I remember reading something in a science book when I was much younger that listed all the things that made humans unique in the animal world. It had things such as writing, agriculture, tool use, teaching, etc. In the last couple of decades I have seen almost everything on that list be left at the wayside as each thing previously considered unique to humans was found to be not-that-original after all.

The world is a wonderfully weird place indeed.

IT MAY sound like something out of Frankenstein, but electric currents applied to the skin could potentially speed up wound healing. Ironically, though the phenomenon was reported 150 years ago by the German physiologist Emil Du Bois-Reymond, it has been ignored ever since.

Now Josef Penninger of the Austrian Institute of Molecular Biotechnology in Vienna and Min Zhao of the University of Aberdeen, UK, have demonstrated that natural electric fields and currents in tissue play a vital role in orchestrating the wound-healing process by attracting repair cells to damaged areas.

Its funny that organics were pushed out by chemical manufacturers. We’re headed back that way, but not fast enough.

U.S. agriculture has developed a heavy reliance on chemicals to safeguard crops from yield-robbing weeds. However, many of those herbicides can pose substantial health risks to people, pets, and wildlife, which is why laws prescribe how some of these chemicals are handled in fields. A study now finds that trace quantities of such agricultural chemicals nonetheless find their way into consumers’ homes—not on the fruits and vegetables they buy but probably by hitchhiking on dust.

I grew up in the country. Our house was on a small dirt road with three neighbors. One of those neighbors was a dairy farmer.

When I was little we used to walk down to their house to get milk and eggs. Best stuff on earth. If you have never tasted raw milk you are really missing out (not that we ever called it ‘raw’ milk, to me it was just milk). Same with fresh eggs from an old school farm. Not the fake free range things they sell in the supermarket, and definitely not those from a factory farm. Those are disgusting. Taste like cardboard.

Picture a psychiatrist at her desk reviewing a case file. The report describes a young, teenaged male who, with several others his age, killed nearly a hundred victims. The case is astounding—not only because of the intensity and magnitude of the violence, but because nothing remotely like it has ever happened in the community before. Not even a single murder. As the psychiatrist turns the pages and reads on, the pieces of the puzzle start to come together. A few years before, the young killers had witnessed the massacre of their families and been orphaned. Afterwards, although still very young, they were relocated to another community with few adults to raise them; importantly, it was absent of older, mentoring males.

Some folks up in the EU are thinking long term. While they might be decried as the ultimate type of pessimist, thinking ahead like this is rarely a bad thing.

It sounds like something from a science fiction film — a doomsday vault carved into a frozen mountainside on a secluded Arctic island ready to serve as a Noah’s Ark for seeds in case of a global catastrophe.

New Scientist Breaking News - ‘Sleeping on it’ best for complex decisions

Complex decisions are best left to your unconscious mind to work out, according to a new study, and over-thinking a problem could lead to expensive mistakes.

The research suggests the conscious mind should be trusted only with simple decisions, such as selecting a brand of oven glove. Sleeping on a big decision, such as buying a car or house, is more likely to produce a result people remain happy with than consciously weighing up the pros and cons of the problem, the researchers say.

The Wisdom of Parasites. The Loom: A blog about life, past and future

As an adult, Ampulex compressa seems like your normal wasp, buzzing about and mating. But things get weird when it’s time for a female to lay an egg. She finds a cockroach to make her egg’s host, and proceeds to deliver two precise stings. The first she delivers to the roach’s mid-section, causing its front legs buckle. The brief paralysis caused by the first sting gives the wasp the luxury of time to deliver a more precise sting to the head.

Contagious obesity? Identifying the human adenoviruses that may make us fat | Science Blog

So what if those extra pounds you were finding yourself carring around where only half to blame on laziness? Well, it may be true. The other half could be caused by viruses.

There is a lot of good advice to help us avoid becoming obese, such as “Eat less,” and “Exercise.” But here’s a new and surprising piece of advice based on a promising area of obesity research: “Wash your hands.”

Ok, so this probably defines me as the geek, but i am incredibly proud that if you do a search on google for “craft club finnegans wake” we are the first result.

It’s a simple pleasure, but the fact that we are currently beating the wikipedia entry for James Joyce which references the Tom Robbins book that we got the idea from is the feather in our cap.

Nearly 100, LSD’s Father Ponders His ‘Problem Child’ - New York Times

ALBERT Hofmann, the father of LSD, walked slowly across the small corner office of his modernist home on a grassy Alpine hilltop here, hoping to show a visitor the vista that sweeps before him on clear days. But outside there was only a white blanket of fog hanging just beyond the crest of the hill. He picked up a photograph of the view on his desk instead, left there perhaps to convince visitors of what really lies beyond the windowpane.

Wired 13.11: My Bionic Quest for Boléro

He’s been haunted by Ravel’s masterpiece since he lost his hearing. A deaf man’s pursuit of the perfect audio upgrade.

By Michael Chorost

With one listen, I was hooked. I was a 15-year-old suburban New Jersey nerd, racked with teenage lust but too timid to ask for a date. When I came across Boléro among the LPs in my parents’ record collection, I put it on the turntable. It hit me like a neural thunderstorm, titanic and glorious, each cycle building to a climax and waiting but a beat before launching into the next.

Unified physics theory explains animals’ running, flying and swimming
A single unifying physics theory can essentially describe how animals of every ilk, from flying insects to fish, get around, researchers at Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering and Pennsylvania State University have found. The team reports that all animals bear the same stamp of physics in their design.

Discovery Channel :: News :: Robot Demonstrates Self Awareness

A new robot can recognize the difference between a mirror image of itself and another robot that looks just like it.

This so-called mirror image cognition is based on artificial nerve cell groups built into the robot’s computer brain that give it the ability to recognize itself and acknowledge others.

Bigger brain size matters for intellectual ability

Brain size matters for intellectual ability and bigger is better, McMaster University researchers have found.

The study, led by neuroscientist Sandra Witelson, a professor in the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine, and published in the December issue of the journal Brain, has provided some of the clearest evidence on the underlying basis of differences in intelligence.

The study involved testing of intelligence in 100 neurologically normal, terminally ill volunteers, who agreed that their brains be measured after death.

No evidence that hangover cures work

Interventions for preventing or treating alcohol hangover: Systematic review of randomised controlled trials; BMJ Volume 331, pp 1515-7
No compelling evidence exists to suggest that any complementary or conventional intervention is effective for treating or preventing alcohol hangover, say researchers in this week’s BMJ.

Researchers: Treated wood poses long-term threat

Arsenic from treated lumber used in decks, utility poles and fences will likely leach into the environment for decades to come, possibly threatening groundwater, according to two research papers published online Wednesday.

Researchers from the University of Miami, the University of Florida and Florida International University examined arsenic leaching from chromated copper arsenate, or CCA-treated wood, from a real deck as well as from simulated landfills.

Studying the fate of drugs in wastewater

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have published an interesting study that sheds light on the fate of a familiar pharmaceutical as it enters the waste stream. In work initially described last year, NIST chemists investigated probable chemical reactions involving acetaminophen when the drug is subjected to typical wastewater processing. Acetaminophen is the most widely used pain reliever in the United States, and a study of 139 streams by the U.S. Geological Survey found that it was one of the most frequently detected man-made chemicals.

Quarks to Quasars, Powers of Ten
This is a visual journey consisting of 42 images — 42 powers of ten. At one end of the journey is the immensity of the known universe, 13.7 billion years old with a radius of at least 12 billion light years (and probably much larger). At the other end of the journey is a depiction of the three quarks within a proton.