Research conducted by scholars at the University of Wroclaw in Poland suggests that tattoos and piercings add to a person's bodily symmetry and denote risk-taking behavior. This may increase the likelihood that a person so decorated will mate and pass on his or her genes:

Among the research subjects, men with bodily decorations exhibited greater symmetry than those without, whereas no differences emerged in women. Because people who are less symmetric did not opt more often for tattoos and piercings, researchers rejected one widely held hypothesis that suggested people use physical graffiti to hide or distract from imperfections in their appearance.

The results jibe with a different theory—getting stuck with needles can endanger one’s health via infections, so the study supports the evolutionary “handicap” theory that only those with high biological quality can afford such risky behavior. The im­pulse to get inked may be a risk-taking behavior inherited from ancestors who were strong enough to endure injuries and survive—as opposed to those whose ancestors survived by avoiding risk and injury. Therefore, at least in men, body art could serve as an “honest” signal of fitness in the Darwinian sense. So maybe that’s why pierced, tattooed rock stars do so well with the ladies.

Link | Photo: Geeky Tattoos

Fake Science is a tumblr blog of amusingly misleading scientific factoids and infographics. It's a good source of information "when the facts are too confusing."

Link via Nerdesque

Scientists have named a previously undiscovered type of jellyfish found in a Tasmanian river. The Csiromedusa medeopolis (Greek for "city of gonads") wears its sex organs like a crown on top of its body. It's quite different from any other jellyfish ever cataloged:

Launceston jellyfish expert Lisa-Ann Gershwin says it is an astounding discovery.

"It's absolutely different from every other jellyfish that's ever been known," Dr Gershwin said.

"So we not only put it into its own new species and its own new genus, but it's actually a brand new family."

Link via Geekologie | Photo: ABC News

A Swedish start-up company called Minestro is developing a system for harvesting energy from ocean currents. "Deep Green" consists of kites and turbines anchored to the ocean floor:

When operational, the turbine is expected to generate 500 kilowatts of power.

One of the big advantages of their technology, Minesto executives say, is its small size -- 12 meters for the wingspan and one meter for the turbine -- relative to other tidal-energy designs. [...]

The company hope to begin trials of a scale model in 2011 at Strangford Lough, in County Down, Northern Ireland -- which is already home to a commercial tidal power device operated by UK renewable energy company, SeaGen.

Link via DVICE | Company Website | Video

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov is the President of Kalmykia, a constituent republic of the Russian Federation. He claims to have been visited by aliens. Now a member of parliament is asking the Russian government to investigate the incident and discover if Ilyumzhinov revealed any state secrets to the aliens:

he head of the republic said that the humanoid figures wore yellow spacesuits and gave him a tour of their craft, which he described as a “semi-transparent half-tube”. They had brought him home in the morning, just as his worried driver and two advisers were about to call a citywide search after finding his apartment empty.

“I am often asked which language I used to talk to them. Perhaps it was on a level of the exchange of ideas,” Mr Ilyumzhinov, who is also president of the international chess federation FIDE, told the Vladimir Pozner programme on Russia’s main First Channel.

This is not the first time that he has spoken of the alien encounter but yesterday his claims prompted Andrei Lebedev, an MP from the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, to ask Mr Medvedev to order an official inquiry into the alleged alien agents to establish whether Mr Ilyumzhinov disclosed secret information.

Link via Gizmodo | Photo: Reuters

Brooklyn attorney David Zevin plans to submit an MRI scan as evidence in a sexual discrimination suit. This will mark the first time that a lie-detecting MRI has been used in a US court other than for the sentencing phase of a criminal trial:

So, Zevin had the coworker undergo an fMRI brain scan by the company Cephos, which claims to provide “independent, scientific validation that someone is telling the truth.”

Laboratory studies using fMRI, which measures blood-oxygen levels in the brain, have suggested that when someone lies, the brain sends more blood to the ventrolateral area of the prefrontal cortex. In a very small number of studies, researchers have identified lying in study subjects (.pdf) with accuracy ranging from 76 percent to over 90 percent. But some scientists and lawyers like New York University neuroscientist Elizabeth Phelps doubts those results can be applied outside the lab.

“The data in their studies don’t appear to be reliable enough to use in a court of law,” Phelps said. “There is just no reason to think that this is going to be a good measure of whether someone is telling the truth.

Link via Popular Science | Photo: NIH

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In this surreal video, comedian Reese Waters sits down for morning tea with boxer Mike Tyson. They discuss their preferences among teas, opinions on cannolis, and the finer points of wedding etiquette.

via Urlesque

Dutch artist Levi van Veluw uses his own head as a canvas, as he did in his 2008 series "Landscapes", pictured above. He doesn't accept help, but decorates his head completely by himself. At the link, you can see more examples of his work and a video of the artist decorated as a country landscape with a functional model train circling his head.

Link via Jules Crittenden | Interview | Photo: Levi van Veluw

Taiwanese designer Wei-Chieh Shih put two hundred laser diodes on a nylon jacket. When he spins around, it looks all swirly. More pictures at the link.

http://www.behance.net/Gallery/200-ld-stage-suit/493017 via DudeCraft | Designer's Website | Photo: Wei-Chieh Shih

(YouTube Link)

The RoboCup is an annual worldwide competition of soccer-playing robots. It's a challenge that encourages roboticists to create intelligent, fast, and accurate machines. The above video is from a demonstration by Japan's national team. via CrunchGear | Official Website

Photographer Francois Robert created a series of pictures in which he arranged human bones into sculptures. It's entitled "Stop the Violence", and serves as a warning against the human propensity to kill and destroy. In an interview about his work, Robert explained:

I always have been fascinated with skulls (In my home town in Switzerland, my parents and I were living above a Natural Museum). As I mentioned, I photographed over 140 skulls of animals from the Field Museum in Chicago, and it become a traveling exhibition across the U.S. for 8 years (sponsored by the Museum). In the mid-90’s, during an auction from an old school, I purchased 3 metal lockers and to my surprise one of them held a real, full size articulated skeleton. For years I had it displayed in one of the rooms in my studio and I often wondered what else I could do with it. Finally the idea came to me to explore the idea of disassembling the skeleton and rearranging the bones, and from that process came the series “Stop the Violence”.

Link via Geekologie | Artist's Website | Interview

(YouTube Link)

Researchers at the University of Maryland's Department of Aerospace Engineering designed unmanned aerial vehicles with the aerodynamic properties of maple seeds. The team then started a company and is selling the product:

X-Naves has produced new prototype vehicles of an entirely different flight configuration, which have demonstrated the capability to carry a payload two times their weight or ten times the amount of their counterparts for longer durations. The prototypes have utilized an understanding of the aerodynamics of a falling maple seed to create a vehicle both naturally stable and extremely efficient. An inventor and founder of X-Naves has patented and built approximately one hundred working prototypes.

Link (warning: sound when you click on an internal link) via Make

Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham argues that the ability to cook food contributed to human evolution:

“Cooked food does many familiar things,” he observes. “It makes our food safer, creates rich and delicious tastes and reduces spoilage. Heating can allow us to open, cut or mash tough foods. But none of these advantages is as important as a little-appreciated aspect: cooking increases the amount of energy our bodies obtain from food.”

He continues: “The extra energy gave the first cooks biological advantages. They survived and reproduced better than before. Their genes spread. Their bodies responded by biologically adapting to cooked food, shaped by natural selection to take maximum advantage of the new diet. There were changes in anatomy, physiology, ecology, life history, psychology and society.” Put simply, Mr. Wrangham writes that eating cooked food — whether meat or plants or both —made digestion easier, and thus our guts could grow smaller. The energy that we formerly spent on digestion (and digestion requires far more energy than you might imagine) was freed up, enabling our brains, which also consume enormous amounts of energy, to grow larger. The warmth provided by fire enabled us to shed our body hair, so we could run farther and hunt more without overheating. Because we stopped eating on the spot as we foraged and instead gathered around a fire, we had to learn to socialize, and our temperaments grew calmer.

Wrangham also asserts that cooking strengthened the bonds within early hominid communities and established lasting gender roles.

Link via Choice | Photo: flickr user flowcomm, used under Creative Commons license

Sheila Radziewicz of Massachusetts was born without arms or kneecaps. But she hasn't let that prevent her from accomplishing her goals, including getting a black belt in Taekwondo:

Sheila Radziewicz was scheduled to take her test next month at Bruce McCorry's Martial Arts in Peabody. The 32-year-old brown belt, who was born with thrombocytopenia-absent radius, or TAR syndrome, told The Salem News she's been training in martial arts for three years. [...]

The Salem resident, who works as an advocate for victims of domestic violence, said she has never let her disability stop her. At 23, Radziewicz earned her driver's license. She uses a car that she controls with her feet.

Link | Photo: AP

(YouTube Link)

The latest meme is to mix two or more memes together. The result is exponentially more amusing or annoying, depending on your perspective. This video combines Keyboard Cat with David After Dentist. It was made by Charlie Schmidt, the original creator of Keyboard Cat.

via Urlesque