The "Moving Target Defense" (MTD) system, as envisioned by Kansas State University's Scott DeLoach and Xinming Ou, has a computer network automatically change its configurations and settings to deter hackers. It sounds like a great idea, and good for security, until you think about the types of computer networks that will end up using it:

Our robot overlords.

 Seriously, haven't we done enough already to make things easy for the machines that will one day rise up to enslave us? This is like those movies where the hero is all, "WHY DIDN'T YOU BUILD AN OFF SWITCH FOR YOUR DOOMSDAY DEVICE?!"

It's all fun and games, and safely in the realm of the theoretical, until someone actually designs a working model. The problem is that KSU got a million-dollar grant to spend the next five years figuring out how to make it work. I'm sure this will end well.

But what if you're allergic to mice?

Remember a few years back when there was a news story about a lethal "peanut butter kiss"? A girl had died, and the rumor that was circulating was that her boyfriend had just eaten a peanut butter sandwich and kissed her, and she was so fatally allergic to peanuts that she had a reaction and died. It turned out to be a load of crap--the coroner released an official report after her autopsy stating that she did not have an allergic reaction to kissing her boyfriend--but the urban legend was just too juicy for people to let go. I still hear coworkers talking about it.

I haven't seen anyone die from a food allergy, but I have seen some pretty bad reactions. Allergies to things like wheat, peanuts, and milk can be serious business. I can only imagine how heartbreaking it must be for allergy sufferers since those items end up in so many of the food products available in stores and items on restaurant menus these days.

Given all that, I think it's kind of a big deal that Johns Hopkins prevented mice from having fatal allergic reactions. I think that's good news. Granted, it usually takes a long time for something to get from the "tested in mice" stage to the "making life better for everyone" stage, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Motorcycles are racist?

Sure, they're dangerous, but according to Johns Hopkins, motorcycles are more likely to be fatal for black people. Blacks and whites, with similar injuries from motorcycle accidents, have noticeably different mortality rates. Even when they both wear helmets, a white motorcyclist has a greater chance of surviving his injuries than a black one.

I'm not really sure how to interpret the results, although I give credit to the scientists for admitting that more research needs to be done. Although they tried to account for factors like the sex of the motorcyclist, the severity of the injuries, and their insurance status, it was 1.5 times more likely for black victims to die, with even white motorcyclists without helmets having a greater survival rate than blacks with helmets. I don't know if this is institutional bias on the part of the hospital, if black motorcyclists are more likely to have pre-existing conditions, or what.

Personally, I'm not a fan of motorcycles. I've never been comfortable on one. All of this reading about motorcycle-related fatalaties makes me more nervous than ever to even think about riding them.

"All Hands on Deck!"

"Screw that, I'm getting mine!"

At least, that's how the exchange goes in "disturbed ecosystems," according to Georgia Tech Researchers. They were looking into whether organisms all try to work together when their ecosystems are under assault, or if it's dog-eat-dog business as usual. It's probably an area of study that's going to be of relevance for quite a while (I'm looking at YOU, gulf coast!).

It was panic in the petri dish as biologists exposed microbes to acoustic disturbances. They looked at how many were killed off when they were in disturbed environments, how many were killed off when they were competing with other organisms for the same resources, and how many were killed off when competing for resources after their environment was disturbed. Rather than both populations of competing organisms declining equally in the third scenario, one group would wipe the floor with the other.

To rephrase that, creatures that are neck and neck in an environment where they have to fight each other to survive no longer remain neck and neck when their environment gets unusually dangerous. That's when the men are separated from the boys, and one group curb stomps their opponents while they're most vulnerable. This is bad news for species diversity, especially when you consider all the ecosystems that we're disturbing...

Profits or Predators Don't Matter, We're All Doomed

I don't think this study will change much in the long run, but it turns out that we might not properly understand what drives the commercial fishing industry. The currently accepted theory is that fishermen use a "top down" approach, starting with predators at the top of the food chain (notably tuna and halibut). Once fishing reduces their population and catches dwindle, fishermen move further down the food chain pulling in the fish those predators used to eat until those numbers dwindle, and so on.

According to the University of Washington, it turns out that our motivations may be more economic than evolutionary. Commercial fisheries are (understandably) motivated to catch whatever fish is the most profitable. This means that governments can influence conservation efforts and maintain sustainable levels of fishing by setting price controls on seafood.

Will it work, though? I'm pessimistic. Governments are going to be motivated by what is politically popular, and I don't think it would be possible to arrange for the kind of national cooperation required to have a lasting effect on ocean populations. We should all cultivate a taste for jellyfish, since they're the only thing that has managed to thrive thanks to our efforts.

How come rich people get all the safety?

It must be nice to be able to afford not to die in a car accident. Actual science from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences shows that car safety features do a better job of protecting rich people. (And by "do a better job of," I actually mean "are present to.")

For their study, they went around and compared vehicle safety features like crash test ratings, air bags, etc. They cross-checked this information with ZIP codes, and compared how much money people were earning in that ZIP code (median income) to how safe their cars were. Care to guess the results?

That's right, the rich people had the safer cars. The researchers point out that usually the cutting-edge safety features are installed as optional (and pricey!) components on high-end cars. Later, as their effectiveness has been proven, it eventually "trickles down" and becomes standard features in all cars, regarless of their price point.

Still, it must be nice to be able to afford better protection against injuries from car accidents.

Your Love of Crabs Will Kill Us All

Congratulations, University of Alabama at Birmingham. Your research into blue crabs is going to poison the environment and kill us all. Sorry, what I meant to say was that UAB has made an exciting new discovery about a potential food source, and I'm sure that nothing could possibly go wrong!

People eat blue crabs. People only eat blue crabs when they're molting. Molting season happens only the spring and early summer. UAB scientists want to make blue crabs molt on demand so that they can be eaten year round.

I see their point. You can start setting up blue crab operations all along the coast and it will create jobs and make more food available. But is it really a good idea to force those kinds of changes? Especially when you consider that factory farms raising salmon are little more than floating ocean pens; how do you keep this chemical you're giving to the blue crabs from getting into the ocean at large? And then what happens once it starts affecting organisms in the wild?

Oh, I'm sure it'll be nothing to worry about.

Silent Killers: Now with More Silence!

That's right, flying robot killers from the future are going to be more silent than ever before! That's robots who fly and kill people, not flying people who kill robots, by the way.

Georgia Tech is working on making our unmanned aerial drones quieter, so that they will be tougher to spot. Short-term thinking says that's a good idea, because we'll be able to spy on today's enemies more effectively.

In the long term, we're already developing more efficient aerial predators based on the design of prehistoric killing machines. It's bad enough that they'll be harvesting our own organs to hunt us down and kill us more effectively, now they'll be able to do it without giving us any warning.

It's going to be a dark future, indeed.

Anthropologists Check Out Ladybutts

At least, that's how they do it in Utah. Seriously. do you spend a lot of time worrying about a lady's waist-to-hip ratio? Because anthropologists in Utah do. But they're a little hung up on reality versus fantasy.

First, they state that men prefer a hip-to-waist ratio of 0.7 when selecting a mate (which "makes perfect sense, according to evolutionary psychologists"). Then they note that the average waist-to-hip ratio for women is higher than 0.8. Dedicated couch potato that I am, this is the part where I'd say "Men want what they can't have, end of story."

But the anthropologists at the University of Utah wouldn't let it rest there. Instead, they've released this study declaring that the larger-than-desired ratios are actually desired in some parts of the world. According to them, narrow waists and wide hips show a predominance of estrogen, making for more dependent women who need to be provided for. Wider waists are associated with an increased level of androgens, meaning that the women are more assertive, dominant, and willing to take initiative. Then they go on to say that in cultures that value submissive women (like Greece, Japan, and Portugal), men prefer their women to have narrow waists (and so they try to make themselves that way), but some cultures value women who can fend for themselves and their women are correspondingly wide of waist.

Honestly, does anyone really work that way? I mean, aside from sitcoms where the guy's mother makes some crack about his girlfriend's "child-bearing hips," are there people out there who are evaluating the waist-to-hip ratio of women and basing their decision to get involved in a relationship with them solely on that information?

In completely unrelated news, check back this afternoon! I'm rolling out an entirely new series for this site, and I'm very excited about it. The first installment goes up later today.

Proof that Phoning and Driving Will Kill You

Look, I think that talking on a cell phone while driving will not only kill you, it will kill other drivers around you as well. And I'm not talking the slow death-by-cancerous-tumor business that has people scared enough to use those devices where they clip the phones to their belts and talk into headsets designed to look ridiculous. I'm talking the fast, violent death that results from car crashes.

And science has proven me right. Talking on a cell phone while driving is more dangerous than talking with a passenger because the passenger can see what's happening around the car and will adjust the pace of the conversation so as not to distract the driver during intense situations. Inconsiderate jerks on the other end of the cell phone won't stop yapping no matter how many times the driver has to change lanes while boxed in by a sixteen wheeler.

If you're a hitman trying to off someone, consider a cell phone. Call them when they're driving. Ask them how their day went. Keep them talking, and ignore any traffic conditions your target might be dealing with. They'll get into an accident eventually. Trust me.

Cybernetic Tiger Lillies

Are they still cyborgs if they're part machine, part plant? I ask because that's going to be the wave of the future, if our discarded nanotechnology ends up in plants. Now we not only have to worry about robot insurrection, but rhododendron ascension as well.

The University of Delaware has proven that plants can absorb nanoparticles into their tissues. With a little work, they found that pumpkin seeds were able to absorb iron oxide nanoparticles. Naturally, it was a soil physicist who did the study.

The alarm they're raising is that if the nanoparticles can get into plants, then other animals that eat those plants will be passing the particles along the food chain. That's not good news, but neither is the thought of these plants getting hold of advanced nanotechnolgy and using it to become superplants. Then we're screwed.

Is your new friend a Psychopath?

Because psychopaths can smell fear.

Just kidding. It's far more mundane than that; psychopaths just notice women who are sad, lonely, and downtrodden, and remember details about them more easily so that they can target them later. Kind of like lions picking the slowest and weakest of the herd.

Dalhousie University, which is apparently breaking new ground in the exciting field of psychopath studies, has released a new study. First, they singled out the study participants who were psychopaths. Then, they separated the test subject psychopaths from the ones who were running the study (ZING!). Then they showed them a series of pictures of women.

All of the test subjects were told that some of the women from the pictures were happy, some were sad, some had high-paying jobs, and some had low-paying jobs. In addition to the mini-biographies, the subjects were told the names of the women in the photos.

The psychopaths did a better job recalling the details of the unhappy, poor women, and a worse job remembering details for everyone else. Other test subjects weren't as focused on the sad, lonely, victim demographic, and couldn't recall details about them as well.

It raises an interesting question. Why is this professor so interested in psychopaths?

Teens Are Trying To Kill You

No, not with their go-go lifestyle of loud music, wild drugs, and wilder sex. They want to kill you with their cars. They're so hell bent on driving that they don't bother getting their license first, and end up being some of the most dangerous hazards on the road.

Unlicensed teens drive recklessly, and don't follow traffic laws. Why should they? They're already driving without a license. The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia found that 20% of the 14- to 18-year-old drivers involved in fatal car accidents were driving without a license. Unlicensed drivers are more likely to drive drunk or while on drugs, drive without using a seatbelt, and "driving without a purpose," which sounds crazy dangerous. Damn kids.

Much like those PSAs they run saying that drunk drivers aren't as dangerous to themselves as they are to other people, these unlicensed teen drivers are a real health hazard. There are some comically racist conclusions in the study as well, about urban vs. rural teens and which minorities are most likely to drive without a license, but it's not really worth mentioning.

What Bacteria and your Crazy Aunt Have in Common

They both love to knit, but you can actually see the hideous and useless (uselessly hideous? hideously useless?) sweaters that your aunt makes, while bacteria can weave things that are as useful as they are invisible to the naked eye.

Did you know that bacteria can secrete fibers, like butterflies and spiders? Small fibers, sure, but I don't think I need to remind you of what they say about thousand-mile journeys and single steps. So five years ago in Sweden, some scientists tried to control these bacteria to get them to produce useful shapes. And they did. Right now the bacteria produce artificial blood vessels (read: simple tubes, and tubes that are not approved for use in medical procedures involving humans, but again, miles and steps).

These days, the researchers involved have set up shop at Virginia Tech, and they've got big plans. They've now figured out how to use electrical fields to control the bacteria so that they can weave custom architectures in three dimensions. It's promising because the bacteria could build tiny scaffolding for things like bone grafts or cartilage repair. Of course, it's also going to be proprietary technology, only available from the companies involved for whatever sky-high rates they decide to charge, but what else is new in health care?

Besides, it won't be too long before the enslaved bacteria figure out how to knit the weapons and armor they need to throw off the shackles of their human oppressors...

Is Half a Liver Better than None?

Apparently not. Crappy, low-grade livers may even be more dangerous than not getting a liver at all, when it comes to the organ transplant waiting list. Still, would you be willing to play god, deciding who will live and who will die?

The University of Michigan has launched a scathing attack on the status quo for liver allocations. At least, it's as scathing as you'd expect a scientific document to be. Under the current system, the Model for End-Stage Liver Disease (MELD), the sickest patients get the best quality livers the fastest. That sounds good on the face of it, but it turns out to have had grave and inintended consequences.

Since the sickest patients are getting the high-quality livers first, that means that other transplant patients are getting lower quality, high-risk livers. According to the study, some of the patients that have a low pre-transplant risk of death end up getting harmed by receiving a transplanted liver.

Just like the issues involved in experimenting on pregnant women, there are some tough ethical questions raised. Should the risky livers go to the patients with the lowest odds of survival, since they probably won't be able to use it to the fullest anyway? Or should the transplant recipients in good shape be given the low-quality organs because they have a better chance of pulling through afterwards?

It's a call I'm glad I don't have to make, but it's also a strong argument for temperance.

First Shots Fired in War on Christmas

Why does the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) hate Christmas so much? Alternatively, what do they gain from pushing their pro-sprinkler agenda? Finally, what should I have chosen as my college major to land a job setting things on fire for money?

That's right. NIST sets Christmas trees on fire. And then videotapes it. How's that for a research project?

The videos were made to show the effectiveness of sprinkler systems in stopping fires, and used Christmas trees to put a seasonal spin on their message. I don't plan on installing a sprinkler system anytime soon, but it looks like it's something I should think about. Dying in a house fire is not on my list of things to do in the new year.

Are You Gonna Eat That?

Because those pigs totally will, if you won't. Or those chickens, or those cows over there, or maybe some dogs. It turns out that one-third of the world's ocean fish catch is just fed to animals.

Pig feed, chicken feed, even farm-raised fish are being fed ground up "bait fish" or forage fish such as anchovies, sardines, and menhade (a species I had not heard of until reading the report). All told, it's 31.5 million tons of fish that could be either fed to hungry people or more importantly kept in the goddamn ecosystem to keep our ocean stocks from collapsing, but I guess that those factory farms needed some kind of substitute now that the threat of mad cow disease has kept them from grinding up cows to feed to other cows.

The whole thing makes me equal parts angry and scared.

Hold Your Nose for Extra Years

It's totally not fair that roundworms get all the cool scientific breakthroughs, but whatever. Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis went ahead and extended their life spans by up to 29%. And they didn't even have to genetically splice them into chimeras or godless abominations that were half worm, half radioactive monster.

I thought the tag line about eating less helping you live longer was unrelated, but it's actually an interesting part of the test. Reducing your calorie intake increases your lifespan. Researchers found that treating roundworms with a chemical to block their sense of smell prevented them from detecting food. Since they couldn't find food as effectively, they didn't eat as much and ended up living longer.

It looks like Weight Watchers should think about giving out nose plugs with their memberships.

I'm sure that worms everywhere will be happy to hear this news. Of course, that's assuming they can avoid the Rooping iron.

It's as American as not bothering to learn English

You know how you can get stuck with huffy people in elevators who are always yelling at people about how "You're in AMERICA! Speak ENGLISH or LEAVE!"? I used to deal with people like them all the time. Hearing people speak in a foreign language really got them worked up, for reasons I never understood.

So, in Wisconsin, they've found out that people like that would have been just as pissed off in the 1800s as they are today. The idea that immigrants coming to America immediately learned the language and started blending in? Yeah, that's a myth.

In fact, the UW-Madison looked at German settlers in Wisconsin from as far back as 1839, and found that some of them never bothered to learn English. In some cases, they lived in the U.S. for over 50 years and remained "monolingual" (German-speaking only). Even after a law was passed in 1889 requiring schools to be taught in English, school districts would still write to the office of the state school superintendent entirely in German.

It looks like we've been able to carry on since then without witnessing the complete collapse of society. I guess it's not as bad as some people make it out to be.

Toothless Chicks Are God's Plan

Or they're at least a noble tradition stretching back through the millennia. That's what the University of Oregon found out after researching the issue extensively. And it's about time.

It's actually quite the subject of academic debate. The prevailing thought was that as societies shifted from hunter/gatherers to farming-based, the change in their diet led to an increase in cavities. Anthropologist John R. Lukacs agrees that women experienced an increasing number of cavities as a result of the societal shift, but not due to diet. Lukacs argues that the societal shift away from hunting and gathering led to increased sedentism and fertility. It was the increase in fertility that led to increased cavities more than anything else.

Did you know that women get more cavities than men? It was news to me, but I'm not really up on my orthodontic trivia. The idea that pregnancy leads to poor dental health was also a surprise, but not something I had spent a lot of time worrying about.