Who doesn’t love a good duck penis? Carl Zimmer has written about them for The New York Times and The Loom. Ed Yong has written about them. So have I. In fact, duck penises are what won me a signed copy of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks signed by Rebecca Skloot at Science Online 2010. So I feel like I owe them something in exchange. That’s why I donated money to research that will be measuring the explosive erection of the duck. And you can too.
As part of the #SciFund Challenge, a crowdfunding initiative for science research, ecologist Patty Brennan and biomechanics expert Diane Kelly are seeking funding for “Force of Duck: Measuring Explosive Erection.” There are three days left for the #SciFund Challenge, so go make their holidays a little brighter and help fund this fascinating research!
I’m excited to announce that my Friday Weird Scienceguest post for Neurotic Physiology was chosen for publication in The Open Lab 2011! For those unfamiliar with The Open Lab series, it is an annual anthology of the best writing on science blogs.
A note from Sci: The authors took the opportunity in the manuscript to thank their hardworking, and probably long suffering, medical illustrator. Yes, Matthew Timberlake, our hats are off. How we do thank YOU. You are, in your own way, a Real Man of Genius (TM)
Men, let’s talk about that space between your testicles and your anus (taint anus, taint balls – Sci). The length of your member doesn’t really have a whole lot to do with your reproductive fitness, but the length of your taint does. It’s time to put away the rulers and whip out the digital calipers!
A new study came out in PLoS ONE earlier this week, claiming to be the first assessment of anogenital distance in adult men, as well as the first examination of the relationship between anogenital distance and a man’s fertility. I hate to break it to the researchers from Baylor College of Medicine and Stanford University School of Medicine, but you are not the first. A VERY similar study came out two months ago in Environmental Health Perspectives, which Sci so awesomely blogged. As Sci mentioned, anogenital distance is used to sex animals– shorter for females, longer for males. Anogenital distance has also been studied in human infants, mirroring what we know to be true in the animal world (which makes sense, because we are animals)…but no one had studied this in adults up until recently, which leads us back to the sudden interest in measuring men’s taints.
For some reason, in the pre-Paris shuffle, this post did not successfully get posted. I SWEAR I hit publish. Oh– by the way, have you seen my head? Proof that great writing can make a difference? The government now proposes a rule change that would require consent for all tissue research, citing HeLa in proposed rule [...]
The internet has been abuzz in the past week or so with the controversy surrounding Google+’s real name policy. If you use a pseudonym on Google+, not only do you run the risk of having your Google+ profile deleted, but you also run the risk of your entire account being suspended, meaning goodbye Gmail, goodbye [...]
With the final return of the shuttle Atlantis, NASA’s Space Shuttle program is officially done. The end of the shuttle program could spell a bumpy ride for biomedicine in space. It’s a citations kind of week. Google Scholar citations and how to formally cite a blog post seemed to be big hits this week. How spotted hyenas [...]
The 3QD Science Prize winners were announced this morning, and I’m so happy that a post by my dear friend SciCurious has been selected as Top Quark by Lisa Randall! CONGRATS SCI! The winners are: 1. Top Quark, $1000: SciCurious, Serotonin and Sexual Preference: Is It Really That Simple? 2. Strange Quark, $300: Anne Jefferson, Levees and [...]
