Can you imagine Obama in nano size?  I bet you can’t, but it is real.

John Hart. Sameh Tawfick, Michael De Volder and Will Walker used 150 million tiny carbon nanotubes to construct each face.

Are you looking for the drawings or dissection images for different animal? Perhaps you can take a look at this website. They provide the drawings and dissections of different body parts of different species.  The body parts include head and neck, cranial trunk, caudal trunk, thoracic limb, and pelvic limb.  The species include are feline, canine, porcine, caprine, ovine, bovine, and equine.  The default mode is ‘drawings’, you can click on ‘dissections’ to find dissection images.

I just stumbled upon this site “Has the LHC destroyed the world yet?“  Apparently the answer is “NO”.

There are more similar sites like this poping up, one of my favourite and dumbest of all is “Is it Friday?“

The hypothesis known as “bad karma hypothesis” by author, I fall in the love with it at the first sight~

Bad karma hypothesis.

Background:
This is basically the “God is punishing you” hypothesis. It sometimes gains a great deal of favor.

Symptoms:
i) All rational explanations have been exhausted and yet PCR still is not working for you.
ii) Persistent feelings of guilt (if you are a Catholic, this symptom could be misleading).

Tests and solutions:
i) Try bungee jumping. If you survive, God must not be too hacked-off at you.
ii) Atone for your sins and start over at the top of the flow chart.
iii) If you end up here next time, have someone watch you next time you set up your PCR reactions.

I’m sure you’ll like it to!

I stumbled upon this website that collects all the t-shirts worn by Sheldon and Leonard on The Big Bang Theory.

The t-shirt features a gigantic lab rat with syringes on it chasing after bald and weird hairstyles scientists.  Currently the only size left for this t-shirt is XS, and it is $15 only.  Too bad, it’s not my size.

In the movie, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille the perfumer source of finest perfume was young females.  Scientists also found a way to create perfume, however it is not from women, but tropical Vetiver grass.  The root bacteria of the tropical grass were found having the ability to promote the production of essential oils in the oil-producing cells.  The bacteria are also able to change the molecular structure of the oil, hence changing oil’s flavours and properties (termicidal, insecticidal, antimicrobial and antioxidant).  The researchers involved in this study were the microbiologists Pietro Alifano and Luigi Del Giudice, the plant biologist Massimo Maffei and their colleagues.

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This is not science fiction, and the orange-suited men in the photo above are not hobbits.  They were climbing around an underground crystal forest found 1,000 ft below the Chihuahua Desert in Mexico.  When two brothers were drilling in the Naica lead and silver mine, they accidentally discovered the cave of crystal.  There are up to 170 crystal pillars and the biggest one is around 37.4 ft.

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If you are a vegetarian, the following news might be useless to you.

Scientists from University of Adelaide discovered a bacterium cause disease among meat lovers.  The discovery led by microbiologists Dr Adrienne Paton and Professor James Paton was published in Nature on 30 October.

E. coli bacteria will release Subtilase cytotoxin, a potent bacterial toxin, to target Neu5Gc sugar on cell surface.  This will cause bloody diarrhoea and haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS) in humans.  However human does no make Neu5Gc naturally, and we the toxin release by the bateria should do us no harm.  The secret to the triumph of the bacterium is because we eat too much meat and fairy products.  While we are creating more carbon emmission by eating the food we love, we also uptake Neu5Gc sugar which is rich in these food into our body.  Scientist emphasized that it is important to eat well-cooked meat and pasteurised dairy products as the bacteria are killed in these food products.

Other researchers involved in this study included scientists from Monash University, the University of California and Emory University.

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Sauna is a ‘sweat bathing’ facility that has been widely used today. Stones are often used to exert high temperature in a room by pouring water over hot stone to produce steam. The heat accumulates in the room making it humid or hot. This promotes sweating, hence relax a person. There are many psychological and physical benefits for using sauna.

The sauna session can improve a person’s social affair. People can talk to each other disrobing themselves in the sauna, and this definitely gives them a special bonding between each other.

Relaxation can also be achieved through sweating cause by the heat in the sauna. This further leads to mind cleansing of a person. Studies (Kukkonen-Harjula & Kauppinen, 2006) showed that sauna is suitable for people of all age, and it does not post any health risks to pregnant women, and patients with high blood pressure, coronary heart disease and congestive heart failure (provided they are medicated). It was also found that sauna can help musculoskeletal disorders patient to relieve pain.

It should be reminded that people suffering from toxaemia might not be suitable to use sauna. For those who are taking antihypertensive medication may cause hypotension after bathing.

The earliest sauna known was a pit dug in a slope in the ground as bathroom in winter, and it is not Finnish invention. There are many types of sauna available these days, such as using a metal woodstove, or kiuas with a chimney instead of using hot stones.

Reference:
Kukkonen-Harjula, K. and Kauppinen, K. (2006), Health Effects and Risks of Sauna Bathing, Int J Circumpolar Health, vol. 65, no. 3, pp. 195 - 205.

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