"Anyone who has ever been out in the rain too long or soaked for hours in a tub knows the prunelike effect it can have on your hands and feet. Conventional wisdom suggests it is nothing more than the skin absorbing water.

But a number of questions have puzzled scientists. Why do “wet wrinkles” appear only on the hands and feet? And why are the most prominent wrinkles at the ends of the digits? Surgeons already know that cutting nerves in a finger prevents the wrinkling, suggesting the process is controlled by the nervous system.

Now a paper in the journal Brain, Behavior and Evolution offers more evidence that wet wrinkles serve a purpose. Much like the tread on a tire, they improve traction.

In the study, an evolutionary neurobiologist and his co-authors examined 28 fingers wrinkled by water. They found that they all had the same pattern of unconnected channels diverging away from one another as they got more distant from the fingertips.

The wrinkles allow water to drain away as fingertips are pressed to wet surfaces, creating more contact and a better grip. Next is a plan to study whether pruney fingers are in fact better at gripping, and whether mammals in wet habitats are more likely to get them. Wet wrinkles have been confirmed only in humans and macaques.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Wet wrinkling may serve a purpose: better grip and traction."

-- Evolution FTW! Follow link for details and sources.

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"Mississippi voters will be allowed to decide on a ballot measure that defines "personhood" from the moment of fertilization, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled last week. The measure could potentially outlaw abortions, birth control, in vitro fertilization and stem cell research across the state.

Measure 26, which will bypass the legislature and go straight to a popular ballot vote, redefines the term "person" as it appears throughout Mississippi's Bill of Rights to include "all human beings from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof." The American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi, Planned Parenthood and the Center for Reproductive Rights filed a lawsuit against the proposal earlier this year, not based on its content or constitutionality, but because Mississippi state law says a ballot initiative cannot be used to change the Bill of Rights.

The Mississippi Supreme Court rejected the lawsuit in a 7-2 ruling, saying that it had no power to review any ballot initiative before the actual vote takes place.

"We didn't lose on the merits of the case, but what's disappointing is that it means the measure does go on the ballot that could later be held unconstitutional," said Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, an ACLU attorney on the case.

Les Riley, the founder of Personhood Mississippi, whose primary mission is to get Measure 26 passed, told HuffPost that he believes the ballot initiative is legal and valid because it does not alter the state constitution, but simply defines a particular word in it that should have been defined by the Supreme Court in the 38 years since Roe v. Wade.

"The court made the right decision," he said. "In the Roe decision, [Justice Henry] Blackmun said, 'We're not gonna answer the question of whether the fetus is a person,' and so in the 38 years since, we have had a tragic number of abortions. We think that God has already told us when life begins, and science has confirmed it, and the court has just not dealt with it, so we're hoping the people of Mississippi make the right decision."

Abortion-rights advocates say they worry that the language of the initiative is so broad and vague that its effects could go far beyond outlawing abortion. The measure could be interpreted to outlaw the birth control pill, for instance, because the pill can sometimes prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg. They also say the measure could outlaw in vitro fertilization, stem cell research and emergency contraception for rape victims, as well as discourage doctors from performing a lifesaving miscarriage treatment when a woman is suffering from potentially-fatal pregnancy complications.

Kolbi-Molinas said the measure could have unintended consequences that reach beyond reproductive health rights altogether..."

-- Sooo if this were to pass, would a pregnant woman be allowed to vote twice? Once for herself and once for the fetus?

And shouldn't she then be entitled to receive two lots of social security? One for herself and one for the fetus?

And airlines will be able to charge pregnant women two airfares - one for the mother and one for the fetus?

Problem Mississippi?

READ HERE

"After your death you will be what you were before your birth." -Arthur Schopenhauer

If only every star's death could be as glorious as a supernova, rocketing anywhere from thousands to millions of Earth-masses out of a star and into interstellar space. When we get one in our galaxy, like we do every few hundred years, the view from Earth can be spectacular.

The Crab Nebula, above, sprung from a supernova nearly a thousand years ago, in 1054. And while that supernova, and a handful of others since, have been visible from Earth with nothing more than the naked eye, we haven't had that pleasure since 1604. The remnant of that supernova, of course, is still visible today, although it looks no more impressive in visible light than the very end of a fireworks display.

While every astronomer would love to have the chance to see a supernova in our own galaxy, these aren't the sorts of things we can control. Instead, we have to be content to see what the Universe gives us to look at. We came close a generation ago, in 1987, when a supernova went off in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy just 160,000 light years away. Under ideally dark skies, the supernova was just barely visible to the unaided eye in the Southern Hemisphere.

For a generation since then, we haven't had a supernova occur anywhere near as close as that one. Which is too bad, because our telescope technology and coverage, today, is the greatest it's ever been.

But last month, on August 24th, the closest supernova since SN1987a went off in our neighbor galaxy -- the Pinwheel Galaxy -- just 21 million light years away..."

SEE HERE

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-- "Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, the star factory known as Messier 17 lies some 5,500 light-years away in the nebula-rich constellation Sagittarius. At that distance, this degree wide field of view spans almost 100 light-years, courtesy of the European Southern Observatory's new VLT Survey Telescope and OmegaCAM. The sharp, false color image includes both optical and infrared data, following faint details of the region's gas and dust clouds against a backdrop of central Milky Way stars. Stellar winds and energetic light from hot, massive stars formed from M17's stock of cosmic gas and dust have slowly carved away at the remaining interstellar material producing the cavernous appearance and undulating shapes. M17 is also known as the Omega Nebula or the Swan Nebula. "

SEE HERE

"An Illinois woman who injected hot beef fat into her face died Thursday of a bacterial infection soon after she administered the homemade cosmetic surgery. Oddly, doctors say the questionable injections had nothing to do with her death, which was deemed natural by Illinois’ Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office.

Janet Hardt, 63 of Homewood, Ill., boiled beef, extracted the fat and injected it into her face before she went to the hospital complaining that her face felt as if it was burning, according to ABC News’ Chicago affiliate WLS-TV.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported that Hardt had infections and scarring in her mouth and on her lips, but an autopsy declared her death was a result of peritonitis, an inflammation of the abdomen’s inner wall.

This bizarre story does not come without lessons, experts say.

“There are a lot people out there doing self-injections for wrinkles, but I don’t know of any medical associations that would recommend this,” said Dr. Phillip Haeck, president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. “It’s not worth taking a chance with your face to try to save money when it could ultimately cost you a lot more money.”

Hardt reportedly injected her face with the beef fat several times, and she also underwent several legitimate plastic surgery procedures. Because she injected herself multiple times with the animal product, Haeck said she was at risk of developing an allergic reaction.

“One of the injections could cause the skin to erode or ulcerate,” said Haeck. “We know that injections of animal proteins do not cause systemwide failure, but it tends to cause local reactions. A lot of people who have allergic reactions to animal proteins will say that their face is burning like this woman did. That’s probably what was going on here.”"

-- 'Cause legit plastic surgery is for suckers!

READ HERE

"European astronomers said Monday that they had found what might be the best candidate for a Goldilocks planet yet: a lump of something about 3.6 times as massive as the Earth, circling its star at the right distance for liquid water to exist on its surface — and thus, perhaps, to host life, as we narrowly imagine it.

The planet, known as HD 85512b, is about 36 light years from here, in the constellation Vela. It orbits its star at about a quarter of the distance that Earth circles the Sun, taking 58 days to make a year. That distance would put it in the star’s so-called habitable zone, if the planet is rocky and has some semblance of an atmosphere — “if everything goes right and you have clouds to shelter you,” as Lisa Kaltenegger of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, summarized it.

Astronomers cautioned, however, that it would take years and observations from telescopes not yet built before those assumptions could be tested and a search for signs of life could be undertaken.

Neither humans nor their robot helpers are likely to be dispatched toward Vela anytime soon. But the finding did vault HD 85512b to the top of a list of the handful of Goldilocks candidates.

The Vela planet was part of a haul of more than 50 new exoplanets — as planets around other stars are called — discussed in a news conference on Monday hosted by the European Southern Observatory. They are the newest fruits of an eight-year observing program by astronomers based at the University of Geneva and led by Stephane Udry and Michel Mayor, working from a telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile. About 16 of them are so-called super-Earths, with masses less than 10 times the Earth, further encouraging astronomers that they are on the verge of finding planets like ours. A pair of papers — one with Dr. Mayor as lead author and the other with Francesco Pepe, also of Geneva, as lead author — have been submitted to Astronomy and Astrophysics, describing the planets.

The Geneva astronomers used a sensitive spectrograph known as Harps (an acronym for High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher) to detect wobble in the stars’ motions as planets swung around them. The wobble technique, however, only reveals the masses of exoplanets. Without further information like the size — which NASA’s Kepler satellite, also in the exoplanet business, measures by seeing the shadows of planets as they cross in front of their stars — or the composition, the astronomers cannot say for sure whether the Vela planet is made of rock, steam, iron, diamonds or something else. Nor can they tell what, if any, atmosphere it has. Kepler will be of no help because its gaze is fixed on a different swath of sky.

The star that the Vela planet circles is known as HD 85512, or Gliese 370, after Wilhelm Gliese, a German astronomer. The star is orange, about two-thirds as massive and about an eighth as luminous as our Sun..."

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-- Love this memorial for the World Trade Center towers. I know it's not new, but I had no idea that you could go to the top of that garage and see it right at the base of the lights!

"Patent reform legislation passed by the US Congress may represent the most sweeping changes to the law in decades but the bill is not expected to end the courtroom wrangling between technology giants.

"My feeling is that it won't change the dynamics much of the ongoing patent wars," said Roger Kay of Endpoint Technologies Associates. "The problem is with patents in general, in that there's way too much patenting and people patent any old thing including how to toast bread."

Ed Black, president and chief executive of the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), said the bill, the America Invents Act, "doesn't effectively address the real serious problems of our patent system.

"The bill tinkers in various ways -- some things are good, some things are bad -- but it's not a gamechanger," Black said, agreeing with Kay that the main problem is "too many patents issued that are simply not high-quality patents."

Black noted that the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced recently that it has issued its eight millionth patent.

"Most people think of patents as being like Edison and the light bulb," he said. "Tell me we've had eight million game-changing ideas."

The Senate passed the America Invents Act on Thursday by an 89-9 vote. It cleared the House of Representatives earlier this year by a similarly lopsided 304-117 margin.

Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, a key author of the legislation, said the bill will "ensure that inventors large and small maintain the competitive edge that has put America at the pinnacle of global innovation."

The legislation notably shifts the granting of US patents from a "first to invent" system, which left considerable leeway for interpretation, to a "first to file" basis and seeks to reduce a backlog of 750,000 applications..."

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"A blind, cave-dwelling fish in Somalia knows what time it is, but its "day" is twice as long as ours.

Most animals have an internal body clock, or circadian rhythm, that lasts around 24 hours and is modified by the light-dark cycle of a day.

But an international team, whose research is published in the open access journal PloS Biology, shows that certain blind cave fish have a circadian rhythm that lasts almost two days.

The cavefish, Phreatichthys andruzzii, has evolved for nearly two million years in the isolated darkness of caves beneath the Somali desert.

Professor Nick Foulkes, of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, said that this particular species was chosen "because it was such an extreme example, having been isolated from a day-night cycle for so long".

In the course of its evolution it has lost its eyes, colouration and scales, having no need for them in the pitch-black of an underground cave system.

But it appears that the absence of day and night has caused a much more profound change in the fish's life rhythm..."

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-- 9/11/11

"Mayo Clinic researchers have developed a genome-based immunization strategy to fight feline AIDS and illuminate ways to combat human HIV/AIDS and other diseases. The goal is to create cats with intrinsic immunity to the feline AIDS virus. The findings -- called fascinating and landmark by one reviewer -- appear in the current online issue of Nature Methods.

Feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) causes AIDS in cats as the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) does in people: by depleting the body's infection-fighting T-cells. The feline and human versions of key proteins that potently defend mammals against virus invasion -- termed restriction factors -- are ineffective against FIV and HIV respectively. The Mayo team of physicians, virologists, veterinarians and gene therapy researchers, along with collaborators in Japan, sought to mimic the way evolution normally gives rise over vast time spans to protective protein versions. They devised a way to insert effective monkey versions of them into the cat genome.

"One of the best things about this biomedical research is that it is aimed at benefiting both human and feline health," says Eric Poeschla, M.D., Mayo molecular biologist and leader of the international study. "It can help cats as much as people."

Dr. Poeschla treats patients with HIV and researches how the virus replicates. HIV/AIDS has killed over 30 million people and left countless children orphaned, with no effective vaccine on the horizon. Less well known is that millions of cats also suffer and die from FIV/AIDS each year. Since the project concerns ways introduced genes can protect species against viruses, the knowledge and technology it produces might eventually assist conservation of wild feline species, all 36 of which are endangered.

The technique is called gamete-targeted lentiviral transgenesis -- essentially, inserting genes into feline oocytes (eggs) before sperm fertilization. Succeeding with it for the first time in a carnivore, the team inserted a gene for a rhesus macaque restriction factor known to block cell infection by FIV, as well as a jellyfish gene for tracking purposes. The latter makes the offspring cats glow green..."

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"From its adoption into the United States in 1850 up until the present day, California has always been a place where eccentricity is accepted, if not welcomed with open arms. Anyone who’s ever spent much time in West Hollywood or San Francisco can attest to that. Today, we’re going to take a look at one of California’s most notorious yet well-loved eccentrics.

He was a self-proclaimed aristocrat, even going so far as to declare himself Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, indulging in the sort of monarchy nonsense that the country had spilled blood over less than a hundred years before. Yet in spite of it, when this Emperor finally died in 1880, almost thirty thousand people jammed the streets of San Francisco to attend his funeral. And in 1880, thirty thousand people represented over ten percent of the city’s population.

Exactly when Joshua Abraham Norton was born is a subject of some dispute. Various records and testimonies place his year of birth anywhere between 1814 and 1819, and his obituary cited his age as “about sixty-five.” Regardless of when he was born, it is known that Norton was born in London but spent most of his early life in South Africa.

Like many men in his time, Norton packed up and traveled to San Francisco in 1849. He financed the move with an inheritance of $40,000 from his father, and within a few years had managed to accumulate a tidy sum in the California real estate market.

Also like many men in his time, an ill-fated investment ate the lion’s share of Norton’s fortune. It wasn’t the gold rush that got him, nor his dabbling in real estate, but a gamble on a shipment of Peruvian rice, of all things. Since China had banned the export of rice due to famine, Norton figured that he could purchase a shipment of rice from Peru and sell it to Californians at an exorbitant cost. Unfortunately, by the time his shipment actually arrived, several other Peruvian ships had as well, and the price of rice dropped from thirty-six to three cents per pound. Norton fought hard to hold on to his property if nothing else, but his bank foreclosed on his holdings in order to cover the enormous rice debt..."

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"Arizona prosecutors have charged more than 30 people affiliated with the Phoenix Goddess Temple, a 10,000-square-foot alleged brothel that had been operating under the pretense of providing "religious" services for hundreds of dollars in cash "donations," police said.

"They were committing crimes under the guise of religious freedom," Phoenix police spokesman Steve Martos said. "It's a sad situation when people are trying to hide behind religion and church to commit a crime."

The "temple" had been operating in Phoenix since 2009, but authorities didn't become aware of it until residents began complaining. After a local newspaper visited the alleged brothel and published an in-depth story, police launched a six-month investigation culminating in the arrest of 18 people Wednesday. They are still hunting down the other 19.

It was the largest Arizona prostitution bust since authorities broke up the tri-state "Desert Divas" ring in 2008.

During the investigation, police discovered the Goddess Temple was operating another alleged house of prostitution in Sedona, Ariz., which was also raided Wednesday.

Goddess Temple founder Tracy Elise, known within her business as "Mystic Mother," was one of the 18 arrested Wednesday. She had also been involved with a similar alleged brothel in Seattle, Wash., that had been shut down in 2009..."

-- So were they paying taxes?! lol

READ HERE