Radition - Cause of Gray Hair

Melanocyte stem cells exist within every hair follicle. These cells gradually split into two populations - 1 produces pigment for hair before dying, while the other becomes a new melanocyte stem cell. In a perfect world, these cells would replenish themselves indefinitely and we'd keep our original hair color (baldness notwithstanding).

Researchers think the melanocyte die-off may allow the body to shed potentially cancerous, radiation-stressed cells. Emotional Stress as a harm to stem cells is still up in the air - so don't blame your spouse just yet.

Color Dictates Hangover Severity

Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research finds that lighter colored spirits (e.g. vodka) may cause lesser hangovers than darker drinks (e.g. bourbon). Many drinks contain byproducts of fermentation called congeners which in large doses can have toxic effects ... darker distilled drinks and wines generally have more congeners vs. lighter ones (e.g. bourbon has 37 times more than vodka).

Intelligent Design

Current Biology has argued that British backyard bird feeders have caused a split in central European blackcap warblers into 2 distinct populations that may become separate species. The finding is incredible as evolution usually takes eons, while this has occurred in less than 30 generations.

The bird feeders are serving a crucial role - for 1 species to diverge into 2, a physical separation is needed so the 2 populations can breed independently and evolve differently. Warblers migrate in the winter and routes are genetically determined. The population studied has historically wintered in Spain. Those flying north died from lack of food in barren winter landscapes.

Bird feeders basically changed the ecosystem, giving warblers an incentive to stay in England during the winter. Also, the birds flight back home in central Europe is several hundred miles shorter than a trip back from Spain, so British migrators immediately begin breeding on their return.

A genetic split has occurred, results already visible in the birds’ anatomy - difference in wing and beak structure and even dietary preferences

How BIG an impact have these bird feeders had? Well, bird feeders are now doing the job mountains, oceans, etc. normally do.

More Fun = Less Time (Sort of)

Time flies when you're having fun, but now the opposite may also be true. Psychological Science has published a study arguing that if people believe time has past quickly, they think they had more fun.

Smaller Fingers = Higher Sensitivity

A study in the Journal of Neuroscience finds that people with smaller fingers have more sensitive fingertips, probably because of a higher concentration of touch receptors in a given area. With smaller hands on average, it follows that women would then have a more sensitive touch then men.

Not So Secret

This is embarrassing ... and dangerous - the Wall Street Journal reports that Iraqi militants cracked the software for Predator drone surveillance planes which send information unencrypted to military operators - with $26 software.

The lack of encryption means the data is less secure than most home wireless internet networks. Considering each plane costs ~$4 million, this is really bad news.

Dirtyness - the key to Health

The Proceedings of the Royal Society B published a study suggesting that over-cleanliness could make babies more prone to inflammation later in life and raise the risk for stroke and heart disease.

The study found that the more pathogens a case group from the Philippines had encountered before age 2, the less cases of C-reactive protein (CRP), an inflammation marker. Every episode of diarrhea lowered chance of higher CRP later by 11%, every 2 months spent in a place with animal feces cut it by 13%, and being born in the dusty, dirty dry season cut the chance by 33%.

So if you want your children to be healthy, let them get a little dirty

Secret to Hummingbirds Drinking Nectar

A hummingbird can extract nectar by wrapping its tongue into a straw. But how could it since viscosity makes sucking liquid more difficult as the straw becomes smaller?

Research at MIT has discovered that the hummingbird is taking advantage of surface tension - what allows water striders to skim across water. When a hummingbird sticks its tongue into a flower, the tongue compresses from 3/4in long to 1/25in in diameter.

The tongue closes, nectar is drawn up, and the "straw" fills with nectar. The hummingbird then scrapes its tongue clean and swallows. It repeats this process 20x/second during feeding.

The discovery holds promise for researchers building miniature chemistry laboratories — "labs on a chip" — that move tiny droplets of chemicals from place to place.

Here's a video of hummingbirds feeding.

Politics ... Skin Deep

From Discover Magazine:

Researchers are making the case that a person’s political views cause them to see with a tinted perspective.

Scientists showed undergraduate students a series of digitally darkened or lightened photos of President Barack Obama last fall, and asked them which photos best represented him as a person ... while self-described liberals tended to pick the digitally lightened photos of the president, self-described conservative students more frequently picked the darkened images. The more one agrees with a politician, in other words, the lighter his skin tone seems; the less you agree, the darker it becomes [Newsweek].

Tweeting with Your Brain

"Locked in syndrome" is a condition where an individual is fully conscious but unable to communicate due to complete body paralysis. The condition is a bit different than ALS (Lou Gherig's disease) but with similar devastating effects.

Adam Wilson, however, has developed a novel method which may one day allow such people full communication abilities — by merely thinking to use Twitter. While wearing a cap with electrodes monitoring changes in brain activity, Wilson is able to tell the computer which character he wants to select, eventually forming a 'tweet'.


Here's a video.

World's Greatest Paper Airplane

Without cuts or glue and one sheet of paper, Takuo Toda has set the world record for the longest paper airplane flight - 27.63 seconds.

If you want to build the same airplane, see the instructional video.

Teleportation - Seriously.

For the first time ever information has been teleported between two separate atoms across a distance of a meter.

Teleportation, unlike any other communication, occurs when no information actually pass between points - that is it does not pass through a physical medium. Instead, the information disappears and reappears from point A to point B. It has occurred between other particles but none offers a means of holding and managing quantum information over long distances.

While the days of Star Trek are still a ways away, the discovery has promise for a quantum computer which could perform certain tasks (encryption-related calculations, searches of giant databases) much faster than conventional machines.

Judging a Book by its ... SMELL???

There's a certain smell to old books and a new study argues that the smell could help in preservation.

The smell of old books is a result of volatile organic compounds released as paper ages. 15 organic compounds were identified to track books condition. As of now, age-testing requires snipping pieces of the paper for testing. If this new method is developed, a hand-held model would allow for a noninvasive analysis.

Bread Crumbs Shuts Down Large Hadron Collider

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a gigantic particle accelerator used to study the building blocks of everything and revolutionize our understanding of the universe.

But it will take just a little longer for the LHC to work its magic.

A crusty chunk of bread “paralysed a high voltage installation that should have been powering the cooling unit.” The bread was found on an electrical connection inside 1 of 8 above-ground buildings at the site. The mystery is how the bread got there in the first place as the cryogenic facility is under heavy guard and designed to super-chill the LHC to temperatures approaching absolute zero.

“Nobody knows,” a spokewoman states.

Birds SEE Magnetic Fields When Migrating

Migratory birds have been long known to be able to detect magnetic fields to help navigate their annal routes. The mechanism itself, however, was a mystery. Nature Magazine has published a study revealing that the European robin can actually SEE magnetic fields through the use of proteins situated in the eye's light-sensitive cells! The study also disproved the theory that iron-based cells in the birds’ beaks were the reason for detecting magnetic fields.

Politics and Manhood

A study, based on saliva samples taken during Election Night 2008, reveals that testosterone levels of male John McCain supporters dropped dramatically. Male supporters of President Obama’s candidacy had no corresponding boost in testosterone levels, and women’s hormone levels remained steady. Surveys also revealed that McCain supporters felt submissive, controlled, and unhappy. The findings prove that politics can affect males in the same way that physical contests do.

What is Dark Matter and Dark Energy?

In 1933, Fritz Zwicky averaged the mass of certain galaxies and obtained a value far greater than expected - he determined there was an unseen "dark matter" that allowed for the discrepancy. Dark Matter was determined to be a directly undetectable state of matter with powerful gravitational effects.

But in 1998 an even more shocking discovery revealed that despite this 'dark' matter pulling galaxies together, the universe itself was expanding ... and at an increasing speed. While dark matter was keeping everything together, a stronger force was pushing everything apart! Moreover, galaxies were not being stretched ... instead, more space was being created. The same amount of acceleration of this expansion was observed irrespective of position.

This means that "dark energy" is uniform and also much stronger than dark matter.

It doesn't stop there ... the visible matter, as immense as it is, comprises only 4% of all the matter in the universe - dark matter is believed to take up 21% of the pie, with dark energy taking up an unbelievable 75% of distribution in the universe!

Here's an easy to understand documentary explaining the phenomenon.

The 'Location' behind Perfect Pitch

Perfect pitch (PP) was considered a genetic anomaly - identical twins are far more likely than fraternal twins to have PP, and ~50% of people with PP have relatives who also have it. New studies, however, reveal that PP is far more common form of "speech" which can be learned.

In the study, English speakers read the same list of words on different days and their pitch for any given word varied by as much as 2 notes. But speakers of tonal languages (e.g. Vietnamese, Mandarin) hit the exact pitch, day after day, and an unusual number had PP. In Mandarin, depending on pitch, 'ma' can mean "mother," "horse," "hemp," or "to scold."

Pitch range was tied to geography so much that researchers guessed where subjects or their parents grew up. Range predictability suggests pitch recognition develops early on, perhaps in the womb.

Moreover, researchers recommend giving children musical instruments, preferably with labeled notes (e.g. a color-coded xylophone) as PP people have a higher rate of synesthesia - seeing a color when hearing a sound.

Cultural Diversity - Its Pathological Roots

Researchers at University of New Mexico and the University of British Columbia have argued in a series of published papers that disease determines much of our behavior.

Where diseases are common, people are less open to new experiences, more xenophobic and mean to strangers to avoid new diseases. When people avoid strangers, communication breaks down which creates different cultures and languages over the long run. For example: Sweden has few diseases and 15 languages vs. Ghana's (of similar size) many diseases and 89 languages.

We even saw this trend with the outbreak of swine flu - some started shaking hands less, wearing masks, even PDA declined - "Handshakes were skipped at college commencements. Mexicans were urged to not kiss on the cheek. Churches stopped having parishioners drink out of a common, holy cup."

It will be a long time before mainstream science accepts the research as truth, but it is food for thought.

Bombing the Moon ... for Science

Scientists crashed a booster rocket and its mother craft near the moon's south pole to discover what lies beneath. Results were inconclusive, but enough data was gathered to tell if the crater contains frozen water.

Results will be published soon.

Breakthrough in Human's Evolutionary History

Science has published a 17-year study of the oldest known skeleton of a putative human ancestor, widening the evolutionary gap between humans and chimps.

40+ researchers from 11 countries studied Ardipithecus ramidus, and discovered it had a brain and body like a chimpanzee, had hands much more like a human than a chimp or ape, and walked upright. The find is incredible as scientists had anticipated the ancestors of humans to be an intermediary between a chimp (man's closest genetic cousin) and man. This means that as of now, science believes man and chimps common ancestor was neither human, nor chimpanzee, but a distinct, separate species from which apes, chimps, and humans evolved.

Here's NBC Nightly News video.

Nurture affects Nature

Research at the University of Chicago Medical Center reveals that social isolation can increase tumor growth. That is, a negative social environment can alter gene expression.

The research is a step forward in chemoprevention and may have implications for chronic diseases like central obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, etc.

Studying Nature to Improve Anti-Virus Software

Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have developed a much more aggressive form of anti-virus software which mimic's ants!

The new software, unlike traditional software, traverses computer networks looking for threats. When detected, an army of ants swarm the threat and draw human's attention. The concept, called “swarm intelligence,” will transform cyber security because it adapts readily to changing threats, just like ants do.

“Our idea is to deploy 3,000 different types of digital ants, each looking for evidence of a threat ... As they move about the network, they leave digital trails modeled after the scent trails ants in nature use to guide other ants. Each time a digital ant identifies some evidence, it is programmed to leave behind a stronger scent. Stronger scent trails attract more ants, producing the swarm that marks a potential computer infection.”

Not All Bad

A comet hitting Earth does more than bring death and destruction - at least that is what researchers at the SETI Institute are trying to prove. Comets could promote certain necessary chemical steps for the origin of life - particularly how comet collisions might have influenced biology's molecular chirality (handed-ness).

Most amino acids, the building blocks of life, exist in 'left-handed' and 'right-handed' forms. Life makes and uses only 'left-handed' amino acids. Comets could have not only helped form, but also bring a massive supply of amino acids to earth to begin the process of life. Comets also carry water with them.

Don't Spare the Rod, Ruin the Child

Research at the University of New Hampshire involving hundreds of American children suggests that spanking is inversely related IQ scores - i.e. the more a child was spanked the lower their IQ. Results held even after "accounting for parental education, income, cognitive stimulation by parents and other factors that could affect children's mental abilities."

Researchers noted the experience is traumatic, can adversely affect the brain and cause children to have more stressful responses in difficult situations - meaning their cognitive abilities are inhibited.

Man Hunter

Researchers have concluded that the extinct Haast's eagle was a predator and not a mere scavenger as previously thought.

Living in New Zealand's mountains, the largest eagle in history weighed ~40 pounds and had a 3m wingspan. The haast's eagle was capable of hunting large grounded birds and small humans. The findings reinforce Maori folk tales - the indigenous inhabitants of New Zealand - which tell of large birds swooping down and carrying away children.

See a reanimation of how a haast's eagle would attack a human.

Salt-Water as Fuel

In a search to cure cancer, engineer John Kanzius chanced upon what may be the single most important step to solving our energy needs - discovering how to use salt water as engine fuel.

Through the manipulation of radio waves, Kanzius was able to burn the oxygen and hydrogen from salt water, generating heat registering as high as 1,300C! Further research could help create an engine which uses one of the world's most abundant, and underutilized, materials.

See the video.

Tickling Rats

Researchers chanced upon rats playing and noticed what appeared to be laughter. Using a frequency converter, scientists were able to bring the noises to a level audible to human ears. To test if the noise really was laughter, the rats were tickled. Sure enough, the rats generated the same sounds as before when playing amongst themselves.

In addition, the rats began to enjoy the researchers company and follow the hand if it had tickled them.

See the video.

Amino Acid Essential for Life found in Comet

NASA scientists believe they have discovered glycine, which organisms use to make proteins, in a comet.

The discovery, the first of its kind, supports the notion that life's building blocks came from, and are prevalent, in space. More important, it helps further the argument that extraterrestrial life is a reality.

Arts and Cops

NYC's Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) is introducing a method to improve police officers vision - through, well, art.

The class first began as a 3-hour "Art of Perception" presentation to help medical students improve their visual acuity. After realizing that police are often put in situations requiring split-second decision making based on body language and environmental cues.

Because everything in a painting has some significance, the art class helps police officers refine an eye already trained to pick up on hidden clues and also to scrutinize their surroundings - something that has not always been done in the past and has led to huge delays in solving certain cases.

Cheap Fertilizer

Urine has a high nitrogen content, and wood ash is rich in calcium and magnesium. All of these nutrients are needed for vegetable growth.

Therefore, according to National Geographic, ash mixed with urine yields ~4 times more tomatoes than otherwise. Also, the fertilized tomatoes had significantly higher levels of magnesium, key for bone, muscle, and heart health.

The only thing the fertilizer did not do is improve taste - tomatoes were as tasty with or without fertilizer.

Fight Science: Ninja Strike

Ninja's are known for stealth attacks and an advanced weaponry skill set. Their strikes (both punches and kicks) are not as powerful as other martial arts strikes, but they are equally devastating.

For example, a strike to the axillary nerve (found on near the armpit) causes erratic electric signal firing. Pain aside, the punch causes a circuit overload, and the body cannot cope with the electrical impulses being sent throughout it. Along with a flood of calcium and potassium, the body shuts down.

The most famous ninja strike is probably to the vagus nerve (found above the jugular vein). Connected to the brain and heart, a strike to the vagus nerve causes erratic electrical discharges which the brain interprets as stress on the heart. In response, the brain slows heartbeat. Translation: the opponent collapses.

HD Video... of the MOON

Japan's Kaguya lunar probe has taken the closest and clearest video yet of the moon. The video appears like an animation, but it is the real deal.

But wait, there's more: video will continue for the next 2 days until the probe's crash landing.

Eco-friendly ... sort of

Coral reefs have been damaged or are disappearing at an alarming rate - some estimates say as less than 30% of the world's coral is healthy.

To help, the 523 ft. USNS Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg, used during the Cold War, will be sunk off the coast of southern Florida to provide a platform for the development of coral. Coral is vital to the maintenance of a vibrant and diverse marine ecosystem. The warship's development of coral will also help shift tourists who dive from areas where the coral population is much more fragile.

Better Than a Polygraph

A study in the Journal of Applied Cognitive Psychology posits that handwriting tests could be a better detector of lying, compared to that of polygraph sets. Subjects were told to write a true paragraph and a false paragraph. Scientists discovered significant differences between the two statements regarding pressure, stroke duration, stroke length, and height and width of letters.

In the future, maybe a written statement of innocence itself could reveal the guilty party. Neat, huh?

Super Velcro

Engineers have developed a velcro-style material out of steel. The material works just like normal velcro, except it can tolerate high temperature (800° C), tensile loads up to 35 metric tons/m2, and exposure to strong chemicals.

The velcro will be useful in automotive systems (near exhaust pipes where heat and corrosive gases are prevalent), to snap aluminum siding onto homes, or to attach hospital curtains where strong chemicals regularly sterilize fasteners.

The inspiration for this new age velcro? The age old burrs that get stuck in your clothes.

Night Vision Without Goggles

Unlike other deep-sea fish, the dragonfish can perceive red light due to the generation of chlorophyll. Research at Columbia University discovered that chlorophyll administered to the eyes in other animals doubled the animals capacity to see in low night.

The D.O.D is now investing in research to allow for the same in humans to be used on the battlefield.

Ribbit Ribbit

Why do frogs make that noise?? First off, every species has its own call. While unique to each species, every male frog primarily uses it to attract a mate. Females return the call to communicate with the male. Calls can also indicate an ensuing rainstorm, or to defend one's territory.


Listen to some of the various calls.

Back from the Dead

North American wood frogs are giving more weight to the plausibility of human cryogenics. To survive the winter, the frog pumps large amounts of glucose, which serves a purpose similar to antifreeze, into its bloodstream and hibernates. The frog has no heartbeat during this period - it is as close to death as you can get without being dead. The phenomenon is baffling as when compared to humans, who can suffer from diabetes from a doubling of glucose blood levels, the frog easily copes with a 250-fold increase!!

When the temperature rises, the glucose is flushed into the bladder, where it is absorbed into the blood slow enough for the liver to convert it into harmless glycogen (which can be indefinitely stored).

Labs have repeatedly chilled wood frogs to as low as -6 °C and the frog still survives.

Check out the video.

Hybrids Not That Green

If you have a buddy who has been letting you know how much more environmentally conscious he is because of his hybrid, tell him to think again. Hybrids like the Prius uses more rare earth elements (REE) than any object in the world. Neodymium and lanthanum, used in a hybrid's batteries and electric motor's magnets, could become extinct in the near future.

With REE used in fiber-optic telecom cables, military gear, computers, etc. hybrids could create a lot of non-ecofriendly situations.

Solar Roads

Research is being conducted to create solar panels embedded into roads to provide power. Each 'Solar Road' panel can generate ~7.6 kwh of power/day, costing ~$7,000 each. A mile-long stretch of four-lane highway would remove 500 homes from the energy grid.

Aside from helping curb our usage of depleting energy resources, the panels could also be used to create LED road warnings and built-in heating elements to prevent roads from freezing.

Zoomed In

IBM scientists have taken the most close-up picture yet of a molecule - capturing a string of carbon molecules spaced at half a million times smaller than the diameter of a human hair.

The breakthrough could help in understanding how charge moves through molecules, which could lead to breakthroughs in building atomic scale computing elements.

When Color Blindness is a Good Thing

Research at the University of Münster, Germany, showed that in close martial arts matches, competitors wearing red were awarded ~13% more points compared to if they had a blue uniform.

The discovery is yet another in a string of discoveries that reveal color can affect the human mind. Red, in particular, has been studied and is believed to be perceived as a dominant color, causing the observer to perform adversely.

You can also participate in the study - see here.

But don't think the color of your uniform will make you Bruce Lee. As researcher Robert Barton points out, "If you're rubbish, a red shirt won't stop you from losing, but when fights were relatively symmetrical, colour tipped the balance."

Dirty Money

A study presented at the American Chemical Society’s national meeting stated that 90% of U.S. paper currency is contaminated with cocaine!

This doesn't mean every bill was used to snort cocaine, as most of the paper bills had minuscule amounts. Some money was used in drug deals, but the majority was contaminated while in banks as cocaine residue was left behind on the money counter from the dirty bills.

With experts saying bills can carry bacteria from feces and urine, this is just one more reason to wash your hands after touching money.

Fixing a Broken Heart ... Through the Stomach

Scientists are looking to the stomach to help treat those suffering from heart attacks. Scientists used stem cell patches of lab-grown heart cells onto rats' stomachs' fatty tissue - which is rich in blood vessels and has previously been used to regenerate other organs. After a week, they transferred the patches to the rats’ damaged heart. Experiments showed that the patches did indeed improve the heart's condition.

Still, much work is needed as the procedure is considered too risky for elderly patients because of the extensive amount of surgery time required.

Not That Useless

Long considered to be a useless appendage, scientists are now discovering that the appendix has a purpose and is far more prevalent in nature than once thought.

Scientists have discovered that the appendix can be a source of good bacteria to repopulate the gut after a severe case of diarrhea. The appendix can also help make, direct and train white blood cells.

More astonishing is the fact that scientists now consider the appendix to have been around for ~80 million years. If true, this means that the view of the appendix being a vestigial organ (an organ rendered useless due to the ongoing phenomenon of evolution) would be incorrect. Moreover, scores of other animals also possess this appendage, oftentimes aiding in digestion.

New Findings in Man's Ancestry

Until recently, the oldest known human hair was ~9,000 years old. An excavation in South Africa, however, revealed a hair ~200,000 years old! The hair was found in a fossilized hyena latrine of all places.

What is Eye Color?

It may be man's most attention-grabbing quality, but what really is eye color?

In short, eye color is the expression of a combined number of genes. Eye color expression is like screwing in a certain color light bulb to emit a certain color of light. If you replace the bulb with a bulb of another color, the emitted light's color will change.

Eye color is not a blend of the parents' colors. Each parent has two pairs of genes on each chromosome, all of which can effect the ultimate color expression in a myriad of ways. Brown eye color is the dominant gene, needing only one copy to be expressed, while blue (recessive) requires both copy's. However, no one gene controls eye color - the OCA2 gene, controlling the amount of melanin pigment produced, accounts for ~74% of variation in eye color. Other genes effect the OCA2 gene's expression.

Geneticist Dr Rick Sturm states, "We believe ... there are two major genes - one that controls for brown or blue, and one that controls for green or hazel - and others that modify this trait". This means that brown-eyed parents can have a blue-eyed child, and vice versa.

For New Yorkers

Well, actually for anyone interested in New York City.

This month's National Geographic feature article explains what New York City was like before it was New York City.

There is also a Wildlife Conservation Society effort, dubbed the Mannahatta Project, devoted to discovering the origins of Manhattan.

Sonic Boom

If you've played Street Fighter, you know that Guile created sonic boom's to attack an opponent.

In real life, aircrafts, and humans, can in fact break the sound barrier.

Breaking the sound barrier not only creates an audible effect, known as a 'sonic boom', but also a visible effect, seen in the picture above. When an aircraft is moving through the sky, it is pushing air out of the way (creating pressure waves) much like a boat which causes ripples in the water as it moves.

When moving at, and then exceeding, the speed of sound, the pressure waves the aircraft creates compress into one huge shock wave because the air cannot move out of the way of the aircraft fast enough. Since air always has tiny droplets of water floating around, breaking the sound barrier creates a compressed cone of water vapor. That is, during a sonic boom, you can actually see the effects of sound!

It is theorized that certain dinosaurs, by whipping their massive tails, could also break the sound barrier.

I mentioned in the beginning that humans can also break the sound barrier. It is true. Whenever one cracks a whip, you are causing the end of the whip to move faster than the speed of sound, thus creating a 'cracking' noise.

Here's a video of a plane breaking the sound barrier. And one more.