Category: Science

Contracts

Simone is currently accepting tenders on proposals to redesign the anatomy and (more importantly) physiology of the female reproductive system in specific relation to it’s adaptation and responses to pregnancy.

All design proposals with appropriate costings should be forwarded to Simone, care of “M**** F****ing Morning Sickness, Bentley Park, Cairns”.

One additional design suggestion which while not being an absolute requirement for any submission, would be a favoring component of any successful bid would be the ability to transfer symptoms (or indeed just the entire pregnancy) to the male other half…

Sushi Side Effects

Curious little mention on Slashdot of an article in Practical Neurology about a neurotoxin in tropical fish which, among other equally odd effects, causes a reversal in the sensations of hot and cold. That would certainly be unusual to experience, but an amusing party joke if you could make it short lived and reversible…

I have ridden the mighty moon worm!

Al Gore, the inventor of the environment, and first emperor of the moon (those futurama fans out there will know what I’m talking about), and one time holder of the award for the most boring man alive, has won the Nobel Peace Prize for his advocacy regarding global warming. Kudos to him. Now the question is going to be who will win the bag of moon sapphires for coming up with a solution to the global warming problem??

Hooray for Allen

The (SETI) Allen Telescope (previously known as the 1 hectare telescope) is up and running. Now lets see if we can’t find some little green men (and do some pretty damn nifty science in the process…

Respiration

At the moment I’m going through quite a bit of respiratory physiology, and I can’t help noticing that I constantly become consciously aware of my breathing. I get that thing where I suddenly notice that I’m breathing, pause mid breath, and then have to think for a tic before I remember what comes next and I start breathing normally again.

It doesn’t happen when I’m studying any other kind of physiology, which is why it’s so curious.

Flight of ideas

One of the things I am living about being in Dunedin is the exposure to Academic medicine, with our lecturers as often as not being dual clinicians and researchers. They really know the stuff, and keep on hinting at the bits that are still unresolved, or those tidbits that have recently arisen from exciting research breakthroughs. Having gone through the UQ Med school and worked for Queensland Health (neither of which have administrations even remotely interested in research) it’s unbelievably refreshing to be around other minds who are interested in how things work, not just the fact that they do. (and who do research that involves more that glorified counting and stamp collecting).

For the first time in what seems like years I find myself wandering along a million miles away deep in contemplation of how I could solve some of the problems in Medicine, how I could improve myself, and how I could come to take over the world (or at least become a giant in my little corner of it). I used to get it all the time when I was doing my Biochemistry undergrad degree, but haven’t felt it much since starting studying medicine, and I had forgotten how invigorated and vibrant it made me feel to know of all the big holes that exist in our knowledge just waiting for me to devote a happy life to figuring them out.

Things that make you go hmmmm

Right. Time for another set of science type stories.
Sony has apparently made a power source that breaks down sugar to make electricity (for portable devices) in much the same way as biological cells. Pretty nifty.

A Japanese company had to recall a series of arm wrestling robots (for amusement in pubs etc) because several people had broken their arms playing it.

Astronomers have recently discovered a hole in space a billion light years across that they can’t explain. Someone better fetch the darning wool and some big needles.

Finally, researchers have managed to replicate the “out of body experience” using clever virtual reality goggles, with some interesting results…

Night sky

Last night I stumbles onto a rather neat little online tutorial for orienting yourself to the (admittedly northern hemisphere) night sky. It’s simple, and quite fun.

http://www.quietbay.net/Science/astronomy/nightsky/

Link-o-rama

Firstly, hooray for those quirky folk at MIT:

1. They think they’ve discovered the molecular basis for fear. Now if that isn’t a potential target for military drug R&D I don’t know what is.

2.  They’ve also been tinkering with next generation space suits, which instead of being pressurised are just really really elastic, to counteract the effects of the no atmosphere of space, and the low atmoshere of other plants/moons.

Next, using the power of photon emission some guys have developed a genuine random number generator. This is great because up until now most all computer based random numbers were just approximations generated by an algorithm, and not actually random. What’s even better is it’s apparently available free of change via the internet for researchers or other people interested in random numbers.

Finally, those/us cooky New zealanders, they’ve come up with an idea to make a biofuel derived from algae that can be used to power commercial jets. They go on to say that algae ponds covering “only” 34,000 square kilometers could supply enough fuel for all the world’s aircraft. That sounds great in theory, but that’s somethink like 15% of NZ’s land area, that doesn’t sound quite to practical…