In a novel experiment, six volunteers were confined in a cramped mock spaceship in Moscow to simulate a 17-month voyage. It made most of the would-be spacemen lethargic, much like birds and bears heading into winter, gearing up for hibernation. […] When leaving confinement in November 2011, the six volunteers - three Russians, a Frenchman, an Italian-Colombian and a Chinese - called their experience successful […] The data scientists collected wasn’t as rosy. Devices on the volunteers’ wrists measured their movements and showed that when they were asleep and awake they were moving much less than they should have been, an unexpected and disturbing finding.
Former astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, who holds the American record for longest space mission, said he could relate to the study findings. During his 215 days in orbit on the space station, he sometimes had trouble getting back to sleep because he didn’t have a sense of lying down or having his head on a pillow. The lack of sleep and lots of work caused him to sometimes nod off during the day, and the lack of gravity meant that when he fell asleep accidentally he would float away and awaken elsewhere in the station, he said.
The United States Food and Drug Administration approved a helmet that treats depression using — wait for it — magnets. It might sound like weird science, but doctors are hailing it as a non-invasive and effective alternative to antidepressants.
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (or TMS), involves wearing a helmet filled with electromagnetic coils that sends magnetic pulses to “rewire” specific neural pathways in the brain. […]
While TMS bears some resemblance to electroconvulsive therapy, doctors say it works quite differently. Traditional shock therapy induces seizures to release neurotransmitters, the goal for TMS is to energize nerve tracks in the brain by making them fire more frequently. The magnetic field impulses of TMS are far gentler
From the Guardian:
There is a hacker terrorising Japan with a computer virus, bomb threats and riddles. Meanwhile, a stray cat wandering a small island near Tokyo holds important clues on its collar. This is no movie. This happened this week. An unnamed hacker in Japan really did leave a memory card on a stray cat’s collar, and journalists and authorities really did have to crack a few riddles to locate said ownerless feline.
If I remember correctly, I was always saying something snarky on Denny’s Odd News thread…I’m having a hard time finding something snarky to say now, but I’m saying it in spirit.
Clostridium difficile > – rod-shaped bacteria [that] are commonly found in the environment and even in our bodies, but have lately become a major concern in hospitals where antibiotics leave patients without the natural flora that protect their bodies […] if not controlled, [they] can lead to severe dehydration, kidney failure, holes in the intestines and death. Patients already weakened by other illnesses are particularly at risk of succumbing […] With more and more strains of C. difficile becoming resistant to antibiotics, doctors have had to find creative ways to treat the infection. One of the most promising (if not revolting) treatments that has been tested in recent years is called fecal bacteriotherapy or ‘stool transplant’, which involves taking donor poop from a healthy patient and inserting it into the gut of an infected one as a form of probiotics, seeking to replace the protective flora […]
Now, University of Guelph researchers have developed a more sanitary way of achieving the same results: synthetic poop.The researchers created fake feces, aptly named > RePOOPulate> , after careful examination of bacterial colonies grown from the stool of healthy volunteers. Once the right ratio of species was determined, 33 different bacteria were grown in a robotic intestine simulator…
This Isn’t the Petition Response You’re Looking For
By Paul Shawcross
The Administration shares your desire for job creation and a strong national defense, but a Death Star isn’t on the horizon. Here are a few reasons:
* The construction of the Death Star has been estimated to cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000. We're working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it.
* The Administration does not support blowing up planets.
* Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?
However, look carefully (here’s how) and you’ll notice something already floating in the sky – that’s no Moon, it’s a Space Station! Yes, we already have a giant, football field-sized International Space Station in orbit around the Earth that’s helping us learn how humans can live and thrive in space for long durations. The Space Station has six astronauts – American, Russian, and Canadian – living in it right now, conducting research, learning how to live and work in space over long periods of time, routinely welcoming visiting spacecraft and repairing onboard garbage mashers, etc. We’ve also got two robot science labs – one wielding a laser – roving around Mars, looking at whether life ever existed on the Red Planet…
In the dark expanses of the Sonoran desert in the US, a terrifying creature stalks the night, searching for fresh meat. Anything will do: crickets, rodents, tarantulas – the nastier the better.
Even the poisonous scorpion cannot escape the savage monster’s little pink paws. It fights bravely, stinging its attacker on the nose. To no avail. The mouse ignores the painful venom and cruelly breaks the scorpion’s tail by pummelling it into the ground, then bites its head and feasts on its flesh. Throwing its head back, the murderous animal howls at the moon.
Your post, disturbing as it seems, reminds me of a guy who was in a prison camp during WWII. There was an awful bout of dysentery or something going around the prison. This guy was kind of a de facto leader, and he went out into the yards during the night, where there were free ranging goats. He picked up some goat turds and told the sick and dying that they were medicine that he’d been able to get from a sympathetic guard. Most of these men rallied and recovered. He thought it was strictly the strength of suggestion, but in talking to some medical folks, including my wife, the pellets were introducing gut flora and probably replenishing what the men had lost due to the infections.
I wish I could remember this guy’s name; he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor a few years ago.
He thought it was strictly the strength of suggestion, but in talking to some medical folks, including my wife, the pellets were introducing gut flora and probably replenishing what the men had lost due to the infections.
That’s very interesting! From what I understand, gut flora is species specific, but there could have been enough in common.
Maybe some of those servicemen were old goats.
My graphics tablet set-up isn’t working at the moment, or I would have fun with that one…The blue stripes look like something from “Avatar” – or the musical “Cats”!
1. The immortal rotifer that absorbs the abilities of anything it touches.
Bdelloid rotifers’ super power appears when they recover from their dormant state. As they rehydrate and repair whatever damage their cells incurred, they incorporate DNA fragments from their environment. This includes partially digested food and any DNA in close proximity to them, even bacterial and archael DNA. It is this ability that allows bdelloid rotifers to overcome the limitations of asexual reproduction and survive for 80 million years without mates. They can literally absorb the attributes of those around them. 2. The deep sea snail that turns its flesh into metal.
Where most molluscs will produce a shell comprised of a calcium-carbonate matrix, Crysomallon squamiferum incorporates iron sulfide into both its shell and opperculum (the scale on a snail’s foot). It’s still unclear exactly why the scaly-foot snail evolved this particular strategy, but its discovery has already led to novel innovations in lighter, more durable body armor. 3. The parasitic barnacle that takes over your body.
How to describe Sacculina? It is a barnacle, but it’s like no other barnacle you’ve even seen. As a larva, it finds a host crab, and then hangs out on the crab’s shell until it molts. Once the crab sheds its shell, the parasite enters the host, castrates it, and emerges from the thorax as a bulbous sack, the externa, where the crab’s gonads would be. Now completely under the control of the parasite, the crab has lost its ability to molt or regenerate lost appendages. 4. The shapeshifting octopus.
Who wouldn’t want to be a shapeshifter? The ability to assume any form, hide in plain site, vanish without a trace is certainly compelling. The Indonesian Mimic Octopus is a favorite around the ocean blogosphere, inspiring numerous posts. It has even earned itself a comic on XKCD. 5. The fungus with the ultimate origin story
In 2007 a curious strain of black mold was discovered living in an area exposed to extreme ionizing radiation. These fungi contain high concentrations of the biopolymer melanin, which commonly protects organisms from ultra-violet and ionizing radiation. Field and laboratory test determined that, via an as-yet-uncharacterized molecular pathway, these fungi are able to generate energy through radiation exposure. Where plants are phototrophic and some deep-sea organisms are chemotrophic, these species are radiotrophic. They eat radiation.
It may sound like an impossible dream, but two designers in London have built functioning prototypes of GravityLight, a cheap way for people in developing countries t0 light homes, recharge batteries, or power a radio. Using the GravityLight simply requires removing the small white lamp from its bag, hanging it up, filling the bag with about 20 pounds of dirt or rocks, and attaching the bag to bottom of the device.
Gravity powers a generator, light fills your room, and every 30 minutes, you hoist the bag back up.
After binge drinking at a party landed MIT graduate student Dhairya Dand in the hospital, he responded like any self-respecting tech geek would: By inventing something. Three weeks after his alcohol-induced blackout, the engineer and former toy designer created a set of glowing ice cubes that let you know when you’re drinking too much or too fast. The prototype, aptly named “Cheers,” contains a circuit encased in an edible jelly mold that monitors the number of sips you take. An accelerometer tracks your drink’s tipping motion, and calculates approximately how drunk you are with a timer clocking your pace.
And sending a not-so-subtle message about when you should slow down is an LED light that flashes from green to orange to red as the night winds on. Ignore the ice cube’s warning and an IR transceiver will send a text message to a designated contact, letting them know you’re overdoing it.
A patch over a male Gouldian finch’s right eye works like beer goggles, though the bird doesn’t need booze to flirt unwisely. If limited to using his left eye when checking out possible mates, he risks making really stupid choices. […] Birds make fine subjects for comparing eye biases because many species’ eyes sit on opposite sides of their skulls with very different fields of view. A bird’s right eye connects to the left hemisphere of its brain, and the left eye to the right hemisphere. Unlike mammals, birds don’t have a high-speed connection between hemispheres. (A bird’s neural structure does allow information to transfer, but it takes hours.) So detecting an eye bias in birds gives clues to what goes on in their brains.
T. bolithophilus > is the first bee known to nest in dung …Many animals rely on dung for food – the dung beetle being an obvious example – but few go so far as to live in it. “Some dung beetles construct brood balls within the food source,” says Sarzetti, but they don’t dig tunnels.
Manure is pretty scarce in > T. bolithophilus’s > neighbourhood: the only animals that provide decent-sized pads are horses, which were only recently introduced on the Patagonian steppes and are still uncommon. In any case, the dung seems like an odd place to transform into a home.
One wonders what their honey tastes like. I think I’ll pass.
We’ll have to go on without him the best we can…
