant development. Enormous gaudy…

Where's GrrlScientist?

Adult plumage Ring-billed Gull, Larus delawarensis, stands on a lamp on Roosevelt Island, overlooking the East River. Manhattan Island is in the background. Image: GrrlScientist, 21 August 2008 [larger view]. I went on a little day trip to Roosevelt Island to look at birds and to learn a little about a company known as Verdant Power. Roosevelt Island (formerly Welfare Island, and before that, Blackwell's Island) is a small island that is roughly two miles long located in the middle of the East River, a tidal estuary that flows between Manhattan Island and the Borough of Queens. Verdant…

A Closer Look at Preserved Dinosaur Soft Tissue Reveals .. Slime

tags: researchblogging.org, dinosaurian soft tissue, fossils, bacterial biofilms, paleontology, endocasts, formerly pyritic framboids, collagen Figure 1. EDS spectrum of framboid. EDS spectrum of framboid showing an iron-oxygen signature. Pt is from coating for SEM. Area in red box was scanned for elements. [larger view]. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0002808. Some of you might remember a paper published in Science that rocked the paleontological world by revealing that a broken thigh bone from Tyrannosaurus rex contained soft tissue. When this soft tissue was analyzed, it was identified as…

The Great Leap Backward - Do we really want to roll back regulations and look more like China?

By Elizabeth Grossman As I've watched the hearings House Republicans have been holding over the past couple of weeks on the economic impact of environmental and occupational health and safety regulations, I've been thinking about what I've learned about and seen of the working and environmental conditions in places that are now the hub of world manufacturing. I've been picturing the smog that hangs over Chinese cities. I've been thinking about the fatal despair of young high-tech workers at Foxconn and Samsung factories in China and South Korea, about the depressed wages and severe working…

How do we see through our own galaxy?

"I am undecided whether or not the Milky Way is but one of countless others all of which form an entire system. Perhaps the light from these infinitely distant galaxies is so faint that we cannot see them." -Johann Lambert When we look out at the Universe, our view is pretty consistently dominated by the stars within our own galaxy. Although we know that many interesting things lie beyond -- globular clusters, individual galaxies, and rich clusters and superclusters of galaxies -- being in the Milky Way makes it very hard to see beyond it. Image credit: Richard Payne, of Arizona…

Important New Science on Melting Glaciers

Most of the current models of glacial ice melting (and contribution to sea level rise) focus on ice melting and less than they need to on the process of glaciers falling apart in larger chunks such as ice bergs. Also, current understanding of glacial ice melting due to global warming indicates that the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is more vulnerable to melting over coming decades or centuries than is the Eastern Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS). New research from two different teams seems to provide a major corrective to these assumptions. First, about how glaciers turn into ocean water.…

RP 2: The Physics of Fantastic Contraption

One of my students showed me this game, Fantastic Contraption. The basic idea is to use a couple of different "machine" parts to build something that will move an object into a target area. Not a bad game. But what do I do when I look at a game? I think - hey! I wonder what kind of physics this "world" uses. This is very similar to my analysis of the game Line Rider except completely different. Fantastic Contraption gives the unique opportunity to build whatever you want. This is great for creating "experiments" in this world. The first step is to "measure" some stuff. The game…

Just because they're out to get you doesn't mean they don't have a point. (One from the vault.)

Wrestling overgrown rose bushes out of the ground may be harder than wrestling gators. (At the very least, it seems to take longer, while provoking less sympathy). Anyway, while I'm recovering from that, here's a "classic" post from the old location. It was originally posted 5 January 2006, but the ethical issues are still fresh. * * * * * Since I'm in the blessed wee period between semesters, it's time to revisit some "old news" (i.e., stuff that I had to set aside in the end-of-semester crush). Today, a story from about a month ago, wherein the Rick Weiss of the Washington Post reports…

Comments of the Week #168: from saving the Earth to escaping a black hole

“You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” -Abraham Lincoln As you've come to expect, it's been another fantastic week of science here on Starts With A Bang!? There's a chance I'll be in Las Vegas next month for the official Star Trek convention, and in addition to all we're doing, there's a chance that there will be a new YouTube video series coming out that features me and the fusion of sci-fi/fantasy with science. Sounds fun? You bet it does! Also, for those of you in and around Portland, OR, join me at 2 PM at the Oregon Historical Society today to catch my…

What's the difference between HeLa and HeLa S3 cells? Part III: Theodore "Ted" Puck, PhD, and the first clonal isolation of human tumor cells

This post is the third in a series on the origin and history of HeLa S3 cells. The first post details how I came about to ask this question when launching my independent research laboratory. The second post details the life and careers of the legendary physician-scientist pioneer, Dr. Florence Rena Sabin. Today, we take up a discussion where we will finally learn the origin of HeLa S3 cells, complete with original literature citations. A recap We left our previous discussion with the final and still-productive years of Dr. Florence Rena Sabin. After graduating from Johns Hopkins Medical…

Celebrating African American History Month with Role Models in Science & Engineering Achievement: George Washington Carver

George Washington Carver – Botanist, Inventor and Educator One of the most phenomenal scientists of the early 20th Century. He found amazing uses for the peanut, sweet potato and soy bean that continue to enrich our lives. And against racial obstacles, his achievements paved the way for generations of young African American scientists The ultimate agricultural botanist and chemist, George Washington Carver, from his early years, was known for his curiosity and his "burning zeal to know everything", especially about nature. He soon became fascinated with how to use botany and other sciences…

Digital biologists, bioinformaticists, and computational biologists: more thoughts on the question of names

"What's in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet" - Juliet, from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare I realized from the comments on my previous post and from Mike's post that more explanations were in order. It seems we have two topics - why do we need a new name at all? and why the current names (biologist, computational biologist, bioinformatician, etc.) don't work. What really distinguishes a digital biologist from a regular, garden variety biologist? Why isn't a digital biologist a computational biologist? So, I brought along two "show and tell…

How fast can flu spread in a household?

How fast flu spreads is related to how many susceptible people an infectious person can infect (a measure called R0) and also something called the serial interval. The serial interval is the average length of time between the start of one infection and the start of the infection of that case's infected contacts. The horter the serial interval the faster a virus can spread. So what is the serial interval for this virus and how can we determine it? The answer to the first question is the usual. We don't know yet. The answer to the second one tells us a little about why we don't know and why we…

CDC: Vaccination rates among kindergartners remain stable

In more encouraging public health news, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that vaccination rates among kindergarteners have remained stable, with the median vaccine exemption rate at 2 percent. Some states even reported an increase in immunization rates. In a study published last week in CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, researchers examined 2016-2017 data from 49 states regarding coverage of three vaccines: measles, mumps and rubella (MMR); diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis (DTaP); and varicella, more commonly known as chickenpox. Researchers also…

Slow progress by OSHA to improve worker health and safety regulations

The Labor Department provided an update on January 20, 2012 to its regulatory agenda, including revised target dates for improved workplace safety and health standards. Several of the rules OSHA now expects to publish in 2012 are regulations the agency previously said would be issued one or two years ago. Missed deadlines, however, are nothing new for OSHA---an agency that has only issued two new major health or safety standards in the last 10 years. To put these new projections from OSHA in perspective, I'll refer to forecasts made previously by the Obama/Solis Administration in 2009 and…

Seven Thousand Year Old African Dairy

Pastoralism is the practice of keeping and herding animals such as cattle, goats and sheep, and using the products they produce, including meat, hide, bone, horn and of course, dairy. In the old days, armchair archaeologists thought that pastoralism would have been a phase of cultural adaptation following hunting and gathering and preceding horticulture (the growing of plant crops). Why did they think that? No really good reason, just a guess. However, over time evidence came along and ideas where altered and minds were changed and now it is generally thought that in Europe and West Asia…

Increase in Antarctic Sea Ice

One of the most commonly winged-about facts of Earth's climate change we hear from science denialists is that sea ice in the Antarctic is increasing, therefore, there is no global warming. The fact that every other measurement of temperature and ice-osity indicates warming and melting would make a normal person think of the Antarctic situation as odd, and seek explanations, but somehow this logic does not emerge in the minds of the denialists. It has been suspected, and increasingly confirmed, for some time that the increase in sea ice in the Antarctic is the result of changes in wind…

Well... The good news is *some* people understand why vaccines are good...

Oh lawd oh lawd. Some folks at Emory investigated the differences in understanding vaccines between parents who got a lot of vaccine info from the internet, and parents who didnt. Oh lawd. Parents’ Source of Vaccine Information and Impact on Vaccine Attitudes, Beliefs, and Nonmedical Exemptions The good news is, this article is Open Access.  The bad news is, this means you all can read the paper and smash your heads into a wall with me.  YAAAAAAAaaaay... First-- a bit of translation that might help you read this paper-- 'Adjusted Odds Ratio'.  Simply, if it is '1', or the 'confidence interval…

So what's Marcus Ross up to nowadays?

The NY Times sent a reporter to the First Conference on Creation Geology, and came back with a discouraging tale of creationist blindness. The two stars are Kurt Wise, old school, and Marcus Ross, new school. Ross recently recieved a Ph.D. for his paleontological work on mosasaurs — marine reptiles from 65 million years ago — yet he also goes to creationist conferences and touts his belief that the earth is less than ten thousand years old. The dissonance does not disturb him at all. At the conference I asked Ross whether he still believes what he wrote in his graduate thesis. His answer…

Chimerism, or How a marmoset's sperm is really his brother's

There's a glut of awesome science coming out towards the end of this week and not much at the start, so I'm sticking the Revisited post up early (it's usually on a Saturday) to clear the schedule later. Imagine you are a man who has just learned, through a genetic test, that your son carried your brother's genes instead of your own. You might well have some stern words to exchange with your partner. But if you were a marmoset, this would all be part and parcel of life. In a striking new study, scientists from the University of Nebraska have shown that marmosets inherit genes not only…

Who needs sex? - Rotifers import genes from fungi, bacteria and plants

You inherited your genes from your parents, half from your father and half from your mother. Almost all other animals contend with the same hand-me-down processes, but not the bdelloid rotifers. This intriguing group of small freshwater creatures are not content with their genetic hand-me-downs; they import genes too. A new study shows that their genomes are rife with legions of foreign DNA, transferred from bacteria, fungi and even plants. The swapping of genetic material is all part of a day's activity for bacteria but it's incredibly rare in animals. But bdelloids are bringing in…

When bacteria merge - two species are turning into one

Humans have been blamed for the disappearance of species before but never quite like this. Scientists at the University of Oxford have found evidence that two species of bacteria are merging into one. The two species are swapping genetic material at such a high rate that they are on the road to sharing a single, common genome. Their genetic merger is probably the result of being thrust into a new environment - the intestines of heavily farmed chickens, cattle and other domesticated livestock. The two bacteria in question - Campylobacter jejuni and Campylobacter coli - are two of the most…

Liberation Ecology

Sunrise on the Maasai Mara, Kenya. Vearl Brown / Creative Commons From the beginning our human family has been on a journey. Born together, in eastern Africa about 100,000 years ago, our ancestors migrated to distant points around the globe. Our family scattered, communication was cut off and, in most cases, we forgot about them all together. We went our separate ways and lived our separate lives. Like siblings each adopted by different parents in distant lands, we came to identify with where we were raised instead of where we were from. Now, after accumulating so many years of…

Understanding Darwin's insight can help us understand evolution today

Sal Cordova is a fascinating example of the danger facing anyone who ignores Pope's advice "A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again." Sal's latest bungling of knowledge comes when he wonders: Is evolution of antibiotic resistance by bacteria an example of Darwinism? Such a claim is very suspicious since Darwinism deals mainly with the origin of species. Answering this question would be easy of "Darwinism" existed in some meaningful sense. But it doesn't.…

Sepsis is not caused by bacterial infection?

Sometimes I come across something so bizarre, so utterly wrong, that my mind reels in confusion and amazement, not to mention horror, that anyone can actually think or write something something like it. In fact, for a moment I considered offering up this one bit of horrifically inspired craziness up as an installment of Your Friday Dose of Woo, but I decided against it. The reason, I'm afraid, is the same reason that I've considered some bits of woo previously for this "honor" but then ultimately declined and covered them as normal posts, dripping with my usual brand of Respectful and not-…

Another Week of GW News, March 17, 2013

Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup skip to bottom Another Week of Climate Instability News Information is not Knowledge...Knowledge is not Wisdom March 17, 2013 Chuckles, COP19+, CITES, JOGMEC, Marcott Bottom Line, Subsidies, Cook Fukushima Note, Fukushima News, Anniversary, Nuclear Policy Melting Arctic, Polar Bears, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Fisheries, Food Prices, GMOs, Food Production Hurricanes,…

Swine flu: How bad was the first wave?

One frequently hears claims that the current swine flu pandemic has been exaggerated because there are "only" 1000 or so deaths, while seasonal flu is estimated to contribute to tens of thousands of deaths a year. There are two reasons why this is not an apt comparison. We've discussed both here fairly often. The first is that the epidemiology of a pandemic and seasonal flu are very different. Epidemiology studies the patterns of disease in the population and swine flu is hitting -- and killing -- a very different demographic from seasonal flu. Its victims are young and many are vigorous and…

This Dodge Power Wagon Can House a Family of Four

tags: Motorworld, giant Dodge Power Wagon, offbeat, weird, automobiles, television, streaming video This is a short video clip from Clarkson's Motorworld about a Dodge Power Wagon that is 64 times larger than the original. It comes with a full-sized house inside, a great view from the tailgate ... and it can move: it gets great mileage for a truck...just under 30 gallons per mile! (I do really like the brief bits from Pink Floyd as background music). How small does someone's penis have to be that they need to have a truck like this?

Battle of the Biology Bands — no one leaves alive!

Perhaps you remember the PCR song from Bio-Rad…or perhaps you tried hard to purge that from your memory. Then Eppendorf upped the ante with a pipettor love song. Now Greg Laden finds another pop tribute to PCR from Bio-Rad. The genre? Disco. By all that's good and rational, not disco. Two can fight this war against good taste. How about a big hair rock ballad to a tissue culture cell monitoring system? That one needs an encore. Little known fact: most molecular biologists dress exactly like that in the lab.

Starling Flocks on OtMoor

tags: starling flocks, birds, streaming video This flock of starlings at dusk is an amazing thing to see, near Oxford, England. The area is an RSPB reserve called Ot Moor. The road from the village to the parking lot is closed from January 7th to March so beware -- you can still see the starlings but it is a long walk. The music is from a company called CSS Music. The track is "soaring with the sun". This video was shot by Dylan Winter on a high definition camera. [5:28]

Amazing Scar Left By Tornado

This is not new, but I just found out about it from Paul Douglas's blog. Back in 2011, an F3 tornado touched down and went straight for over 60 km. The beast (that's the technical for a big-scary-tornaod) was almost a kilometer wide. It left an impressive scar, which you can see in this photograph: More recently, when so called "Nemo the Storm" swept across the same region, the scar became plainly visible, as shown in this image: The first image is from here, the second is from here.

Global Warming Kills People

This has been known for years. It is very frustrating to see people ask questions like "well, what we don't know is what will global warming do?" Global warming has done, already, quite a bit and it is insulting to our collective intelligence and an affront to the families of those who have died from it to pretend nothing has happened. From desertification in Africa to heat waves in Chicago, global warming has killed people. Perhaps the following video from PBS will make this a bit more palpable to those who can't grasp this concept.

More on Clarence Thomas

Two articles that might be of interest for my fellow con law wonks. The first is from the new issue of Legal Affairs, a fairly glowing article about him from Stephen Presser. He writes quite a bit about Thomas' notions of originalism and his disbelief in stare decisis. The second is from Doug Laycock, one of our foremost scholars on the religion clauses of the first amendment, in a message posted to the religion law listserv that I am a member of. Laycock explains why Thomas' claim that the Establishment Clause should not be binding on the states is incorrect.

Win at Running, Football, Arson, Weddings, and Art!

From email, a silly fake commercial from CollegeHumor: Why do I care? Look at 1:35. That's our wedding picture that flashes up on screen. I don't think I know the people responsible-- I think they probably wound up with our picture because our wedding pictures page was in the first page of Google results for "wedding picture" for a while. The ways of the Internet are very mysterious. But there's another second or so chipped away from our fifteen minutes of fame. I just wish it had been used in the service of a better joke.

My New Ride

For those who care, a picture of my new car (I picked it up Tuesday, but didn't get around to cropping down the pictures until this morning): In keeping with Ford's general policy, this shot is sort of a three-quarters angle-- as Kate pointed out, the glossy brochure from the dealership doesn't include any pictures full on from the side. She thinks it's because the car has a certain hearse-like aspect from that angle: I think she's just, um... jealous? No, wait, she's pretty much right. I don't care, though-- it's a new car, and it's mine all mine.

Japan Photo Albums

As a Christmas present for her grandparents, Kate put together a coupld of albums of pictures from our Japan trip, including this shot of What Japanese Commuter Trains Look Like to Me: (That was taken standing up looking straight ahead on a train from Tokyo to Yokohama. The Japanese have the best trains in the world, but they're not tall.) Kate has posted all of the pictures from the grandparent albums over on her LiveJournal, along with the extensive captions she wrote for them: Part 1 (27 pictures) Part 2 (33 pictures) Go on over there and take a look.

Diethylene glycol in Panamanian toothpaste

I seem to have missed this NYT article over last weekend. Following from the continuing appearance of diethylene glycol in glycerin imported from China, yet another consumer product is found to be adulterated, again in Panama: Diethylene glycol, a poisonous ingredient in some antifreeze, has been found in 6,000 tubes of toothpaste in Panama, and customs officials there said yesterday that the product appeared to have originated in China. This just goes to show that any product containing glycerin, from cough syrup to toothpaste, runs the risk of containing the cheap substitute, diethylene…

I play guitar and I'm pretty sure I'd be a rock star if I also had these.

Eddie Vedder on vox. Sting on bass. Ringo on drums. Anybody on drums. Thom Yorke doing backing vocals A duet with Beyonce. Lyrics by Margaret Atwood. Samantha Fox's breasts. A wardrobe malfunction. Wilco in the studio. A studio. A studio with amps that go to eleven. A cameo in a Woody Allen movie. A cameo in a Jackie Chan movie. A mention at the next Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. A mention on American Idol. Blessing from the Pope. Permission from my wife. (This list presented again from a old posting, since we were on the subject of writing music anyways)

Fall Foliage--The Backstory

For those who may have come to the Loom after seeing me talking about autumn leaves on ABC News this evening, you can learn more about the science in these posts (plus this article I wrote for the New York Times). Scientists continue to investigate why leaves change colors--check out this new post yesterday from Voltage Gate. (I should also clarify that the damage leaves suffer in the fall can come from charged atoms within the leaf, rather than directly from the sun's photons.) Update: Link to the ABC news segment added.

Sharks have more proteins in common with humans than zebrafish!

Image of a great white shark from Wikimedia Commons. Dr. Michael Stanhope from Cornell University has discovered that great white sharks actually share more proteins involved in metabolism and biochemistry in common with humans than zebrafish, a common fish model used in biomedical research. They made this discovery by sequencing the transcriptome of a heart isolated from a great white shark. I find it fascinating that sharks have more proteins in common with mammals than with bony fish, even though sharks and bony fish are not very closely related. Source: Cornell University Press

Still hope for writers everywhere: Robots take over sports desk - but need writer to write lede.

By way of demonstration, the group plugged in stats from the Oct. 11 playoff game between the Angels and the Red Sox: BOSTON -- Things looked bleak for the Angels when they trailed by two runs in the ninth inning, but Los Angeles recovered thanks to a key single from Vladimir Guerrero to pull out a 7-6 victory over the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park on Sunday. Guerrero drove in two Angels runners. He went 2-4 at the plate. via mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com Posted via web from David Dobbs's Somatic Marker

Euro-update 1: What's wrong with this picture?

I'm reporting from sunny, temperate Paris. Gorgeous weather here, and we've already taken in a few sights. However, the first psychology-related photo op actually occurred on the plane on the way over here. Why is Greta scowling in this picture? She's holding a catalog page from the SkyMall catalog, where travelers can order useless gizmos from the discomfort of their airline seats. Here's a close-up of the offending catalog item. There's a doozy of a psychological error in the claims made for this product. Can you spot it? Let us know in the comments.

Interesting analyses of monumental scientific research

Bora's hosting the first-ever edition of a new history of science carnival, "The Giant's Shoulders," which promises to focus attention on great research from years past, once a month. All participants review a journal article or other report of science from their field of expertise. The catch is that the science being reviewed must be at least ten years old. This edition recaps all the entries from Skulls in the Stars' original challenge, so if you missed that, now's your chance to catch up, in addition to reading all the new entries for this edition.

Nerdtastic Accessory Trifecta

Ancient nerd legend has it that anyone in possession of these three things will have REAL ULTIMATE POWER. Its a pin. Its a synapse neuron. Sweet. From now on all my eating and drinking implements will display the chemical structure of their contents. Pong. Batteries. Shirt. Need I say more? Those last two came from the ever-awesome ThinkGeek, but the neuron pin came from an amazing site aptly-named Neuromart. Neuromart contains items of such phenomenal nerditude that I died a little inside that I didn't think of it first. Neuromart, I salute you. Hat tips to Charlie and darkman.