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Exposure therapy is the practice of exposing people to things they fear in small doses, and it has helped vast numbers of people get over their phobias. But why? Now, a new study has shown that as little as a single session with a tarantula permanently alters the way an arachnophobe's brain works. More »
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Okay, so maybe not your next one, but in a few year's time? Maybe your storage will be writ across DNA itself. Researchers at Stanford have developed a method to store binary code on DNA. Dubbed the "recombinase addressable data (RAD) module," the method controls the synthesis and degradation of two proteins, integrase and excisionase. With RAD, a particular section of a microbe's DNA is tweaked to glow either red or green under ultraviolet light — and it can be switched back and forth at will. More »
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Inspired by steampunk graphic novel The Five Fists of Science, Dr. Horrible Rob Flickenger set out to make his own handheld, field-generating Tesla coil gun. More »
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Ticks are known for transmitting disease, but they've also been known to make people deathly allergic to meat. More »
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There have been quite a few efforts to harness people power, by putting specially designed energy harvesters in exercise machines, yo-yos, or right inside your shoes. But none of them have been quite as thin or just downright cool as a new device that uses a paper-thin electrode packed with viruses to turn mechanical energy into electricity. More »
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Grabbing a bullet can be harder than you might think. If it's buried deep inside a wall, how could you get your fingers around it? For that matter, you really shouldn't be getting your fingers around this bullet—you might get charged with some crime. The solution is obvious: you need a tool to pull out that bullet. Such a tool exists. It's called a bullet puller; you've probably seen one on innumerable cop shows. And right now you can get a set of seven bullet pullers for the low, low price of 150 pounds sterling, or about $240. These bullet pullers are used, but they come with some good history: they were valuable parts of Britain's top-notch Forensic Science Service. More »
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The ingredients label for a can of Hormel's SPAM with bacon — that non-perishable staple of survival kits the world over — lists "pork," "ham" and "bacon." Separately. In that order. More »
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It's rare to read an ingredients label these days without stumbling over at least a few unfamiliar words, and many of these words can be a little... disconcerting. More »
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Let's say we detect an asteroid about to hit Earth and for some reason we can't throw Bruce Willis at it. (My problem-solving strategies generally involve throwing Bruce Willis.) Well, a swarm of tiny spacecraft could also do the job. More »
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Researchers have shown that male mice that eat yogurt lug around bigger testicles, inseminate partners faster, and produce more offspring than those who don't. And yogurt-eating females give birth to larger and healthier litters. More »
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You only have to pick up an old novel to realize that people write very differently than they did 100 years ago, or even a couple generations ago. But is it possible to quantify those differences? Could pick apart centuries' worth of literature, and track their age based only on the words on the page? More »
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Your relationship is on the rocks. Begrudgingly, you and your significant other visit a marriage counselor in the hopes that there's still something left to salvage in your relationship. You both spill your guts and admit that the love is gone. The counselor listens attentively, nodding her head every now and then in complete understanding. At the end of the session she offers the two of you some practical words of advice and sees you on your way. Oh, but before you leave she fills out a prescription for the two of you. Your marriage, it would seem, has been placed on meds. More »
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Let's face it, humans aren't too good at the whole "regenerating limbs" thing. In fact, the only way we can regrow bones is if we only lose the tip of one of our fingers or toes. But what makes that loss different to any other part of the body? More »
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We all know that one cannot make a doppelganger, or find one in an alternate universe, without that doppelganger being evil. But how is that great capacity for malice instilled in a twin? We asked biologist Terry Johnson, author of How to Defeat Your Own Clone, how to construct an evil twin using science. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5903337&view=rss&microfeed=true I love it when the abstract for a scientific paper reads like the opening to a Charles Stross novel. Case in point is the paper that computer scientist Benjamin Kuipers posted the other day on arXiv: More »
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Tightrope walking - or tightrope motocross riding, as rather awesomely seen here - may seem like an impossibly complex skill of athletic ability and audacity. But a new mathematical model reveals one trick to mastering this seemingly arcane art. More »
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Evolution is generally regarded as pretty good at specializing species for certain ecological niches, but with a glacial pace of adaptation, sometimes it needs a helping hand. Meet the team of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, who decided they wanted to beef up the paraoxonase 1 (PON1) to the point it could combat sarin and other G-type nerve agents. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5903125&view=rss&microfeed=true The Wall Street Journal reports that the American Association of Plastic Surgeons has seen a meteoric rise in chin implants over the past year. The number of chin implants, where a silicon implant increases the size of the chin, grew 71% in 2011. That's 20,680 chin implants total in the U.S. According to the WSJ: More »
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This, according to the US Forest Service document entitled "Obliterating Animal Carcasses with Explosives," is the right way. See those rectangles? Those represent sticks of dynamite. Their placement demonstrates how they should be positioned in order to achieve what the document calls "total obliteration." More »
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Dmitri Krioukov, a UC San Diego physicist, was recently given a ticket for running a stop sign. He went to court to argue the ticket, armed with a scientific paper that mathematically demonstrated that he really had stopped. He won. More »
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Science fiction is becoming reality faster than anybody realized — we not only can transplant an entire arm now, but we've succeeded in creating face transplants that restore mouth and tongue function to patients. How long will it be before we can transplant an entire brain? Peggy Kolm from Biology in Science Fiction looks at the history of extreme transplants. More »
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Obviously, an erupting volcano can kill you in several direct ways — typically via heat and/or explosive force. But there are some rare and weird ways to die near a volcano. Did you know that a volcano can make your head explode? Or melt your face with hydrochloric acid? More »
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Yes, that's a serious scientific question, especially now that animals are moving into unfamiliar territories and bringing their poop along with them. After two years and over 9,000 dung beetles, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the answer... More »
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In the 1940s, a group of doctors at the University of Cornell set out to create a unit of pain intensity. Using the "dol" as a unit, the physicians created a 21-point quantitative scale, but through unusual means — testing pain reactions on medical students and women in labor between contractions. They did this by burning their subjects. Ow. More »
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Want to create an egalitarian utopia? A rigid hierarchical hellscape? (Or an egalitarian hellscape and hierarchical utopia, depending on your politics?) You might just need to stimulate or suppress two crucial parts of the human brain. More »
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A Scottish whiskey distillery recently began a two-year experiment to answer maybe the most important question in human history: does zero gravity make alcohol taste more excellent? Thanks to the heroes on the International Space Station, we'll soon have an answer. More »
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When a squirrel encounters a rattlesnake in the wild, it does something very peculiar to survive its brush with the predator. That something is so peculiar, in fact, that we've had to build robot squirrels just to try to understand it. More »
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Parasomnias are the class of sleep disorders associated with abnormal sleeptime behavior. One of the most common examples of parasomnia, for example, is somnambulism (better known as sleepwalking). More »
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A new subatomic weight scale can measure masses as tiny as one yoctogram. Less than the mass of a proton, a yoctogram is equivalent to a billionth of a billionth of a millionth of a gram. More »
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Scientific papers contain wonderful gems of knowledge and insight, but why are they often so dry? Comedian and molecular biologist Adam Ruben explains how you, too, can sound like the inside of an academic journal. More »
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This is Noori, the first ever clone of the pashmina goats found in the Himalayas. This particular breed's wool is said to make the world's finest cashmere, but their dwindling numbers and high-altitude habitat makes them almost impossible to find. More »
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Huug Bosse went in for hip surgery three years ago, and when he woke up he had a mean case of uncontrollable laughter. And he hasn't been able to stop laughing ever since. Understandably, his wife is absolutely miserable. Watch the video interview, and feel this woman's pain. More »
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Are you looking to seduce a would-be paramour on a roller coaster, but are completely unwilling to reenact that generation-defining Mark Wahlberg-Reese Witherspoon scene from Fear? Fortunately for you, such softcore machinations may be completely unnecessary. More »
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In The Matrix, the Machines farm humans for energy. Today, we do the exact same thing with tiny critters like cockroaches. More »
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Sure, when it comes to making calculations and accumulating knowledge, computers have long since left most of us in the dust. But for tasks involving even a little nuance and uncertainty, computers can't even compete with your average preschooler. More »
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This is Startram, a proposed launch system that would use magnetic levitation trains, a 1000-mile tunnel, and a superconducting cable to reach low Earth orbit. Amazingly, we already have the technology to do it...at far less than the cost of rockets. More »
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Quantum mechanics says objective reality doesn't exist, that instead all we see are probabilities collapsing into one particular configuration... and all other possible realities might just exist together in a quantum multiverse. Here's the deadly experiment that could help you to test that very idea. More »
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Back in the 1870s, a newspaper editor named Christopher Latham Sholes rearranged the letters on typewriters so that the keys would stop jamming. The result was the QWERTY keyboard... and his innovation has actually fundamentally altered how we think about words. More »
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In 1994, a group of Norwegian researchers embarked upon a groundbreaking study as to whether garlic was an effective deterrent against blood-sucking Nosferatus. Did this timeworn wisdom withstand the rigors of the laboratory? More »
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It's melanin Monday (not a real thing — but it should be), time to brush up on your knowledge of all things pigment-related! People with fair skin and rosy locks get their distinctive looks from mutations in the gene that codes for melanocortin 1 receptor, a protein that aids in the synthesis of the pigment melanin; but there is also a growing body of evidence that suggests folks with the redhead phenotype actually experience pain differently than the rest of us. Everyone, it's time you learned about the painful secrets of the crimson coif. More »
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