Discover, September 27 2010.
The Emergency Bra, which won both the Ig Nobel prize in public health and a spot on TIME’s list of the Worst Inventions of 2009 is now available through the website, www.ebbra.com for $29.99. CNET explains its intended use:
The bra is, of course, meant to be taken off, something most adults presumably have experience with. Once removed, it separates into two masks which, when placed over the nose and mouth, filter out particles…. Read More >
Discover, September 24 2010.
This little 6th generation iPod nano just wants to dance. Because that’s what its human programmed it to do.
Kazu Terasaki, also known as YouTube user PachimonDotCom, is a Japanese software engineer from Silicon Valley, CA who is addicted to making apple products walk around. He has been working on this project for years, hoping to create a robo-legs product that could give any gadget the ability to walk around, says a GetRobo post about Kazu’s walking objects project from 2008. Read More >
Discover, September 24 2010.
Clutching an injury does make it feel better, according to a study published in Current Biology, reducing the pain on average 64 percent. But only if the injured party is the one doing the clutching (insert your own self-touching joke here). It doesn’t work if someone else does it. Study coauthor Marjolein Kammers explained to the Daily Mail what this means:
“Pain isn’t just the signals coming from the body to the brain, but it is also the way the brain processes those signals,” she said. Read More >
Discover, September 23 2010.
August 2nd marked the first human-powered flight of an ornithopter. Wait, a what? It’s pronounced awr-nuh-thop-ter, and it’s an aircraft propelled by flapping wings, like a bird. First sketched by Leonardo da Vinci in 1485, people have been trying to improve on his design–and build a working model–for centuries.
A group at the University of Toronto’s Institute of Aerospace Studies made their own design, and in August, they successfully flew the first human-powered ornithopter. The pilot, a PhD candidate named Todd Reichert, sat in a tiny cockpit pedaling furiously to make the wings gracefully flap. Reichert explained the world’s obsession with this strange machine: Read More >
Discover, September 23 2010.
The USDA and the EPA are in cahoots, scheming against Guam’s invasive brown tree snakes, or are they throwing a party?
Using streamers, cardboard, some acetaminophen (aka Tylenol, aka hangover medicine), some dead mice and a helicopter, the team is looking to destroy the island’s invasive snake population.
Guam has only two snake populations. The first is the island’s only other snake: a tiny, blind worm-like little guy. The second, and more obvious, is the invasive tree snake, which is mildly venomous, can reach 11 feet long, and can be found at up to 12,000 snakes per square mile. Read More >
Discover, September 23 2010.
The New York Times’s health blog is asking scientists and readers what they would rename high fructose corn syrup, if they were given the chance. The ubiquitous sticky sweetener is considered poison by many foodies and some public health officials, who worry that HFCS-packed processed foods contribute to obesity. But the companies that make the sweetener–the Corn Refiners Group–are hoping that changing the name of the product will change its image, as their president told the New York Times:
“Clearly the name is confusing consumers,” said Audrae Erickson, president of the Washington-based group, in an interview. “Research shows that ‘corn sugar’ better communicates the amount of calories, the level of fructose and the sweetness in this ingredient.” Read More >
Discover, September 22 2010.
So sweet… so painful. You try to hold back, to stop yourself from over-indulging, because you know what will happen: That crippling, brain-piercing pain of the ever-feared brain freeze will ruin your ice cream love-fest.
Bjorn Carey of Popular Science discussed this terrifying condition with medical experts, seeking their opinion:
First, let’s get one thing straight. “This condition is referred to as an ‘ice-cream headache,’ ” says Stacey Gray, a sinus surgeon at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston. “It’s a very technical term.” Read More >
Discover, September 22 2010.
Apple may not allow porn on its product line, but it has no problem with another source of controversy: evolution. A new, free iPad/iPhone application called Timetree, distributed by Arizona and Penn State Universities, allows users to map how long ago two living creatures separated on the tree of life, a subject that can get a bit sticky with creationists, says The Register.
Now, Apple has taken a stance which will upset a lot of Americans: it has allowed an app which specifies quite clearly that evolution is real and that humans and monkeys share a common ancestor some 30 million years in the past. Read More >
Discover, September 22 2010.
Yesterday’s Twitter meltdown was caused by a known flaw that resurfaced with the help of a 17-year-old Australian and a Scandinavian developer, among others. The boy, Pearce Delphin, and the developer, Magnus Holm, discovered the JavaScript vulnerability, which allowed hackers to make other users launch various functions merely by mousing over links in tweets sent by the hackers. Instead of reporting the vulnerability to Twitter, Delphin tweeted it–and it caught on.
“I did it merely to see if it could be done … that JavaScript really could be executed within a tweet,” Delphin told AFP via email. “At the time of posting the tweet, I had no idea it was going to take off how it did. I just hadn’t even considered it.” Read More >
Discover, September 21, 2010.
A study of children has discovered a correlation between obesity and prior infection with a cold virus, called Adenovirus 36. While the link is fairly weak, the tantalizing research suggests a new front on the war on obesity.
The study participants included 124 children between the ages of 8 and 18. Of the 67 obese children involved in the study, 15 had signs of previous infection with the AD36 virus, in comparison with only 4 of the 57 non-obese children. The study was published in the online edition of Pediatrics.
The children who had been previously exposed to the virus (which was indicated by the antibodies to the virus present in their blood) were on average 50 pounds heavier than the non-exposed children. And even within the obese group, those that had been previously exposed to AD36 were an average of 35 pounds heavier. Read More >