Making Science More Better For You on 09/14/07

And away we go

Jackie Gleason’s occult library is on display at the University of Miami. The exhibit includes over 1,7000 books, journals, pamphlets, and publications on such topics as witchcraft, folklore, the occult, ghosts and voodoo. (The Daily Grail)

It’s long been rumored, by those who traffic in such rumors, that in 1974 President Richard Nixon made it possible for Gleason to go to Homestead Air force base in Florida so he could view the bodies of the dead extraterrestrials that are kept there. But, you knew that.

To the moon, Alice...and beyond

Sounds fishy
Salmon parents spawn baby trout
By Lauran Neergaard (MSNBC)

Japanese researchers put a new spin on surrogate parenting as they engineered one fish species to produce another, in a quest to preserve endangered fish.

Idaho scientists begin the next big step next month, trying to produce a type of salmon highly endangered in that state — the sockeye — this time using more plentiful trout as surrogate parents.
The new method is "one of the best things that has happened in a long time in bringing something new into conservation biology," said University of Idaho zoology professor Joseph Cloud, who is leading the U.S. government-funded sockeye project.(MSNBC)

When interviewed, foster parents Gill and Dorsal Fin say they love the little guy and will raise him as if he were their own.


Headline of the day
Man steals car to turn himself in for another charge

Vincent Estrada Jr. is accused of stealing a car in Canandaigua, NY to turn himself in in nearby Geneva. (Rochester Democrat & Chronicle courtesy of the Obscure Store)
It has a nice kind of symmetry

Now you know
Curly hair tangles less than straight hair
Some think the findings could lead to advances 'in Velcro-like technology.’To learn which kind of hair truly is the snarliest, biophysicist Jean-Baptiste Masson at the Ecole Polytechnique in France had hairdressers count tangles for a week in the hair of 212 people — 123 with straight hair and 89 with curls. Counting was conducted between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m., so that hair had a chance to snag during the day.

Masson found straight hair got tangled nearly twice as much as curly hair — the average number of tangles was 5.3 per head of straight hair and 2.9 per head of curly hair. To investigate further, Masson devised a geometrical model of hair that might explain the results. Although straight hairs interact less often with each other than curly hairs do, his math suggests that when straight hairs do rub against each other, they often do so at steep angles that cause tangles.

Masson noted that Velcro essentially involves hairy fibers getting tangled up with each other, and that his findings could lead to advances "in Velcro-like technology," he told LiveScience. For instance, researchers could try increasing the tension of Velcro fibers, essentially making them straighter. (MSNBC)

It’s a French research project, so I’m sure there will be some post-modern fractals involved as well.