This Week in Science!!!

A career in writing will lead to premature aging and a healthy dose of personal humiliation. But science and medicine is where you'll make money, fame, and the respect of your parents. As a result, we might as well pay attention to what they're doing in those fields.

So it's time to take another peak at anything going on in the world of science and medicine this week.


Starting off with:  A weasel goes out in a flash...of sorts.

story one:
Weasels hate science!!!

Science hater.

Confirming long-held suspicions of villainous behavior, a weasel is possibly to blame for taking down the $7 billion, 17-mile Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.

The collider--which moves protons at nearly the speed of light before smashing them together in hopes of building on data on the Higgs boson, a cornerstone of particle theory--went offline this week after a power cable was disabled.

And how was it disabled? Engineers found the charred, furry remains of what they believe was a weasel or marten at the scene of the crime. Crime doesn't pay, weasels! Karma bites back!

This isn't the first time cute animals have tried to cripple science at the Large Hadron Collider. Back in 2009, a soggy, plain baguette dropped by a passing bird became caught in some electrical equipment and took out the collider then as well. That's right--bread products and birds are undermining scientific advancements, too. The chaos needs to end!

Does this mean small woodland creatures hate particle theory? Are they fundamentalists? Spies? What's their angle? Only time will tell.



story two:
Brainless slime can adapt!!!

Little Bobby is delicious!

Slime actually exists outside of Nickelodeon skit shows and two-bit divorce lawyers, and scientists have discovered that it can think. Sort of, at least, according to Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

A single-celled organism called Physarum polycephalum has no nervous system, with largely a solitary desire to find food as its lone act of survival. Picture your average 15-year old boy. Just like that.

Scientists wanted to know if the unicellular organism would adapt if they put a harmless barrier between it and a food source. Using caffeine or quinine as the barrier, P. polycephalum showed reluctance to move at first. On day one of the experiment it took the slime hours to adjust to the barrier, as apparently our mindless friend doesn't appreciate the finer qualities of a cup of joe as we do.

After nearly a week of testing though, and apparently tired of the charade, the slime smartened up. Once placed in the petri dish on day six, it immediately moved across the barrier to its food source. Scientists believe this is an example of 'habituation,' where harmless stimuli are ignored in order for the appeasement of important life functions.

What to take away from this? Slime will adapt and dominate the planet in forty million years. Be prepared.



story three:
Your dog is a touch-me-not!!!

"Help meeeee."

A researcher at the University of British Columbia studied a collection of 250 photos of humans hugging their dogs and claims that not only are many people suspicious of being touched by you, but even your dog would appreciate three feet of personal space.

Stanley Doren, a professor of psychology at UBC, studied the photos and says the canines often exhibit signs of stress, anxiety, discomfort, or plain dislike of the hugging situation. The discomfort originates in dogs' inherent desire to flee from danger, and with all your hugging and canoodling you're trying to negate ages of evolutionary behavior.

Doren believes that 81.6% of dogs in the photos were giving off at least one sign of discomfort--all while you were trying to Instagram and Facebook that awkwardness--except you weren't picking up on the social cues apparently.

So the next time your dog is giving you some serious side-eye action, he's not flirting. He's wondering where the pepper spray is.



story four:
Zinc has never sounded so sexy!!!

Zinc = XXX

When a human egg is activated by a human sperm, a tiny little zinc firework explodes around the egg, researchers at Northwestern University say. The larger the zinc firework, the healthier the egg is for developing a viable embryo. Zinc is now officially the sexiest chemical on the periodic table.

Researchers say this could have huge benefits toward choosing the healthiest eggs for in vitro fertilization. "It’s a way of sorting egg quality in a way we’ve never been able to assess before," said Northwestern's Teresa Woodruff.

To think, all those years creepy guys said they could make fireworks happen in the bedroom--they weren't lying.