meth
Turns out casual experimention with a little meth here and there is a good thing, if you're a snail. A paper recently published in the Journal of Experimental Biology explains how snails were able to remember negative stimuli longer when under the influence of a bit of speed.
When great pond snails (Lymnaea stagnalis) venture into low oxygen water, they extend a breathing tube above the water's surface. Researchers seperated a bunch of these party snails into two groups and put one sober group in normal water and another in meth-laced water. Then when the snails went to extend their…
So a week back or so, a number of friends read an article about death by rectal eel and immediately thought of me. For those of you who missed the story, it went a little something like this:
* Chinese man gets drunk with friends and passes out
* Friends think it would be hilarious to insert a large living swamp eel into the man's butt while he is unconscious
* Hilarity does not ensue. In fact, the man dies. Chinese doctor says the eel "consumed the man's bowels"
The article was widely reported in major news outlets like CNN and the Times, but I am linking instead to the UK edition of…
On December 14 (last week), the US National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) released the findings on adolescent drug use and trends as determined from the 35th annual Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey (press release). The ambitious survey is conducted with NIDA funding* by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Sciences led currently by Dr. Lloyd Johnston. The larger survey began in 1975 with only high-school seniors and was expanded in 1991 to include 8th and 10th graders to improve the ability to measure changes as a population progresses through school. A very detailed white…