Nepenthe

The Astronomy Picture of the Day ;) (click to go directly and enlarge, of course)

The Art of Gert and Uwe Tobias

Read all about it at The Wall Street Journal . In a potential breakthrough that opens a new way to protect against HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, researchers found that a gel applied by women before and after sex cut the chance of acquiring the AIDS virus by 39% and the genital herpes virus by 51%. It is the first time an HIV-prevention method controlled by women, who bear the brunt of the epidemic in Africa, has been shown to work. About a third of women in the study said their partners didn't know they were using the clear, odorless gel. The findings come at a time when donor nations have been balking at continued large increases for funding AIDS treatment, intensifying pressure on finding new ways to prevent people from contracting the virus in the first place. The study was randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled—the gold standard for clinical research—and the results were deemed statistically significant. "It's a really well-done...

On astronaut food: Space food must be both lightweight and dense in calories. Therefore, bacon enters a hydraulic press to become a “Bacon Square” and toast becomes a “Toasted Bread Cube” glossed with a layer of edible fat designed to keep crumbs in check. Because carbonation bubbles won’t rise to the surface without gravity, beer is a no-go in space. Milkshakes work just fine, however, as does grapefruit juice. On relativity: If you tote your bathroom scale onto an elevator and watch the readout at takeoff, you will temporarily gain weight as the elevator’s acceleration adds an additional earthward pull to the earthward pull of gravity. The gain is temporary. On weightlessness: Bed rest, curiously, mimics spaceflight in that “staying off one’s feet causes the same sorts of bodily degradations that weightlessness causes”, including muscle atrophy and the thinning of bones. Because of the similarity, NASA funds bed-rest studies at the University of Texa...

- I finally read Twilight , and after hours of internet research, I’ve found a solution to a major problem I had with the story. I know why the vampire sparkles! Of course, innate body glitter is just the latest thing wrong with vampires at large, so I’ll start with the broader picture and work my way to the answer to that new riddle. First, I assert that vampires must be giant, highly evolved insects. That makes sense because most of the hematophages in the natural world are bugs. Second, like many real bloodsuckers, vampires must feed before they reproduce . However, unlike anything in the natural world, vampires seem to reproduce entirely through horizontal gene transfer . If they don’t kill their victim outright, then vampire genes invade the host and trigger… Metamorphosis . According to Twilight , the process takes days and is excruciatingly painful, which is logical given that the victim undergoes complete hystolysis and histogenesis without the benefit of a pupal ...

I already have something similar to stamp my personal address on envelopes, but that's due to my poor handwriting :|