San Diego menaced by jumbo squid:
[Via BBC News | Science/Nature | World Edition]
Scuba divers off the Californian city of San Diego report unnerving encounters with large numbers of Humboldt squid.
[More]
This can be a nasty squid. It can be aggressive and has some nasty teeth on its tentacles. Usually only found in deep water, it seems now to be at depths that overlap with scuba diver. Hope it does not move p to the Puget Sound.
I wonder how it deals with orcas?
Technorati Tags: Science
The pressing question this Penis Friday: how hard is hard enough?:
[Via NCBI ROFL]
Penile sufficiency: an operational definition.
“In an effort to obtain a more precise definition of erectile sufficiency for vaginal penetration 19 normal men were exposed to an erotic videotape and recordings of penile tumescence were obtained. The subjects were instructed to signal with a push button switch when they had attained an erection they judged sufficient for penetration. They were asked to signal a second time when a full erection had been reached. The results showed that in all but 1 case maximal tumescence was recorded polygraphically before the subjects signaled sufficiency.”
Thanks to Michael for today’s ROFL!
If you read the whole abstract (apparently the whole paper is not available online) you will see two interesting facts. A lot of guys signaled that they were hard enough for penetration but then had a substantial time period until they reached maximal hardness, even though the measuring devices showed no change.
That is easy to explain. They wanted to keep watching the erotic videos! The machines were probably shut off once the ‘patient’ signaled full tumescence.
And 37% were unable to achieve full erection. From the abstract this seems ambiguous. By full do they mean enough for penetration or the maximal erection? And is this reported by the ‘patient’ or by the machine.
Because some of those guys may have wanted to watch the video again!
Or it might be similar to being piss shy. Perhaps some guys just do not get sexually excited when an instrument is attached to their penis in a lab where everyone is watching.
Now I want to find the article to understand what they mean by a full erection and how that was measured. And would Viagra make a difference? Sounds like it is time for a followup paper.
Technorati Tags: Science
from wikipedia
The Further In You Go, The Bigger It Gets:
[Via In the Pipeline]
I had a printout of the structure of maitotoxin on my desk the other day, mostly as a joke to alarm anyone who came into my office. “Yep, here’s the best hit from the latest screen. . .I hear that…
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As a biochemist who did a post-doc in a Chemistry lab, as an undergraduate who hated organic chemistry, this molecule makes my mouth drop. That an organism actually has the enzymes that make tis behemoth is amazing. The metabolic pathways to create this must be really fun. (Probably somewhere along the bottom left of the linked figure, which can be enlarged, at least on a Mac, by hitting command-+)
But it is a really nasty toxin, so the biological aspects could be really interesting. One gram would be able to kill half a billion mice.
And, as many of the commenter wrote, while it might not be a big winner for a pharma, it would be like climbing Mt. Everest for a synthetic chemist. I just wonder how the sucker is transported around the cell.
Technorati Tags: Science
