cwilcox | January 26, 2009Hey there all,
I've been asked to team up with a cool crew of people and chip in some stories at a site called NutritionWonderland.Com. It's a new site (launching in the next week or two, so it's not even completely ready yet) that wants to bring the science back into nutrition. The goal is to blend in-depth science reporting with how it directly relates to diet and its impacts on health. In the end, the reader will not only learn about the latest breakthroughs in health science, but how it impacts them and their diet. It's a very cool idea.
Well, I figure - oh, what the heck? As if two blogs…
cwilcox | January 25, 2009Ok, the consistent reader of this blog can't help but notice that I am a sucker when it comes to unique studies about human relationships and the trappings that go with them. The biological basis and interaction with behavior is simply fascinating to me. This is why I had to report on a study that showed even without knowing it, women's brains picked up on the smell of arousal in men's sweat. And, following that vein, I can't help but write about a new olfactory study, which found that a woman's passion for her man affects her ability to identify the smell of other men in her life.…
cwilcox | January 23, 2009Japanese scientists announced on Jan 22nd that they had made a huge breakthrough in fabricating human organs. Researchers from the Tokyo Institute of Technology successfully created a doll made of living cells.
The doll is about 1-inch tall and 5 mm wide, and is made from fully functioning cells. Scientists first created a mould for the doll's shape, then seeded it with 100,000 cell capsules - tiny 0.1 mm balls of collagen coated with cells which then were allowed to grow. The final result is a fully living structure that retains the cellular abilities for at least a day when suspended in…
cwilcox | January 22, 2009How many times have you heard a guy say "Women - can't live with them, can't live without them." Well, they just might be onto something. At least kind of. You see, living with a woman might just make you fertile longer. New research published in Biology of Reproduction has found that male mice stay reproductively active longer if they live with a female mouse than if they live alone.
The study, from the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, sought to see whether living with a female mouse had any affect on a male mouse's fertility as he aged. To do this, male mice were…
cwilcox | January 21, 2009Everyone knows that dieting and losing weight is hard, especially for women. It's like our bodies are hard-wired to fail - and, perhaps they are. At least that is one interpretation of a new study coming out of the Brookhaven National Laboratory this week, set to be published in PNAS shortly.
The researchers looked at the PET scans of men and women after 20 hours of fasting at rest, when looking, smelling, and drooling over their favorite food, and when that food is presented to them but they are told not to think about it. All of the subjects reported feeling less hungry for the food when…
cwilcox | January 20, 2009If you're a fan of once-a-week info bites like my Sci-Fi Parasites or Doses of Cute, you should check out Biochemical Soul's new Adaptation of the week. It's sure to be a great new weekly digest of adaptations at their finest!
cwilcox | January 20, 2009Here's a nice San Diego beach scene, made by swabbing fluorescent bacteria on a culture plate:
Now that is just cool. Here's some nerdy-background info on the artwork: the scene, by Nathan Shaner (photo: Paul Steinbach) is made from eight different colors of bacterial colonies expressing variations of the GFP and red-fluorescent coral protein dsRed. It was made in the lab of Roger Tsien, who as you might know received the Nobel Prize for his work with GFP.
cwilcox | January 19, 2009What do you do when you've lost your mom?
... Find the next closest thing.
c/o www.dailymail.co.uk, click to link to story
Which, in the case of hedgehogs, is apparently a cleaning brush. These little youngsters are reportedly attracted to the bristles because they smelled like their outdoor home and feel like mom should.
I admit, I might be partial to this story because I had hedgehogs as pets as a kid. They're marvelously wonderful animals. Sure, they smell, but so does a ferret - and their little piggy noses make them so much cuter than those little weasels.
cwilcox | January 18, 2009The estrogen hormone oestradiol is associated with just about every aspect of female beauty. As well as serving as a growth hormone for female reproductive organs, it's associated with having a symmetrical face, large breasts and a low waist-to-hip ratio. Now, the hormone is credited with one more association: it makes women serial monogamists.
Her relationships explainedby her body cheimstry?
For those who may not have heard of this term, let me explain. A serial monogamist is a person who has sequential relationships, and who tends not to spend much time alone in between partners. While…
cwilcox | January 15, 2009Most parasites are really, really small. Especially the ones that mess with brains - they tend to be able to fit in them. But not all parasites that can do some fun jedi mind tricks are so itsy-bitsy. Take, for example, the Rhizocephalans - the parasitic barnacles.
Yes, I did just say parasitic barnacle. Although you probably wouldn't recognize it as a barnacle when it's an adult. The adult parasites look like a sac where a female crab would have eggs. It's classified as a barnacle, however, due to its larval forms, specifically the cypris larvae (left), which neatly place it in the class…
cwilcox | January 15, 2009So, every once in awhile I check my feedburner stats, to see what kind of stuff attracts people to my site. You know, where people link to me from, etc. Well, I usually have a few from random google searches like "science nerd" or "tiger" (something about my Tiger Wine post is apparently very popular with google search). Sometimes, though, it's just good to know a person found what they were looking for. Like this guy:
That's damn right, biatch. Another satisfied googler, I'm sure.
cwilcox | January 14, 2009Every kid blames their parents for all their bad habits. Parents are supposed to be your role models, your guides. So who doesn't try and get away with a "mom's X behavior when I was a kid made me like this" every once in awhile? Well, it turns out you might get to pile one more on poor mom's shoulders. Drink a little too much, a little too often? Find yourself naked in unfamiliar places with no idea how you got there? Think that beer is a "soft drink" because it's less than 20% alcohol by volume? Well, it's possible your boozing behavior is your mother's fault. That's because a new study out…
cwilcox | January 13, 2009Rose Ragai over at MY LIFE IS MY CHOICEÂ has tagged me a game of tag!
Here are the rules:
1. Link to the person or persons who tagged you.2. Post the rules on your blog.3. Write six random and/or revealing things about yourself.4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.5. Let each person know theyâve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog6. Let the tagger know when your post entry is up on your site.
6 Random Things1. In high school, I took AP Physics instead of AP Bio, and I went into my college career planning to double major in Marine Biology and Physics. Clearly,…
cwilcox | January 12, 2009Hee hee! I am such a sucker for baby animals... Especially duck-ducks! ( ;> to Barry)
c/o http://www.dailymail.co.uk last year (click picture to link to story)
These little tykes were somehow swept away from their mother and were facing a terrible death at sea, until, lucky for them, a passing canoeist spotted them, picked them up, and brought them home to nurse back to health.
cwilcox | January 11, 2009Thanks to Allie, I've found a bunch of new ways to waste time, all thanks to Sporcle.
Can you remember all 20 of the standard amino acids? (yup. Got all 20. Cheating, though, that they give you the 3-letter and 1-letter abbreviations. Makes it too easy... though spelling them right is hard!)
How about the entire periodic table? (67. Eh.)
The Geological Timescale? (I'm sorry Prof. Brooks! I totally failed this one... I am not worthy...)
Or maybe, if you're not as scientifically inclined, you want to try The 32 NFL teams or the U.S. Presidents. Does it say something bad about me that I can name…
cwilcox | January 9, 2009Screw Tetris.
More and more research seems to be accumulating to support MDMA (or Ecstasy, to the street-wise reader) for the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
MDMA, or 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine, is well-loved by drug enthusiasts for its experiential effects which include feelings of intimacy, lack of fear or anxiety, and, of course, the feeling of euphoria it is named for. It does this by increasing oxytocin in the brain, a hormone which is otherwise released after orgasm, dopamine, and 'stress hormones' like noradrenaline and cortisol. Though its mechanism isn'…
cwilcox | January 8, 2009Most of us women can tell if a guy is 'into us'. We pick up on a vasy array of non-verbal cues, not the mention the ever-obvious verbal ones. But I wouldn't say I can smell sexual interest- would you? Probably not. But, as it turns out, women's brains can distinguish the difference between sweat from a man who is aroused and one that isn't, according to fresh research published in the Journal of Neuroscience
Is he hot or horny?A woman's brain knows.
Scientists from Rice University used fMRI scans to take a look at women's brains while they processed four different smells. The first was sweat…
cwilcox | January 7, 2009
Look at the guilt in her eyes...
I love it when animal ingenuity triumphs over human expectations.
One very happy, hungry, and ingenious harbor seal found its way into a state fish hatchery sometime Monday night and had a ball of a time snacking to its heart's content until a hatchery worker discovered its whereabouts on Tuesday morning. The seal was found frolicking in the holding tanks, and didn't exactly go quietly when the muscle from the Cape Cod Stranding Network removed her from her ill-gotten gains.
The kicker is that the hatchery is two miles inland - meaning the seal…
cwilcox | January 6, 2009Ok, I simply had to post about this new study from PLoS ONE because my boyfriend, Barry, absolutely loves the game Tetris. Anyhow, new research has found that Tetris can help treat PTSD flashbacks, which is pretty cool for a really old, really simple video game.
Read the rest of this post!
Here's how it works. Your brain has limited resources and capacity. In other words, your brain can only process, remember and manage so much input at a time. When you see an image or perform a mental task, you have to put energy into it and resources. After witnessing a traumatic incident, part of your…