Brady Barr is hardcore. I say this because the man slathered himself in hippo dung and sported a prosthetic Nile crocodile head to get closer to his study subjects.

The best part about his get up, which he recently and successfully sported in Tanzania, is that he got the idea from a kid (as explained on the Nat Geo Channel’s blog):

Not long ago I was speaking to a group of children and explaining to them what I do and one small boy raised his hand and said, “Dr. Brady why don’t you dress up as a crocodile and just join their club?” I laughed and continued my lecture, yet couldn’t shake this crazy idea form the back of my mind.

Lo and behold, Barr got the creative engineers at National Geographic to build him a croc suit all fortified with a protective metal cage covered by a Kevlar shield, all cloaked in a life like latex cape.  And it worked. He managed to sidle up the to the crocs, which reach 20 feet in length, and stick data loggers on them. The data loggers will upload data on the temperatures in their dens for example.

If the idea of deadly animal suits tickles your fancy, then let me introduce you to Troy Hurtubise, who dedicated a large portion of his life to making a grizzly proof suit. Here’s a clip of some of the beta versions running the gauntlet. 

I had just a WONDERFUL trip to the hospital on Wednesday night. Anne and I had gone for a 5pm cake-break to help us work long long long into the evening. But even though I asked, very specifically “does this apple pear torte have nuts in in?” And even though she answered “NO”, I ended up in a trauma bed with an IV.  It was my worst allergic reaction in about 7 years.

My mom came to pick me up from work and sat with me for the couple of hours they watched me turn from purple-inflated, swollen girl, to a more normal shade and dimensioned person. I chatted with my nurses and medical student (she was very nice; her boyfriend is allergic to nuts, too).

It kind of sucked, but not so much really. At least this time I had underwear on.

PHOTO: JEAN SCHEIJEN
Exhibit A. Cause what we need in this world are pain-killing pears...NZ scientists discover aspirin keeps pears fresh. Two horticultural scientists from New Zealand have found that dunking pears in salicylic acid, AKA aspirin, keeps them fresh for longer. I just had to share ‘cause well, you never know when you might crave some crisp pristine slices of pear when you have a headache. Uh. That’s it really. FYI.

Exhibit B. If modern science can’t figure out how to make THE perfect bacon sandwich, we might as well go dwell in caves again. So thank god humanity is now enlightened on the subject.

This story is a bit dated, but boy is it timeless. Leeds University researchers have formulated the perfect bacon sandwich. No joke. They spent more than 1,000 hours testing 700 variations of the simple pig/bread combo at the behest of the Danish Bacon and Food Council (DBFC).

To see the equation of all equations for yourself go to the DBFC page here. Here’s the key:

Top of the list according to the bacon boffins, are the two ‘C’s - crispiness and crunchiness. The research revealed that, ideally, the ‘crunching’ sound made when you tuck in to those crispy rashers should measure 0.5 decibels when eaten, and they should break when 0.4 Newtons of force is applied through chewing.

And with those words, it is now decreed that any respectable chef better have a sound level meter perched next to their Kitchenaid. 

The New York Times has an interesting story discussing the issues around mentally ill or diseased people voting. I mean, you wouldn’t want a criminally insane child murderer making legislation or a guy with Alzheimer’s planning out the road map to universal health care, so do we really want them driving the country? They are so easy to manipulate. They don’t really know what’s going on. Any rat bastard could steal their votes or sway them to his nefarious cause.

Of course I feel pretty much the same way about a large portion of the voting US population.

Take this quote from the grandmother of Sebastian Go, who is under legal guardianship bacause of his bipolar disorder and Asperger’s Syndrome.

“He has to have someone manage his money for him and make his medical decisions,” Ms. Clarke said. “But Sebastian is able to make a political decision.”

Exactly. He might not be able to balance his cheque book or administer his lithium, but man oh man can he vote.

I’m on this whole rabbit breeding kick. It started, and I thought, ended with Hugh Hefner’s bunnies being all endangered down in Florida. But then I came across this headline ”Last captive Columbia Basin pygmy rabbits are breeding in wild, scientists say” and, well, the interest began anew.

I mean, this is a big deal. Read:

The only surviving pair of endangered pygmy rabbits released as part of a program to increase their numbers in the wild have dodged coyotes, badgers, hawks and owls and found time for love…
“We were worried. It took them a little while, but they did what rabbits do best,” Rod Sayler, a Washington State University conservation biologist, said from Pullman.

See? Even the scientist on the case couldn’t resist the glaring cliche inherent in this story. Also, just in case this is too fluffy and cute for you, check this out, the male bunny studmuffin was nicknamed Utapau - after a planet in the Star Wars movies - by Washington State University students.

I didn’t even know about these bunnies previous to reading this story. Who knows why not. They come in adorable sizes (slightly larger than your hand) and are the only bunnies in the US that dig their own burrows. Scientists aren’t exactly sure but suspect inbreeding, range fires, farming, disease and predators are to blame for the Columbia Basin bunnies demise.

Check out this Oregon Zoo video of the critters being released into the hazardous wild (*&$%!ing adorable. Note the “takeout” container they’re transported in). Meadow, a pygmy bunny there, was named “Zoo Mother of the Year” in 2006. Goooo Meadow!

WHEN THE WHALE WAS WEE, THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN MODERN MONEY (PHOTO: BJEARWICKE)

Having a splinter embedded in your finger is deeply irritating, so imagine having a lump of metal embedded in your shoulder for over a hundred years. This was the plight of a bowhead whale featured in a news story with a rather marvellous headline today - 19th century bomb found in whale.

Well, quite. The bomb was actually time-delay harpoon, and apparently would have been ‘uncomfortable’ for the whale. Possibly a slight understatement, but we’ll let it slide. Experts think the whale was probably born around the time of the American civil war, and then speared 30 or so years later, as the ‘bomb’ was of a type manufactured between 1879 and 1885. That would make the animal well over a hundred years old.  It would presumably have kept on swimming for a while yet had he not been fished by a hunter off Alaska. The whale wasn’t illegally taken, it was part of an quota that indiginous hunters are allowed each year, as an exemption from the morotorium on hunting. But it’s apparently reasonably rare to find a centenarian whale, so it’s sad that this particuluar invididual is swimming no more, bomb or no bomb.

When Anna came to visit me in Texas she sarcastically commented on how, like, EVERYONE had a white car. How [rolled eyes] conformist!

So when I told her it was because they attracted less heat from the sunshine she was reallllly embarrassed. Well, now it turns out that those white pickups are good for more than staying just a mite cooler. The recently completed Vehicle Colour Study, conducted by Monash University Accident Research Centre concludes that white cars are The Safest Of All. :

“Conversely, darker colours and colours with low contrast to the road environment, including silver, grey, green, red, blue and black, tend to be associated with a higher crash risk, particularly in daylight hours,” he said.

Dr Newstead said the link between car colour and crash risk was found to be weaker during twilight and night driving.

Compared to white cars, black cars had a 12 per cent higher crash risk, closely followed by grey cars with 11 per cent higher risk. Silver vehicles were next, with 10 per cent, then blue and red at 7 per cent. 

Welcome ye olde faithful Inky Circus readers!

The content’s the same. The font’s a bit different. There’s slightly less orange. But this is it. Our new digs.

But as we tame this new beast, and settle in, we need all the feedback we can get! So with your judgements.

p.s. Here’s our new RSS feed. 

Atul Gawande, poetic wunderkind Harvard doctor, just gave a lecture at Imperial College about how medicine can improve patients’ lot and you can watch his performance here or even download it if you wish.

For those in the dark, let me fill you in. Gawande is surgeon at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and an assistant professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. He was also the editor of The Best American Science Writing 2006. Why him? Because he’s a remarkably gifted writer. Witness his second book, Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance, that came out this spring.

Take for example this recent New Yorker article of his about endangered geriatricians, ”The Way We Age Now.”

To follow up on your nascent fandom of this gentleman, check out the aptly named NYTimes slide show about him ”In Good Hands.” Ahh those steady sensitive hands. That steely gaze. A week from now you won’t even remember who McDreamy is on that show Whosy-whatsit’s Anatomy. 

Oh MMR. Your friend and mine. The triple vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella that has received so very very very much media and scientific attention since British doctor Andrew Wakefield first linked the baby shot to baby autism back in 1998. Never mind that he was paid by some angry parents with autistic kids. Never mind that pretty much every single study that’s come out since has cleared the vaccine of causing autism. Never mind that vaccination rates have dropped and kids might die from these preventable diseases.

Because we’re done with battling it out in the courts of journal articles, newspaper pages and doctors’ offices. Now it’s the courts’ turn.

Little Michelle Cedillo from Arizona is to have her day in front of a judge as her parents and their lawyers try to prove “that a link between autism and the shots is more likely than not, based on a preponderance of evidence.” Sounds a bit waffly? Well the evidence is not.

Just last year, a study from McGill University in Montreal (where I happen to be at the moment) found that autism rates continued to rise after vaccination rates dropped among 28,000 children monitored from 1987 to 1995. Importantly, the rates continued to rise once thimerosal - the mercury based preservative generally fingered by US parents as the autism culprit - was removed from vaccines.

Of course this isn’t the first time that parents of autistic children have turned to the legal system. Parents in the UK have been trying it for 15 years now. But their action was, just days ago, disbanded by a high court judge.

We can only hope that such sense prevails as the 4,800 US cases take their turn at trial.