omnibrain | November 2, 2007Check out this sweet sweet purse made to resemble a brain:
I think it's an obvious idea since brains combined with anything is sweet, but you might wonder about who the heck came up with this idea:
Known for stretching the fashion limits with his avant garde design for the label Undercover, Jun Takashi recently came out with this Brain Bag. An intricate knit of wool resembling the three-pound jelly structure encapsulated by the skull, it's playful but also looks mature and sophisticated and holds its own among other designer handbags.
-via boingboing-
omnibrain | October 31, 2007Cookin' babies and their brains:
How to Make a Bleeding Zombie Brain:
Brains! Build your own goopy bloody gray-matter:
Ohh my god! like... How-To Eat Halloween Brains! Beverly Hills style...
omnibrain | October 31, 2007
Ahh Halloween - when neuroscientists find all sorts of fake brains for sale and recipes to create them. This is our yearly reposting of the greatest brain recipe of all time.
This recipe was inspired by the one Alton Brown did a few years back. I liked the idea but wasn't thrilled with the recipe, so I came up with my own. By the way, I would suggest getting this mold - it looks a lot more lifelike.
Panna Cotta (brain style) with Pomegranite Sauce
Get the recipe below the fold!
1 cup milk
5 teaspoons unflavored gelatin
4 cups heavy cream
1 cup + 1 Tb sugar, divided
pinch salt
2 Tablespoons…
omnibrain | October 24, 2007
Pneumatic Anatomica by ~freeny on deviantART
I really like how the hemispheres of the brain are forced to be especially separated by the physical structure of the balloon dog. I wonder if there are any behavioral implications?
-via boingboing- and here's the original.
The artist says this:
Artist's Comments
After months of observations, dissections and a 25 minute intro to clown school, I have finally successfully mapped the inter workings of the domestic balloon dog.
NEWS! This piece will be featured in the next issue of "Hi Fructose" magazine.
omnibrain | October 12, 2007
It will only take you two clicks to take care of this one (and you could even do it from work, home, and the coffee shop!). Shelley, from Retrospectacle, needs your help to win a $10,000 blogging scholarship. Just think she could pay off her student loans and maybe even have a couple bucks left over for a computer and some beers!
So please head over to the voting site and click on Shelley Batts' name!
Thanks!
omnibrain | October 8, 2007Just because Chimps are Funny:
And no bitching about my use of the word monkey! Via Neatorama
omnibrain | October 8, 2007The Nobel Prize in Medicine has gone to Mario R. Capecchi, Oliver Smithies, and Sir Martin J. Evans for inventing a technique called Gene Targeting.
According to the NYTimes:
The three scientists were honored for a technique called gene targeting, which lets scientists inactivate or modify particular genes in mice. That in turn lets them study how those genes affect health and disease.
To use this technique, researchers introduce a genetic change into mouse embryonic stem cells. These cells are then injected into mouse embryos. The mice born from these embryos are bred with others, to produce…
omnibrain | October 6, 2007Music education in the United States has typically been one of the first thing to be cut when it comes to balancing the budget. This is a horrible shame since music is one of those things (above any of the other arts) that has a wide ranging effect on peoples intellectual achievement. One of the holy grails in education and psychology is skill transference. Imagine being able to train one ability that positively affects the performance of many many other abilities. Sounds a bit ridiculous eh?! Well, music seem to be one of the only things that can have this effect. Psychologists have…
omnibrain | October 5, 2007We got an exciting new banner today from Len the creator of Monster-by-Mail! Head over to his website for some absolutely phenomenal pieces of monster art! (Ohh... and make sure you buy stuff or order your own monster.
Len's banner is now going to randomly rotate with our wonderful old banner done by my cousin Erin (click refresh a couple time to see them both up top).
Here they are :)
The Marauding Omni Brain was created by Erin Higgins who can be reached @ higgsmax2000 -at- hotmail -dot- com
And this wonderful banner (as well as the image above) was created by Len over at Monster by Mail…
omnibrain | October 5, 2007It's that time of year again when the most exciting set of awards for us here at Omni Brain are announced. If you don't know what the Ig Nobels are you're missing out on a very important part of science! According to some article at MSNBC "The annual no-rules awards ceremony, where flying paper airplanes and interrupting honored speakers are commonplace, pokes fun at bizarre and improbable achievements in real-life scientific research."
This year some of my favorite prizes were:
NUTRITION: Brian Wansink of Cornell University, for exploring the seemingly boundless appetites of human beings,…
omnibrain | October 5, 2007Have you ever wanted a pre-frontal lobotomy?! I know I have!
Just think, by severing connections to your pre-frontal cortex (or just destroying the whole darn thing instead) you can have drastic personality changes! You could even skip that and go straight to mental retardation! Of course we're not sure here at Omni Brain what technique they're using up there in Canada for the lobotomies there are just so many great ones!
You could drill holes in people's heads and then inject alcohol, you could drill a hole in the head and just remove whatever brain matter happens to be sitting around…
omnibrain | September 28, 2007Mind Hacks has alerted us to some amazing engineering from Harvard University:
A team from Harvard Medical School are interested in how smoked marijuana affects the brain, but have come to the inevitable conclusion that it's actually quite hard smoking a joint when you're lying on your back being brain scanned.
So the research team put their heads together (!), and realised they needed to design a bong - a water pipe for smoking marijuana - safe to use in an MRI scanner.
This isn't a trivial task. Apart from being free of metal parts that could be affected by the MRI scanner's strong magnet,…
omnibrain | September 28, 2007Ok... maybe not for real reals but there are some brain eating amoebas taking over the world. Ok maybe they're not taking over the world but they really (for real this time!) have killed a few people.
According to the AP:
A killer amoeba living in lakes enters the body through the nose and attacks the brain where it feeds until you die.
Even though encounters with the microscopic bug are extraordinarily rare, it's killed six boys and young men this year. The spike in cases has health officials concerned, and they are predicting more cases in the future.
Panic!!! Don't swim in lakes! You…
omnibrain | September 25, 2007
From the official website:
Hypochondriacs have long had to satisfy their needs for self-diagnosis with medical reference materials written for the masses, but this revolutionary book is dedicated entirely to the hypochondriac's unique perspective on health. The world's worst maladies, conveniently organized by symptom (real or imagined), will ignite even the mildest hypochondriac's fantasy life. We're all going to die of something--why not choose an ailment that's rare and hard to pronounce?
Features:
* Profiles of over 300 deadly diseases
* Organized by symptom for ease of self-…
omnibrain | September 24, 2007
alt="Openlab 2007" title="The Best Science Writing on Blogs 2007" />
Can you solve this problem?
Given a human being with an inoperable stomach tumor, and lasers which destroy organic tissue at sufficient intensity, how can one cure the person with these lasers and, at the same time, avoid harming the healthy tissue that surrounds the tumor?
For the solution and evidence from Laura Thomas and Alejandro Lleras (2007) that shows that moving your eyes in a specific way can help you solve the problem, continue reading after the break.
In the 1940's and 50's gestalt psychologists began to…
omnibrain | September 20, 2007MMmmmm..... Brains!
Mixed chocolate human mini brains treats with cherries is a set of twelve anatomically correct mini Chocolate Brains. Each brain is 1x1.25x.75"
-via Neatorama-
omnibrain | September 19, 2007I think you are. It seems that many fewer people are washing their hands after using the toilet than only a couple years ago. Not only that... people lie about it. Yes you reader - I'm calling you out! I'll bet you don't wash your grimy little hands.
Here's some of the details about this very clearly influential and well done study:
In an observational study sponsored by the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) and The Soap and Detergent Association (SDA), slightly over three-quarters of men and women (77%) washed their hands in public restrooms - a six percent decline from a similar…
omnibrain | September 17, 2007
I have a project that I could use your help on. Yes... you!
If that didn't get you excited I'm not sure what will ;)
Here's the essentials from the wiki:
Welcome to the Help Steve get his Ph.D. Wiki
This project aims to collect as many distinct scene gists as possible (as a first step - the later steps are classified at the moment!). These are separated into two categories, Scene Gist and Social Gist. A Scene gist is the basic name or category for a scene that does not consist of any humans. You should be able to name the scene nearly instantly as soon as you look at it. For example a jail…