Archive for August, 2008

Super-athlete pills: just in time for the Olympics

Thursday, August 7th, 2008

Here’s something all those Beijing-bound Olympic athletes would love to have in their duffel bags: fat-burning, endurance-enhancing pills fresh out of development, presumably not yet tested for in the barrage of drug tests they’re sure to undergo for the next few days.
To save myself from a load of acronyms and scientific gobbledygook, I present this […]

World’s smallest snake!

Tuesday, August 5th, 2008

The smallest snake in all the world has been found, and it wasn’t the one in my pants after all.
Meet Leptotyphlops carlae, indigenous to the easternmost Caribbean island of Barbados, less than 4 inches (10 cm) long when fully grown, and for about 15 minutes, internet star.
The little guy was discovered by an evolutionary biologist […]

Space pioneers of the non-human kind

Saturday, August 2nd, 2008

The Time website just came out with a cool photo essay about animals in space. The photo essay is supposed to commemorate NASA’s fiftieth anniversary, but I’m more interested in the animals themselves.
Are they heroes? Pioneers? Hapless experimental test subjects?
The handful of images including the one above may not suffice to reach a conclusion, but […]

One more thing to blame genes for

Friday, August 1st, 2008

Lazy? Never feel like going out and exercising? would you rather sit in front of the TV or surf the web like you’re doing now?
It could be because of your genes.
A team of scientists at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte have used to number studies to come to a conclusion that genetics may predispose […]