Archive for the ‘research’ category

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Divine Burgers?

January 14, 2012

 – – At a restaurant aptly named Hamburger Mary’s in Tampa, Florida, an image of the Virgin Mary has been reported on a stainless steel wall near the kitchen.  Remarkably, the diner has been known for gay karaoke nights and drag queen shows. 

The mark of a superior being or saint has likewise been seen in a Walmart receipt, cheese sandwiches, candle wax, Cheetos, rocks, overturned trees, walls, pizza pans, and even on a fish stick!   Some of these items have been offered for sale on internet auction sites.  Verily, the Lord moves in mysterious ways…

The perception of religious imagery in natural phenomena is sometimes called simulacra, and studies have shown that even visual perceptions can be affected by wishes, preferences, and desires.  The human mind prefers to perceive patterns, especially the pattern of a human face, in otherwise random phenomena.  Perception of an image is additionally mediated or filtered through culture, politics, and worldview…

Categories: psychology, research, science, strange, strange happenings, weird
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Rats Who Care…

December 20, 2011

 – – It’s OK to call someone a “dirty rat,”  as rats do get dirty;  it might not, however, be scientifically supportable to refer to rats as uncaring in light of a new University of Chicago study on empathy-driven behavior in rodents. 

Appearing in the prestigious journal Science, the results of this landmark study show that untrained laboratory rats will free restrained companions,  even when those restrained rats are not in pain.  Rats will even choose to free other restrained rats when offered the alternative activity of feasting on chocolate!  Greater love hath no rat than this…

The new study on rats sets a precedent for future research on sentient and empathic animals; it’s also safe based on what we know to assume that numerous other animals display empathy, which is thought to have deep evolutionary, biochemical, and neurological underpinnings. 

Findings of empathy in animals may force uncomfortable questions about how humans treat animals, especially with regards to horrific invasive research.  Birds, rats, and mice are presently excluded from some federal legislative definitions of animals, with only about 1% of the animals used in research in the United States currently protected by legislation.

Categories: animal abuse, animal behavior, animal rights, animals, furry, furry causes, research, science
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Pliocene Park?

December 7, 2011

 – – I dunno if it will sound like Ray Romano in Ice Age, but Japanese and Russian scientists are working to bring back woolly mammoths via a cloning process within five years!   ‘Ya see, a mammoth thigh bone was found under permafrost soil in Siberia with its marrow in unusually well preserved condition, and a Russian/Japanese team will seek to recreate the mammoth using DNA taken from the marrow that is then put into the nuclei of eggs cells of common elephants.  Embryos so obtained would then be implanted into elephant wombs to be delivered.  Since the two species are close relatives, scientists are not foreseeing many complications.

Despite the usual cries of science running amok, this is very cool technology and an exciting prospect!

Categories: animals, cool things, furry, research, science
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Eww, Smells Like (Tiger) Poo!

March 12, 2011

– – Smells like teen spirit?–No, it might smell like tiger poo, at least if you want to use an odor to repel pests…

A team from the University of Queensland made the discovery as they researched non-lethal ways to keep herbivores such as goats and kangaroos away from certain plants.  Now animal repellents are typically based on other offensive smells such as rotten eggs, blood, or bone.  Using tiger feces as a repellent came from the logical notion that if you could smell a predator nearby, you’d probably want to go elsewhere!  Tiger poo was found to be a more effective repellent than the feces of other predators, and it was found to be especially effective if the tiger feces collected were from a tiger who had been fed the animal being targeted.

An offended tiger offered the comment, “Hey, whadya expect?–It don’t smell like roses!“

Researchers also found that old goat carcasses also proved effective in warding away goats, but the smell was so bad that it made the scientists feel sick…

…and you thought that you had a bad job!

 

Categories: animal behavior, animals, research, science
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Artificial Meat!

February 2, 2011

– – Eat your cruelty-free artificial meat…for once, no animals were harmed in its creation!

This isn’t that awful tofu, soy, or gluten stuff, either…nope, this artificial meat, also known as vitro meat or cultured meat is animal flesh that has never been part of a complete, living animal!  In vitro meat is laboratory-grown meat using animal stem cells that would be placed in a medium to grow and reproduce.  The result would mimic flesh and could be cooked and eaten.   Potentially, any animal’s muscle tissue could be grown through the in vitro process.

Some scientists say the technology is almost ready for commercial use and simply needs a company to back it.  Cultured meat is currently prohibitively expensive, but it is anticipated that the cost could be reduced to about twice as expensive as say, conventionally-produced chicken.  Some promising steps have been made towards the technology, but we’re still a few years away from having in vitro meat available to the general public.

PETA is offering a one million dollar reward to the first scientist to produce and bring in vitro meat to market…and the first generation products would most likely be minced meat.- -That’s right, think Spam, vienna sausages, etc…yummers! Meat grown in vats may be necessary, however, to feed the nine billion people who are expected to be alive by the year 2050…

Categories: cool things, research, science, strange
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Afraid of Nothing?

December 20, 2010

– – Excessive fear is certainly not a good thing, but it’s likewise undesirable to be afraid of nothing.  A woman with a rare genetic disorder, Urbach-Wiethe disease, falls into the latter category, and is literally afraid of nothing.  Her condition is associated with damage to her amygdala, an almond-shaped portion of the brain strongly associated with fear responses in past research on animals.

Researchers at the University of Iowa tried their best to scare a 44-year old female with the condition, exposing her to live snakes and spiders, taking her on a tour of a supposedly haunted house, and showing the subject emotionally-evocative films; they got nothing! The subject also had a life history full of dangerous situations, including being held up at both knifepoint and gunpoint, and almost killed by domestic violence.  Even in those situations, the subject did not experience fear.

Through study of this woman, researchers hope to be able to better understand how the amygdala is connected to human fear, leading to better treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder.

Categories: animals, psychology, research, science
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Great Gonads!

November 18, 2010

(Warning:  Some Mature content)

– –We all know the appeal of big balls, although I’ve never had to use the ballroom dancing classes my parents required me to take.  The Fox Trot came quite naturally to me, although I’ve never been prevailed upon to do the Waltz or even the Cha Cha…but enough of my ballroom notoriety…

In the animal kingdom, a species of cricket, the tuberous bushcricket (Platycleis affinis)  has been found to have, as AC/DC might sing, “…the biggest balls of them all,” testes that amount to 13.8 percent of its body mass!  This would be the rough equivalent of a human male hauling around testicles that weigh 22 pounds!  I don’t know what this would translate to in foxes, but they’d probably be pretty impressive…

It is thought that the extra large testes in bushcrickets (also known in North America as katydids) allow males to mate repeatedly without their sperm reserves being exhausted…to say nothing of their bragging rights!

The research appears in “Biology Letters,” a journal of Britain’s Royal Society…(heh, and you thought they were stuffy!)

…and AC/DC rocks!–Woo!

Categories: animal oddities, animals, insects, research
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Sweatin’ Bullets…

October 16, 2010

– – Someone once said that animals sweat, men perspire, and women have a rosy glow.–Well, a study performed at Osaka International University in Japan and reported in the journal Experimental Physiology indicated that men sweat more and more efficiently than women, with men who are physically fit sweating more than anyone else!

Physically fit people begin to sweat at a lower core body temperature, which is adaptive since sweating is the body’s way of cooling off and preventing overheating.    A sweating person can then perform longer and better at whatever it is that they are doing.  Fit men tended to sweat the most, whereas  fit women had higher sweat rates than inactive men or inactive women.

Sweating may be the manly thing to do, too, as prior research has shown a link between the male-sex hormone testosterone, physical training, and an increase in sweat rate…so sweat proudly, knowing that you are a manly man, and that the proof is in the nostrils!

Categories: medical, research, science
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Give Me A Good Book!

August 21, 2010

– – A new study presented at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association  suggests that personality may be more than just a psychological construct, but rather reflect underlying neural differences in the brain.

Study researcher Inna Fishman of the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences found that more extroverted test subjects showed a higher change in a particular brain electrical activity known as P300 when they were exposed to images of human faces as opposed to pictures of flowers.  Those scoring lower on a test of extroversion had very similar P300 responses to both human faces and flowers.

The findings might partly explain why extroverts are more motivated to seek the company of others than are introverts,  who might not place a larger weight on social stimuli than on other stimuli…


Categories: psychology, research, science
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