(a lake in Guinea)

I nearly spat out my coffee when I read this headline: Korean Researchers to Clone Sept. 11 Rescue Dog.

But it’s true. And it gets SOOO much stranger.

First off, the dog in question, a 15 year old ailing German shepherd named Trakr, is winner of BioArts International’s Golden Clone Giveaway contest. Here’s a video of Trakr’s story which explains why he’s the winner: it vacillates between being TOTALLY surreal and TOTALLY weepy (just wait until the end; I dare you not to get a bit misty).

The contest is run under the umbrella of BioArt’s ”Best Friends Again” program. Yes that’s right, as in let’s be best friends again after you, my dearly beloved dog, pass away.

You see, BioArts, a bioengineering company in California, held a competition to find the world’s most “clone-worthy” dog. The winner, whomever the lucky hound be, got to be cloned for free. And that lucky winner happened to be Trakr, who made himself a hero locating the last human survivor under 10 meters of debris at Ground Zero shortly after 9/11.

(The whole Trakr story is WAY more endearing than just that. Turns out Trakr was a retired police dog from the Halifax Regional Police force when his handler Constable Jamie Symington decided to call in “sick” so that he and Trakr could venture down to NYC to save some lives. You can see photos of the hero hound (and his mildly hunky handler)here.)

Well Trakr already escaped death once: Jamie saved him from the police dept.’s policy to euthanise its retired canines. Sadly (and by sadly I mean heart-crushingly weepy) today Trakr can no longer use his hind legs due to “a degenerative neurological disorder that is linked to exposure to toxic smoke at the site” reports Chosunilbo, the Korean newspaper.

Within the next month, BioArts will send a sample of Trakr’s somatic cell genes to Dr. Hwang Woo-suk’s lab so that the previously disgraced Korean scientist can clone the diseased dog. Trakr the puppy will be due in November. If it’s a go, then it appears that the dog’s genes and doc’s rep will both get reprieve. 

This is especially confusing given the carcinogenic qualities of other red dyes in food (do you remember all the schoolyard urban legends surrounding the color of ketchup chips? They chilled my eight year old bones).

But red yeast rice, that lends peking duck its appetizing burnished color, dramatically cuts the risk of heart disease and cancer in patients according to a recent study in the American Journal of Cardiology. In fact the red yeast even outdoes statins at the job.

Crazy talk. I know. 

Except that red yeast rice has been used by the Chinese for over a thousand years as a herbal medicine and spice. If a country has the smarts to invent noodles, don’t you think they can figure out when a flame colored yeast keeps illness at bay? I do. 

Well, I’ve just come across what may be the most bizarre, intimate and gross animal pairing yet: the chicken and the gecko.

Some poor Aussie doctor was cooking himself some eggs when lo and behold there was a dead little GECKO INSIDE THE EGG. Yeah. Ew. And as if to read our minds and in a feeble attempt to allay them “health authorities say the discovery is nothing to be alarmed about” according to ,a href=http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/16/2246597.htm>ABC News.

Like any good confused and fascinated citizen he took some pics and made his egg into a headline.

Now I know you’re asking yourself HOW HOW does this happen. Well, the dominant theory at Australia’s Egg Corporation is that the GECKO CLIMBED UP THE CHICKEN’S CLOACA. The question remains: why???? 

Needless to say, no matter how many scrumptious desserts we stuffed down his gullet, and how many meals we coerced him into joining, he couldn’t shed his guilt about frolicking around the city with us when he should have been at the lab getting blisters from all his pipetting.

At one point he cracked: I have to go, he pleaded. I have lab guilt, he admitted. And then muttered something about being an ex-catholic.

And so inspired was I by this admission that I decided to make a T-shirt for him to that effect that I’m now selling at The Inkstand.

But I have to clarify: lab guilt is in no way the exclusive property of ex-catholics. From what I can tell, it applies to any person who has experiments to operate and science to see to. And to be fair, us un-lab-bound people who cherish and love our scientist friends, should be more sympathetic to their plight. So, if you see someone wearing this t-shirt, gently approach them to gage their interest in joining you at the pub, but whatever you do DO NOT pressure them if they decline. It is your job as their supportive friend to understand their quandary and slowly back away leaving them to their martyrdom. How else will the best science get done in this world?

Men’s “I’ve Got Lab Guilt” Tee. $22
Women’s Lab Guilt American Apparel Tee $22

As I’ve wandered around New York city lately a couple things have struck me as being relevant to the self-aware science geek. Here’s the first. More to come.

For one, I went to New York magazine‘s shopping pages to see what pretty things were for sale and where. There I came across a Design*Sponge‘s take on the purdiest things to take home. And lo and behold item number 105 out of 126 on her Shop-A-Matic list was a “Science series decanter” on sale at Clio in Soho for a whopping $334 (actually that’s for the small one. The large one is $485). Now this is great because it means that science is trendy but it’s also stupid because only a fashion slave douchebag would buy this item for a small fortune when you can get the real deal for $7.95 from Edmund Scientific’s. That one’s 1000ml so it should fit a bottle of wine just fine. But if you want an even larger one to hold your wine in a slightly prettier fashion get the 2000ml one from 4Physics.com for $18.30.

Can you tell I’m hungry?

Anyways. If any of those restaurants she visits are parts of national chains, she will soon (Saturday) have the opportunity to check the calorie count of all her foods conveniently in the store before ordering/purchasing. For New York, ever the health maverick - what with it’s Big City smoking ban and trans fat ban - is trying to force all restaurants with at least 15 chains nationwide to display calorie counts on menus. The restaurants aren’t liking it and there’s been some legal rigmarole over when the requirement is going into action but some stores have started doing it anyways - like Starbucks.

So yes, you can finally see exactly how many calories you save by trying the gummy low fat muffin compared to its oil-infested neighbor.

The question remains whether it will change people’s eating habits and, erm, actually combat obesity as argued by the lawyers upholding the regulation against challenges from the New York Restaurant Association.

Personally, I’d like to see this kind of calorie-labeling trend take off.......and push restaurants into offering slightly healthier options and, MUCH MORE IMPORTANTLY, smaller portion sizes. Many obesity researchers and eating psychology experiments suggest that our obesity crisis is owes much gratitude to the inflation of standard meal sizes.

This is something that restaurants could easily tackle. For example, the Starbucks Oat Fudge bar (so delicious...have you had one?) weighs in at 440 calories. But half of one would suffice beautifully. I mean, I kind of feel ill eating a whole one (this does not stop me - curse of fat gene). One could offer a similar treatment to those cookies and scones and loaf slices that are approximately the size of my head.

It’s a great business model: they could offer half the amount of food, but drop the price by just 20% and display an attractively low calorie count. Nice. I think we’re on to something here.....

Now INN designs has introduced some Periodic Rings that up the ante. By several thousands of dollars. But what else do you expect from a solid silver, gold or platinum ring? If you’re serious about pledging your allegiance to chemistry, perhaps this is the way to do it.

They kind of resemble men’s signet rings. So I’m thinking you get three in one: a clever periodic table reference, an artistically sculpted hunk of precious metal, and something to press into hot wax to seal those scrolls you use to invite people over for some weekend wine and cheese. Oh and also: Forget the plebeian brass knuckles; these pricey suckers will definitely leave a dent in your molester’s eye socket.

VIA Notcot

Well the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction. And it’s attempting to flatten on Ms. Chloe Marshall, a plus-size model from England, reigning Miss Surrey (a county just south of London).

Ms. Marshall is 5’10 and 176 pounds (or so the US papers say), giving her a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 25.3. The “normal” range is 18 - 25. She’s not exactly obese - in fact she would have to be 210 pounds to be technically obese. Chloe is spoutin’ lots of curvy girl power and frankly, she’s pretty hot, so more power to her.

But one Ms. Monica Grenfell, a dietitian and columnist for the UK tabloid newspaper The Daily Mail, thinks that Chloe is a v. bad role model. If you don’t care to read the whole article then I’ll give you some choice snippets:

“It would send an appalling - and very dangerous - message to other young women that it’s OK to be fat.... Chloe is a stark reminder that obesity is now virtually normal in our society - and we should all be hanging our heads in shame.....She is an ambassador not for the beautiful larger lady as she’d have us believe but a poster girl for diabetes, strokes, heart attacks, cancers and all the other devastating and potentially fatal health problems that are caused or exacerbated by obesity. “

Now I must return to the fact that Chloe ain’t obese. Whether she’ll end up obese in later life is another question (the girl is only 17), but it is certainly not a forgone conclusion. Ms. Grenfell says that Chole’s BMI is 26.03 (she obviously has slightly different information about her weight). Whatever. While BMI certainly isn’t the be all end all measure of health, at 25.3 or 26.03 it’s clear that Chloe is very slightly overweight (by 2 to 7 pounds based on a normal upper limit of 24.9).

Of course Ms. Grenfell, the DIETITIAN says that Chloe should have a BMI of 20 - or about 140 pounds. This is unabashedly wrong. I’d expect a profession to know that. Of course this is the woman who wrote “5 Days to a Flatter Stomach.” And, more recently, “Crash Diet: Lose 7 Pounds in 7 Days.”

Oh blah. Blah blah. We can’t win, can we? You’re either glorifying skinniness, or fatness AND FOR GOD’S SAKE LET’S THINK ABOUT THE CHILDREN. The simple fact is that Chloe is a weeee bit overweight and many models are a weee bit underweight. When we start praising “curves” on a 250 pound 5’4” woman (BMI 42.9) or the “elegance” of some 5’11” chick who only weighs 95 pounds (BMI 13.2) then we should get worried.

APOE - or apolipoprotein E - is a normal compound that transports cholesterol around the blood and seems also to be responsible for depositing plaques in the brains of AD patients. Fun.

My grandmother AD it, so it’s not exactly shocking that I carry the risk factor. What’s left to be determined is whether there is anything we can do about it. AD is linked to high blood pressure, cholesterol, high fat diet, diabetes, head injuries, lack of exercise, low education level and mental activity (the use it or lose it angle).

So here’s the extra funny part. I also have two copies of the “risk” allele for the fat gene FTO - discovered last April by a team of UK researchers as they were exploring massive cohorts of diabetics. FTO is widely lauded as the first widespread fat gene - all the other ones were random freaky mutation that only appeared in a couple of people.  16% of people in the research cohorts had two copies of the fat gene, weighing an average of 3 kilos more with a 67% increased risk of being obese. The effects were seen starting from just seven years old (ironically, when I started to pudge out. It’s hilarious to be able to see yourself so directly in research studies).

To sum up: I have an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease (normal for women is about 17% lifetime risk - mine is 29%) and two copies of a gene that make it harder for me to avoid the AD risk factors - obesity, diabetes etc. Fun! So fun! Thanks Mom and Dad!

That’s my news. I have to go not eat now.

Do you see the beautiful circle of caffeinated life going on here? Do you?!? 

It’s kind of like Project Runway for chefs - each episode they have to do two very difficult cooking challenges - limited time, budget, weird ingredients etc - and have them judged by some of the best chefs in the world. One of the challenges in Season 3 was to take classic American food, including as meatloaf, chicken a la king, cabbage rolls, lasagna, mac and cheese, tuna casserole, frank and beans, and make them LOWER CHOLESTEROL. Not lower fat or saturated fat or calories, but lower CHOLESTEROL.

This irketh me. Mostly because it’s wrongity wrong wrong. Let me explain.

For years and years doctors had noted that people with high total cholesterol had more heart attacks. This lead to the logical conclusion that by EATING less DIETARY cholesterol one could drop your BLOOD cholesterol. Remember when everything said “cholesterol free” and our dads were told to stay WELL clear of high cholesterol foods such as eggs?

Well it turns out that was all kind of wrong. Because EATING cholesterol seems to have little impact on the ratio of good:bad cholesterol (high density lipoprotein: low density lipoprotein), which is actually a much stronger indicator of heart disease risk than total cholesterol. Indeed, many nutrition scientists argue that it is eating the trans and saturated fats (not cholesterol) that bumps up blood cholesterol and skews the ratio to the bad. Check out the summary of the situation at this 2000 paper published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition.

Did I mention that was a 2000 paper...eight years ago? This is not new science and frankly I was kind of appalled that the Top Chef dudes haven’t figured that out. I realize their job is NOT to make healthy food, but fuck-off tasty food, but come on. The balance of evidence today is pointing to the fact that a diet high in artificial fats, saturated fats and traditional vegetable oils (canola and corn) and low in olive oil, fish (the omega-3 etc) is really driving heart disease risk. And SOMEBODY on the production team should have figured this out.

I probably wouldn’t have been so cheesed had not the judges singled out one dude for using lobster in his dish. Per 100 gram serving, lobster has 90 calories and 0.9 grams of total fat total...but it has 95 mg of cholesterol (about half an egg’s worth). For comparison, 100 grams of skinless, boneless chicken breast has 110 calories and 1.24 grams of fat....but just 58 mg of cholesterol. We’re theoretically supposed to limit consumption to 300 mg per day.

So by the CHOLESTEROL method, lobster is a sin indeed. But if - as science can now tell us - that EATING cholesterol in food, doesn’t functionally RAISE cholesterol in the blood, then I say the lobster is actually the healthier food. Fewer calories, saturated fat and more uber-health omega-3s (yes, yes there is the PRICE problem, but that’s another blog post, isn’t it?)

The public has surely been jerked around by the evolving science of dietary fats: what’s good, what’s bad and how much should we eat of ‘em. Helping people to understand these changes is IMPERATIVE. A show like Top Chef - with it’s superstars (Oh Padma the beautiful) and high entertainment value - is a prime opportunity to teach these very facts. I am INCREDIBLY disappointed that they just added to the confusion.

But I still love the show. That Padma, I tell you.

A recent analysis of your population suggests that, unless there are fewer deaths from ship strikes and fishing gear entanglements, you and your buddies are never going to recover. Collisions killed 24 of the 67 right wales reported dead (that’s reported only) between 1970 and 2007. Scientists argue over how to fix the problem. Avoid certain areas, re-route shipping channels, just plain slow down...all of these may help. Except the slowing down; a 90,000 ton ship doesn’t have to move that fast to be lethal.

But slowing down DOES make it easier to avoid the whales. If anyone is looking or LISTENING that is. And now they can.

Scientists at Cornell’s Ornithology Lab (yes, that means birds, but who cares) are piloting a project whereby buoys floating around the waters off Massachusetts (and especially in the shipping lanes) detect the sounds of right whales, triangulate their location and then broadcast it to ship captains. It’s called the Right Whale Listening Network and you can enjoy their terrifying interactive graphics and pretty pictures.

Of course the ship captains still have to CARE about the info when they get it, but if some regulatory intermediary is FORCING them to watch and then FINING them millions of dollars if they don’t comply, it might work. Happy Momma Right Whale.

(PS. Right whales are called right whales cause they float to the surface when dead, making them easier to harvest..hence the “right” whale to go after. Huh)

Here’s the subhead: “Sea and reptile motifs are big for the home this spring, but a popular show on Charles Darwin gives them extra resonance. Danny Sinopoli examines the Victorian naturalist as modern-day style maker”

And sure enough Danny dearest goes on to mention that there are some really nice silver lizard napkin rings, turtle-shaped boxes with removable shell lids and crocodile picture frames out this season. Weighty desk clocks, tripod floor lamps and wood and leather campaign chairs round out the look.

I quote: “the look and trappings of Darwin’s world are all the rage this spring.” In part this trend is inspired by the traveling exhibition ”Darwin: The Evolution Revolution“ that blessed the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Field Museum in Chicago with its presence before moving to Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum where it will continue until August 4th.

Frankly, snot has been on my mind in that cloying way that makes me suspect it might literally be spreading through my brain.

So now that I’m coming out of the cold (I’ve moved into the dry cough to the wet cough to the annoying-everybody-in-the-office cough) I’ve become slightly philosophical about my snotty state. What happened??

Well according to the CDC when your nose and sinus get infected with germs your nose makes clear mucus in an attempt (feeble in my case) to wash away said germs. This mucus is clear. After a couple days (this would have landed me on precious Good Friday - the first long weekend of the Canadian year) your body’s immune cells fight back. Apparently this battle changes the mucus to a white or yellow color - I have no idea why. This is what the CDC writes next: “As the bacteria that live in the nose grow back, they may also be found in the mucus, which changes the mucus to a greenish color.” Which begs the question, if they’re normal happy nose bacteria then why isn’t my snot always green. Say what?

So lucky for me Dr. Rod Moser has the answer in this post from WebMD: “After sitting in a congested nasal passage all night, mucous becomes stagnant....just like a green pond.” Eeenteresting, if not absolutely foul to think about. But Dr. Moser does go on to drill home the message that green snot ‘snot bad news. And just because it’s green doesn’t mean you need to bully your Doctor into prescribing you or your child antibiotics.

Still, where does the color green come from? Well. It comes from the color wheel. A New Scientist article explains that two of the common types of human nasal bacteria Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas pyocyanea take on a a golden yellow and blue hue respectively. Mix them together and let them fester in a congested nasal passage and what do you get? Grotty green snot.  It’s practically art. And if that isn’t a truly enlightened view of your head cold, well I’ll just go jump in a lake. 

Morris also made a film called “Gates of Heaven” about the pet cemetery business. It’s pretty odd. Or shall we say, the people who feel passionately about pet cemeteries are pretty odd. Of course this brings up the question, what DO you do with your pet after they die. There are the obvious choices: burial in either the backyard, illegally in the favorite park, in a proper pet cemetery or scattered as ashes wherever you choose.

Alternatively (and I do mean alternatively) you could:

Have them stuffed. Nothing says eternal love like a taxidermied tabby cat perched upon the mantle

Have them stuffed and ROBOTICIZED. If a life-life expression isn’t lively enough for you, add some animatronics to your stuff pet. Have them sit on their favorite kitchen chair and paw at your arm for dinner....the options are endless.

Or...or....USE THEIR FUR TO KNIT A SWEATER. The closest thing to snuggling up to Fido? Of course if you have a small cat, this might only make a hat or single mitten. Start collecting stray hairs now.

Here’s a silver bullet - if you’re in Computer science that is. SCIgen randomly generates an entire computer science research paper (complete with graphs and figures) at the click of a button. All you have to do is fill in the five author fields.

For example, the trio behind inky circus came up a paper titled On the Visualization of Hierarchical Databases.

Here’s the abstract. Can I just say, who knew we had it in us?

In recent years, much research has been devoted to the visualization of XML; however, few have deployed the investigation of spreadsheets. Given the current status of classical archetypes, end-users daringly desire the refinement of the partition table. We construct a heuristic for autonomous information, which we call Emu. Such a claim is usually an extensive mission but fell in line with our expectations.

As you can see the results are pretty spiffy - which explains how three randomly generated papers made their way to the World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics in Orlando in 2005. The 13 minute movie about the hoax, Near Science, can be viewed here. 

A multitude of clinical trials have tested probiotics for both the prevention and treatment of allergies. This review from January 2008 from The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology found that, yes, probiotics do indeed help prevent allergies, but not actually treat them. Fair enough.

It’s possible that breastfed babies get more probiotics from their mother’s milk, which might explain why breastfed babies are less likely to develop allergies. Another theory on the breast-allergy relationship is that eating food proteins (peanut, pollen, egg, dairy) via breast milk (ie mother eats it and it is transmitted to baby through breast milk) might actually help the baby become tolerant as opposed to allergic to the protein (Here is a neat little study from Nature Medicine on mice that showed just that).

Of course the studies here can be a bit conflicting. The most recent suggest that breastfeeding for 4 to 6 months decreases risk of allergies and asthma, but continuing after that seems to increase risk. Weirdly.

Now another prong to the “Breast Is Best” movement is emerging: the added probiotics from breastfeeding might help babies regulate their weights. A follow up of 49 babies from a large Finnish study that was originally testing the probiotics-allergy connection has revealed that those who had higher levels of Bifidobacteria (good and found in many yogurts) and lower levels of Staphylococcus aureus (bad) were less likely to be overweight at 7 years old. Which kind of fits with the observation that allergies and obesity are linked...any may even provide the mechanism that everyone is searching for…

Now you might get all fusty and dig up this paper, which found little connection between childhood obesity and adult obesity (only significantly predicted adult fatness after age 13..), but all told, the story that is emerging on the potential importance of healthy gut bacteria, even from a very early age, is enough to make you wanna feed your child with and then bathe them in raw milk (errr, sort of).

But it’s true. They really do, according to a recent study out of the Minnesota Stroke Initiative that found that cat-less souls had a 40 percent higher risk of dying from heart disease.

Here’s what the lead researcher, who owns a cat, had to say in Twincities.com: “There may be an effect even on blood pressure but we haven’t looked at that. It could clearly have a beneficial effect that we don’t completely understand at this point.”

The study didn’t find such a protective effect in dog owners, but I don’t know. Dogs keep me pretty happy too. 

They also play some, er, weird stuff. Canadians, you know what I mean. For example, take this AMAZINGLY dorky song about the planet Venus from Jerry Jerry and the Sons of the Rhythm Orchestra, sent to us by Inkycircus gal, Simone. We here at the circus are, of course, big fans of science related musical offerings (nerdcore hip hop, bestest science pop songs and old school science educational songs) and this song certainly doesn’t disappoint....."it rains all day, rains all day, rains all day concentrated sulphuric acid.”

And needless to say it grabbed my eye. Because Gordon Rodda, a zoologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, projects that escaped Floridan pet pythons could grow to 20 feet in length and snake their way up the American lines of latitude - up the coast of California for example. Next up, is a study examining how the giant constrictors - including boa constrictors and yellow anacondas - could invade the continental US.

Nothing like wittle snakey wakey slithering away in a bid to freedom. 

Their tagline is “The Trustworthy Encyclopedia.” Obviously. I mean check out some of th featured sources on the homepage:

“There is no scientific consensus that AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) is significant”
“Understanding Intelligent Design”
“Planned Parenthood Website Promotes Porn to Teens”
“National Education Association Pushes Homosexuality in School Booklet”
“Guns Save Lives”

If that isn’t trustworthy news, I don’t know what is. I mean the liberals obviously have a gruesome hold of Wikipedia, the Encyclopedia Brittanica, The Oxford English Dictionary etc. We decent people have to have some where to find decent information. Cause there ain’t no true, just Red and Blue.

(I actually found this site by way of looking for some vaccine-autism stuff wherein I came across this line on their vaccine page: “A concept in vaccine planning is “herd immunity,” whereby humans are equated with chattel.” I could spend all day on this site. But then I might have to kill myself. Or move to Sweden.)

My choice of notes wound up dark and minor enough that the result sounded like a less professional riff of the soundtrack to “There Will Be Blood“‘s blood-pressure raising march of minor notes and strings. It’s a bit rushed (after all there are 10K notes to run through) but the fun part is that you can vary and repeat it as much as possible. I’m now going back to come up with some nice pretty high notes to play pi: I’m thinking triangles, and song birds, and the noise of sunshine instead of dark and roily mining story in California. 

Sooooo you know the milky way galaxy? The one in which we reside not the chocolate bar.

Well a bunch of Australian astronomers at the University of Sydney showed a slew of astronomers up when they proved, after only a couple hours of internet-based research, that our home galaxy is a is 12,000 light years thick, not the 6,000 light years thick it was previously believed to be (the width of our disc shaped galaxy remains constant, however, at 100,000 light years across).

Here’s the hilarious quote from team leader Astrophysicist Professor Bryan Gaensler from the University of Sydney news page:

“Some colleagues have come up to me and have said ‘That wrecks everything!’” says Professor Gaensler. “And others have said ‘Ah! Now everything fits together!’”