This may be one of those situations where my love of a good story gets me in trouble with the more hard-minded scientific types among you, so please understand first that this is all intended in fun. Nonetheless, there are some intriguing facts here.

During the summer of 1997, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) repeatedly detected an extremely powerful underwater sound on an array of Cold War era hydrophones originally installed to listen for soviet submarines. "While it bears the varying frequency hallmark of marine animals, it is far more powerful than the calls made by any creature known on Earth." Phil Lobel, a marine biologist at Boston University, purportedly "agrees that the sound is most likely to be biological in origin," although his opinion appears to be in the minority. (Both quotes from this article at CNN.com.) The approximate origin of the sound has been identified as 50 S x 100 W, which is almost exactly the same latitude as Lovecraft's fictitious sunken city of R'lyeh, at 48 S x 123 W, although it is 1000 miles distant in terms of longitude. [Thanks, Maredith!]

You can listen to a sped-up version of "The Bloop" on the NOAA website here.

Before Jonathan Kuniholm had a tour of duty in Iraq, he worked for Tackle Design, an industrial design, research and development firm. After that tour, he was missing part of his right arm — which he lost when his Marine patrol was ambushed near Haditha.

When Kuniholm returned to his design shop, he brought along three prosthetic arms given to him at Walter Reed Medical Center — the same body-operated hook many veterans have used since World War I, a shorter utility prosthetic, and a new, state-of-the-art myoelectric arm. Each one had its drawbacks — and when Kuniholm and his Tackle Design colleagues disassembled them, they quickly concluded that they could improve on the designs. They founded the Open Prosthetics Project, an open-source collaboration that makes its innovations available to anyone. And Kuniholm signed on with Revolutionizing Prosthetics, an initiative of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.

Kuniholm's story — including the details of his injury and how his experience in Iraq has shaped both his work and views of the war — is featured in Michael Belfiore's new book, The Department of Mad Scientists: How DARPA Is Remaking Our World, from the Internet to Artificial Limbs. He joins Fresh Air contributor Dave Davies for a conversation about the Open Prosthetics Project and its goals.

This novel approach to cellphone microscopy from Dr. Aydogan Ozcan from the University of California, Los Angeles, foregoes bulky lenses and magnifies electronically.

For this electronic system of magnification, inexpensive light-emitting diodes added to the basic cellphone shine their light on a sample slide placed over the phone's camera chip. Some of the light waves hit the cells suspended in the sample, scattering off the cells and interfering with the other light waves.

Far From a Lab? Turn a Cellphone Into a Microscope [via picturephoning]

More:
Cameraphone microscope extension revisited
Cell phone camera turned remote microscope

Dutch designer Jelte Van Abbema recently won the €10,000 Rado Prize for promising young designers. His awarded body of work includes Symbiosis, a project involving printing with bacterial cultures on paper and billboards. The letterforms change shape, saturation, and hue as the micro-organisms grow and die. The seriousness with which it's all taken seems a bit overblown to me, but it's still a neat idea. I also like the minimalist text-only styling of Van Abbema's personal webpage.

From photographer Kevin Van Aelst. [via Boing Boing]

There's a ridiculous amount of hype in science today, and in an area as sexy as cancer research it is perhaps even worse. In writing this post, I am mindful of the "sharks don't get cancer" trope that's been used irresponsibly to sell shark cartilage as snake oil, very often to people who are in a desperate situation. Consider that a disclaimer.

There is, reportedly, a very low incidence of cancerous tumors in naked mole rats. Statements like "there has never been a tumor found in a naked mole rat" may be misleading unless they also explain to us just who is looking for tumors in naked mole rats, how long they've been doing so, how hard they're looking, who's paying for it, and why. Still, I think this paragraph is interesting:

The findings, presented in today's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show that the mole rat's cells express a gene called p16 that makes the cells "claustrophobic," stopping the cells' proliferation when too many of them crowd together, cutting off runaway growth before it can start. The effect of p16 is so pronounced that when researchers mutated the cells to induce a tumor, the cells' growth barely changed, whereas regular mouse cells became fully cancerous.

Of course, there's all kinds of reasons why it might work for naked mole rats and not for people, but the idea that a mechanism as simple as cellular "claustrophobia" might go so far to eliminating tumors is pretty interesting. Here's the original abstract at PNAS.

Gillian Higgins teaches horse owners about what's "under the hood." To do so, she very carefully paints detailed anatomical art onto the pelt of her white horses "Freddie Fox" and "Henry." [via Neatorama]

It may smell like rotten eggs, but it turns out H₂S may be able to slow down the chain of chemical degradation that causes death in cells that are deprived of oxygen. Biologist Mark Roth can supposedly take a lab rat, stop its heart with a dose of hydrogen sulfide, and bring it back to life an hour later just by turning off the gas. Quoting now from this article at CNN.com:

Scientists are starting to understand that death isn't caused by oxygen deprivation itself, but by a chain of damaging chemical reactions that are triggered by sharply dropping oxygen levels. The thing is, those reactions require the presence of some oxygen. Hydrogen sulfide takes the place of oxygen, preventing those reactions from taking place. No chain reaction, no cell death.

Roth has won a MacArthur grant for this work, so there's a better-than-average chance that it's more than just hype.

What do you do when you can't make robotic systems sensitive enough to detect faint traces of an unknown explosive? Normally, one would train dogs, but apparently this takes many months, and many treats. Inscentinel has a different solution- why not use bees instead? They claim that within a few hours, they can train a whole crop of bees to sniff out and react to a different kinds of scent, and then the bees are released back to their hive at the end of their shift.

Maybe someday, they will team up with the people who are creating remote-controlled beetles, in order to create an army of sensor insects to fly around and monitor everything. Which might be ok, as long as they don't sting me for not doing my laundry. [via neatorama]

Josh Klein developed a machine that trains crows to trade coins for peanuts. Literally, for peanuts. So you fill this thing with peanuts and set it out, say, in a public park, and the crows will scour the ground for loose change, carry it to the machine, and drop it in a slot in exchange for food. The project, dubbed "CrowBox," made a big splash when he unveiled it back in 2007. Now he's made the complete plans for the CrowBox freely available online so you can roll your own. And there's no reason you couldn't train your fly-monkeys-fly to gather other crow-portable objects. Twenty-dollar bills? Keys? iPods? Human eyes? The possibilities are endless. Set one up at the beach! Train seagulls to trade whole wallets for pre-shucked oysters!

In an effort to advance the cause of citizen science, Michael Wood is offering a total of $400 in prize money to anyone who can produce reliable, low-cost (<$100US) DIY scientific apparatus capable of meeting one of four design objectives:

First, we require a device capable of producing liquid nitrogen at the rate of at least 100mL an hour.

Secondly, we require a vacuum system capable of pumping down a volume of at least 10cm x 10cm x 10cm to, and holding a vacuum at, 0.01 atm (with pressure measurement).

Thirdly, we require the ability to view objects of small scale with up to 1000x magnification.

Finally, we require a functioning oscilloscope, capable of measuring at least two signals at once, and with multimeter capability, accurate in all measurements to within 1%.

Read all the details at Michael's website.

Back in 2005, I wrote a fictional scientific paper (.pdf) postulating that zombiism is in fact caused by a prion, rather than a virus, as is commonly hypothesized. I also wrote a short essay about the idea of "fiction science" at the time. Now Ben Tippet, at the behest of Dinosaur Comics' Ryan North, has written a similarly fictional scientific paper (.pdf) presenting "A Unified Theory of Superman's Powers" from a physicist's perspective. I'd be interested in hearing of other examples of people co-opting the serious literary forms of science for fictional purposes. If you know of one, please drop me a comment. [via Neatorama]

This trick actually came in really handy the last time reckless teenagers accidentally killed a member of my family. It takes several months for the pumpkin to grow into the shape of the victim's face, but, that's actually sort of useful because it gives you time to cool down and figure out if you really want to go through with the whole vengeance-from-beyond-the-grave thing or not. If you decide against it, you can always use your hellpumpkin as the world's creepiest Jack-o'-lantern, which is what I ended up doing. It worked out great, at least until those same reckless teenagers kicked it into a pile of goo on my front porch. That's irony for you! So now I'm growing another one...

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

Microchip Technology Inc. and MAKE have teamed up to present to you the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

Jared Bouck, over at InventGeek, sent us news of this project for building an Arduino-controlled algae bioreactor. Jared is gaga over algae, so much so, he's created a new site, algaegeek.com. Here he explains his bioreactor design:

This project is an easy to use platform for one technique that is broadly being used to trick algae into reproducing. Each algae species reacts differently in many ways to its environment and a light frequency that affects one algae may have no effect at all on another. So I have created an easy to build microcontroller platform that can be variably set and allows for easy configuration to any bioreactor. The LEDs can be swapped out to experiment with different colors and even UV for some hydrogen producing species. The platform is flexible enough to add other features like relay control for lighting, pumps, agitation and cooling and heating. While you may not be an algae fan like I am there is tremendous potential in this simple organism and inventgeek applauds researchers worldwide in their efforts and research.

Arduino Strobe Algae Bioreactor

Yesterday was a big day for anthropology, seeing the first publication of some 15 years worth of analysis of a 4.4 million-year-old fossil skeleton of Ardipithecus Ramidus first discovered by Gen Suwa, then a graduate student of Berkeley paleoanthropologist Tim White, in Ethiopia, in 1992. Science magazine has made all eleven papers freely available to anyone willing to register at their site.

How do you photograph a 300' tall tree in a dense forest with no clear sight lines? Wildlife photographer Michael Nichols did it by taking a bunch of close-ups using a special camera rig and stitching them together digitally. NPR has the full story. [via Hack-a-Day]

Don't be afraid! It's just expanding foam, a few bits of string, and some red paint. Gothic Nightmare's page will show you how to make the severed legs twitch, too.

I'm expecting a lot of prawn-armed Wikuses (Wiki?) this year, but the award goes to YouTuber GrafixFan for producing the first bloggable District-9-related Halloween costume images I've seen. We must harvest his tissues immediately.

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

Microchip Technology Inc. and MAKE have teamed up to present to you the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

Apologies to Jason Morrison for stealing his macro for the title, there, but I just wasn't going to be able to live with myself if I went with one of the obvious "computer virus" gags. Because these are viruses, you know. Made from old computer parts. By sculptor Forrest McCluer. [via Neatorama]

Harvard's George M. Whitesides has the highest Hirsch index of any living chemist, which makes him arguably the most significant in the world. The Hirsch or h-index is a kind of weighted score based on a numerical analysis of a scientist's published work which factors in both the number of papers and the number of citations those papers receive by other authors.

Back in October of 2008, Whitesides, et. al. published a paper in the Royal Society of Chemistry's journal Lab on a Chip that describes a technique for separating blood plasma for use in various immunoassays using a piece of plastic tubing taped to an eggbeater. The method can replace a $400 bench centrifuge for many purposes.

OK, OK, this is probably something you shouldn't try on yourself, a loved one, or even a close friend. Still, it's pretty flippin' amazing: a full-grown animal, permanently (apparently) cured of a genetic defect by a few injections. Can X-people be that far behind?

(That's a rhetorical question, BTW; those of you who know the real answer to that question is "yes," just chill and give me my moment.)

Here is the original abstract at Nature.

To produce a naturally blue rose has been a dream of horticulturalists for almost as long as people have been breeding flowers. It turns out to be essentially impossible to do by traditional plant husbandry, and attempts have proved futile for so long that the blue rose itself has become a symbol of the impossible or the seemingly impossible, and only the rarest achievements call for their presentation as gifts. And until recently, even those rare occasions had to be served by artificially blue roses made by growing white roses in tinted water. Now, however, the Japanese company Suntory, in partnership with Australia's Florigene, have created a transgenic rose which incorporates a petunia gene to achieve a pale lilac color which is really only barely blue. It took them 13 years of work to do it, however, so I guess they've decided pale lilac is close enough.

Artist Luke Jarram makes these gorgeous models of microorganisms and infectious particles in hand-blown glass.

I'm no expert on plant nutrition or hydroponics, so I can't vouch for the effectiveness of this idea or of the particular system, but aesthetically I really like these rotating hydroponic gardens with the plants growing inward. The idea is to minimize radiant losses from the bulb, which is the expensive part of an indoor garden to operate, and hence to maximize cost efficiency. The design saves on floor space, too.

My friend Cara just introduced me to the work of Japanese photographer and aquarist Takashi Amano. From his Wikipedia entry:

Takashi Amano is one of the most influential people in the freshwater aquascaping community. He can largely be credited with introducing Japanese gardening concepts such as Wabi-sabi and Zen rock arrangement to the aquascaping hobby. His tank compositions involve intricate, and typically asymmetrical (though balanced) arrangements of aquatic plants often augmented by river rocks and driftwood. His aquascapes are notable in that they often mimic nature in their appearance, and can be regarded as a form of art.

Besides his personal site, linked above, Mr. Amano also runs Aqua Design Amano, which specializes in high-end aquascaping equipment and supplies.

A 48-year-old elephant who lost part of her front left leg a decade ago was fitted with a prosthetic last week and is reported to be doing great. The artificial leg was made by the Prostheses Foundation, which also makes artificial limbs for human amputees.

Let the witty naming begin -- Robo Dumbo has been used, and I'm thinking someone more creative than me can come up with a nifty Steampunk version of Elephunk.

More:

• Report on Treehugger
• Report by Associated Press with more photos
• Nice chronology here

Well, turns out the USDA has weighed in on the argument with interesting findings. My favorite part of the Safe Food Handling fact sheets is this chart on how to handle moldy foods (very, very carefully is not one of the answers):

An article on CNN takes it one step farther, suggesting that you shouldn't eat the pizza you left out on the counter overnight (What? Even my husband finds this to be absurd). And I never would have thought about eating moldy sausage, hard or not.

In the end, experts and the USDA report both recommend throwing out most moldy foods. I admit, the idea of threads of mold weaving their way into the bottom of the container gives me a moment of pause; but if you read about what happens if you eat a slightly tainted dollop of sour cream, the most likely effect will be a stomach ache.

I've had stomach aches from eating myriad meals over the years, made by friends, family, and fast food joints, so this news isn't likely to change my habits. After all, we all know about the happy molds found in blue cheeses and on the outside of Bries and Camemberts. Now there's some mold I can sink my teeth into.

Anyone out there have any experience working with molds in cheese-making, or have a gruesome tale that will cure me from my "just scrape it off" attitude? Tell me about in the Comments.

ZeroEdge Aquariums makes these groovy continuously-overflowing fish tanks. I'm afraid to ask what they cost, but it seems like a do-able remake.

Julie Yu, a post-doc at San Francisco's Exploratorium, has a really good collection of unusual home lab activities on her page, including a home column chromatography experiment using common materials, which is the first of its kind I've seen.

Instructables user mountainmanna has noticed that used mini-blinds are perfect for re-purposing as plant markers. They're lightweight, rustproof, designed to hold up to continued sun exposure, and have a nice treated surface that takes ink or pencil very well. Her tutorial shows you how to cut them up for use.