Solar cells powered by photosynthetic proteins taken from Spinach..
Category: Oddities
(This post’s title is a tribute to what is probably the best-named Spaghetti Western of all time.)
Shiffer‘s comment on the Superbaby post (personal correspondance, as they say in the science journals when they don’t have a citation to offer) emphasized how I am a victim of my sources: I post links to stuff I see on other blogs, like most other bloggers do, thus perpetuating an incestious cycle.
So, I’m going to post a bunch of links that I found on other blogs, or on other sites with RSS feeds. This is sort of a linkdump, which I might make a habit of doing (instead of having massive pages with just one half sentence of content). So:
Apparently , the mother-child bond is an addiction or something:
Pleasure receptors best known for helping the body respond to morphine and opium may also hold the key to mother-child bonding, scientists reported on Thursday.
Mice pups genetically engineered to lack these receptors — doorways into cells — were unable to properly bond to their mothers and did not show the natural distress when separated from her, the researchers said.
Next, virtual reality can function as an anesthetic: a study case involving applying heaters to people’s feet while immersing them in a VR of an icy canyon populated by penguins and snowmen shows that not only does this distract them from the pain, it apparently makes them feel it less.
If that was a personalized link for Israel, in that I only posted it because he reads this blog, here’s one for Ijon, from boingboing. Check out the moose on that Canada Day coin.
I’ve still got some science links, one about glassy steel (adding rare elements to iron, researchers made amorphous, non-crystaline steel, that’s lighter and stronger, as well as non-magnetic), and other one’s about bees, a study showing how genetic diversity helps honeybees regulate the temperature of their hives: The new work shows that bees with different fathers start fanning at slightly different temperatures. This stops sudden colony-wide shifts between warming and cooling behaviours, and keeps the temperature in the nest more constant.
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Last, a link to Jay Pinkerton’s blog, mentioned by a commentator on this boingboing item. He writes funny shit (if you would have felt more comfortable if I’d written “funny stuff, it’s probably not your cup of tea), and has helpfully made a best hits list of his favorite articles, but browse the blog archives for parody art and such.
Categories
Tolkien’s hobbit hill up for sale
Telegraph : Tolkien’s hobbit hill up for sale at £500,000
It dominates views of the surrounding countryside and is credited as the inspiration for Tolkien’s Middle Earth, and now the Wrekin, a 1,300ft hill, is up for sale.
It is deemed one of the most important of mid-Shropshire’s heritage sites.
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The Wrekin, which overlooks Telford, is so well known locally that it has entered the language of the Midlands people.
The expression “All round the Wrekin” means “going the long way” or “not explaining something clearly and directly”.
Compare:
Categories
Now the drugs don’t work
Nature – Virus robs addicts of their high: Transgenic carrier inactivates cocaine in rat brains.
The treatment was developed by Kim Janda, a chemist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, and her colleagues. They gave eight rats nasal injections of the virus twice a day for three days and compared them to eight rats that did not receive the treatment. On the fourth day, they gave both groups a dose of cocaine.
The untreated rats behaved in a characteristic way after receiving the drug: sniffing, standing up on their hind legs and rocking backwards and forwards. But the rats that received the virus showed much less severe behaviour.
“If they are not demonstrating this activity, they are probably not feeling the high,” says Janda.
Categories
Seven Drunken Men
An article about Mongolians getting back surnames:
After seizing power in the early 1920s, the Mongolian Communists destroyed all family names in a campaign to eliminate the clan system, the hereditary aristocracy and the class structure.
Within a few decades, most Mongolians had forgotten their ancestral names. They used only a single given name — a system that eventually became confusing when 9,000 women ended up with the same name, Altantsetseg, meaning “golden flower.”
…
In 1997, a new law required everyone to have surnames…. Today, however, there are still 10,000 people without surnames.
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Borjigin, the tribal name of Genghis Khan, has become the most popular name in the country. It means “master of the blue wolf,” a reference to Mongolia’s creation myth.“Everyone wants the name Borjigin, as if they have some connection to Genghis Khan,” said Serjee Besud, director of Mongolia’s state library and a leading researcher on surnames.
“It’s like a fashion. But it has no meaning if everyone has the same name. It’s like having no name at all.”
Mr. Besud has spent years poring over the dusty archives of the state library to compile a book of possible surnames for the nameless. He obtained access to the highly secret archives of the country’s Communist Party, which included detailed lists of the names of noble families who were prohibited from party membership.He discovered his own long-lost surname, Besud, by finding his grandfather’s name on a 1925 list of conscripts in a Communist army.
His book, called Advice on Mongolian Surnames, provides maps and lists of historically used surnames in each region of the country.
The book also suggests other ways to choose a surname. Some people choose the name of a mountain or river in their ancestral region.
Others prefer the name of an ancestral occupation: Blacksmith, Herdsman or Writer. Some names are linked to clans: White Camel or Black-and-White Horse.
And some names have more obscure origins. One surname listed in the book, perhaps less fashionable today, is Seven Drunk Men.
Seven Drunk Men, huh? Obviously named after the clan’s father(s)…
Maybe Tal can make some extra money as a surname consultant…