Rockin' New Particle

Are you as excited about the new Omega b baryon as I am?

I know, right? It's totally awesome. Just last month I was lying in bed worrying about how we'd ever understand how matter was formed, and whether we'd languish for years before finding specific evidence proving the critical success of the quark model, giving us new insight into the strong force that binds quarks together to form larger particles. And POW, it seems like almost no time elapsed before my concerns were addressed.

Wait, was I really wondering that, or did I just totally steal that from the article? Sorry about that. Still, science discovers some pretty weird stuff.

Fat Friends Don't Make You Look Thin

Fat friends make you get fat. Is it any surprise that peer pressure will affect a child's weight, along with everything else? It's not like kids are on the playground saying, "C'mon, Shelly! Eat that donut! What's the matter, are you chicken? Hey, a chicken sandwich would be pretty tasty right now..." However, there's a correlation between a child's weight and the weight of its friends.

I wouldn't call the study groundbreaking based on the overview that I've read, but it looks like they've proven fat kids end up having fat friends. So, if you want your kid to be skinny, keep him from having fat friends. You should probably also keep him from making friends with loose morals.

Nanoships and Nanoshipping

Sure, we've done a lot of studies on how things move around inside the body, but it's about time we got into the game ourselves. UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara and MIT picked up the gauntlet, designing nano-sized vehicles (that they adorably call "cargo ships") to move things through the body.

Wy do you need a fleet of cargo ships cruising your body, carousing in their next port of call and collecting stories to tell when they make it back home? Because these cargo ships can deliver all sorts of helpful compounds like medecines and drugs to destroy tumors. The tricky part was keeping the body from attacking the nanoships, but they think they've figured out how to deal with that.

The best part is that I'm absoulutely certain that this technology will only be used to deliver beneficial products to the body parts that need them. There is no way whatsoever that the government could subvert this technology to deliver harmful substances to specific parts of certain troublemakers.

Paid Posting Policy Disclaimer

Blogging is fun, but it's also time consuming. As a result, I'm going to start looking into ways to make money with it, and that may include the addition of some paid posts. Given that, it's time for me to adopt a formal policy about accepting payment in return for mention on this blog.

This policy is valid from 27 September 2008.

This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me. For questions about this blog, please contact Stanley! (Stanleylnbp At GMail Dot Com).

This blog accepts forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation. The compensation received may influence the advertising content, topics or posts made in this blog. Compensated content, advertising space, or posts will be clearly identified as paid or sponsored content.

The owner of this blog may be compensated to provide an opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the blogger's own. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question.

Did I miss anything?

Addicted Kids Become Addicted Adults

Adolescents are more likely to become addicted to drugs than adults, according to a recent study. Researchers at Rockefeller University found this out by getting mice addicted to powerful prescription painkillers. Hooray, science!

The idea is that due to the still-developing brain chemistry of adolescents, they are more vulnerable to having their mental makeup permanently altered by foreign substances. This can lead to bona fide dependency, actual physical addiction, which stays with them for the rest of their lives.

That's why it's important to keep kids off drugs. Of course, just because you lay down some ground rules early on, that won't keep your kids from developing drug habits as adults. Just ask Rush Limbaugh about that.

Catfights in the Workplace

Are totally hot.

That's why women should report to female supervisors, as has been proven by science. The University of Toronto studied stress in the workplace and found that women working under a female supervisor reported more distress than women working for a male supervisor. I'm sure that when they say "distress," they are referring solely to the tensions that build steadily until they boil over into an explosion of hot girl-versus-girl action.

Guys, on the other hand, find their supervisors annoying no matter what their gender may be. Until the supervisor gets sick of their bad attitude and fires them.

The happiest employees (as relative as "happy" can get on the job, read: employees with lowest distress levels and fewest physical symptoms) were the ones who reported to a pair of supervisors, one male and one female.

The Food Network Is Trying to Kill You

Texas Tech studied the Food Network's top chefs, including Rachel Ray, Emeril, and Sandra Lee. They found 460 "poor food handling incidents" and only 118 positive food handling examples.

We're talking about food shows where chefs get their food from unsafe sources, don't use thermometers, use food from the floor (yes, the ten-second rule is scientifically sound, but we don't need to make it the foundation of our cooking techniques), and not refrigerating perishable food, just to name a few. I know that they edit some things out to make for exciting television (who wants to watch two hours of some chef washing dishes the whole time?), but actually showing someone mixing their ready-to-eat foods with their raw food is a bad idea.

It's a shame, because when it comes to food safety, people need more visual examples. All right, accusing the food network of actually trying to kill you is a little harsh, but they're certainly playing fast and loose with the concern for their audience's health.

I guess that they could use it to their advantage, though. Imagine that episode of Iron Chef?

"Today's secret ingredient is... LISTERIA!"