• Science

    This Germ Could Save Your Life

    By Posted on 3.12.2008 10 Comments

    Its a drizzly morning on New Yorks Upper East Side, and Rockefeller University microbiologist David Thaler is sipping a double espresso amid the retro-hippie pillows and dangling paper stars of Java Girl, a favorite haunt of the neighborhoods brainiac Nobel laureates, aging poets and famous entertainers. Thaler somehow manages to embody all three—a long, graying ponytail curling down the middle of his back, wire-frame glasses askew over expansive brown eyes, and a schnozz to rival an Einstein, Ginsberg or Allen. Thaler is one of the leading cheerleaders for a new field of biotechnology aimed at engineering the bacteria inside us to deliver drugs, destroy tumors, actively fight infection, and even vaccinate against their disease-causing kin.

    4.6.2008 at 09:29pm - Comment by Vamphyri

    Well, we do have one that eats oil spills then dies of hunger when the source is depleted... Sometimes there are some pretty cool successes. Naturally our own bodies have bacteria that were not part of our makeup before that do all kinds of things symbiotically - not the least of which is digestion. The concern is more like the problem in nature when a bacteria or virus gets in a mutated state that causes it to breed fast in a crowded environment and start causing disabilities and death. Don't think for an instant that a genetic 'bug' for good or ill will be the same for everyone, just like some people have large reactions to things like chicken pox and some people get killed by simple diseases on a wide scale. Just some thoughts :)

  • Science

    Science Confirms the Obvious: Men Mistake Female Friendliness for Sexual Interest

    By Posted on 4.4.2008 9 Comments

    Sorry fellas, but shes probably just being nice to you. Many women know that men sometimes mistake friendliness—say, smiling and eye contact—for sexual interest. Psychological research has long backed up their experience. A new study appearing in the April issue of the journal Psychological Science is no exception. It found that college-age heterosexual men who viewed images of women misidentified their body language and facial expressions as sexually suggestive 12 percent of the time. Women made the same mistake only 8.7 percent of the time. These findings are nothing new, but when the researchers ran the second part of the experiment a curious pattern emerged.

    4.6.2008 at 09:17pm - Comment by Vamphyri

    It is interesting to me that nobody has pointed out that it is also saying that women get it right 91% of the time and men 88% (it sounds less out of whack and people seem less clueless when you put it that way...) Easier to see: roughly 9/10 accuracy for everyone on a nearly rounded average - (so whats the problem?)



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