The lunatic is on the grass. In his underpants.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071205/sc_nm/moonbeams_dc_1;_ylt=AlH2J7H2OnC8mRO1ARi_KooE1vA

Couple of things that are funny about this story
1) They are calling the moon-light collector an "interstellar light collector." Either they think that the moon is not within our system, or they actually have no idea what interstellar means.

2) It sounds like some elaborate scheme a James Bond villain would cook up - middle of the Arizona desert, with an undergrould lair and a giant moonbeam collector on top, ready to fry James Bond strapped to a giant metal table or something. Sadly, just more woo.

3) Moon bathing hints to me a possibility of "moon burn", which is not only fun to say, but so ridiculous that it's awesome. I can't wait for Coppertone to come out with moonscreen.


One thing that is really sad about this story:
1) "You feel almost like you are in heaven," said Aranka Toniatti, a cancer patient who has driven from Colorado twice to stand in the moonlight. "It's a gorgeous feeling."

Just one way that a seemingly benign woo story can become rather worrisome.

Candles and Mammals

So, some bloke tells me that any old mouse's heart beats about as many times over its life span as my heart will beat over my life span. Is that so, I says. Well, here's how I would have replied if I could mentally access the internet; 

700 Heart beats/minute*60 seconds *24 hours*365 days*2 years =  735,840,000 beats per mouselifespan, assuming aforesaid mouse lives 2 years.

60 Heart beats/minute*60 seconds*24 hours*365 days*100 years = 3,153,600,000 beats per humanlifespan, assuming advances in healthcare comparable to those of the 20th century.

SO, not completely off. Only one order of magnitude, and my heart will only out beat the mouse by a factor of 4.2857.  Unlikely that the rule holds everywhere, and to be honest, my sources (wiki, random animal site) are not the most reputable. But it does make one wonder whether that line from Bladerunner is in point of fact, true for mammals. Quote in question; 

 "The candle that burns twice as bright burns twice as fast." 

After all, we get our energy from the same reaction by which candles burn. 

And some other bloke told me once that the human body releases the same amount of heat as a candle in a given period of time. 

Speaking of which, does anyone want to go see the new edition of Bladerunner with me on the seventeenth at Theatre du Parc? 

Zombie Cockroaches Revived By Brain Shot

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12983-zombie-cockroaches-revived-by-brain-shot.html

There is a cure for zombies after all – if you are a cockroach. A new study has shown that cockroaches that turned into "zombies" after being stung by a parasitic wasp can be revived with an antidote.

Cockroaches can lose their ability to walk when stung by jewel wasps (Ampulex compressa) – the females of which use the cockroaches to feed their young.

The wasp, being much smaller than the cockroach, has evolved a fine sting that can deliver a venom cocktail directly into the cockroach’s brain. The poisons effectively turn the cockroach into a zombie.

The cockroach is not entirely paralysed, but loses its ability to escape. The wasp then grabs it by the antennae and pulls it into its burrow and lays an egg on its abdomen. The cockroach sits still while the wasp's larva hatches, chews a hole into its belly, and slowly eats its living host from the inside over a period of eight days.

Brain injection

To find out if he could revive the cockroaches, Frederic Libersat from Ben-Gurion University in Be'er Sheva, Israel, injected stung zombie cockroaches with candidate chemicals that resembled various neurotransmitters in the brain.

Libersat found that one of the drugs, a mimic of the neurotransmitter octopamine, succeeded in bringing the roaches back to life.

"The cockroach begins to walk spontaneously again, especially when injected directly into the brain," says Libersat.

He had previously discovered that octopamine-producing neurons elsewhere in the cockroach’s body show reduced activity when stung by the wasps. Libersat thinks that the same thing may happen in the brain.

Zombie humans

"I think the most likely explanation is that a component of the toxin affects the expression of genes that regulate the activity of these neurons", he says.

So could octopamine become a possible antidote for future humans turned into zombies by, say, invading aliens? Not quite, says neuroscientist Hans-Joachim Pflüger at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.

"Our brain is of course much more complex, and we use different neurotransmitters,” he says. “But new research shows tiny quantities of octopamine exist in the vertebrate spinal cord and do affect leg movement, so it will be interesting to see what exactly octopamine does in humans."

Journal reference: The Journal of Experimental Biology (vol 210, p 4411)

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As awesome as zombies are and as even more awesome as zombie immunity shots are, this strikes me as slightly dangerous. I mean, WTF are these people doing? Okay, don't they realize that cockroaches are the only thing that can survive a nuclear winter? Now they want to make them zombie immune? Are they crazy? Nothing will be able to stop them!

Also, I wonder how the anti-immunization/vaccine people will take this news... Are they pro-zombies?

-heather

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