Brain basics

There's a fun little interactive tutorial on the brain over at National Geographic:
http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/health-and-human-body/human-body/brain-article/
If you don't know much about the brain and want to learn a bit (or like interactive pictures of the brain) I recommend it.

Sunday Comics

And I thought it was just my birthday...

I have been saying that someone should do this for a long time...

Wired science has a story about how a simple contraption is using dog poop (yes, that's the technical scientific term) to power the lights at a local park in Cambridge, Mass.  Most people don't think about the carbon footprint that their pets can have, but it is pretty substantial.  In fact, it has been estimated that owning a medium sized dog is twice as bad for the environment as owning a gas guzzling SUV.  The main reason for this is that dogs (in fact all animals, including us) take in carbon in the form of food (think CARBOhydrates and fats, which are made of long carbon strains) and expel carbon dioxide and methane when we breathe, fart, and poop (yup, again, all accepted scientific terms).  Of course the carbon dioxide that we breathe out is not so bad, but the methane that we produce, is pretty bad.  In fact, the EPA estimates that methane is 21 times more harmful to the environment than carbon dioxide.  So what can we do about the methane released by dog poop?  We can burn it.  That's right, burn it.  When methane is burned, it not only produces energy, but water and carbon dioxide, thus, reducing the environmental impact.  Put all this together in a dog-friendly park and here's what you get:

"Dog owners collect their dog waste in a special biodegradable bag and throw it into the digester –- an air-tight cylindrical container, where the dog feces are broken down by anaerobic bacteria. A byproduct from that process is methane, which can then be released through a valve and burnt as fuel. In this case it is being used to power an old-fashioned gas-burning lamppost in a park."
Read More http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/09/dog-poop-powers-park-lights/#ixzz0zehGO9Zz

I'm just sayin'

This summer was the 4th hottest summer on record for North America.  And this year is on pace to be the 2nd HOTTEST YEAR EVER (and by ever, I mean in recorded history, perhaps before life existed on earth and we were still a molten ball of magma it was hotter)...

Anyway, remember all those people who were saying global warming isn't real because there was a blizzard in February in Washington D.C.?  Ummm... where are they now?  Oh, wait, they're still stubbornly denying global warming despite the still ever mounting evidence.

Sunday Comics

WTF?

Just when I think that I cannot be any further surprised at the things that people will believe...
http://www.galileowaswrong.com/galileowaswrong/

Yeah, you read that right.  A whole conference devoted to the notion that the Earth is the center of the universe... I would write a rousing article about why this is so wrong, but apparently Phil Plait over at the Bad Astronomy blog has it covered...

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/09/14/geocentrism-seriously/

Of course, I suppose I should be happy that these people at least think the earth is round.

Unlike some other people:

http://theflatearthsociety.org/cms/

If you want to read an article on this particular group, may I recommend the following article over at the BBC (you should read the comments as well, they are quite good):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7540427.stm

My favorite part of the story:

What about all the photos from space that show, beyond a shadow of doubt, that the Earth is round? "The space agencies of the world are involved in an international conspiracy to dupe the public for vast profit," says Mr McIntyre.

Because when I think NASA, I think "vast profit".

Bug Brains and Antibiotics

So, the paper for this isn't out yet, but there is a story over at ScienceDaily about how researchers have found several new antibiotics lurking in, of all places, the brains of cockroaches:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100906202901.htm
A big problem in hospitals (and in general) is the resistance of certain strains of bacteria to traditional antibiotics.  One of the biggest offenders is a strain called MRSA (pronounced Mur-suh), which stands for Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus.  As the name implies, MRSA is particularly resilient to treatment with narrow spectrum antibiotics like Methicillin (an antibiotic not too different from Penicillin).  In this report, researchers from the University of Nottingham have discovered that tissue from the cockroach nervous system is particularly good at killing MRSA, offering hope that potential antibiotic drugs may be developed from these tissues.
Of course, this isn't the first time that scientists have discovered antibacterial properties in the tissues of an unusual animal.  For example, several years ago, researchers reported on the remarkable ability of Komodo dragon saliva to keep the more than 50 strains of toxic bacteria that live in its mouth from killing it.  But the really good news in the case of the cockroach brain is that the researchers have already characterized several compounds that that have antibiotic properties.  Unlike in the case of the komodo dragon, from which no specific antibiotic compounds were ever isolated, these compounds may eventually be developed into usable antibiotic drugs that can help to fight the spread of bacterial infections in hospitals, particularly MRSA, which can kill thousands of patients each year.