MaxRedline

Check With Your Proctologist

There's something going on with Uranus.

The appearance of a massive white cap on Uranus may seem alarming, but as planetary scientists are learning, this is what a prolonged summer looks like on the remote ice giant.

Ice giants Uranus and Neptune have water-rich interiors coated with hydrogen, helium, and a pinch of methane, the latter of which gives these outer planets their distinctive cyan complexion. Unlike Earth, where seasons last just a few months, Neptune and Uranus experience seasons that last for decades, resulting in strange and intense atmospheric phenomena.

Methane? They got cows out there?

Quick! Get Alex Occasional-Cortex on it!

 

GMCs? Oh My.

Researchers have genetically modified chickens that can lay eggs that contain drugs for arthritis and some cancers.

The drugs are 100 times cheaper to produce when laid than when manufactured in factories. Dr Herron and her colleagues managed to reduce the costs by inserting a human gene - which normally produces the protein in humans - into the part of the chickens' DNA involved with producing the white in the chickens' eggs.

Three eggs are enough to produce a dose of the drugs, and chickens can lay up to 300 eggs per year. With enough chickens, the researchers believe they can produce drugs in commercial quantities.

Still waiting for a response from KFC....

 

The Big Shark

That girl who was filmed with a huge great white shark and hitching a ride on one of its fins (among other no-nos) is now taking heat from actual scientists:

A lesson here: never make it All About You.

 

Food & Health

Vegans, as it happens, take twice as many sick days off work than normal people do. And:

The survey of 1,000 office workers by lozenge overlords Fisherman’s Friend found that vegans are also three times more likely to take a trip to their GP, compared with the average UK adult.

They may not be healthy, but they sure feel good about themselves.

On the other hand, if it was legal to hunt them, flamingo is reputedly tasty:

Ancient Romans, the first on record as having dined on the birds, ate both the body and the tongue. Apicius, a famous Roman cookbook that dates back to the first few centuries A.D., lists a flamingo recipe in which its meat would be boiled with dill, vinegar, leek, coriander and a fruit syrup and served with a sauce made from vinegar, boiled wine, cooking liquor, starch, pepper, cumin, coriander, asafoetida, mint, rue, and dates. “The same recipe can be used for parrot,” the entry concluded.

This is not to be confused with flamenco, as you'd be in for a whole lot of trouble if you boiled a dancer as described above.

And then, there are the cannibal bunnies:

Your fluffy pet bunny's cousin is actually a carnivore—and a cannibal, new photographs reveal for the first time.

Snowshoe hares in Canada’s Yukon Territory eat meat to supplement their diets during long winters in one of the coldest places on Earth.

It's emerged that while largely herbivorous during summers, they become meat-eating scavengers in winter.

 

Possibly Bad News

It turns out that there is no "aging plateau" - you're going to keep aging until you die.

Oh well; nothing makes it off the planet alive.

 

Not Content With Screwing Everything Else Up,

Wealthy Boomers are trying to fend off aging by having transfusions of children's blood.

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — Could the secret to eternal youth be found in blood transfusions from young people? Some claim that transfusions with “young blood” from teenagers can reverse the aging process.

They're kind of overlooking an important detail:

You risk picking up a severe case of stupid from the blood of today’s youth.

Science Leaps On

Research published in a major medical journal concludes that a parachute is no more effective than an empty backpack at protecting you from harm if you have to jump from an aircraft.

Researchers had subjects leap from a biplane and a helicopter, wearing either a parachute or an empty backpack. None of the subjects sustained an injury.

It may seem amazing, but the results speak for themselves; there was no difference in outcome for those who jumped while wearing a parachute and those who jumped while wearing an empty backpack.

On the other hand, it's possible that an underlying reason for the identical results of the tests might have had something to do with the fact that both aircraft were parked on the ground, so the average leap was two feet.

 

 

Nope, Not Cold Hookers

Hoar Frost is totally different (and likely prettier):

It's basically supercooled fog that becomes solid upon contact with trees, power lines, grass, and similar items at freezing temperatures. It doesn't generally affect roads, as it's really a transient phenomenon that melts away rapidly.

As for the term "hoar" it comes from the Old English word "har", meaning gray, venerable, old. The term came into use over time due to the phenomenon's supposed resemblance to an old man's beard. Naturally, the word was eventually bastardized into the present "hoar".

You're welcome.

 

At Least We Won't Need To Bomb Them

The ground is shifting under Iran's capital, Tehran, home to approximately 15 million people and the biggest city by population in western Asia. High-resolution satellite images recently revealed that in some places, the metropolis of the Middle East is sinking about 10 inches (25 centimeters) per year.

Just let them keep doing what they're doing; they'll be too busy trying to shore things up to worry about shooting missiles at the USA.

A side effect of the subsidence is the sudden appearance of giant cracks and sinkholes in some areas. In one case, a farmer was trapped for hours in a 20-foot-deep (6 meters) sinkhole after a crack opened where he was standing, Ali Beitollahi, head of engineering seismology at the Building and Housing Research Center in Tehran, told Nature.

Nature will take care of them.

 

What Has More Germs Than A Toilet Seat?

Pretty much everything. In brief, you're never home alone. Showerheads, in particular, generally harbor massive colonies of Mycobacteria. So while you think you're getting refreshingly clean, you might want to re-think that.

In essence, the bacteria poop a little indestructible condominium in your pipes, built of hard-to-break-down complex carbohydrates. But when the pressure is high enough, these species are let loose into the fine aerosol spray of water droplets pelting our hair and bodies and splashing up and into our noses and mouths.

Comforting, is it not?