(THIS IS ME AND BOAZY, THE KING OF KATS, SNOOZING AT MY COUSIN’S IN NYC A COUPLE YEARS AGO)
So recently I’ve started dividing my friends into nappers and non nappers. I find that the non nappers are quite unsympathetic to the nappers and write them off as lay abouts. But! Wait!! They serve a function. Other than snoozing through the doldrums of the day. They work to solidify long term memory. How cool is that??

This is very welcome news because lately I’ve taken to cat napping one of our office cats and taking a cat nap with her on the love seat in the conference room. Her purring is better than a low rpm car engine at sending me to dreamland. And, now that the researchers from University of Haifa’s Center for Brain and Behavior Research in Israel mention it, it really might quicken the “storage of long-term memory.” Mind you, in their experiments they found this was only true of 90 minute naps. And well, I rarely conk out for that long. But maybe I should. For the betterment of the speed at which I consolidate my long-term memory.

Yeah, that’s totally what I’m going to start calling it. Practice it with me fellow nappers: “Pshaw. I’m not NAPPING! Jeee-ez. I’m consolidating my long term memory. Like, duh!”

I have a weakness for Doritos. I pretty much love all the classic flavors, although Cool Ranch is my real Achilles heel. There has been more than one occasion when the boyfriend has come home to find me sheepish, ashamed, nauseous and nearly comatose on the sofa beside an empty Doritos bag (and not the small one). I swear on a stack of vegetables that I’ll never do it again, but let’s be honest. Doritos are drugs in crunchy, cheesy, salty-food format and I am helpless to resist them.

Of course Frito-Lay is well aware of the effect their product has on me. They’ve spent years adding salts and sugars in their most potent and evil forms (MSG and corn syrup) to ensure that I keep coming back for more. And more and more. I bet they have a whole bank of fMRI machines to test for maximal activity in brain pleasure zones when ingesting their products.

Indeed this contrived intensity of and variety of flavors found in many processed foods likely makes people eat more and feel less full - or at least that’s the contention of one David Katz at Yale University. He has a book called The Flavor Point Diet, which is all about keeping meals within a limited number of flavors thereby allowing our brains to feel full on less food...because there is always room for more of another taste. Such as desert. Or Doritos.

Likewise, a recent report from the journal Hypertension found that kids who ate less salty snack foods also drank less sugary sweet drinks. The authors contend that the kids drank less fluids cause salty foods make you thirsty, which is of course true, and yet methinks that kids who eat crap snacks also drink crap drinks, so there’s no medical mystery there. And again, the delightfully addictive intensity of saltiness and sweetness feed into one another to ramp up calorie consumption. I mean is it a mistake that Frito-Lay is owned by Pepsi-Co? It’s kind of like they hooked us on purpose...like they knew that their product was addictive and dangerous.....and...and…

(PHOTO: Ana Schaeffer)
I was flying home from Boston yesterday on a very very full plane. I had the window seat and a large man (6’ 2” and hefty) was unfortunately in the middle seat beside me. He, of course, took the entirety of the armrest, but as the sad middle sod, I was okay with that.  But...his leg...it kept on creeping over the line into my zone. His grimy stranger knee and foot always touching me. I tried to huddle towards the window, keep my knee from touching his...but he kept on encroaching, his legs splayed wider and wider until I was about to snap. I mean SERIOUSLY? DOES THIS PENIS NEED SO MUCH ROOM????

Yes, in a word. In the study of proxemics - essentially personal space - men tend to use more personal space and invade the space of others, most often women. Fuckers. Things like social status and warmth play a role in personal space differences, but the end result is the same: the man was stealing my freakin’ leg room.

(Also, he had both his suitcase and big briefcase in the overhead bins even though the flight was packed and the flight attendants asked everyone to only put one thing in the bins, but now I sound crazy so I’ll stop)

Back in the day, back in the very embarrassing and incriminating day, my dear friend Kathleen and I would (half) jokingly enact interpretive dances of our molecular biology curriculum. It was akin to adapting song lyrics to your test material but much funnier and - this would be why we kept reverting to it - much easier to do successfully on less mental steam.

So imagine my delight in discovering that some genius out in Vienna has put together an honest to god “Dance your PhD” competition and had the wherewithal to post all the submissions online over at Science‘s website. Needless to say the dances are an exercise both in body forms as well as the varied and obscure forms that science’s underbelly of investigation can take ( PhD titles included the mouthfuls “mRNA stability regulation as a drug target” and “A spectroscopic study of the Blazhko effect in the pulsating star RR Lyrae"). Marry the two together and you have something both absurd, and touchingly beautiful.

My favorite however was the winner of the “Professor” category. Giulio Superti-Furga (in the middle of the trio pictured above on the left hand side) won for his trio’s riveting dance of his PhD “Transcription Factors Involved in Development and Growth Control.”

Now I had a vague idea of what this PhD topic meant. But that vague notion was dashed to pieces upon watching the dance. Now I’m convinced it’s all related to leap frog, factory workers doing a riff of the macarena dance and The Beatles Rubber Soul album. Oh well. It made for great viewing.

Especially when I found out that the lithe man dancing his heart away in the middle was none other than the CEO and Scientific Director of the Research Center in Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.  Check out how serious he looks in his profile picture. Just looking at him I feel like he’s staring me down all the way to my own very transcription factors and hijacking their use for growth control. Now check out how all together un-serious he is in his dance. See? See why scientists are great people???

(Thanks Isla!)

Every now and again I swing by YouTube and do a search for science related vids. And I happened upon this. I know that cornstarch + water = weird
(it’s a liquid yet you can punch it and walk on it), but I’ve never seen anything like this. The ‘holes’ are pretty darn bizarre but the ‘fingers’ are just eerie.

More of the same here and here and here and here. It’s alive!

If you’ve ever tried traveling with a dog on a road trip, you’ll know it can take some extra planning to ensure you find a hotel that accepts pets. Especially if your pet is a large, lovable stinky type, such as a Labrador Retriever. But there is one lab that is always welcome at the Fairmont Copley Plaza in Boston, because, well, she actually she lives there. Catie Copley resides in a warm little bed by the St. James street entrance, where she waits patiently for guests to take her on her favorite walks around town. Heh. But seriously. Had I known, I would TOTALLY be staying at the Fairmont for the AAAS meeting. 

Thank god for the research of “Professor Popsicle” the University of Manitoba thermophysiologist Gordon Giesbrecht. Bless his soul the man did all these live simulations to determine what the best way of surviving a sinking car is. All in all he used up 80 vehicles in his experiments.

Now you may think this is an obscure skill set that you will probably never cash in on - sure we’ve seen the scene countless times in movies but that’s hollywood right? Eat your words (or thoughts): seven to 10 per cent of all drownings in Canada happen in vehicles. Scary much?

So. Here’s what you do. Remove your seatbelt. Free your children. Roll down the window (never fear: electric window will still work underwater). Escape.

Don’t open the door. It will be difficult to do and will only succeed in sinking your car in about 10 seconds as opposed to the sixty it would take left to its own devices. And don’t get your cell phone out to call for help.

Now if you often drive around winter roads or lakes it might be worth your while to spring for a “centre punch” tool, Giesbrecht recommends. The tool has a point on it that will break glass with minimal force as well as a small blade for cutting a stuck seatbelt. 

It’s all win-win.

See, we’re major fans of polar bears here. Oh yes. They’re beautiful magical, and in juvenile form, adorable, creatures. But they’re also getting screwed over what with the melting arctic ice. So buy yourself one of Eleanor Grosch’s (she’s the lady who designs all those fab Keds critter pattern flats) polar bear prints for $40. And she’ll donate all the money to the global warming awareness group Stop Global Warming.

Cool huh? Like I said. It’s win-win. 

I have always loved stuffed animals. LOVE. At the moment my childhood collection sits in 4 massive Rubbermaid boxes somewhere in my parents’ house. My mother knew better than to throw them away. Today I am in danger of returning to plush collecting mode, especially as I seem to be able to justify these purchase under the guise of something science-related. I mean, I can’t even visit the Giant Microbes site without wanting to buy absolutely everything there. I mean LOOK AT THIS BOOKWORM.

Etsy is another very very dangerous place for stuffed animal collectibles. I’ve always loved the work of one Ms. Skullknocker. She works nimbly in Naugahyde, creating a plethora of adorable creatures (owls are her specialty, but she dabbles in sharks and whales and bears and octopuses and hippopotamuses and and and). My favorite was the now sold shark pictured above. Sigh.

Of course I could always support some actual nature with my fuzzy nature cravings. Like with the ’Zoo in a Box‘ from the National Zoo in Washington DC (includes six little endangered species) and supports the zoos conservation programs. They have lots of individual species to choose from, too, including a VERY adorable flamingo and the uber ugly-cute Golden Lion Tamarin .

The World Wildlife Federation has a similar store, with even more delicious little creatures to choose from. Seriously. I think I need a Blue-Footed Booby and a Horned Puffin.

But really, what I have always always wanted (and will probably at this point never get due to space limitations and the distinct possibility that my friends will check me into the loony bin should I ever purchase them) are the enormous Lifelike Animals from FAO Schwartz. There were some pretty dirty scenes in the mega-NYC store in the mid-80s as I begged my parents to buy me a 5-foot cheetah for Christmas.

(PS. Mom and Dad, if you are reading this, the 72-inch octopus is on sale for just $242. This is your chance to make it up to me...)

(PHOTO: CYANCEY) IS THAT A BANANA IN YOUR FRUIT BASKET OR ARE YOU JUST HAPPY TO SEE ME?
The CDC would like to remind you that there are healthy ways of showing your love, ways that do not require 7000 calories, 39 units of alcohol and a whole lot of tacky shit that no one needs...ways like dancing, skating and the oh-so-romantic RELAY RACE or FRUIT BASKET.

Can I just repeat that for emphasis: RELAY RACE AND FRUIT BASKET. Someone should seriously be shot. Especially because they forgot the healthiest and happiest Valentine’s recipe of all: a small portion of high quality dark chocolate and lots and lots and lots of sex.