I wanna know who pays for this sort of study?
Grapefruit May Make Women Seem Younger: A study of smells shows that the scent of grapefruit on women make them seem about six years younger to men. However, grapefruit fragrance on men does nothing for them.
And could you imagine being the subjects in the study having to have broccoli, banana, spearmint leaves, and lavender smeared on you?
Weird.
I mean, who would want to go around smelling like broccoli?
How ironic? Today when I blog about not feeling grown up, there is a story about how the people of today are aging slower than their parents. Hehehe....
Want to know if the cosmetics, skin care products, and hair products you use are really safe? Go here to search the products you use.
I'm not sure what to make of this. GAO: Pentagon sold biolab gear
[My source: Tom Tomorrow]
On Ebay? Okay, not quite.
To terrorists? Who knows?
But just in case, let's leak that the protective suits that were sold are defective. That'll make them think twice before using them. ;)
To be honest, I'm not sure what to make of this article. $46,000 worth of equipment is not a whole lot. Granted I'm sure the government gets a discount. But to anyone who works in a lab and has ever priced lab equipment, that's peanuts. One piece of sophisticated equipment can cost you more than 46 Gs. Shit, a set of [cell culture] incubators will run youat least 7 grand. A [benchtop] centrifuge, another 7-10 grand. On the flip side, getting it for 700 is ridiculously cheap, if it actually works.
All I'm saying is, this article doesn't mean much without more information to back it up. I'd like to know how old the equipment was, how many pieces, etc. The Pentagon will look stupid if in fact they sold lab equipment to individuals and not scientific companies/organizations, irregardless. But other than the 300-400 protective suits, how many pieces of equipment were really sold at bargain basement prices, and to whom?
Can you tell I've become very skeptical about the accuracy of news reporting these days?
I find mainstream science articles to be the worst offenders. I still haven't gotten over the article that detailed reason #123 that red meat is bad for you is because it contains sialic acid?!?!?! Uhh...hate to break it to the reporter but, red blood cells, the ones coursing through your blood vessels, are covered in *sialic acid*. [the major component of sialic acid is sugars]
Almost as bad was the article describing how bananas will be extinct in 50 years. And then there are all the ones that contradict each other about what's 'good' and what's 'bad' for you in terms of food and drink. Most of those studies are crap. Not enough people included and not controlled in the least bit. Poorly designed studies lead to poor conclusions based on crappy data.
I could go on and on, but I'll just end my rant there, LOL.
It appears that there have been a number of serious pneumonia cases in Asia and the Middle East, including 15 in Iraq. While officials have ruled out SARS, who's to say it isn't a cousin. Shall be interesting to see whether it's a bacteria or a virus. But I'm sure Bush will start trying to say it's a bio weapon that Saddam gave al Qaida. *rolls eyes*
As a scientist I've learned that nature is far superior than humans in designing viruses and bacteria. Heck, we can't even get Gene Therapy using viruses to work reliably and without harm. It's hard to fathom that anyone would have been that successful in creating a bioweapon using a new organism.
I think eventually the scientists will find that this is a new strain of something or a new emerging pathogen, just like SARS was this winter. No bioterrorism. Just simple person-to-person spread. Or like SARS animal-to-person-to-person spread.
According to a study out of Canada, it is possible that some women may ovulate multiple times a month and this could be a reason that the rhythm method has such a high failure rate. Also, this could explain why many fraternal twins have been shown via ultrasound to be weeks apart in gestation. They found that a portion of their test subjects who were scanned everyday showed follicular activity multiple times within a month. It is unclear whether a egg was released each of these times. But the findings surprised the researchers. --I'm not sure why they were studying woman's fallopian tubes and ovaries on a daily basis if they weren't looking for that, LOL!
This data suggests that the ovulation cycle and the menstrual cycle may be somewhat independent of the other. Source: Yahoo News
So it looks like there may need to be some revising of the sex education textbooks, lol. "Most of you will ovulate only once a month, but some of you will be fertile myrtles and ovulate all the time. Since you don't know which category fall into, don't have sex, unless you're married." [Well, this change would be during the Bush administration, LOL.]
I can recall a humorous map of the Y chromosome published in the early 90s in Science or Nature that depicted genes such as 'hogs remote control', 'doesn't ask directions' etc. I think I still have a photocopy of it somewhere. Well now scientists really have sequenced the Y chromosome and made some interesting discoveries in regards to how Y edits itself to keep itself clear of mutations through a series of repeats/palindromes. And that these palindromes are found in chimpanzee Y chromosomes as well, LOL. The story is online at GNN.