Tag: science

My DNA results are in…

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… and I can confirm that I’m 100% human!

And given my French-Canadian lineage, I’m really not surprised about my genetic heritage being predominantly Northwestern-European (French, British, Irish, etc…)

Katy says that “this might explain the forehead”. Thank you, my love.

The good news is that there are no major health gremlins hiding in my DNA (with the usual caveats that they don’t check for everything), so that’s good. Some of the train reports that they provide also indicate that the findings need to be taken with a grain of salt:

Bald Spot – Likely no bald spot
Cilantro Taste Aversion – Slightly higher odds of disliking cilantro
Early Hair Loss – Likely no hair loss
Fear of Heights – Less likely than average to be afraid of heights
Finger Length Ratio – Likely ring finger longer
Hair Texture – Likely straight or wavy
Hair Thickness – Less likely to have thick hair
Light or Dark Hair – Likely light
Wake-Up Time – Likely to wake up around 7:46 am

The errors seem to be mainly centered around hair, weird. I also really like coriander.

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The family that gins together… 

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Katy, Ben and I are experimenting. Science, bitches, can you taste it? As the Mythbusters said: “Remember kids, the only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down”.

  Katy Richard Ben
juniper 25 20 24
coriander 10 8 9
angelica 2 3 2.6
orris 1.1 1 x
bitter orange 2.5 2.1 1.1
orange 2.5 1.8 2
lemon 2.2 1.9 0.6
lime leaf 1.06 0.5 x
black pepper x 0.2 x
rosemary hint x x
cassia x x 0.8

Notes: After 24 hours of steeping, both Katy and Ben put fresh apple peel in their gin (Ben lots). We also took out the cinnamon from Ben’s gin. After another 24 hours, we all put 3-4 fresh orange peelings and took out the apple where applicable. After another 24 hours, we filtered it through some coffee filters and bottled it. 

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The unsuccessful self-treatment of a case of “writer’s block”

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The unsuccessful self-treatment of a case of “writer’s block” is a humorous academic article by psychologist Dennis Upper about writer’s block. It contains no content outside title and journal formatting elements, including a humorous footnote. Published in 1974 in a peer reviewed journal, Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, it is recognized as the shortest academic article ever and a classic example of humour in science. The article has led to at least three similarly humorous and peer-reviewed, published replication studies.

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Researchers find stoned rats just can’t be bothered

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THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, makes rats less willing to exert cognitive effort – lazy – but, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.

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The new research, published on Tuesday in the Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, looked at the effects of both THC and the non-psychoactive compound cannabidiol, or CBD, on the male lab rats’ willingness to exert cognitive effort.

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Researchers trained 29 rats on two different challenges: rats which successfully carried out the more difficult task earned two sugar pellets; those which carried out the easier task earned just one. Rats usually preferred the harder, but more rewarding, task. But after being dosed with THC, the same rats picked the easier task.

CBD, which does not cause a high and is believed to have medicinal benefits such as relieving pain and the symptoms of epilepsy, had no impact on the rats’ cognitive behaviour. It also did not mitigate the cognitive impact of THC in the rats.

The THC did not make the rats less intelligent – just lazier, said the study’s lead author, Mason Silveira, a PhD candidate in psychology at the University of British Columbia. “What’s particularly interesting is though they were less likely to do these more difficult tasks they were still able to. There’s this distinction between THC’s ability to affect your cognition versus your willingness to actually use your cognitive abilities.”

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A lengthy debate finally put to rest with hard, solid facts.

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pnis-measurement

Finally, a study which may lay to rest some of the lingering fallacies about penis size and alleviate the woes shared by many men worldwide. According to new research, the average erect penis length is just over 13 centimeters, or around 5 inches. Furthermore, there’s no strong association between foot size and penis length, so women can stop judging men by the size of their shoes. To obtain a reliable data set, a team of U.K. researchers decided to compile measurements taken by health professionals who followed a standardized measuring procedure. They included both girth (the circumference at the base or the middle) and length (pubic bone to the tip of the glans) measurements from 20 different studies, which totaled 15,521 men from various countries across the world. And the results will be music to the ears of many.

The average flaccid penis was found to be 9.16 cm (3.61 inches) long, whereas the average erect penis is 13.12 cm (5.16 inches) in length. In terms of girth, the average circumference of a flaccid penis turned out to be 9.31 cm (3.66 inches), and 11.66 cm (4.59 inches) for an erect one. Furthermore, those at extreme ends of the spectrum were found to be much less common. For example, only 5 men out of every 100 have an erect penis longer than 16 cm (6.3 inches).

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