Being of a curious mind, I am occasionally fascinated by simple things such as the phenomenon of cracking knuckles. In this respect, I have done some very basic research regarding this phenomenon and have been repeatedly disappointed by the explanations presented on nearly every web site I have seen that attempts to describe the process in question. There are many physiological reasons that our joints make noise, but the description of at least one of these processes is always, well…not what it is cracked up to be. Specifically, virtually every web article mentions “cavitation” as the primary cause of the…
The Science Creative Quarterly
From journal club
JOURNAL CLUB FIND: SORT OF PUTS THE IDEA OF ‘FOOT MASSAGE’ INTO A WHOLE DIFFERENT LEAGUE
– – – REFERENCE: Pseudomamma on the foot: An unusual presentation of supernumerary breast tissue. (2006) Dermatology Online Journal: 12 (4): 7 ABSTRACT: A 22-year-old woman sought medical care for a lesion in the plantar region of her left foot, a well-formed nipple surrounded by areola and hair. Microscopic examination of the dermis showed hair follicles, eccrine glands, and sebaceous glands. Fat tissue was noted at the base of the lesion. Clinical and histopathologic findings were consistent with the diagnosis of supernumerary breast tissue, also known as pseudomamma. To our knowledge, this is the first report of supernumerary breast tissue…
JOURNAL CLUB FIND: DNA = MUSIC, SERIOUSLY
As translated into musical notation REFERENCE: The all pervasive principle of repetitious recurrence governs not only coding sequence construction but also human endeavor in musical composition (1986) Susumi Ohno and Midori Ohno. Immunogenetics 24:71-78 ABSTRACT: Organisms which have evolved on this earth are governed by multitudes of periodicities; tomorrow is another today, and the next year is going to be much like this year. Accordingly, the principle of repetitious recurrence pervades every aspect of life on this earth. Thus, individual genes in the genome have been duplicated and triplicated often to the point of redundancy, and each coding sequence consists…
KADATH: A VISION INTO THE AGE OF NANITES
Many science fiction writers have developed tales regarding mankind’s attempts to surmount the forces of nature that separate man from God. These works often portray the human species as a newcomer to Earth and as a brash and shortsighted community working feverishly towards its own demise. The history of this story has its modern roots in the late 1800s with the Transcendentalism movement in New England. Writers such as Edgar Alan Poe and Herman Melville, as well as their counterparts in England such as Mary Shelley, began examining the human spirit’s desire to conquer nature in their literature and the…
A FABRICATED PAPER: DORIAN GRAY MICE – ON IMMORTAL MICE
(This paper was presented as an April Fools Joke in Nature, 1993) TITLE: Dorian Gray Mice (by Robin A. Weiss) FIRST PARAGRAPH Newly generated transgenic mice appear to be able to grow indefinitely without ageing, yet with programmed death. This dramatic developmet is the work of several groups, and has been accomplished in three stages… (download pdf of paper here)
WHAT’S THE SCOOP? A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF KELLOGG’S RAISIN BRAN
Advertisements for Kellogg’s Raisin Bran indicate that there are two scoops of raisins in every box, and two plastic scoops, along with the words “Two scoops!”, appear prominently on the front of the box. Unfortunately, a scoop is a nonstandard unit of volume, so the prevalence of raisins in the cereal remains uncertain. Moreover, Kellogg’s Raisin Bran comes in 15-, 20-, and 25.5-ounce boxes, all of which bear the “Two scoops!” claim. This observation suggests two alternative hypotheses: (A) Scoop size is independent of box size. In other words, the same scoops are used to add raisins to each box,…
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG SAPLING: TREES AS ARTISTS AND MOBILE ENTITIES
Image resulting from tree “painting” by Douglas-fir for two minutes. Trees epitomize immobility and passivity. They are rooted in one place, have extremely long lives relative to humans, and react slowly to most environmental stimuli, so both practically and symbolically, trees are closely linked with the related characteristics of stability, constancy, and permanence. The word “tree” is derived from the Sanskrit word “deru”, which shares its roots with the words endure, hard, and continue. Spiritual practitioners often relate sitting silently in one place – like a tree — to religious leaders such as the Buddha, who achieved enlightenment under the…
JOURNAL CLUB FIND: SEXUAL ORIENTATION? LET’S LOOK AT YOUR FINGERS.
(Click on reference to see pdf of first page) REFERENCE: Finger-length ratios and sexual orientation. (2000) Nature 404: pp455-456 FIRST PARAGRAPH: Animal models have indicated that androgenic steroids acting before birth might influence the sexual orientation of adult humans. Here we examine the androgen-sensitive pattern of finger lengths, and find evidence that homosexual women are exposed to more prenatal androgen than heterosexual women are; also, men with more than one older brother, who are more likely than first-born males to be homosexual in adulthood, are exposed to more prenatal androgen than eldest sons. Prenatal androgens may therefore influence adult human…
A FABRICATED PAPER: FOLLOW YOUR NOSE – ON BIRDS FARTING AND STUFF
(This paper was designed by the author for a class assignment and as such is completely fabricated) TITLE: Follow your Nose FIRST PARAGRAPH Every bird examined to date has a fully functional olfactory system that is strikingly similar to the mammalian system. Also, many avian species are able to produce odour. However, researchers have struggled to demonstrate the existence of social odours or chemical signals in the avian community… (download pdf of paper here)