In what seems like the perfect solution to everything (or an episode of What Could Possibly Go Wrong?!), a pair of prototypes hint at a future in which robots eat bugs for fuel. Forget charging batteries or docking in your very own R2D2 -- these autonomous, self-feeding droids could easily run along happily without us. The secret lies in two developments, both of which mimic the Venus flytrap's prey-catching method:

Recreating this method means finding materials that can not only detect the presence of an insect but also close on it quickly. At Seoul National University in South Korea, Seung-Won Kim and colleagues have done this using shape memory materials. These switch between two stable shapes when subjected to force, heat or an electric current.

The team used two different materials - a clamshell-shaped piece of carbon fibre that acts as the leaves, connected by a shape-memory metal spring. The weight of an insect on the spring makes it contract sharply, pulling the leaves together and enveloping the prey. Opening the trap once more is just a matter of applying a current to the spring.

Mohsen Shahinpoor at the University of Maine in Orono took a different approach. His robot flytrap uses artificial muscles made of polymer membranes coated with gold electrodes. A current travelling through the membrane makes it bend in one direction - and when the polarity is reversed it moves the other way.

Bending the material also produces a voltage, which Shahinpoor has utilised to create sensors. When a bug lands, the tiny voltage it generates triggers a larger power source to apply opposite charges to the leaves, making them attract one another and closing the trap (Bioinspiration and Biomimetics, DOI: 10.1088/1748-3182/6/4/046004).

"We should be able to benefit enormously from these flytrap technologies," says Ioannis Ieropoulos of the Bristol Robotics Lab in the UK. He and colleagues previously developed Ecobot, a robot that can digest insects, food scraps and sewage to power itself. Ecobot uses bacteria to break down a fly's exoskeleton in a reaction that liberates electrons into a circuit, generating electricity.

It's an interesting premise, the bug-eating robot. I'd personally never thought of feeding a machine anything other than electricity (or sunlight for the solar-powered variety).

If you built a robot, which fuel source would you design it to run on?

Link

Hot on the heels of India's $35 tablet designed to promote education within the country, and the annual new computer purchases for hundreds of public schools across the US, The New York Times printed an article that details the educational standards for children of some of Silicon Valley's biggest names; surprisingly, the schools in question are gadget-free and as low-tech as any you'd find in the pre-computer era.

Redbox, the movie rental kiosk, has an interesting thing going on. Apparently a few people planning to dress up as the ubiquitous red boxes caught the attention of the company, who decided to give their fans a hand.

A few weeks ago, we started noticing that a lot of people were planning to dress up as redbox kiosks for Halloween. Some of the costumes are simple, and some are elaborate, but they are all amazing. So we decided to help out. No gimmicks, no strings, no costs. Just simple fun.

Broseph featured above hand-drew his letters, but if you too would like to be a certain fiery-hued DVD rental box for Halloween, head over to DressLikeRedbox and get some downloadable costume assistance, including printable stickers and templates. http://www.redbox.com/dresslikeredbox

Thanks, Michael!

Image: Nashville Metromix

According to a study by the University of California, San Diego Division of Social Sciences, men are a teensy bit funnier than women are--but mostly only to to other men.

The stereotype

Men have long been defended as the funnier sex; a sense of humor attracts women (just ask women) and the thinking was that an inherent funniness was a biological adaptation akin to a peacock's tail or an elaborate preening ritual in animals come mating season. Christopher Hitchens argued this point in his 2007 Vanity Fair article, "Why Women Aren't Funny." In his words, men "had damn well better be" funnier. "Women have no corresponding need to appeal to men in this way. They already appeal to men," he says with an unhumorous textual wink. In response, a 2008 article titled "Who Says Women Aren't Funny?" contends that women are in fact quite funny, and that women--especially on television--are more responsible for their own writing than before. It makes no mention of women in typical social situations, however, which is precisely where Hitchens claims men excel.

The study: Round 1

The U of C study set out to determine whether this social bias (backed up by the results of the Stanford University School of Medicine study referenced in the Vanity Fair article) is legitimate, or if we're thinking about this humor thing in the right way.

The study team ran two separate but related experiments. The first experiment had 16 undergraduate males and 16 undergraduate females writing captions alone in a quiet room for 20 New Yorker cartoons in 45 minutes, for a total of 640 captions. All were instructed to be as funny as they could be.

This was the level-playing-field portion of the show--without the pressure of social interaction, men and women could access the full depth of their humor, rewrite if necessary, and the resulting captions could be presented to test subjects without indicating the sex of their author. To test men against women, a cartoon was diplayed with one caption written by a man and the other by a woman, then subjects chose the funnier of the two.

The number of rounds, from zero to five, that captions survived before being knocked out determined the writers' average scores.

True to the conventional wisdom, men did better than women, but not by much: Male writers earned an average 0.11 more points than female writers. But what's even more interesting, the researchers say, and what runs contrary to the standard explanations of why men might be funnier, is that men did better with other men: Female raters allocated only an average 0.06 more points to the male writers, while the male raters gave them a significantly higher average of 0.16 more points.

Looks like the guys are preening for each other. Biology can't explain that!

The study: Round 2

Are men's jokes more memorable than women's, and can the author of a funny caption be correctly perceived as male or female given the humorousness of its contents? Enter the memory bias portion of the program:

In a second, related experiment, the researchers tested memory and memory bias to see if men are credited with being funnier than they really are.

As expected, funny captions were remembered better than unfunny ones. The authors of funny captions were remembered better too. But humor was more often misremembered "as having sprung from men's minds," the researchers write. And, even more telling, Mickes said, when the study participants were guessing at authors' gender, unfunny captions were more often misattributed to women and funny captions were more often misattributed to men.

So men do win in the analytic breakdown of perceived humor and the ability to be funny on command... but only very barely, and by margins "so small that they can't account for the strength of the belief in the stereotype," according to Laura Mickes, a postdoctoral researcher in the UC San Diego Department of Psychology.

Well?

Well. The conclusion seems to be that there is no conclusion. By and large, men may be funnier than women, and women may be funnier than men, but there's no way to standardize humor in a real-life scenario (or, at least, not one which has been studied). So we'll leave the question to you:

As a whole, do you think men really are funnier than women?

Sources:

• Men Win Humor Test (by a Hair)


• Why Women Aren't Funny


• Who Says Women Aren't Funny?

A Zanesville, Ohio, man who owned a large private menagerie of tigers, lions, bears and monkeys opened the cages to many of the exotic animals then killed himself in his home Tuesday. Around 5:30pm, his neighbors began calling the Muskingum County Sheriff's Office to report sightings of animals wandering off of Terry Thompson's land.

When police went to investigate, they were met by a herd of about 50 exotic animals, and Thompson's body in the driveway. "I had deputies that had to shoot animals with their side arms," said Muskingum County Sheriff Matt Lutz. Soon after, officials from nearby Columbus Zoo came armed with tranquilizers to help locate and rescue as many of the animals as possible. But it didn't go as planned: "We just had a huge tiger, an adult tiger that must've weighed 300 pounds, that was very aggressive. We got a tranquilizer in it, and this thing just went crazy," Lutz said. After the incident, he ordered a shoot-to-kill for the remaining animals.

49 of Thompson's 56 animals were dead and buried on his property, at the request of his estranged wife, by Wednesday morning. Authorities captured a grizzly, three leopards and two monkeys, which were sent to the Columbus Zoo for safekeeping. A baboon possibly infected with hepatitis B was still missing as of Wednesday night.

How did this happen?

Ohio has extremely lax governance over the ownership of exotic animals. The state's "inadequate regulation" puts it near the bottom of the list in a 2009 report from the Humane Society of the United States. And earlier this year, an emergency rule which "prohibited people convicted of animal cruelty from owning exotic animals" expired, allowing Thompson, who was previously charged with and found guilty of animal cruelty and neglect, to keep his 56 lions and tigers and bears.

Public safety vs. animal protection

Immediately after this story broke, Zanesville residents and national news viewers began calling the sheriff's office and Zanesville area shelter to ask why the animals--many of them listed as endangered species--were being killed rather than tranquilized or recaptured. The short answer: No time. The longer answer is best explained by Jack Hanna, beloved animal rights activist and director emeritus of the Columbus Zoo:

"[Y]ou can't tranquilize an animal in the dark. It upsets them ... they settle in, they hunker down, they go to sleep. Obviously, we can't find them in the dark. So what had to be done had to be done. Even a bear came after one of the officers last night, and she was just trying to get out of a car. ... No one loves animals more than me, but human life has to come first."

As night descended on Ohio and liberated exotic animals ran loose, swift and decisive action was needed to protect the human residents of Zanesville; unfortunately, it was at the expense of Thompson's pets. The Humane Society supports Lutz's actions and those of his team, and PETA, in a written statement, blamed legislation instead of law enforcement for the deaths.

Preventative action

Over the years, Lutz received "around 35 calls" about Thompson's farm--all concerning "animals running loose to animals not being treated properly." He went on to say that his office has "handled numerous complaints here, we've done numerous inspections here. So this has been a huge problem for us for a number of years."

Former governor of Ohio, Ted Strickland, imposed the legislation that was allowed by current governor, John Kasich, to lapse in April. Of Thompson, he said, “Someone with a record like this man was not intended to have these animals.” Strickland asserted that Thompson "would almost certainly have had his animals removed by May 1, 2011, if the emergency order had not expired."

PETA, for its part, has been petitioning Ohio (and a number of other states) for years to institute "an outright ban" on owning exotic animals. The group is currently asking the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to "exercise its authority to declare emergency regulations to prohibit the keeping of exotic animals" as well as petitioning the state to "seize the animals over whom the agency has jurisdiction and see that they are placed in reputable sanctuaries." Whether Gov. Kasich will comply has yet to be seen.

Is an outright ban on owning exotic animals the right move here, or should there just be stricter limitations on who can keep the animals (and where)?

Sources:

• Deputies Hunt Exotic Animals on the Loose in Ohio


• Freed tigers, lions and bears cause panic in Ohio


• Exotic animal laws called into question after Ohio killings


• Humane Society Doesn't Fault Ohio Authorities In Animal Deaths


• At Least Two Dozen Dead in Ohio

Image

"All the Single Ladies," The Atlantic's cover story about women who choose to remain unmarried, made the rounds like wildfire. Author Kate Bolick insists that "it’s time to embrace new ideas about romance and family—and to acknowledge the end of 'traditional' marriage as society’s highest ideal." Bolick's story understandably sparked some interesting conversations. The only thing they seem to agree on is that, yes, it's true: marriage rates are dropping precipitously.

In the 1860s nearly all women managed to get hitched. Today, with a better gender ratio, only 22% of adults aged 18-29 are married and only 44.9% of adults in all adult age groups have ever been married. The median ages for first marriages have moved way up as well--from 23 for men and 20 for women in 1960 to 28 and 26, respectively, today. Divorce is hovering at the 50% rate.

'Major attitudinal shifts'

Bolick notes that for women, marriage is now "an option rather than a necessity," citing a dwindling pool of educated, committed men, a new majority of women in the workplace, a tanking economy, IVF and adoption, the rise of non-traditional families and marriage arrangements, and a dissipating "spinster" stigma.

Bolick represents the intentionally single thirty- or forty-something. The newest generation eschewing nuptials is the tech-savvy and generally liberal Millennial. With education leveling the playing field, opportunities to earn something beyond the MRS might just be higher on a girl's list of priorities. Likewise, the responsibility of career, house and family (married or not) is what Sex at Dawn co-author Christopher Ryan calls “swimming upstream." It's perhaps inevitable that fewer women take it on.

Today's women are professionally and financially more established, so they should be all that more appealing to males. They are, generally, but not in a "find The One and keep her" way. Men are also opting to remain single as long as they are happy. "If you have four quality women you’re dating and they’re in a rotation, who’s going to rush into a marriage?” asks Ralph Richard Banks, author of Is Marriage for White People? In response, Rod Dreher at the American Conservative lays it out: "Throw out traditional morality for an ethic of libertinism and you get men being what biology has programmed them to be. In this way, feminism, whatever its benefits for women, has hurt them."

Changing expectations

Dreher's insistence that being unmarried is a 'hurt' to the purposely single woman is debatable. But it's clear that the expectations of marriage have changed rapidly over the last half-century. Women are not expected to be June Cleaver, and men are not expected to shoulder the full financial burden alone. And they can even cohabitate now without the nasty rumors that haunted earlier generations.

This doesn't necessarily mean that healthy relationships are, or the desirability of the pair bond are declining. One could argue that without the legal constraints, the odds of finding a working, healthy relationship increase. Add to this the growing presence of nontraditional family groups (friends and extended family as family) and relatively commonplace single-parent household, and what you get is a less strict idea of what normal relationships are.

In Mexico City, in a move to counter high divorce rates, lawmakers have proposed a two-year marriage license. The trial-by-marriage would give newlyweds "an easy exit strategy" by allowing them to mutually decide whether or not to renew. Whether this is better than having never married at all is a completely different debate, but points out how marriage is not what it once was.

Tradition? Buck tradition.

Marriage as we know it is a relatively new concept. It wasn't until marriage was used to procure and maintain land-ownership that the couple was limited in breaking that bond without permission. And when your husband or wife is chosen for their respective acreages, affection is an afterthought, if a thought at all.

And yes, a certain non-zero percentage of the population is still denied marriage by (most) state laws. Typically it's argued that this denial of rights is to protect traditional marriage, but clearly marriage before the last century and since is not what we would call "traditional."

Bolick's article makes several major points that aren't included here. But given that gender parity and economic downturn and the changing boundaries of social acceptance have come together to throw a wrench in our standard American Marriage, Bolick might be onto something.

Do you think that the declining marriage rates in the US are a problem, or is it just a shift in expectations from relationships and adulthood? Or, if you prefer: Is less marriage better, or worse?




Sources:

• All the Single Ladies


• The Atlantic's 'Single Ladies' cover story: 6 takeaways


• NBC Celebrates 'End of Traditional Marriage,' Perpetual Female Singlehood


• In U.S., Proportion Married at Lowest Recorded Levels


• Decline of men, decline of marriage


• ‘Til 2013 do us part? Mexico City mulls 2-year marriage

In 1983, more than 10,000 transfusion recipients were infected with HIV from tainted blood. In response, the FDA instituted a lifelong ban on blood donations from any man who'd had sexual contact with another man ("MSM" for short). There are no exceptions, even for celibate men who have tested negative for HIV.

Last month, U.K. Department of Health, acting on recommendation in a report from the the U.K. Advisory Committee on the Safety of Blood, Tissues and Organs (SaBTO), lifted their similar law banning MSM blood donations -- provided the men haven't had sex in at least one year. Restrictions have been relaxed in Australia, Japan, Sweden, South Africa and New Zealand. Some think the US should follow suit, but others believe the ban should remain to protect transfusion recipients.

Why a one-year deferral?

The SaBTO report looked at data regarding HIV and related diseases and "additional infectious agents" in the donor population as well as the UK overall population. What SaBTO found is that these diseases can be reliably screened for at the time of donation -- if the donor is not in an "early window infection" stage. This window is between nine days and 12 months, depending on the disease. During the window, test results could be unreliable -a false negative might appear in donors who'd recently engaged in high-risk behavior, who could then transmit the disease to a recipient.

The SaBTO recommended deferring gay males for either one or five years from their last sexual encounter to ensure the window had been exceeded. The UK chose the one-year deferral.

Should the US follow suit and institute a deferral system rather than an outright ban on donations from gay men?

In favor of maintaining the lifetime ban

In 2009, the Center for Disease Control "estimate[d] MSM represent approximately 2% of the US population, but accounted for more than 50% of all new HIV infections annually from 2006 to 2009." This data is the most heavily cited in ban-lifting opponents, who say this creates an increased risk to recipients.

Dr. Jay P. Brooks, a professor of pathology and the director of blood banking and transfusion medicine at University Hospital in San Antonio, says the risk is too great to lift the ban:

"If the current policy is changed or eliminated, we just don't know what the increased risk to the blood supply will be. We could have one additional HIV-positive unit released every 10 years, every 20 years — or one per year. . . But if the policy is changed to relieve the stigma, you have a risk that has been transferred to a completely different group — the recipients — and I think that is an unfair situation."

The FDA agrees: a petition put forth from the American Red Cross in 2006 called the ban "medically and scientifically unwarranted," but the FDA maintained that the increased risk of HIV infection in the general population was too great to assume.

In favor of lifting the lifetime ban

The American Red Cross continues to advocate a repeal of the MSM donor ban in favor of a deferral system, as does Dr. James P. AuBuchon, president of the American Association of Blood Banks. "Given the sensitivity of the tests we now have available, there is no detectable increased risk of HIV entering the blood supply by allowing gay and bisexual men to donate. . . [U]nits of blood are typically destroyed quickly if they're identified as unsuitable, and blood collectors have a robust protocols — including computer systems approved by the FDA — to prevent erroneous releases."

What the FDA should focus on, says Joel Ginsberg, head of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, are "behavioral risks rather than belonging to a particular group" by reworking the donor questionnaire about sexual activity and lifestyle behaviors, regardless of demographic.

There are opponents to this tactic, though--primarily, SaBTO. They felt that "the introduction of extensive donor health check questionnaires regarding sexual history will lead to a loss of existing donors," when presenting their data to the UK Dept. of Health. So there's the dilemma: do you lose part of your current donor base to admit the (very few) celibate homosexual men who could then donate under the new, fairer screening process? That gamble is not likely to be accepted in the U.S. The most viable option for lifting the ban appears to be the one-year deferral adopted in 12 other industrialized nations.

OK, Neatoramanauts: If it were on a ballot, would you vote to keep the blood donation ban for gay men intact, or vote to implement a deferral system?

Sources:

Pro/Con: Two views of U.S. prohibiting gay men's blood donation
American Red Cross Fights Ban On Gays' Blood
Bloody Personal
Britain Lifts Ban on Gay Men Donating Blood. Could the U.S. Be Far Behind?
SaBTO Donor Criteria Selection Review (April 2011) [PDF]
HIV Incidence Report, CDC 2009

Here's a disturbing trend: Between 1996 and 2010 the number of teenagers aged 13-19 having elective cosmetic surgery has increased by 548% - from around 14,000 procedures to 76,841 last year, according to American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS). The vast majority of these surgeries are rhinoplasty, followed by octoplasty (ear-pinning, typically), breast augmentation, asymmetry correction and reduction, and liposuction.

Why would so many kids go under the knife? Almost without exception, the surgeries are performed in response to teasing, bullying and low self-esteem. The ASPS says that teens "tend to have plastic surgery to fit in with peers, to look similar," by "improv[ing] physical characteristics they feel are awkward or flawed, that if left uncorrected, may affect them well into adulthood." Thirteen-year-old Nicolette Taylor (shown above) had a nose job after kids at school teased her; the "Hey, big nose," comments followed her to Facebook before her parents stepped in and opted to have Nicolette's nose reconstructed. She's not alone, either -- ABC reports that at least 90,000 such surgeries were performed last year “to avoid being bullied.”

Of course, a teenager can't just walk into a doctor's office and request a consult. Richard D'Amico, president of the ASPS, speaking with U.S. News and World Report, says that for anyone under age 18, a parent or guardian must be present and the prospective patient must have the maturity to understand the procedure, be able to express that "the desire for surgery does not reflect what a parent, friend, or boyfriend desires" and have realistic expectations. Even so, it becomes obvious when looking at the numbers that often surgery is a knee-jerk response to what most adults would consider the norms of teenage interaction. And it seems to skip over that "it builds character" thing that previous generations admired so strongly before plastic surgery was so widespread and available. Succinctly, Sheri Reed of The Stir asks, "[Plastic surgery], in no way, attempts to deal with the emotional matters behind a bully's behavior, nor does it teach the teen who hates herself the important life lesson of resilience."

How do parents justify plastic surgery for their children? There are no laws governing the minimum age for cosmetic procedures. Standard policy requires that a patient reaches a point of growth maturity beforehand, which is determined by monitoring changes in shoe size or height. There are two types of procedures: corrective and cosmetic. In the first camp, you have surgeries to repair deviated septa, cleft palates, under- and over-bites and any malformation or physical impairment that affects the quality of life. One teenager in the news recently will be having a series of procedures to correct her severe underbite; while kids do tease her about her protruding jaw, Samantha Weichhan's orthodontists Drs. Jerry Blum and Margo Brilliant argue that the process is not cosmetic. "It’s kind of like if you have somebody that one leg is 4 inches shorter than the other leg, and they say to straighten it out is an aesthetic thing. No, it’s not an aesthetic thing. Yeah, you will look  better if you’re standing straight on both legs, but point is, it’s a functional problem.” But those aren't the worrying procedures.

In Nicolette Taylor's case, whose nose operates just fine, getting cosmetic surgery to change the way she looks in response to some posts on a Facebook wall (which, incidentally, are not supposed to be opened by 13-year-olds according to Facebook's Terms of Service), the reasoning becomes a little hazier. Rob Taylor, Nicolette's father, explains it this way to ABC: "You send them to a good school. You’d buy them shoes. You’d get them braces, which we did. It’s that kind of thing.” The parents of Kaitlyn Clemmons, who gave their 18-year-old daughter breast augmentation surgery as a Christmas gift, see the pain of the procedure as something akin to the pain after a trip to the gym. "Everything comes with a price," her stepfather says. Tracy Carp, who had breast augmentation at 17 with her parents' consent and recently underwent a second procedure to reshape a "slight bump" on her nose, says that "a little bit of cosmetic work" has helped his daughter "feel much better about herself . . . and healthier."

What price hotness? A new nose or sleeker profile aren't free, even if the surgery is performed pro bono or paid for by insurance. The ASPS urges teenagers and their parents to remember that "plastic surgery is real surgery, with great benefits, but also carries some risks." In 2008, Pennsylvania courts awarded $20 million to a family of an 18-year-old girl who died from what was "likely a pulmonary embolism after liposuction." The same year, 18-year-old Stephanie Kuleba of Florida died of malignant hyperthermia, a rare reaction to anesthesia, after undergoing cosmetic breast surgery. “This is something that can happen in any surgery, on any part of the body, in any setting,” D’Amico said. Other risks? MRSA infection, a deadly strain of staph, which killed more US patients in 2008 than AIDS. Unskilled or shady surgeons, like the man who gave Priscilla Presley injections of "industrial, low-grade silicone" after convincing her that it was a miracle fix for wrinkles. And then there are always the kids who will tease you for having a nose job or breast implants.

Given all the factors that accompany an elective procedure, would you consent to or support plastic surgery for your own kids if they were being teased about their physical appearance?

Sources:

• 13-Year-Old Long Island Girl Gets Plastic Surgery To Avoid Being Teased


• Dr. Niccole Shares His Views on Teen Plastic Surgery


• Florida Teen: Jaw Surgery ‘Will Change My Life’


• Plastic Surgery For Teenagers Briefing Paper


• Teens Getting Plastic Surgery: Be Cautious


• Teen Plastic Surgery: How young is too young to get nipped and tucked? (Video)


• Girl’s Death Spotlights Plastic Surgery among Teens

Suren Manvelyan, Nylus Crocodile, 2011

A couple of years ago, Armenian photographer Suren Manvelyan was a bit of an Internet sensation... even if only behind-the-scenes. His macro photo collection, "Your Beautiful Eyes," was shared nearly everywhere online and published in Daily Mail, The Independent, the Telegraph, La Reppublica, and Liberation. Now Manvelyan is back with a slightly different focus, this time shooting animal eyes. The variation in these extreme closeups reveals not only the varying pupil shapes you'd expect in different animals, but also the differing complexity of the creatures' ocular evolution. It's a beautiful gallery, which we hope he'll be expanding soon. Link | via Flavorwire

Of all invertebrates, the octopus is considered the most intelligent, and sadly, rather underrated. They've been caught on video wrestling sharks to death like sea-dwelling honey badgers, using tools and opening twist-cap bottles. And according to at least one paleontologist, their ancestors may have been bigger, smarter, scarier and perhaps even a bit artistic.

The Triassic World

During the Triassic Period, a creature we call Ichthyosaur swam the seas, chowing down on whatever it wanted--it was the size of a school bus and had a mouthful of jagged teeth, and until Monday, paleontologists assumed it sat at the top of its watery food chain. But a stash of nine interestingly arranged, fossilized icthyosaur bodies discovered in Nevada have long confounded researchers, who haven't been able to determine how they died. Formerly, it was believed the seas were shallow in that location and the giant proto-whales fell victim to an algae bloom. But evidence from the surrounding rocks indicate the seas were still deep at the time of their demise, leaving science with something of a mystery.

That's where Mount Holyoke College paleontologist Mark McMenamin comes in. “Charles Camp puzzled over these fossils in the 1950s,” said McMenamin. “In his papers he keeps referring to how peculiar this site is. We agree, it is peculiar." See, the bones of these ichthyosaurs are etched differently from one another, indicating that they didn't die at the same time. But since they're all buried together, something interesting had to have happened. And McMenamin thinks that "something" is the work of kraken.

Deliberate Burial

McMenamin believes that the midden-building and predation behaviors observed in modern octopuses--specifically that of the famous Shark vs. Octopus video, wherein an unassuming dog shark gets totally pwned by a seemingly mild-mannered cephalopod--support the theory that gargantuan prehistoric kraken were terrorizing the ichthyosaur population, "either drowning them or breaking their necks.” Suspiciously twisted necks and many broken ribs from the ichthyosaur dig seem to support the idea, as fantastical as it is. But weirdest of all is how the bones came to be buried together, and why their arrangement seems bizarre: “I think that these things were captured by the kraken and taken to the midden and the cephalopod would take them apart," and rearrange them into what McMenamin believes is "the earliest known self portrait."

In the fossil bed, some of the shonisaur vertebral disks are arranged in curious linear patterns with almost geometric regularity, McMenamin explained.The proposed Triassic kraken, which could have been the most intelligent invertebrate ever, arranged the vertebral discs in double line patterns, with individual pieces nesting in a fitted fashion as if they were part of a puzzle.

To illustrate, the bones are arranged like this:

That's not even a little bit creepy.

Or is it Pareidolia?

Soft-bodied animals, by virtue of definition, have nothing to leave in the fossil layer, so McMenamin's tentacled beast will likely never turn up even if it did exist. And this presents something of a problem for the theory, since many researchers are "highly skeptical" of his "evidence." Roger Hanlon, a marine biologist at the Marine Biological laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, says,"There's nothing in the scientific literature that suggests that modern-day cephalopods do anything like this." And according to Dr. Hans-Dieter Sues, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, the Nevada site "essentially represents a mass burial ground for ichthyosaurs in a shallow sea." Speaking to Christian Science Monitor, Dr. Thomas Holtz Jr. of the University of Maryland declares that McMenamin's approach to understanding the ichthyosaur peculiarities "is too many steps away from the evidence to call it science."

But that doesn't mean that McMenamin is universally scorned: science writers and kraken enthusiasts are rooting for McMenamin and his Triassic tentacled leviathan. Rebecca Boyle of PopSci is sympathetic, hypothesizing that "the hypothetical kraken was just lonely, and, unable to clone itself [as some modern jellyfish can], it made an artistic rendering of an imaginary friend? It seems possible, although maybe less possible [than] the imagined kraken." But if moral support is what McMenamin needs, Cyriaque Lamar at io9 has got it in spades: "[T]he possibility of finding that which is essentially a gargantuan mollusk's macaroni illustration? That's the kind of glorious crazy you hope is reality."

What do you think, guys? Is McMenamin's idea a little too crack-pot to hold water, or is there maybe something to this whole self-expressive kraken thing?

Sources:

• GSA Press Release: Giant Kraken Lair Discovered


• Did an Ancient Kraken Create Its Own Friends? What About a Modern Jellyfish?


• Giant prehistoric krakens may have sculpted self-portraits using ichthyosaur bones


• Kraken monster ruled ancient seas? Scientists wary of new theory.


• Kraken Versus Ichthyosaur: Let the Battle Commence

Image 1 | Image 2

It seems like a simple enough question, right? One even a very small child could answer. Unfortunately, there were no children on staff at Panera Bread in 2006, when the company sued Qdoba Mexican Grill for building a restaurant near one of theirs--a restaurant which happened to be protected by a "sandwich shop" location exclusivity contract. In other words, Panera sued Qdoba, makers of fine burritos since 1995, for selling "sandwiches" too near their sandwiches. The judge presiding over the case used "common sense" and "a dictionary" to determine that, no, a burrito is not a sandwich. (The "Is Panera trying to look ridiculous?" case was resolved out of court.)

The burrito question may well be determined, but the definition of a sandwich leaves plenty of wiggle room for interpretation. According to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, a sandwich comprises "two or more slices of bread or a split roll having a filling in between," but then continues to include "one slice of bread covered with food." This would indicate that hotdogs, bruscetta, and even biscuits and gravy are sandwiches.

Let's take a look at the difference in sandwich conservatives' and liberals' opinions on the matter. In the right corner, we have the "two pieces of bread with filling, no variation" group. This excludes commonly accepted sandwich derivatives like stuffed pitas. On a technicality, they also must include the quesadilla unless the decision is made to restrict the sandwich definition to include only leavened bread. A self-described Sandwich Orthodox friend explained to me that any food which requires cooking before sandwiching is not a sandwich, even a hamburger--"If it can't be made in the woods, it isn't a sandwich." What about grilled cheese, dude?

On the other side, there are those who, like Ian Chillag of NPR's Sandwich Monday, will accept any "protein wrapped in carb." A close inspection tells us this would be sweeping enough to qualify sushi, fried cheese and those bizarre egg-and-cheese toaster strudel as sandwiches, in addition to any burrito, taco, this thing or Hot Pocket, while excluding traditional sandwiches (like jelly or veggie). How is a hotdog a sandwich if a veggie sub isn't?

If your definition relies on portability or hand-to-mouth eatability, then out go the Dagwood, Merriam-Webster's second definition and anything messy enough to require a fork. Likewise, any number of clearly non-sandwich foods could be included here.

Consider also the breadless sandwich: lettuce wraps, vegetable substitutes and *shudder* the KFC Double Down. They're sandwiched, yes, but are they sandwiches?

Neatoramanauts, settle this debate: What is your definition of a sandwich, and what is definitely not a sandwich?

Sources:

• Is a Burrito a Sandwich?


• Wikipedia: Sandwich


• That's a Wrap: The Truth Behind the Great Sandwich Debate


• Burrito not a sandwich, judge rules in Panera-vs.-Qdoba tiff


• Merriam-Webster: "sandwich"


• Is a quesadilla a sandwich?

Image

Gone are the days of a raised and hand and simple "Present." Now students in one school district must submit a fingerprint to be counted in morning roll call.

The Washington County school district in Florida has a little problem with inconsistent attendance. After weighing their options, school officials decided to place finger scanners at the entrance to Chipley High School, where incoming students are scanned in each morning. Because most kids in the district ride buses every day, and because keeping track of everyone in the halls is difficult, the system will be moved to select buses for a trial period to determine if it's a more efficient way to save time and to ensure students are accounted for from the time they arrive until they're dropped off at home.

The program has been in place for about two months, and so far, attendance is up--but not everyone is happy about it.

Identity theft

There are questions about the security of a device that reads a fingerprint, "which is a unique, identifiable piece of information," and then "stores it in a database, and links it to a name" (Kelly Hodgkins, Gizmodo). Being that the students are mostly minors, it's a legitimate concern, and one that Washington Co. Schools Superintendent Sandra Cook is quick to dismiss: There are only four or five points recorded in each scan, which are translated into a 60-digit passcode. "We can't go backwards with it. We can't turn around and take that number and recreate the points on a finger." (DailyMotion)

$$$

The scanners cost about $22,000. Per student, this breaks down to about $30 a year each, which is a problem for some parents, and an expense they say the school doesn't need. But Clay Dillow at PopSci thinks it'll all come out in the wash: "At $30 per student per year, the system isn’t necessarily cheap. But considering the uptick in attendance (which means more money from the state in many districts) and the inherent increase in accountability and student safety, it may well be worth the cost."

1984?

Even accounting for privacy, security and the cost, isn't it "kinda Orwellian that the school wants you to flash your fingerprint before you can learn"? And what does it say about the district schools? As Micheal Trei at DViCE comments, "it seems like a sad commentary if you need to treat students like prisoners to get them to attend."

But Superintendent Cook has no concerns. "When it's all said and done, we're going to find that this is going to be one of the most monumental things that Washington County has ever done," she says. And parents can always opt out by signing a waiver and having their children check in with a teacher each morning.

What do you think? Is it too "Big Brother" to ask students to scan a finger for attendance, or is this just an example of technology improving an inefficient process?

Sources:

• Finger Scan Devices Coming to Washington County School Buses


• Are Fingerprint Scanners Really Necessary On School Buses?


• A Florida School District is Taking Attendance by Scanning Students' Fingers


• Florida schools are using fingerprint scanners to track students


• New Finger Scanning Programs Being Used At Washington Co. High School In Chipley

Image: pcstelcom.com

Man's best friend is getting a trial run as little-man's best friend. Educators across the country are using canines to teach compassion and social responsibility, in efforts to curb school-age bullying.

Kansas City Schools have a program called No More Bullies, in which program volunteers, accompanied by trained dogs, teach kids about fairness, compassion, and integrity for one hour a day over five days. "The animals are the glue that helps the children stay focused and understand the message," says Jo Dean Hearn, an ex-teacher who developed the program. "Children can easily identify with an animal. And it's easy for them to transition when we ask them to consider how an animal feels (if ill treated) to how the kid sitting near them feels (if poorly treated)."

It's a great program that's showing promising results, and it isn't the only one. Check out the rest of the story on The Week. Link

Image

Everyone likes dogs, right? How about surfing? What about surfing dogs? In the most adorable mash-up ever of two seemingly unrelated things people like, a recent competition pitted man's best friend against some totally righteous waves.

Five competitors piled on a surfboard during Sunday's Surf Dog Surf-A-Thon in Del Mar, Calif. The event welcomed 4,000 spectators, 80 pooches, and raised more than $100,000 for orphaned animals. Canine surf competitions have recently grown in popularity, and a number are held in Southern California each year.

Check out the slideshow of hang-ten pups on The Week. http://theweek.com/article/slide/219693/dogs-that-surf-competitively-a-slideshow---september-28-2011

Image: REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

(watch on MyDamnChannel)

Comedian Mark Malkoff offered New Yorkers free cab rides for an entire day, accepting requests via Facebook and Twitter. Mark says, "I hired a cab driver and kept the meter running for fourteen hours straight! Along the way we did fun stuff that’s never been done in a cab before including filling the entire cab with popcorn and plastering Tony Danza's face all over the cab. The grand total on my 14 hour cab ride turned out to be $486.10. Afterward I showered for a long, long time!" I'm willing to bet the shower was also 14 hours long.

Thanks Mark!