With all the recent fuss about the Hunger Games series, I think it's important to not forget about the best children's book series of all time. Harry Potter fandom will keep burning strong long after the Hunger Games hype has fizzled out.

However, since audiences seem to be craving epic battles to the death, let's see what would happen if there was a hunger games of sorts at Hogwarts. But instead of starting another fight among human children, let's try pitting animals--the animals representing each Hogwarts house--against each other.


The Contestants

Lion: Gryffindor House

The King of Beasts needs little introduction. Lions usually hunt in groups, chasing down large animals like zebras, wildebeest, and buffalo. Female lions do most of the hunting since they are more aggressive by nature.

Eagle: Ravenclaw House

Surprisingly, the Ravenclaw house animal is not, in fact, a raven but an eagle. This bodes well for Ravenclaw in this fight since ravens are a lot smaller and less fierce than some species of eagles.

To make it a fair fight, let's say the Ravenclaw eagle is a martial eagle, the largest eagle in Africa. The martial eagle can have a wingspan greater than seven feet, and it has a diverse diet that includes birds, reptiles, and mammals.

Snake: Slytherin House

Without much indication in the books, there are a lot of possible snake species that could represent Slytherin. Again, to even the odds, let's make the Slytherin champion a black mamba. This snake is one of the fastest and most venomous in the world. Also, like many Slytherin students, the black mamba is very defensive and aggressive.

Badger: Hufflepuff House

The European badgers that are native to England are pretty wimpy. In a fight, their first reaction is to run or to hide their head in their paws. So let's consider a more tenacious species--the honey badger. Though it's small, this badger is extremely feisty. In fact, it was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the "World's Most Fearless Animal".


The Fight

In order to determine which animal has the best chance winning, let's see what would happen if the champions were to duel to the death in pairs.

Lion vs. Eagle

The martial eagle can prey on animals a lot larger than itself. It feeds on many mammals including baboons, antelope, and, yes, the occasional lion cub.

However, it would be a bit of stretch to think that an eagle could kill a full-grown lion. More likely, the lion would use its superior size and strength to its advantage. The martial eagle would probably suffer a similar fate to a golden eagle that was killed by lions (in front of horrified patrons) at the Vancouver Zoo.   

Lion vs. Badger

Though lions are clearly the larger animal, don't underestimate the honey badger. Honey badgers often take on larger animals. In fact, several accounts tell of honey badgers scaring lions and leopards away from their kills.

This stealing may be achieved with a rather unusual technique--the little rascals have been known to go for the scrotum of larger male animals during conformation. But despite their ingenuity and moxie, honey badgers are often killed by lions.

Lion vs. Snake

A black mamba's venom is very toxic. Untreated bites have a 100% mortality rate in humans, and death can occur in as little as twenty minutes.

Mambas get very aggressive when they are cornered or when something comes between them and their prey. In these situations, they have been known to attack and kill full-grown lions.

Basically, a lion would be crazy to mess with a defensive mamba, and if it did, the outcome would not be good. Take a look at what happened when a lion family camped too close to a territorial cobra, which are less venomous and aggressive than mambas (skip to 2:00).
 


Eagle vs. Snake

Though black mambas slither very fast--reaching speeds up to 12.5 miles per hour--they are no match for a flying animal. Martial eagles regularly kill and gobble up mambas. In fact, mambas and other reptiles make up a whole 38% of the bird's diet. 

Eagle vs. Badger

Honey badgers may have a good relationship with one species of bird--the greater honeyguide. Supposedly the honeyguide leads the badger to a bee hive, and the badger tears into the hive with its claws. Then they both feast on the honey and larvae inside. However, there is little empirical evidence of this relationship, making many scientists skeptical.

Regardless, interactions between a honey badger and a martial eagle wouldn't be nearly as friendly. As stated above, the eagles often kill mammals even larger than honey badgers. However, given that the honey badger is an especially fierce mammal, the match would be pretty even. 

Snake vs. Badger

Seeing as lions are likely to be bested by black mambas, you may be surprised to learn that honey badgers would not only hold their own against the mambas but most likely win. The difference is that honey badgers regularity hunt and eat mambas as part of their diet.

In fact, honey badgers are built for hunting snakes. In addition to their sharp claws and teeth, they have very thick skin, which protects them from bites. Also, some research has also shown that the badgers may actually have immunity to some snake venom.

Check out this mind-blowing video of a honey badger eating a puff adder (skip to 2:15 for the cool part).



The Results

Let's see how the champions fared. For simplicity's sake, each animal gets one point for a win, zero points for a loss, and a half a point if the match is a toss-up.

But when it gets down to it, who really cares which house comes out on top--as long as it's not Slytherin?

About a year ago, readers across the United States were treated to headlines going something like this: "College Students Not Learning Much."

The headlines were prompted by a study of 2,300 undergraduates, which found that a full 45% of those students showed no significant improvements in key measures of critical thinking and learning after two years of college. And with four years of college under their belts, 36% still didn't demonstrate any improvements.

Accompanying these provocative factoids were more statistics that undoubtedly caused a great many readers to mumble and grumble about "all those lazy college students." Half of the students surveyed in the study didn't take a single course requiring twenty pages of writing during their prior semester, and one-third didn't take a course requiring more than 40 pages of reading.

From this, one might conclude that college students are neither learning nor working, but this isn't entirely true. To the contrary, the study showed exactly what might be expected out of a college survey like this: the majority of students go to college to learn, and a minority attend solely for the experience. Some study hard, get good grades, have some fun along the way, and become better, more learned individuals, while others choose to neglect their studies, incessantly peruse Facebook in class, party six nights a week, and glide through.

Institutions obviously bear some of the blame for deteriorating standards and a lack of educational innovation, but we shouldn't fool ourselves into believing that colleges are the primary culprits for a lack of student learning. Attending college has never entailed that the student will learn anything, because -- in the end -- only the student has control over how much they learn. A student chooses whether or not to attend class, to read, to take notes, or to apply themselves academically.

Of course, the real problem with this whole situation isn't that some students are choosing not to learn, it's that those students are still graduating. The college degree is degrading into something that's merely bought, not earned.

As one enlightened author wrote, colleges are becoming "industrial degree factories." Like a vending machine, you put some money in and out pops a bachelor's.

To reverse this new trend, colleges must demand excellence. But students must also strive for that same excellence.

You could say that Adam Savage has made a career out of blowing stuff up. His innocent and enthusiastic embrace of explosions stood out when he worked as a special effects engineer/consultant on such vaunted films as The Matrix: Reloaded, Star Wars, and Terminator 3. It was this experience that helped jet him into the limelight as one of the admired Mythbusters on Discovery Channel.

"The only thing that differentiates you and me from a couple of fourteen year old pyromaniacs is ballistic glass!" Savage once told his partner, Jamie Hyneman, on an episode of the show.


Throughout Savage's many moments of well-meaning pyromania, his ability to make science understandable and enjoyable has been what has truly shone through. Savage's show, MythBusters, isn't solely about busting myths that often involve alcohol, firearms, motor vehicles traveling at unsafe velocities, flames, or some other form of destruction. The show teaches the viewer how to form hypothesis and put them to the test. Indeed, through MythBusters, Savage demonstrates how to apply science in our everyday lives.

Back in November, Savage put his teaching talents on display at TEDEd. His talk, posted to YouTube on March 13th, has already amassed 458,000 views. The topic? "How simple ideas lead to scientific discoveries."

To demonstrate his point, Savage cited two incredible discoveries from human history made by applying simple, creative methods and using the subtle forces of human cognizance. One was the example of Eratosthenes, who, by applying prior knowledge and geometry to the shadow created from the Sun shining against a stick stuck in the ground, calculated that the diameter of the Earth was roughly 25,000 miles. Eratosthenes' estimate was within one percent of the actual value, and he did this 2,200 years ago!

Savage's second example was that of Hippolyte Fizeau, who, by utilizing only math, a toothed cog wheel, and two mirrors set five miles apart, calculated the speed of light to within 5% of the actual value!

In light of these two examples, Savage concluded his talk with a rousing and energetic observation.

 "...When you look at what the discoverers were thinking when they made their discoveries, you understand that they are not so different from us...

...Most people think of science as a closed, black box, when in fact it is an open field. And we are all explorers. The people that made these discoveries just thought a little bit harder at what they were looking at and they were a little bit more curious."

The wind blew across the mountainous Chilean plain and rustled the hearty flora littering the arid landscape. Above, a vast canvas of sky encircled the horizon. Not a single cloud besmirched its perfect blue hue.

Suddenly, an explosion thundered in the distance, followed by a reddish brown plume of dirt and debris. The blast was hailed as a "Big Bang on Earth;" seventy more will follow. It's all part of a grand plan to move a mountaintop in order to "mine the sky."

Last Friday, preliminary construction began on the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) in the Chilean Andes. A joint operation by a consortium of institutions from the United States, South Korea, and Australia, the telescope is set to be completed by 2018. When finished, the GMT will cast its gaze into the star-laden heavens and supplant the Gran Telescopio Canarias as the largest land-based optical telescope.


But GMT's size dominance may not last for long. When completed, its optical collecting surface diameter will measure a considerable 24.5 meters - the current champion is 10.4 meters. But GMT is slated to be outdone by the Thirty Meter Telescope in Hawaii before the end of the decade. And after the Thirty Meter Telescope comes the European Extremely Large Telescope, slated to carry a mirror with a considerable 39.3-meter diameter. (It was originally intended to be named the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope and to have a 100 meter lens!)

This size competition is not merely motivated by astronomical pride. When it comes to telescopes, size matters. As explained by "The Bad Astronomer" Phil Plait:

Think of a telescope as a bucket that collects light. The bigger the bucket, the more light it collects. Many people think that the most important quality of a telescope is how much it magnifies an object (certainly cheap 'scope manufacturers advertise them that way!), but what is usually more important is how faint an object the 'scope can see. In that case, the more light you collect, the fainter you'll see. So over the years, telescope makers have focused on making telescopes bigger and bigger.

The overt benefit of these burgeoning telescopes is that mankind's gaze into outer space will be tremendously magnified. With this enlarged scope of clarity, scientists may be able to answer some of the most intriguing and mystifying questions. What exactly is dark matter? How did the first galaxies form? What is the fate of the universe? Are we alone?


But the most exciting possibility presented by these revolutionary telescopes is not that we will be able to answer our current questions, but that we may conceive of entirely new questions to ask! Who knows what unimaginable discoveries are lurking just out of sight, waiting to be seen?

By the end of this decade, they may come into view.

It is widely known that animals are not very discreet when it comes to sexuality. Whether visiting the zoo, watching the Discovery Channel, or strolling through the park, parents have to be ready with a tactful answers to their kids' curious questions.

Some animals, however, are more promiscuous than others. Lately, scientists have been intrigued by female animals who mate with multiple males during a reproductive cycle. The resulting litter can then be composed of half-siblings rather than true siblings.

Species of birds, mammals, snakes, turtles, insects, and spiders all have been shown to exhibit this wanton behavior, and scientists are puzzled as to why. This puzzlement has turned into a heated debate about whether female promiscuity, or polyandry, helps or hurts the female.

Most of the cons of polyandry arise from the fact that sex is costly and risky for a female. By mating with multiple males, a female gives up more time and energy, and she exposes herself to more predation, infection, and injury.

However, recent research has revealed some viable pros to polyandry as well. One of the most interesting advantages is achieved through a coy-sounding phenomenon called cryptic female choice. This term describes ways in which females can choose which of her suitors sires her offspring--after copulation.

Let me explain: the female mates with several different males, stores their sperm, and then chooses which sperm will fertilize her eggs. Apparently a lot can happen in the female reproductive tract.

Scientists think there are two genetic reasons females could exercise cryptic choice: 1) to get the best possible sperm and 2) to eliminate sperm that aren't compatible with their own genotype.

One of the many possible ways that the female may eliminate incompatible sperm is with her immune system. As soon as the sperm enter the female's reproductive tract, they are bombarded with hoards of anti-sperm white blood cells and antibodies. The immune cells are programmed to attack incompatible sperm, which are identified by the proteins on their surface.

One reason particular sperm may not be compatible with a female is because they are too genetically similar. This ability to favor dissimilar sperm is especially handy for animals who are fond of inbreeding. One study demonstrated this fact by showing that female spiders stored more of a stranger's sperm and less of a sibling's sperm.

Spiders aren't the only animals that use cryptic female choice, other animals--including humans--use it too. Investigations about role of cryptic female choice in human sexual reproduction are just beginning, but I think you will agree that the possible opportunities for research and application are super exciting.

If you've come to this blog post looking for a scientifically proven method of getting out of figuratively sticky situations, I'm afraid Newton doesn't have an answer for you. As far as I know, there's no systematic magic bullet for convincing your mom that you "didn't do it," or explaining to your significant other why you forgot your anniversary, or escaping from a burning bank under assault from Godzilla. But literal sticky situations -- now that is something that science can help you with.

We begin with something that happens every winter. For countless creatures of curiosity, the allure of sticking their tongue on a freezing metal pole is just too overwhelming. Only when their favorite fleshy organ with a sense of taste becomes firmly frozen to said pole do they consider that "maybe this wasn't such a good idea."

The science behind this sticky conundrum begins with the moisture on your tongue, which is, of course, subject to freezing courtesy of winter's chilling bite. As further explained by LiveScience's Roy Britt, "...the heart constantly pumps warm blood to the tongue, trying to keep it from freezing. But a frigid metal pole has no heart."

In fact, a heartless metal pole is an excellent conductor, so it will sap the heat right out of your tongue. This means that a sticky situation can quickly develop into an emergency requiring the aid of the fire brigade. Luckily, there's a simple way to get out of this fix without leaving a mark. Simply ask... wait that won't work... Okay, I've got it! Simply pantomime to your friend (just like charades) that he or she should go fetch a glass of warm water and pour it on the icy bond of metal and tongue. Once this has been taken care of, slowly detach yourself.

We move next to a more ubiquitous problem, that of stuck chewing gum. We've all experienced it, whether on shoes, desks, clothes, or even in hair.

So how can you get it off? One tip-tendering website recommends egg whites, chocolate, mayonnaise, peanut butter, and lemon juice, but we're not trying to create some kind of abominable food concoction, so forget those and remember these two simple steps: The first step -- provided you know who's to blame -- is to shamelessly lambaste the sticky culprit, because I mean, come on. The second step, is to find yourself some vinegar and pour it on the gum-affected area. Allow the vinegar's acetic acid a few minutes to work its chemical bond-dissolving magic, then slowly peel away the gooey gum remnants. Problem solved!

Our last sticky situation involves skin and superglue. Need I say more?

If every you find yourself superglued to yourself, reach for an acetone-based nail polish remover. Acetone, also known as dimethyl ketone, is the solvent of choice for cleaning purposes in your run-of-the-mill scientific laboratory and it's more than capable of handling hardened cyanoacrylate (superglue).

Once you've got your acetone, wash the glued area of your skin with soap and water, then pour some acetone onto a cotton swab and apply it to the stuck skin. Wait a few seconds, and voila, you are free.

Please note that acetone should not be used in all circumstances of self-gluing. If superglue has been applied to the eyes, ears, nose, or other sensitive areas, it's best to except the humiliation and head in to the hospital. Unconvinced? Just ask the 47-year-old man who accidentally mistook superglue for nasal spray and glued his nostrils shut.

Sticky situations can arise anywhere, at almost any time. You should now be adequately prepared for the literal ones.

"For nearly seven hours while shooting Wheel of Time, Werner Herzog emitted a frequency astrophysicists first mistook for signals originating from a mass of potentially intelligent light waves, delivering a message that the universe had finally stopped expanding."

Werner Herzog is an exceedingly talented filmmaker and documentarian. His career has spanned decades and includes such noted works as Grizzly Man, Rescue Dawn, and The Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Herzog often narrates his own documentaries, introducing uniquely abstract concepts that intertwine with the often profound subject matter. This philosophical mixture makes it seem as if each film is meant to delve to the pith of our souls.

Werner Herzog's documentaries are perplexing enough with the abounding conceptual notions, but the bewilderment doesn't stop there. When Herzog's audible cogitations blend with his thick, yet strangely pleasant silky German accent, the viewer simply doesn't stand a chance to truly grasp what the heck he's talking about.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, neuroscientists have found that our brains respond quite differently to hearing foreign accents. Measurements of brain activity in the areas associated with accent processing suggest that there's an adaptation process that takes place as you listen to a foreign speaker.

While your brain is busy adapting, you're probably taking longer to actually process what's being said, according to a 1995 study published in Language and Speech. Researchers Murray Munro and Tracey Derwing also found that highly incomprehensible utterances tended to take even longer to process. Considering that many of Herzog's narrations likely fall into the "highly incomprehensible" category, this does not bode well for your chances of understanding his self-narrated films.

It seems that Herzog takes steps to counteract this problem by playing classical music in the background, which appears to positively affect performance of spatial-temporal reasoning, short-term memory, informational intake, and cognitive skills. 

Alas, the background music in The Cave of Forgotten Dreams did not improve my comprehension of Herzog's concluding remarks. He ended the film by displaying scenes of swimming albino crocodiles and asking, "Are we today possibly the crocodiles who look back into an abyss of time when we see the paintings of Chauvet Cave?"

Ummmmmm... Maybe?

Flip-flopper.

The mere mention of the word can cloud a politician in a mist of doubt and uncertainty. When the murmurings grow torrential, the storm of aspersions can singlehandedly muddle the reputation of any leader. In most respects, the term "flip-flopper" is pure poison. But when ascribed to a scientist, it's entirely the opposite.

That's because a good scientist is a flip-flopper. Or, more accurately, a good scientist is willing to flip-flop.

In any scientific study, a researcher will enter the investigation with a hypothesis or a preconceived notion of what they think might happen. Many times, they may even secretly want their hypothesis to be true. At the same time, good scientists realize that the goal of scientific exploration is not solely to prove or disprove the hypothesis, but to seek knowledge. Even if the evidence shows the hypothesis to be incorrect, the study can still be a success. Views may have had to change, but new knowledge was attained.

Examples from the Past

Imagine if the scientists of past centuries rigidly clung to their ideology as many politicians do now. We might still believe that:
 

• A substance called phlogiston is the source of all combustion.
• Everything is composed of earth, air, water, and fire.
• Life can spontaneously spring from inanimate sources.
• The age of the Earth is only 400 million years old, not 4.54 billion.

These widely held scientific beliefs were swept away with the tide of novel information. At the time, it probably wasn't easy to move to new modes of thinking. Mindsets had to be changed. Rules had to be rewritten. But humanity moved forward. After all, it's the fluidity of knowledge that drives positive change, not intractability. At a time where science can have a world of impact and is subject to politicizing, scientists -- and indeed all of us -- would do well to remember this.

An Open Mind is the Key

In today's world, a scientist should never begin a study on climate change with a fixed mindset or a political agenda. This can only damage their reputation and cast doubt upon their research. The same goes for studies on such issues as hydraulic fracturing or genetically modified organisms.

Last July, anti-frackers were angry with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. (AP Photo)

In that same vein, many ordinary people outside the science community may not want to give up the freedom to drive inefficient vehicles or the freedom to pay for cheap, dirty power, even if an overwhelming consensus of scientists informs us that the Earth is getting getting warmer. If that may potentially have disastrous consequences, perhaps we shouldn't be so obstinate in our ways.

Or on the other end of the spectrum: A non-scientific HBO documentary convinced many of us that fracking means fire will come out of our kitchen faucets. But, when a scientific study emerges from the University of Texas that contradicts that, maybe we should be willing to listen?

It feels great to be confident in one's beliefs, but an excess of sureness can be an enemy of progress. Good scientists know that it's okay to be unsure. It's okay to listen to new information. And it's okay to flip-flop.

In Douglas Adams' acclaimed science fiction novel, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, dolphins (yes, dolphins) do mankind a great favor when, just before the Earth is demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass, they create a replica of the Earth and transport everything to it as a way of saving the human race. The super-intelligent dolphins, however, did not inhabit the new Earth because they had important business to tend to in an alternate dimension.

Now, this whole situation is a tad ridiculous, but it isn't entirely fictitious. In reality, dolphins have saved humans on many occasions.

In two (sort of) similar incidents, one in 2004 and one in 2007, pods of dolphins circled imperiled surfers for over thirty minutes in order to ward off aggressive great white sharks. And in 2000, a fourteen year old boy fell off a boat in the Adriatic Sea and nearly drowned before being rescued by a friendly dolphin. The marine mammal swam up alongside the boy and pushed him back to the boat from which he had fallen, where the boy's father promptly scooped him up.

Far from being merely a modern phenomenon, historical accounts show that dolphins have been saving humans for centuries. In the 1700s, a pod of dolphins helped rescue Vietnamese sailors when their boat was sunk by Chinese invaders. According to the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, recorded stories of dolphins protecting humans date back to ancient Greece.

We know that dolphins have lent humans a helping flipper on countless occasions, what we don't know is precisely why. Scientists, however, do know that dolphins are incredibly intelligent, large-brained, and highly social mammals -- like us in these respects. Scientists have also found that dolphins are capable of mirror self-recognition, a primary indicator of self-awareness. And, according to researchers at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, this capability "is thought to correlate with higher forms of empathy and altruistic behavior."

The altruism answer is certainly possible, but other theories abound. Can the dolphins' behavior be attributed to a biologically programmed response? Were the dolphins merely attempting to play with humans and saved them inadvertently?

Right now, your hypothesis is as good as any. The only way we may obtain a definitive answer is by asking dolphins, themselves.

Authors have essentially three points of view from which to write: first person, second person, or third person.

While there are pros and cons to each voice, the third person is traditionally thought to be best for scientific writing. Many scientists write in third person in order to distance themselves from their research and seem more objective. The idea is to let the research speak for itself without personal opinion getting in the way.

However, writing scientific articles in the third person is not as easy as it might seem. The authors have to describe their procedure, relay their results, and argue the significance without using "I" or "we" as the subject of any of their sentences. This constraint has produced some pretty creative subject substitutes.

One option is to simply turn the receiver of the action into the subject--this is better known as passive voice. There is a lot of controversy about whether passive or active voice is more acceptable for scientific writing. One author makes the argument that both voices are valid--as long as the writer uses them correctly.

Two other ways scientists avoid personal pronouns is by 1) using "it" and 2) giving action to intimate things. Consider the examples below:

1) It was observed that the dishes were dirty.

2) The chunks of food floating in the dishwater suggest that the dishes were dirty.

In the first example, a universal "it" keeps the author from saying just exactly who made the observation. In the second example, the chunks for food aren't actually suggesting anything because chunks of food can't move or think. When the author really means is "I saw the dishes were dirty by observing the floating chunks of food in the sink."

What if the real reason scientists are reluctant to use first person isn't because they are trying to objective but because they are trying to be humble? Researcher Ken Hyland, suggests that scientists and other academic writers may choose not to use personal pronouns because that style simply doesn't fit with the impression the author wants to give. Hyland writes:

Underlying this view [that academic writing should be objective] seems to be an assumption that academic persuasion is essentially an issue of accommodation, and that humility toward one's peers, one's reviewers, or the discipline in general represents the best means of gaining acceptance of one's claims. The research article is thus regarded as a modest, self-effacing genre in which the writer acts as a humble servant of the discipline.

However, that is just one theory. In fact, most scientific journals now encourage authors to write in first person. Scientific writing style guides also encourage the first person narrative. However, some propose that certain sections of a paper (like the discussion) might be more suitable for first person than other sections (like the results). 

The narrative type that often gets overlooked in scientific writing (and in all writing for that matter) is the second person. In the second person, the author talks directly to the reader using the pronoun "you." The effect is pretty evasive and assuming, so technical writing is one of the only places second person is used in scientific writing.

However, the second person has taken the blogosphere by storm. Creative writing pieces in the second person are popping up all over the place. Many posts describe personal experiences in a sort of instructional format in order to subtly distance the author from the account and to tell the story in an interesting way.

Somehow I don't think that the second person will ever catch on in scientific writing--since it would make academic papers sound like self-help books.

Saturday is St. Patrick's Day. Doubtless, most revelers will celebrate Irish culture by wearing green and drinking alcohol in excess, but don't forget, there's another reason to kiss Irishmen and women on Saturday besides that they gave us an excuse to engage in good-spirited hooliganism: They gave us the potato.

In 1719, Irish immigrants bore the humble, starch-laden tuber across the Atlantic to the northeastern United States and began to cultivate it as a food crop, just like they did in the old country. It was there, in 1870, that 21-year-old aspiring horticulturalist Luther Burbank developed the Burbank potato. For the next fourteen decades, Americans have been enjoying the fruits of his labor in mashed, fried, au gratin, baked, hashed, and chip form.


Today, to the tune of billions of dollars, we splurge on potatoes and devour their scrumptious carbohydrates. But do we fully appreciate all that the modest potato has to offer? The caloric density (calories per gram) of your average potato is about four to five times less than that of rice or wheat, which -- on paper -- indicates that it would be much harder to overeat. (Note: this is before we fry them in oil, stew them with meat, slather them with chili-cheese, or drown them in bean dip.)

What about a potato's nutrition? You'd think it meager, but this is not so. A small, 100-gram potato contains 16% of your daily value of vitamin B6, 24% of vitamin C, 12% of potassium, 14% of iron, as well as other trace vitamins and minerals. In addition, between 7% and 13% of a potato's starch is actually resistant to digestion, and is considered to offer similar physiological and health-related benefits as typical fiber.

In July of last year, agronomists around the world rejoiced when scientists from the Potato Sequencing Genome Consortium succeeded in peeling unraveling the potato's genetic code. In total, they discovered over 39,000 genes. Historically, the potato has been difficult to breed because it's a tetraploid -- it contains four copies of each chromosome. But now, it will be much easier to create genetic variants of the tuber in order to increase its resistance to pests and pathogens.

The sequencing of the potato's genome is more likely to affect the world's potato farmers than the farmers here in America. In truth, we Americans actually live a rather sheltered life potato-wise. Most of us consume a select few varieties, such as the Yukon Gold and the aforementioned Russet-Burbank. But many of the over 5,000 varieties of potato actively shape livelihoods and nourish denizens of the developing world.


In fact, if you trace the source of the noble potato to its roots, you'll find yourself in the mountainous region of Southern Peru. Long ago, Spanish sailors returning home from the Andes introduced the tuber to Europe, where it burrowed its way to Ireland, and eventually to America. So, on Saturday, after finishing that large fry at McDonald's, find the nearest person of Irish descent give them them a big kiss; not because they're Irish, but because they brought us the potato.

In 1946, Dr. Percy Spencer, an engineer with the Raytheon Corporation, was experimenting with a new high-voltage, microwave-producing technology called a "magnetron tube." One day in the lab, he felt a strange warmth in his pants pocket. Glancing down at his hip, Spencer noticed a small brown stain on his trousers. The Mr. Goodbar in his pocket had melted.

Curious if the magnetron had something to do with it, Spencer placed numerous popcorn kernels in the vicinity of the tube and giddily looked on as the kernels excitedly popped and bounced all over the desk. Seriously excited now, he and an intrigued colleague next experimented with an egg, which, after a short time, exploded and splattered them with yolk. The microwave oven would be conceived soon after.

Spencer made two extraordinary discoveries that day. One, he had invented a way for people to quickly, efficiently, and safely cook and reheat food. And two, he had introduced a pastime that would enthuse countless numbers of college students, pyromaniacs, and bored people everywhere. Microwave buffoonery was born.

In the ensuing decades after the microwave became readily available, homegrown mad scientists have been constantly searching for the most awesome objects to zap. Crafty individuals have tossed in everything from marshmallows, to Furbies, to fruit flies. I'm sure you're curious which objects produce the most dazzling and destructive effects, so in order to save you some time, Newton has assembled a brief list of the coolest microwave experiments for you to (not) try at home.

Bar Soap Soufflé. The great thing about microwave science is that the directions are often pretty simple. With Ivory bar soap, it's easy: all you have to do is place the soap in the microwave oven, close the door, turn it on, and watch the magic unfold (image from LoadingReadyRun).

Because ivory soap is filled with air bubbles, and the air bubbles contain water, the microwave heats up the water and causes the air trapped within the bubbles to expand. This expansion causes the soap to break apart and puff up to an enormous size!

Sparking Steel Wool. Metal doesn't always create sparks blasted with microwaves, but steel wool sure does (image from LoadingReadyRun).

Microwaves cause a buildup of charged particles in metal. These particles won't arc when the charges are spread around evenly, but when there are significant voltage differences over short distances, oh do they arc. According to Scientific American, the sharp points and tiny edges in steel wool, "concentrate charge and also cause localized drops in voltage, which together create corona discharge--a spark."

Grape Balls of Lightning! When one thinks of cool, dangerous things to microwave, metal often tops the list. Well, the humble grape utterly shatters this preconceived notion. Simply cut a grape in half, then cut one of the remaining halves almost in half, leaving only a thin layer of connecting outer skin. Once this is complete, open up the halves and set the grape in the microwave. Now, turn it on and ogle the fireworks.

What's going on here? Well, grapes contain a high amount of electrolytes, and when blasted with microwaves, the ions of these electrolytes begin to move back and forth very quickly between the two grape segments, producing a current. Eventually, a flame is produced and the traveling electrons arc through the flame, which ionizes the surrounding air and produces a ball of plasma.

(Please note that many of these experiments are hazardous and almost certainly will do damage to your microwave -- which is, of course, why we don't recommend that you do these totally awesome experiments!)

The tickets are punched. The brackets are set. The teams are ready.

March Madness tips off this week, and the ensuing ruckus will be nigh on inescapable for anyone even remotely interested in sports. However, a word of warning to those who would fully embrace March Madness: gird yourself for the commotion. This is because the event lives up to its name; it may actually make you go insane.

All right, that's a slight exaggeration, but March Madness is one of those unique sporting competitions that can actually have a marked effect on a fan's health and sanity. Allow me to elaborate.

Mental Effects

First off, bracket pools have become synonymous with March Madness, allowing everyone to embrace their inner "gambling addict" without too much guilt. The pools also -- in a way -- allow us to embrace our inner "drug addict." That's because the parts of the brain that respond to the prospect of winning and losing in gambling are the same areas that respond to drugs like cocaine and morphine. With this information in mind, it goes without saying that the brains of "bracket poolers" go on a wild ride with each exhilarating win or bracket-busting loss.

While we're on the subject of bracket pools, gamblers beware, getting a little skin in the game may actually lessen your enjoyment of March Madness. A study from Dr. Stephen Nowlis published in the Journal of Consumer Research found that "consumers who make predictions about uncertain events experience significantly less enjoyment while observing the events than those who don't make predictions." This held true even for those who bet on the winning team.

Besides gambling's potential effects on your mental state, there is also the ever-present risk that a heartbreaking loss will induce acute situational depression. Fortunately, the effects can usually be alleviated by invoking the "there's always next year" treatment.


Physiological Effects

Watching March Madness as a fan can almost be as stressful as actually competing as a player.

"[Watching a game can prompt] a 300-400 percent increase in blood flow pumped out of the heart," Vicki Greenberg, nursing program manager for the University of Phoenix told the Phoenix Forward. "Because the heart is pumping more quickly, and with more force, this increased pressure can cause people with high blood pressure issues to experience damage to the interior lining of their blood vessels."

March Madness presents a bounty of tense, exciting moments, and watching these can cause arteries to constrict due to perceived bodily stress. This physiological response can briefly elevate the chance of heart attack or stroke. In fact, a 2002 study conducted in England discovered that risk of hospital admission for acute myocardial infarction increased by 25% on the day England lost to Argentina in penalty kicks at the 1998 FIFA World Cup.

For males, heart rates won't be the only thing fluctuating. Numerous studies have shown that sporting events can cause an increase in testosterone levels in fans of the winning team and a decrease in the fans of the losing team.

March Madness is one of the most irresistible and enticing spectacles in all of sports. As its physiological and mental effects make plain, March Madness is more than just a game. Prepare yourself accordingly.

We'd all like to believe that facts trump falsehoods, but unfortunately this is often not the case. Misinformation is easy to believe, and even easier to spread. An untruth can be repeated into reality by simply bombarding the public via advertisements, news, and social media. It's that easy.

Psychologists are demonstrating that repetition is the prime conduit for shaping beliefs. In the 1940s, Floyd Allport and Milton Lepkin conducted pioneering research demonstrating that newspapers could be used to boost morale for the war effort. By repeating positive headlines, even if they were misleading with the details, the public would believe that events are going smoothly, and would thus stand firmly behind the cause. The tactic worked to great effect.

Over time, studies have shown that repetition leads to familiarity, which is the key to fostering belief. In a 2007 paper published in the journal Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Doctor Norbert Schwarz, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, had this to say:

Perceived familiarity exerts the observed influence because, under natural conditions, frequent exposure to an opinion is often a valid cue that many people share it, providing the social consensus information that figures prominently in Festinger's ''secondary reality tests." Moreover, daily conversational conduct is based on the assumption that communicated information is truthful and relevant (Grice, 1975), again fostering acceptance, in particular when it seems that one has ''heard this repeatedly.''

Unfortunately, once familiar misinformation is embedded into our psyche, it can be incredibly difficult to dislodge. Prior research from Schwarz has found that attempting to debunk myths by presenting contradicting facts can easily backfire. In one study, researchers hung up fliers listing myths about the flu vaccine and corresponding facts contradicting them. Three days later, participants who had read the flier reported less favorable attitudes towards the vaccination than control participants who hadn't read the flier. The research indicated that any repetition of misinformation -- even if the purpose is to debunk -- can serve to perpetuate it.

This means that those fighting for the spread of truth -- scientists and educators, for example -- have to perform a delicate tap-dance when it comes to quelling misinformation, as any actual mention of the misinformation could hinder their honest pursuits.

Or they could just forget the tap dance and, instead, play the game: If you want the public to believe something, just yell it louder, say it simpler, and repeat it more often than anybody else.

Over one hundred and fifty years ago, the U.S. signed the Treaty of the Meter in order to recognize unified control over the metric system. In the eighties, Congress passed two bills in an effort to convert U.S. trade and commerce to the metric system. One amendment even set a deadline: 1992.

Needless to say, a U.S. transition to the metric system has been a little slow.

We've made some headway. The scientific community generally recognizes that the metric system (or the International System of Units) is way more logical and intuitive, and more businesses are converting to metric all the time.

Yet many Americans are still very reluctant to use the system in their everyday lives. Could they have some good reasons?

Metric system is flawed

The meter was initially defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from the pole to the equator. Now length of a meter is tied to the speed of light in a vacuum, which is something that can always be found in nature and will never change.

Almost all of the metric system's units have now been linked to some sort of universal constant, except one--the kilogram. Originally, a kilogram was defined as the mass of a cubic decimeter of water. Later, the experts forged a cylinder of mostly platinum and declared it to be exactly one kilogram. This hunk of metal has been used to calibrate the world's scales ever since.

However, earlier this year, the International Committee on Weights and Measures finally met to discuss the kilogram and its lack of a constant. The committee recommended the use of Planck's constant, but the new standard has yet to be made official.

I should also point out that most of the imperial units are solely defined according to the metric system. Yes, an inch is literally 2.54 centimeters--no natural constants attached.

Metric system isn't practical

While the metric units' association with physical constants makes them accurate, it makes them less practical for common use. The units of cups and tablespoons developed naturally because these objects were right there in the kitchen. The gram, on the other hand, was not developed with cooking and baking in mind, so it is much smaller than it needs to be. For the same reason, the foot and the ounce are also much more user-friendly than their metric counterparts.

Also, because they have a base of ten, metric units cannot be divided into as many even fractions as imperial units. A meter can only be evenly divided into 2 or 5, while a foot can be divided into 2, 3, 4, or 6.

So if you ever have to measure a third of a meter, good luck.

There may be better options

Before we consider going to all the trouble of adopting a new measurement system, shouldn't we be sure that the metric system is the best option? One physicist, Johannes Koelman, has proposed another alternative to the imperial system that he has dubbed the "post-imperial" system.

The post-imperial system takes advantage of some coincidental properties of the pound and the inch. It uses these properties to fix a couple things that the metric system lacks. Both of these repairs involve time.

Unlike the metric system, Koelman's model measures time using the same units as distance. This feature relieves us from having to do calculations involving miles per hour or meters per second. It also incorporates the fact that time is simply a fourth dimension of our 3D world.

Even though Koelman's idea would be hard to implement, it has some very useful features and opens the door to other possible alternatives.

Imperial system is more quirky

As you may have noticed, the witches and wizards at Hogwarts don't use the metric system. Harry's wand, for instance, is described as eleven inches long (also niiiice and supple). This is not simply an adaptation for the U.S. edition. In fact, despite her editor's protests, J.K. Rowling insisted that even the British editions keep the imperial system.

After recalling the wizards' system of currency (29 knuts to a sickle, 17 sickles in a galleon), it's not difficult to understand Rowling's decision. She says that the imperial system is much more quirky and therefore is better suited to the wizarding world.

Rowling even accepted an invitation to become a member of the British Weights and Measures Association. She admits, however, that she accepted the invite as a joke, and that she really does prefer the metric system.*


Imperial system is traditional

I think the main reason why Americans are reluctant to make the metric plunge is simply because they are afraid to change their ways. Maybe it's a valid reason.

Mathematics professor at Chapel Hill, Russ Rowlett, says "In fact, the metric system has met popular opposition in every country at the time of its adoption. People don't want to change their customary units, which are part of how they see and control the world. It is naturally disturbing to do so."



*This information was written by J.K. Rowling and is summarized from the Pottermore beta site, Book 1, Chapter 1, "Measurements" 1 and 2.

It's well known that science fiction can inspire advancements in science and technology. Author Douglas Adams seemingly portended the universal translator well before Google started working on it, and his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy molded into reality in the form of a sleek tablet called the iPad. And don't forget, Isaac Asimov was scribbling about walking, talking androids well before the Japanese invented robots that can play soccer and cook for you.

Now, iPads are cool, and robots are even cooler. But it's hard to top a trash-powered, time-traveling Delorean.


I vividly remember the first time I watched Back to the Future. With its seamless blend of time travel, action, and comedy, the film instantly became one of my favorites. I also remember being absolutely wowed when Doctor Emmett Brown, after rummaging through a trash can, casually tossed banana peels, eggshells, beer, and the beer can, itself into the good ole "Mr. Fusion" attached to his Delorean. But while my thoughts did not evolve past the stage of awe, others saw the scene and decided to bring a trash-powered time traveling vehicle into reality.

The time travel aspect has proven a tad difficult, but last year, Aleix Llovet, a student at BarcelonaTech, created a small remote control car that can run on a mixture of aluminum pop tabs, water, and sodium hydroxide. When placed in the car's "gas" tank, the concoction sparks a chemical reaction that produces hydrogen gas. After the products of the reaction go through a filtration process, the hydrogen is used to feed a fuel cell that generates energy for the car.

"The car does not allow time travel, but you can get a top speed of 30 km per hour with a range per charge of 40 minutes," Llovet and his fellow team members told Wired UK.

On a more macro scale, in 2009, All Power Labs of Oakland, California created a trash-powered Honda Accord by utilizing gasification technology. Gasification is achieved by reacting solid biomass or other carbonaceous solids within a heated chamber. In order for it to work, the chamber must reach a temperature of at least 700 degrees Celsius. To do this, large amounts of steam or oxygen are used to catalyze the reaction. The products of gasification are carbon monoxide, hydrogen, and carbon dioxide, which can be used as a fuel.

Gasification was actually widely used in Europe during World War II when petroleum became scarce. It is estimated that up to 9,000,000 vehicles were powered by gasifying wood. Today, more advanced gasification cars can run on any dry, carbon-based waste, such as wood chips or pine cones. Unfortunately, they don't run on pure trash straight from the dumpster just yet.

But who knows, with some ingenuity and a little inspiration from Doc Brown, perhaps some day we'll be driving super fuel-efficient vehicles powered only by banana peels and used coffee filters.
 

Worldwide deaths from shark attacks hit a two-decade high in 2011. An unnerving statistic like this seemingly vindicates our worst fears about sharks. So exactly how many humans did these "monsters of the deep" kill last year? A hundred? Two hundred?

Nope. Only a dozen. And none of these deaths occurred in the United States. In reality, humans need not fear a gruesome death by shark attack. We actually have a higher chance of being struck by lighting or being done in by a falling coconut.

On the flip side, sharks have every reason to fear humans. Anywhere from 30 million to 100 million sharks are slain by man each year. Many of these sharks die as a result of bycatch, while others are mutilated for their fins.


But facts often don't stand a chance against the power of terrifying news stories or powerful cinema. By itself, Jaws did more to elicit shark terror than any real shark ever could. Ironically, the story would have been accurate if it had been told with the shark as the victim and man as the antagonist. It could have been called "PROPELLERS."

Since penning Jaws in 1974, author Peter Benchley spent decades learning as much as he could about the animal he vilified. In 2002, he eloquently reminisced on his fish tale with a hint of sorrow:

"We knew so little back then, and have learned so much since, that I couldn't possibly write the same story today. I know now that the mythic monster I created was largely a fiction. I also know now, however, that the genuine animal is just as--if not even more--fascinating."

Fascinating is almost an understatement. A cholesterol-type compound in dogfish sharks called squalamine has recently been shown to be effective at combating several human viruses, including dengue fever and hepatitis. The substance is currently in human trials for treating cancer and eye disorders. In addition, researchers are finding more and more that sharks are capable of forming complex social groups and utilizing cooperative hunting techniques. This is a far cry from the shark's common misconception as a mindless machine.

Peter Benchley's aforementioned change of heart has inspired many people, including marine biologist, Dr. Ryan Johnson. "[Peter Benchley] illustrated to me the power that visual media has to inform the wider public, outside the limited field of scientists," Johnson said on his website.

Taking a note from Benchley, Johnson set out last November to demonstrate to the world that sharks are not murderous marine beasts. He recruited two beautiful bikini-clad women to swim with several black-tipped reef sharks, the species responsible for 60% of the attacks in Florida. The women survived. The sharks didn't even take a nibble.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is highly regarded for his proficiency in astronomy and astrophysics, but even more so for his unbelievable ability to educate and inspire. Recently, Tyson has been featured on a variety of media outlets to talk about his newly released book, Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier. Amidst his current medley of radio, magazine, and television interviews, all of which showcase Tyson's refreshing candor and soaring rhetoric, an astronomical gem has surfaced from his past.

In 2008, Tyson sat down with Time Magazine to answer ten reader-submitted questions. One of them asked, "What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the universe?"

Now, first let me say this: I've had the opportunity to view a great many of Tyson's stirring off-the-cuff orations, but the one he gave in response to this question outdoes them all. It was, quite simply, out of this world. His answer is now commemorated in a dazzling three-minute video, the popularity of which will undoubtedly go supernova. Here's a snippet from Tyson's uplifting answer, and you can watch the full video below:

"The most astounding fact is the knowledge that the atoms that comprise life on Earth -- the atoms that make up the human body -- are traceable to the crucibles that cooked light elements into heavy elements in their core under extreme temperatures and pressures. These stars, the high mass ones among them, went unstable in their later years. They collapsed and then exploded, scattering their enriched guts across the galaxy. Guts made of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and all the fundamental ingredients of life..."

"...When I look up at the night sky, and I know that, yes, we are part of this Universe, we are in this Universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the Universe is in us."

Some scientists also noticed that a lot of people are afraid of snakes, and they wondered if humans have a built-in fear of the slithery creatures. Their research showed that our fear of snakes is not innate since not all babies are afraid of snakes. However, we do learn to fear them very quickly.

Being afraid of snakes just makes sense. Snakes have many habits and characteristics that can downright give you the willies. Here a just a few.
 
1) Postmortem predation

You might think that if you were to fatally wound a rattlesnake by, say, shooting it multiple times, you could consider it safe to handle. Well guess again.

Thanks to a reflex, rattlesnakes can bite and inject venom for a surprisingly long time after they are dead. Even if a rattler is decapitated, the head can still envenomize you for up to an hour after it has been severed from the body.

2) Toxin-stealing trickery

Some conniving snakes can actually swipe poison from their prey. All the Rhabdophis tigrinus snake has to do is gobble up a few poisonous toads and voila, the snake is poisonous itself.

To be fair, these snakes can't recycle the poison to kill more prey. They do, however, collect it in glands to use for defense. If predators were to attack and claw at the snakes, the glands might rip open and hit the predator with a face full of poison.

Take that, predators.

3) Avian abilities

Part of what makes snakes so creepy is the way they slither on the ground.  The movement is so unnatural and fluid that it totally grosses us out. Well it seems that some snakes aren't just limited to slithering on the ground--they can also slither through the air.

I'm just gonna go ahead and say it: snakes can freaking fly.

Chrysopelea snakes can glide up to 330 feet through the air by simply holding their bodies at an angle and squirming. They look a little like those undulating ribbons that dancers use, except in this case, they're undulating ribbons of horror.


Most people, scientists included, assume that snakes inject their venom by biting their prey and squirting the venom from their fangs. While some snakes do deliver venom from hollow fangs, the majority of snakes use grooves along the side of their fangs to direct a flow of venom into the bite.

Venom, however, is very cohesive. It sticks to itself so well that, theoretically, the snake could have a hard time getting it to flow from the tooth groove into the wound. Luckily, the snake is also wrestling with a recently-bit victim, so the thrashing around shakes the venom into the wound quite nicely.

As one writer pointed out, this cohesive property of venom is similar to ketchup and other gels. Like venom, ketchup gets stuck up in the bottle, but with a little shaking it all comes spilling out into your burger.

5) Drinkable venom

Venom is like ketchup in another way: you can eat it.

Venom isn't the same as poison--it can't fry your skin or be absorbed through your stomach. It can only hurt you if it goes directly into your bloodstream via an open wound. If you swallow it, your stomach will simply break it down and it will be harmless by the time it reaches your blood.

But before you enjoy a tall glass of modified snake spit, remember that any kind of mouth sores or stomach ulcers are open wounds and are therefore gateways into your bloodstream.

I'm not exactly sure why it's scary that people can drink snake venom, except maybe that it's scary awesome

I won't bore you with a long introduction when simply reading the title will suffice. How to make the seemingly mundane less boring:

In Video Games...

For many, the daily and weekly grind can occasionally seem humdrum. Eat, work, sleep, eat, repeat. Yet to puncture the tedium, some ironically enjoy leisure activities that glorify the mundane. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in The Sims.

For those of you who don't know, The Sims is a wildly popular series of video games that allows the player to control the everyday lives of virtual characters. Your character showers, cooks, goes to work, pays bills, buys a house, goes on dates, raises a family; everything you might do. Except while you might deem many of these daily activities to be unremarkable if they occurred in your life, in The Sims, they are anything but. As stated by writer Charles Paulk,

Here was a game as menial and repetitive as life itself, and its utter dearth of the fantastic perversely served as its hook. The Sims' enigmatic appeal scythed across boundaries of age and gender... By 2005, the audience for The Sims and its various expansions had swollen to over 52 million worldwide.

Closer analysis reveals an obvious difference that makes playing The Sims so enjoyable. The speed with which the player receives rewards and reinforcement compared to real life is greatly increased. In The Sims, time moves much faster, and you can fast-forward at your pleasure. It doesn't take your Sim thirty minutes to prepare an immaculate meal, it takes mere seconds. A promotion at work is only hours away, not years.

In Television...

Advertising the monotonous hasn't just worked for video games, but it has also been successful for reality TV. The newest shows aren't dropping people on exotic islands and asking them to outwit, outplay, and outlast for our pleasure; they're simply showcasing the everyday lives of pawnshop owners, parking cops, DMV employees, and airport staff.

So what's the key difference here? Well, on those singularly enjoyable reality TV shows, you don't have to watch the parking cop performing repetitive duties like paperwork and checking meters -- which actually comprises the majority of their day -- you only get to see when he or she plants a $100 ticket on a Maserati or gets berated by someone who just received "the boot."

At Work...

Regrettably, there's no way to edit or fast-forward days of drudgery in our own lives, but there's something that can be done to reduce the monotony: reward yourself frequently. For example, at work, make a deal that 55 minutes of arduous toil will earn you five minutes of Facebook or Internet surfing. If your employer doesn't like this, tell him or her about a 2009 Australian study, which found that "short and unobtrusive" breaks can boost worker productivity.

Would you receive a medical treatment that is not proven to work? A lot of people already do. It's called alternative medicine, and it is an approximately $34 billion industry in the United States. Irrational hatred of "Big Pharma" and a desire for "natural" healing has driven many people to reject evidence-based medicine in favor of what has become the modern-day equivalent of a snake-oil remedy.

Unfortunately, stem cell therapy is becoming the latest snake-oil fad.

Don't get me wrong. Stem cells have enormous therapeutic potential. Someday, hopefully in the not-too-distant future, stem cells will be used routinely to cure devastating diseases. But that day is not today.

A company called Celltex, however, is injecting patients with adult stem cells derived from their own bodies. The problem is that the procedure is not known to work, and it might actually be illegal, as Nature reports. What is most stunning, from a scientific point of view, is the attitude that one of the doctors has toward this unproven procedure:

"If you can compare before and after and show improvement, there's no need for a placebo."

Wrong. If a treatment is completely untested, the standard procedure is to conduct a randomized clinical trial using a placebo. If this basic scientific practice is not met, then it is nearly impossible to determine if a patient is actually better or simply feels better due to the placebo effect.

It gets worse. He adds:

"The worst-case scenario is that it won't work."

Wrong again. Stem cells are useful because of their ability to divide for long periods of time, perhaps indefinitely. But it is precisely this quality that makes them potentially dangerous. What other kind of cell grows indefinitely? Cancer. And there has been at least one documented case of a child contracting brain cancer after he was injected with embryonic stem cells. Additionally, a relatively new idea hypothesizes that cancer itself arises from cancer stem cells.

Treating people with stem cells in anything other than a clinical trial setting constitutes three potential bioethical violations: (1) Falsely raising patients' hopes; (2) Downplaying the importance of evidence-based medicine; and (3) Downplaying the risks associated with the procedure.

To me, that sounds a lot like alternative medicine.

Image credit: National Science Foundation/Wikimedia Commons

Infant dinosaurs are little bundles of joy. They can kindle the same "oohs" and "awws" induced by mammalian neonates and -- as a bonus -- young dinosaurs often lack the ability to tear you limb from limb, unlike their adult counterparts.

Over the years we've seen plenty of dino babies in films and on television. For example, Jurassic Park featured a Velociraptor birth early in the movie, which prompted John Hammond to coo like a nurturing mother as the tiny, man-eating carnivore struggled to break free from its shell. (Though, in real life, Velociraptor was about the size of a turkey and likely couldn't eat a man.) Most memorably, the adorably plump and playful Baby Sinclair from the television series Dinosaurs caused many a viewer to uproariously laugh as we watched him spout, "Not the mama!" at his poor father, often while hitting him with a pot.

But while baby dinosaurs are noticeable in the modern media and have recently been the focus of major paleontological discoveries, for many years, they were not quite so copious in the fossil record. Before 2000, nobody had ever seen a juvenile triceratops. Why is this? Speaking at TEDxVancouver last November, esteemed paleontologist, Jack Horner partially blamed hubris:

...scientists have egos, and scientists like to name dinosaurs. They like to name anything. Everybody likes to have their own animal that they named. And so every time they found something that looked a little different, they named it something different.

Besides the ego issue, Horner also added that museum curators succumbed to a preoccupation with size in the early 20th century:

Every museum wanted a little bigger or better [fossil] than anybody else had. So if the museum in Toronto went out and collected a Tyrannosaur, a big one, then the museum in Ottawa wanted a bigger one and a better one. And that happened for all museums.

So, because curators selected for size, smaller fossils were disregarded. And because scientists had egos, many younger dinosaurs have actually been misconstrued as being different species.

In order to halt these trends, Horner has been collecting plenty of juvenile dinosaurs for the Museum of the Rockies, and he has also been making dinosaur species go extinct (for a second time), an action that has not made him popular with children, he says.

By looking at the bone histology of fossils, he and his students have been able to pinpoint identical species and eliminate duplicates. Analysis of dentition and cross-sections of bone have supplied useful proxies for their research. Of the team's many discoveries, they have found that Torosaurus is, in fact, a grown up Triceratops. (Edit: New research published Feb. 29 has disputed this finding.) And Nanotyrannus is actually an infant Tyrannosaurus. (Imagine that.)