Show Notes: Episode 17

This week, we celebrate the victory of the World Champion Green Bay Packers, and pulling back ever so slightly from the brink of nihilism.

This Week in Star Trek

Shatner Gets Even Heavier

William Shatner is intent on recording a metal album[…]the Star Trek actor will have plenty of experienced help on hand, with members of Deep Purple and Queen guesting on the album according to LA Weekly.

And Shatner is still milking his sci-fi past with all the tracks to have a ‘space’ or ‘flying in space’ theme.

In Conversation Gives Back

We are nothing without our fans. Nothing.  So, thanks to Aaron Merrill for suggesting a Nerds on Tech story, Kyle M. for letting us know that folks at The Daily are good people, Elisabeth McCaffrey for suggesting a Weird Science story this week, and our theme-song composer Pete Snyder for giving us two Weird Science stories as well as some funny feedback.

You too can get a shout-out by reblogging the show, leaving a comment, writing a review, or suggesting a story.

@cordblomquist tweets about the show, so give a re-tweet!

Nerds on Tech

Wired Gets Personal

A few selected readers have received an ultra-personalised cover of this months Wired magazine (UK edition). Wired digged up some personal information on the web of each person and printed this on their own personalised cover.

Wired’s statement: “…many of us are unaware how data we post only for social reasons can later be used for other purposes”

Up in Them iPhone Guts

The location and design of the RF components—EMI (electromagnetic interference) shields, connector locations, even board layout—is changed. They redesigned the vibrator—a seemingly minor item, but it takes up a large amount of space inside the phone. My tester said that the “Verizon vibration was quieter, a little softer to feel, and made a better sound on the table.” (No, I’m not making a ‘That’s what she said’ joke.)

The real news is that the chipset also supports both GSM and CDMA, suggesting “universal” models may be forthcoming.

 Armchair Psychologists

Sexy News is Good News, or Is It?

from Communication Research:

The experimental study reported here employed one of the most compelling visual cues of female sexual attractiveness (low waist-to-hip ratio) to test the influence of news anchor sexualization on audience evaluations of her as a professional and their memory for the news that she presents. Male participants saw the sexualized version of the anchor as less suited for war and political reporting. They also encoded less news information presented by the sexualized than her unsexualized version. Conclusions were drawn in line with evolutionary psychology expectations of men’s cognitive susceptibility to visual sex cues.

Women participants, on the other hand, did not vary across conditions in their assessments of the anchor’s competence to report on war and political news. Moreover, they encoded more news information presented by the sexualized than unsexualized anchor condition.

Good Vibrations

from The Journal of Sexual Medicine:

The prevalence of women’s vibrator use was found to be 52.5% (95% CI 50.3-54.7%). Vibrator users were significantly more likely to have had a gynecologic exam during the past year (P < 0.001) and to have performed genital self-examination during the previous month (P < 0.001). Vibrator use was significantly related to several aspects of sexual function (i.e., desire, arousal, lubrication, orgasm, pain, overall function) with recent vibrator users scoring higher on most sexual function domains, indicating more positive sexual function.

Weird Science

One Flu Vaccine to Rule Them All

A new flue vaccine would:

target proteins inside the flu virus that are common to all types of flu instead of being tailored to match individual strains, according to researchers at Oxford University.

The technique has never been tested on humans before and could be used to prevent around a billion people a year contracting the disease, including the variant swine flu.

This means that there would no longer be an annual rush to create new vaccines, at great expense, to match different strains as they develop.

Totally Gross Grossness

To make artificial blood vessels the team took smooth-muscle cells from fresh corpses and cultured them on tubular scaffolds made of a material called polyglycolic acid. Grown this way, smooth muscle secretes collagen, a structural protein that is, among several other things in the body, an important component of the walls of blood vessels.

Kickstarting Synthetic Biology Through Film

This new perspective comes from engineers turning their attention from other fields towards biological sciences and the structures of DNA. They see DNA as programmable code, cells as systems built of genetic circuits, and biology as a platform from which manufacturing systems can be created.

Synthetic Biology is a new approach to genetic engineering. It can make E. Coli bacteria smell like fresh rain, turn sunlight into gasoline, make concrete buildings heal themselves, or goats produce spider silk in their milk. These are strange technologies certainly, but these examples help demonstrate what is possible and already happening with the tools of synthetic biology.

See more at KickStarter.com

Our Awesome Governments

Senate Seating Assignments

from the National Bureau of Economic Research:

In this paper we demonstrate that personal connections amongst politicians, and between politicians and firms, have a significant impact on the voting behavior of U.S. politicians. We exploit a unique database linking politicians to other politicians, and linking politicians to firms, and find both channels to be influential. Networks based on alumni connections between politicians, as well as common seat locations on the chamber floor, are consistent predictors of voting behavior.

Less Smoking, More Drinking & Driving

from The Journal of Public Economics

Using geographic variation in local and state smoke-free bar laws in the US, we observe an increase in fatal accidents involving alcohol following bans on smoking in bars that is not observed in places without bans. Although an increased accident risk might seem surprising at first, two strands of literature on consumer behavior suggest potential explanations — smokers driving longer distances to a bordering jurisdiction that allows smoking in bars and smokers driving longer distances within their jurisdiction to bars that still allow smoking, perhaps through non-compliance or outdoor seating.

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Nerd Rage

There’s no reason to be mad this week.  Aaron Rodgers is the Super Bowl MVP.  The Packers did it.  Done.