Christmas Geek Gift Guide: Non-Newtonian Sand

If you are looking for gifts for the geek in your life, look no further.  Over the next several days, I will post a handful of items that I, in my extreme nerdiness, deem to be some of this year's great geek gifts.  For this first day of Christmas, may I recommend SAND by Brookstone (or for the Europeans in the crowd, Kinetic Sand by Waba Fun).  These products are 98% sand and 2% polymer, resulting in a non-Newtonian sand substance... if that's not total geek fun, I don't know what is.  You can see from the YouTube vid posted by Waba Fun (below), that their product can behave like a doughy solid at times, but also like a grainy, almost liquidy pile of sand that slips through your fingers.  It all depends on how the substance is being used, just like some other more well known non-Newtonian substances, like ketchup in a bottle (stuck, solid-like in the bottle until you stick the butter knife in there to get it out, then all of a sudden it pours out like Niagara).  Or like cornstarch mixed with water, bouncing on a sub-woofer (runny liquid when at rest, but congealed semi-solid when smacked by the bass).  Or, like one of my favorite non-Newtonian solids: Silly Putty (pull it apart fast and it snaps apart like a karate master's board, pull it apart slow, and it's like that mozzarella on the first slice of pizza that, no matter how long it gets, still won't break).  In fact, these sand products are actually made using the same polymer that goes into silly putty (polydimethylsiloxane), which helps the sand to never dry out, and helps it clump together so clean-up is a breeze.  Enjoy!

An artificial sweetener in research news NOT for causing cancer,

But instead may actually help to treat Parkinson's and other neurodegenerative diseases... read more

Impact schmimpact. Now give me some money.

Apparently NIH is now asking grant applicants to include a segment about the impact their proposed project will have. The problems with this are myriad. First, this means that for this section of the grant the most points will be awarded to... the best bull-shitter. That's right: "your project will lead to a cure for cancer while also preventing Alzheimer's AND save the polar bears?!? Well here you go! Are you sure we can't give you more money?"  Please! Like anyone could have predicted that studying fluorescent and luminescent proteins in jellyfish and fireflies would have led to pretty much ALL the major medical breakthroughs and drug discoveries of the last few decades. I'm pretty sure their discoverers weren't thinking about it at the time. They were probably just thinking " hey, that animal glows in the dark! That's pretty cool! How does that work?" Bam! Nobel prizes and major biomedical breakthroughs all around! Congrats everybody. But don't take my overly sarcastic word for it. Check out this editorial in the latest issue of science for a much more eloquent breakdown of this unfortunate trend in science policy:
http://m.sciencemag.org/content/340/6138/1265.full

Backlog Data Dump...

So, I may not have as much time to write here as I used to, but I still collect various science stories from the internet that I find interesting and hope to blog about, but then they just sit in my bookmarks, which is becoming longer than a Sumo wrestler's grocery list, so here are some links to a few of the things that caught my attention:

"Barking up the wrong tree" has a fun list of a bunch of cliches and sayings with links to research on whether or not they could be true, so click here if you want to know whether or not nice guys finish last, if you can tell a lot about a man from his handshake, and if blondes have more fun.

Over at EurekAlert is a blurb about a Banaca-like oral spray that could help cut down on your susceptibility to airborne flu virus... the secret ingredient (cetylpyridinium chloride) is also a main ingredient in some non-burning mouthwashes, so using the right mouthwash frequently might also help to cut down on your flu susceptibility (though that has yet to be tested).

Apparently the guys over at Freakonomics are also fans of the band Bullets for My Valentine becaue they posted this podcast about guns in America just this past Valentine's Day.  Despite the interesting timing of the piece, no word yet as to whether Cupid has traded in his bow and arrow for a Mac-10.

And over at The Scientist is a story about how the males of a certain species of sea slug can actually detach their penises after mating (likely to prevent other potential suitors from getting in there and competing with their sperm), and then amazingly they can grow a new penis the next day.  I believe some of the credit for the discovery should go to early 90's rockers King Missile who first postulated the possibility of such a phenomenon in their song "Detachable Penis"

Could just thinking about science make you act morally?

PZ Myers has a nice little blurb about a study that suggests priming one's mind with scientific terms (e.g. logical, hypothesis, science, theory, etc.) results in more moral actions when the subjects are subsequently asked to be charitable (share money) or make moral judgments.  Of course, the study, like many of its kind has certain drawbacks, as Myers points out:

"Another important caveat is that it’s a typical psychology study, using a small pool of undergraduates at the University of California Santa Barbara, so they’re actually tapping into very narrow cultural norms. A group of students who were familiar with the Tuskegee syphilis study, to name just one exception, might respond to priming with science words very differently, while people from a less science-dependent culture might find the exercise meaningless."

He goes on to conclude that the important thing is that if some thing becomes widely accepted in a culture as being related to positive moral action, then just reflecting on that thing (be it religion, or science, or Bill or Melinda Gates) will make us more likely to adhere to the moral norms associated with it.

Girls are better at science than boys...

At least in some countries... not this one, of course, but then maybe that will change as our culture evolves and the traditional gender roles dissolve.  See the article here.

Your home is probably contaminated with mouse urine!

Unless you're R. Kelly, in which case it is likely contaminated with both mouse urine and human urine.  But seriously, according to an article in Pacific Standard Magazine approximately 82% of homes in the U.S. have readily detectable levels of mouse urinary proteins, and if you live in urban areas, the likelihood is close to 100%.  Dr. Elizabeth Matsui at Johns Hopkins University is worried about this mouse urine contamination for 2 reasons: 1. the proteins in mouse urine are apparently very stable and thus hang around for a long time (likely accumulating over time to higher and higher levels), and 2. mouse urinary proteins can elicit allergic responses and may cause asthma in children who are exposed to these ever increasing levels.  That being said, while mouse urine is likely to get a lot of attention, there are actually many things we should be worried about in and around our homes that are known to cause or worsen allergies and asthma in children... like common house dust, proximity to automobile traffic, drinking too many soft drinks, cleaning agents, plastic bottles, and flooring made from PVC... even when they aren't saturated with mouse urine.