A Moment on the Lips, a Lifetime on the Arteries, Heart, and Possibly Breast Tissue

I'm always a fan of studies about drinking, and while this one didn't involve malt liquor, it still reinforced existing beliefs about gender differences.

Harvard is studying women who drink. For science. Well, the study is for science, the women appear to be drinking for the usual reasons. Anyway, Harvard Medical School has found that alcohol does more damage to women when viewed over the long term.

You may know that women metabolize alcohol more slowly than men. Harvard has examined this and found that since the alcohol spends longer in a woman's body, her body tissue is exposed to more alcohol per drink than a man. When this is paired with a study in Japan showing that too much alcohol is bad for the heart and arteries (and earlier studies showing that it can harm breast tissue), a picture emerges showing that women are more susceptible to the inherent health risks in alcohol than their male counterparts.

And that's not even counting the health risks posed by their male counterparts, if they're drinking at a fraternity.

Tomorrow's Technology Brings You Yesterday's Brutal Dismemberments, Today!

In a well-thought-out marriage of robotics and dinosaurs, paleontologists have been working with aeronautic engineers to create an aerial drone based on the design of a Pterodactyl.

This can only end well. I mean, we have solid proof that dinosaurs were ferocious, brutal, and damn near unstoppable, now we'll have robot dinosaurs stalking us from the skies, using our own eyes to spot us.

Well, probably not my eyes, because I have pretty crappy vision. And really, if you're going to build a flying robot anyway, you might as well use eyes that are better suited for that kind of thing, like from a hawk or an owl. But that's beside the point. Do we really want to make autonomous machines more mobile? Shouldn't we maintain some measure of control?

Or should we go the other way, and make it mandatory that ALL robots mimic some type of animal? What animal would you copy if you were in charge of designing a robot?

So we have a new president-elect.

It wasn't the outcome I expected, but that's not a bad thing.

Water Pirates from Outer Space: One Step Closer to Reality

The University of Alabama in Huntsville envisions a future where microwave ray guns harvest water from the moon and possibly Mars. The idea is to collect water in those locations so that our space missions don't have to bring their own water with them, but it's just a short step of the imagination to imagine unscrupulous privateers looting the water reserves of planets across the galaxy.

There is ice buried just under the surface of the moon and Mars, but digging for it is risky and could damage the equipment. However, melting the ice with microwave radiation can turn it into water vapor that is then captured and re-condensed as water. I'm not really sure what happens if the ice that gets turned into vapor was actually a significant part of the surface that the ray gun was resting on, but I'm sure that the scientists have thought it through.

They actually want to take it further, imagining a "robotic, roving device powered by a nuclear generator," irradiating huge stretches of the moon's surface to get at the water underneath. They also want to melt the moon's surface into a solid, dust-free crust, which could be used as a landing pad or to bake bricks or blocks that can be used in the construction of lunar structures.

Sure, the idea of fusing the lunar surface with concentrated bursts of radiation sounds like a bad idea, but it's already getting irradiated by the sun, and it's not like there's an ecosystem up there to be destroyed. I say go nuts.

Truckers Are Essential for Battling the Flu

Oh, sure, you need doctors, and nurses to keep the hospitals running, but stop and think about what is going to be important in the event of an epidemic illness. That's right, truck drivers and communications personnel, along with utility workers are going to be pretty crucial. Thank goodness that Johns Hopkins Medical Center has been thinking about this.

I'm pretty sure that my local government would be completely helpless in the event of a severe flu outbreak or bioterrorist attack. In fact, my own preparations are sorely lacking. I don't have stockpiles of food, water, or medicine. I'd better hope that my plans of keeping my fingers crossed and praying will work out for me.

I never even thought about what would grind to a halt and what would be important. At least someone's thinking about it. Hopefully internet connectivity and cable television are also put on the "vital services" list.

100 Years of Mixed Blessings

Nitrogen has been a pretty powerful tool, increasing crop yields on one hand and killing marine life on the other. But most of its impact wouldn't have been felt if it weren't for a 100-year-old process, the Haber-Bosch process for synthesizing ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen.

The widespread availability of nitrogen created by the process allowed for the use of nitrogen in explosives and fertilizer (and sometimes both at the same time) and spawned a huge chemical industry that was able to discover new uses and applications for it. The problem now is to figure out how to meet the increased demand we've created.

Hi there, third world countries! Were you looking to develop your farming efforts so that you can actually feed your citizens?

In a way, it's kind of like oil. In the early 1900s, no one cared about it. Now, everyone wants a car and oil is a resource that affects almost all of us in our daily lives. Similarly, four of the world's leading environmental research centers think that nitrogen is going to become important, and I agree with them when you consider the increased demand for biofuels along with the growing needs of a globally increasing population.

I disagree when they say we'll have a nitrogen-based economy. Do we have an oil-based economy now? Yes, oil is a crucial part of the economy, but not the sole scale against which all other economic gains or losses are measured.

I could be wrong, though. What do you think the next big natural resource is going to be?

How Echolocation Brings You Better Coffee

It's all about the bats. First, there are ongoing studies in Mexico to determine how to raise coffee without pesticides. The researchers used to think that birds played a crucial role in keeping coffee-eating insects away from crops, but it turns out that a much larger share of the responsibility goes to bats.

They studied four groups of coffee plants. The control group of plants, uncovered day and night, was protected from insects by both bats and birds. A second group of plants was only covered during the day, protected by the bats at night, and a third group was covered at night, protected only by the birds during the day. The final group of plants was covered day and night, and was most severely attacked by pests.

It turns out that plants that did not have the benefit of the bats' protection had 84% more assorted pests than the coffee plants in their care. That's when they started paying more attention to how the bats were protecting the plants. Think spiders. Actually, think sandworms of the sky.

You may be familiar with the way you can see bats hunting for insects, zipping through the air after mosquitos and other flying pests like aerial dogfighters from World War I. Bats can eat half their body weight in just one night that way. However, the researchers watching the coffee plants learned about a new way for the bats to hunt.

The bats by the coffee plants would hide in the trees, and use their sonar to listen for insects going after the plants. Like Frank Herbert's sandworms, sensitive to the shifting of desert sands, the bats can use their acute hearing to pick up the sounds of insects moving, eating, or chirping. Then they strike. It's actually kind of awesome.