Weird Science

For every time you watched a scrawny guy chow dozens of hot dogs in 12 minutes and wondered where, exactly, he puts it, scientists may have your answer. As compared with us mere mortals, the Wall Street Journal reports, a professional’s stomach appears as a “giant balloon that looks like it has no limit.” More »

Think all politicians are self-justifying hypocrites? You're probably right, John Tierney writes in the New York Times . As a recent psychological study demonstrates, all of us, given enough time and mental wiggle room, will succumb to the "self-halo effect," justifying in ourselves and our allies moral lapses we readily condemn in anyone of an opposing group. More »

A woman suffers from an itch so severe that she scratches right through to her brain—yet doctors find no medical ailment. War victims feel the sensations of a real limb—but from phantom appendages. What does it all add up to? Perhaps a new understanding of how our brains perceive reality: Call it the “brain’s best guess” theory, Atul Gawande writes in the New Yorker . More »

Homer's Odyssey is 2,700 years old, and the events it describes happened centuries earlier. But two scientists claim in a new paper that they've traced one line in the epic poem—a possible reference to an eclipse—to a real astronomical event. Classicists might take issue, writes the New York Times , but the astronomers say that Odysseus' return to Ithaca coincided with a solar eclipse on April 16, 1178 BC. More »

A 2-year-old Indian girl born with eight limbs and worshiped as an incarnation of a Hindu goddess is learning to walk after surgery last fall, CNN reports. Doctors say that Lakshmi Tatma continues to recover from the marathon 27-hour operation that severed a parasitic twin, but that her organs are all functional and she may even be able to have children of her own some day. More »

Men make dumb decisions when ogling bikini-clad beauties—conventional wisdom, sure, but now there's some science behind it. Belgian researchers found that men bombarded with sexy images have a definite drop-off in cognitive skills when compared with those who gaze at landscapes, reports MSNBC. The experiment supports earlier findings that arousal causes "a kind of tunnel vision" and may explain why sex sells so well. More »

Tourists could soon have a new accessory to add to travel-sized toothpaste tubes and electrical adapters: an anti-diarrhea patch. A new US study shows that travelers wearing a “transcutaneous immunization” patch, loaded with E. coli toxins, reliably protected wearers against diarrhea and vomiting, the BBC reports. Those who did get sick bounced back much more quickly than a control group. More »

De Beers might like you to think a “diamond is forever,” but try this on for size: “A diamond is for everyone.” In a secret Massachusetts lab, Apollo Diamond is using novel technology to grow diamonds virtually indistinguishable from their mined cousins, the Smithsonian reports. Unfortunately for consumers, the synthetic gemstones cost about the same as Mother Earth's—for now. More »

Knowledge may be power, but finding that knowledge can get you killed. List Universe ranks the top scientists killed or injured by their experiments. Galileo Galilei: The “father of modern physics” refined the telescope by staring at the sun for hours, resulting in near-blindness. Michael Faraday: A nitrogen chloride explosion halted Faraday’s research of the electro-magnetic field and caused chronic suffering from his chemical poisoning. More »

For decades scholars have debated whether Napoleon, who died in exile on the island of St. Helena in 1821, was poisoned with arsenic by his British captors; as recently as 2002 a biographer wrote that there was "nothing improbable about the hypothesis." But now a team of Italian scientists has conducted a detailed analysis of the French emperor's hair that seems to disprove the theory. More »

More biology students are ducking icky frog and fetal pig dissections by doing them on computers, the AP reports. Animal rights activists, thrilled that 14 states let kids skip dissections, are helping get the interactive programs to schools. One West Virginia group donated software to a high school that spends about $1,000 a year on frogs and $40 a pop for hogs. More »

Scientific journals' status as bastions of objectivity and truth has come under fire in the past 10 years because of "image fraud," the Chronicle of Higher Education reports. Researchers alter representations of scientific data for inclusion in journal articles for various reasons, and not all have evil intentions. One admitted doctorer said she “was trying to present” the data “even better.” More »

New York City officials warned people today to avoid a toad venom-based aphrodisiac that recently killed a man, the AP reports. The illegal love drug, often sold as Jamaican Stone or Chinese Rock, is harmful whether ingested or applied to the skin. "There is no definitely safe way to use it,” one official said. Similar drugs have killed at least five New Yorkers since the early 1990s. More »

It may throw a wrench in Noah's ark-stocking plans, but same-sex relationships appear in many animal species, reports LiveScience.com. The long list of animals that practice gay sex includes bears, penguins, gorillas, and dolphins, among others. But scientists question the act's evolutionary purpose, because it doesn't aid in reproduction. It may be an adaptation for nurturing offspring, or just a dry run. More »

Being bird-brained might not be much of an insult: New MIT research paints a more intricate portrait of how songbirds learn to sing, with one part of the brain used for learning and another for singing itself. Rather than maturing from babbling to birdsong, the independent but overlapping pathways work together during different life stages. More »

A new patch is being marketed to make women think "sexy time"—but does it really work? Scentuelle’s “libido patch” claims to “turn you on” and “enhance feelings of sexuality through our sense of smell." Linda Dahlstrom of MSNBC tried it, and was surprised by the power of its lemony scent. "I felt a sudden sensation," she writes. "Unfortunately, it was nausea." More »

A wetsuit for a penguin might  sound as useful as a fur coat for a bear, but it was just the thing for an elderly penguin at San Francisco's Academy of Sciences who was losing his feathers, reports AP.  A suit designed by dive experts made it possible for Pierre, 25, to stop shivering and return to the chilly water. His penguin pals accepted his new look, and his feathers are sprouting again. More »

Brazil buys more condoms and boasts more rainforest than any other country; now officials hope to connect the dots, the BBC reports. The government will use rubber from Amazon trees to make 100 million condoms a year, given out freely as part of the country's anti-AIDS program. Rubber can be obtained without destroying trees and is widely available. More »

Octopuses are sexier in the wild than in the aquarium, report stunned researchers who snorkeled among the frisky cephalopods for several weeks in Indonesia. Some Abdopus aculeatus males employ deceit, mimicking females with their changeable colors and sneaking up on them from the reef bottom. Others jealously guard their mates, fending off competition with a fatal multi-armed stranglehold. More »