IN THE annals of medical history, this could go down as one of the most effective but stomach-churning treatments ever devised. Scientists seeking a cure for a deadly superbug have successfully treated patients using human faeces. Trials in a Scottish hospital have shown patients suffering from the Clostridium difficile bug can be cured using ‘donor […]
Month: November 2007
Paris, citizen-scientist of light
The modern version of the experiment looks like this. First, we need a researcher — let’s say, Paris Hilton, just to stretch your powers of imagination a little. Paris sets up a simple light source in front of a barrier with two small slits cut into it, with a light-sensitive screen on the other side […]
A frog in the throat, in passing
A man in southeast China says 40 years of swallowing tree frogs and rats live has helped him avoid intestinal complaints and made him strong. Jiang Musheng, a 66-year-old resident of Jiangxi province, suffered from frequent abdominal pains and coughing 20 years ago, until an old man called Yang Dingcai suggested tree frogs as a […]
Gay bomb news
Here’s further news about the so-called “gay bomb,” whose inventors won the 2007 Ig Nobel Peace Prize. A letter from David Hambling in the November 3, 2007 issue of New Scientist says (referring to an earlier item in that magazine’s “Feedback” section): Feedback asked what happened to the US air force’s Ig Nobel-winning “gay bomb” […]
Hedy Lamarr joins LFHCfS
Hedy Lamarr has joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists, as an historical honorary member. She is the co-inventor of divided spectrum transmission technology. Hedy Lamarr, LFHCfS Inventor and movie star
Jerk minimization
people might be minimizing some version of jerk So writes the unnamed author of a research commentary called “We Move in Mysterious Ways,” which described research done by Konrad K?rding and colleagues. It appeared in the year 2004 in PLoS Biology, 2(10). The full paragraph, with the jerk fragment in its proper context, says: There’s […]
Max the microbe
Meet Max the Microbe. Max, short for OmniMAX? 2 T1R, has spent most of his life in labs. He loves participating in science experiments. His high competency and easy-to-use One Shot? format make him an integral part of most cloning methods. How do you get Max or a friend? It?s easy – Just buy 2 […]
Finger Celebrities (Part 2 of 2)
… Meanwhile, S. Marc Breedlove, a professor of neuroscience at Michigan State University, has become a giant of finger research. In 2000, his study, Finger-length Ratios and Sexual Orientation, appeared in the journal Nature. It features a handy graph. The reader can see that, on average, gay and straight women have distinctly different finger ratios […]
The camera doesn’t lie…
The camera doesn’t lie, but… Slimming photos with HP digital cameras With the slimming feature, anyone can appear more slender?instantly. The effect is subtle?subjects still look like themselves Can be adjusted for a more dramatic effect See a before and after version, then decide which to keep (Thanks to investigator Mark Kramer for bringing this […]
STATISTICS LESSON: Other
David Weinberger explains a basic — but often overlooked — aspect of statistics: At some point we noticed a crack in the windshield of our car. It’s a single line, about 8 inches long, not the spider web fracture typical of a pebble or assassination attempt. We don’t know exactly when it happened or how. […]