http://i.imgur.com/Zz9L1

Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2307

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/07/12/137797153/super-resistant-gonorrhea-strain-found-in-japan?ps=sh_sthdl%3Fsc%3Dfb&cc=fp

…

The new, super-resistant strain is called H041, and so far, only a handful of cases are known in Japan. But don’t count on it staying that way. Experience has shown that once a resistant strain of gonorrhea appears, it steadily displaces those that can be killed with antibiotics.

…

But the discovery of H041 foretells a different ballgame. This super-gonorrhea strain doesn’t merely require higher doses of the most powerful antibiotic available. It might be entirely untreatable.

So the new bug calls for “enhanced disease control activities” to contain it, or at least delay its spread, the Swedish and Japanese teams says, and “ultimately, new drugs are essential… for efficacious gonorrhea treatment.”

Really not that much of a surprise that Joe sent me this.

http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/tyrannosaurus-sex-dinosaur-penis.html

Welcome to the future my friends.

Festo Product Page:
http://www.festo.com/cms/en_corp/11369.htm

SmartBird is an ultralight but powerful flight model with excellent aerodynamic qualities and extreme agility. With SmartBird, Festo has succeeded in deciphering the flight of birds – one of the oldest dreams of humankind.

Flight Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnR8fDW3Ilo

Specs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fbmWQ3ExEs

First saw this on Slashdot: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/03/28/0121209/Flying-Robot-Bird-Unveiled

Never knew about this.

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/bizarre-sea-slug-is-half-plant-half-animal-0

Photo: Nicholas E. Curtis and Ray Martinez

…
But the Elysia chlorotica is far from ordinary: it is both a plant and an animal, according to biologists who have been studying the species for two decades.
…
Not only does E. chlorotica turn sunlight into energy — something only plants can do — it also appears to have swiped this ability from the algae it consumes.

Native to the salt marshes of New England and Canada, these sea slugs use contraband chlorophyll-producing genes and cell parts called chloroplasts from algae to carry out photosynthesis…
…
That genetic material has since been passed down to the next generation, eliminating the need to consume algae for energy.

However, the baby slugs can’t carry out photosynthesis until they’ve stolen their own chloroplasts, which they aren’t yet able to produce on their own, from their first and only meal of algae.

“We collect them and we keep them in aquaria for months,” Pierce told LiveScience. “As long as we shine a light on them for 12 hours a day, they can survive [without food].”

http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/01/05/autism.vaccines/index.html

A now-retracted British study that linked autism to childhood vaccines was an “elaborate fraud” that has done long-lasting damage to public health, a leading medical publication reported Wednesday.

An investigation published by the British medical journal BMJ concludes the study’s author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, misrepresented or altered the medical histories of all 12 of the patients whose cases formed the basis of the 1998 study — and that there was “no doubt” Wakefield was responsible.

…

The now-discredited paper panicked many parents and led to a sharp drop in the number of children getting the vaccine that prevents measles, mumps and rubella. Vaccination rates dropped sharply in Britain after its publication, falling as low as 80 percent by 2004. Measles cases have gone up sharply in the ensuing years.

In the United States, more cases of measles were reported in 2008 than in any other year since 1997, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 90 percent of those infected had not been vaccinated or their vaccination status was unknown, the CDC reported.

…

Wakefield has been unable to reproduce his results in the face of criticism, and other researchers have been unable to match them. Most of his co-authors withdrew their names from the study in 2004 after learning he had had been paid by a law firm that intended to sue vaccine manufacturers — a serious conflict of interest he failed to disclose. After years on controversy, the Lancet, the prestigious journal that originally published the research, retracted Wakefield’s paper last February.

…

According to BMJ, Wakefield received more than 435,000 pounds ($674,000) from the lawyers. Godlee said the study shows that of the 12 cases Wakefield examined in his paper, five showed developmental problems before receiving the MMR vaccine and three never had autism.

Illustration by Chad Hagen

http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/artificial-intelligence/moneta-a-mind-made-from-memristors/0

MoNETA (Modular Neural Exploring Traveling Agent) is the software we’re designing at Boston University’s department of cognitive and neural systems, which will run on a brain-inspired microprocessor under development at HP Labs in California.

…

Researchers have suspected for decades that real artificial intelligence can’t be done on traditional hardware, with its rigid adherence to Boolean logic and vast separation between memory and processing. But that knowledge was of little use until about two years ago, when HP built a new class of electronic device called a memristor.

…

Basically, memristors are small enough, cheap enough, and efficient enough to fill the bill. Perhaps most important, they have key characteristics that resemble those of synapses.

…

A little far reaching towards the end but I feel it does a great job of summarizing and describing lots of different problems / approaches to the field.

http://tiny.cc/g8sjn

In the second week of school, the society of physics students held a roughly annual welcome back party. As tradition dictates, we made our own ice cream with liquid nitrogen, 77 Kelvin, as a refrigerant and aerator. We spilled a little liquid nitrogen onto a table and watched the tiny little drops dance around. Someone asked, “Why does it do that?” That may have been the point of no return.

As is traditionally my role, I answered that the nitrogen evaporates at the surface of the table, which creates a cushion of air for the drop to sit on, and thermally insulates the drop, which minimizes further evaporation. That’s why a drop dances around without boiling, without touching the table, and without spreading out like a pool of water.

Then I continued. I mentioned that the very same principle makes it possible to dip one’s wet hand into molten lead, or drink liquid nitrogen without injury. I had done the latter several years earlier in a cryogenics lab, and remembered the physics of how it worked.

Naturally those around me were skeptical. “It will freeze your whole body. Remember Terminator 2?” But I was sure of myself. I had done it before, and I believed in the physics behind it. So I unhesitatingly poured myself a glass and took a shot. Simple. Swallow, blow smoke out my nose, impress everyone.

Within two seconds, I collapsed to the floor, unable to breathe or indeed do anything except feel intense pain. The ambulance arrived. The police arrived. The journey to the hospital. The attempt to explain to baffled ER staff how something like this could happen. Then I passed out.

Read more on the link above.

Whether it’s true or not I don’t know. I do know, however, that it’s entertaining.

Go CESIUM (got to wait for the end)!

http://tiny.cc/1x34B

What a beast.

http://tiny.cc/B3lMQ

The image shows an Asian weaver ant hanging upside down on a glass-like surface and holding a 500mg (0.02oz) weight in its jaws.
…
The research shows how ants change the size and shape of the pads on their feet to enable them to carry heavier loads.

He hopes it could help scientists develop better glues.

“The pads on ants’ feet are self-cleaning and can stick to almost any type of surface,” he said.

“No man-made glue or adhesive system can match this. Understanding how animals can control their adhesive systems should help us come up with clever adhesives in the future.”