Tasp + Hookers = Heterosexuality!

11 years ago
Self-stimulating the brain for heterosexual sex with a prostitute. Seriously.

Scene: 1970s, late night; car rolls up to young woman standing under a streetlight; window rolls down as car approaches

"Excuse me, miss? My name is Dr. Heath. I've got a young, gay man hooked up to a brain stimulator back in the hospital. He's been stimulating himself stupid horny these last few days. If I give you $40 would you mind coming back with me and see if you can't screw him straight-wise? Be sure to mind the wires because they're hooked right into his brain.

Can you imagine writing this into your IRB proposal? I mean. What?

And I love the matter-of-factness about describing how this all played out:

The laboratory was modified to permit complete privacy, and an extension cord was inserted between the plugs in the patient's hand and the jack box to the recording room to give him adequate mobility.

He goes on:

Later, the patient began active participation and achieved successful penetration, which culminated in a highly satisfactory orgiastic response, despite the milieu and the encumbrances of the lead wires to the electrodes.

To recap: this study involved taking a severely depressed, drug addicted, gay man into the hospital, letting him stimulate his own brain, and then tracking down a prostitute to have sex with him.

And in related wood-panelled 1970s mad neuroscience news, may I present The Feraliminal Lycanthropizer.

Previously, previously, previously, previously.

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Current Music: The Kills -- Fried My Little Brains ♬

New drug could cure nearly any viral infection

11 years ago
This sounds... unlikely.

Now, in a development that could transform how viral infections are treated, a team of researchers at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory has designed a drug that can identify cells that have been infected by any type of virus, then kill those cells to terminate the infection.

In a paper published July 27 in the journal PLoS One, the researchers tested their drug against 15 viruses, and found it was effective against all of them — including rhinoviruses that cause the common cold, H1N1 influenza, a stomach virus, a polio virus, dengue fever and several other types of hemorrhagic fever.

The drug works by targeting a type of RNA produced only in cells that have been infected by viruses. “In theory, it should work against all viruses,” says Todd Rider, a senior staff scientist in Lincoln Laboratory’s Chemical, Biological, and Nanoscale Technologies Group who invented the new technology.

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Current Music: Gary Numan -- An Alien Cure ♬

T-shirt hack!

11 years ago
Neo-Nazis tricked by T-shirt that changed message after it was washed

Attendees at a nationalist, right-wing concert in Germany were duped into wearing souvenir T-shirts that at first bared a pro-nationalist stance and symbology but later revealed an anti-far right message offering assistance after they had been washed.

The t-shirts originally read "hardcore rebels" and sported a skull and nationalist flags. However, once the garment had been washed, the shirt revealed a new message that offered to help far-right extremists break away from the neo-Nazi scene.

The message reads: “If your t-shirt can do it, you can do it too — we’ll help you get away from right-wing extremism."

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"Success! Functioning Anal Sphincter Grown in a Petri Dish"

11 years ago
Have you seen a better headline in weeks? I didn't think so.

Today's body part is the anal sphincter, that handy little ring of muscle that maintains the separation between your insides and your outsides. Researchers grew them from cells, implanted them in mice, and compared the new sphincters' function with the animals', ah, native orifices. And apparently, they were quite satisfactory.

The major step forward made here is that these sphincters, which were grown in a circular mold from human muscle biopsy cells and mouse nerve cells, could, by virtue of those nerve cells, communicate with the animal's nervous system, a level of functionality that had not previously been reached. The big-picture goal is to build new sphincters from patients' own cells, which could then be implanted without the immune system kicking up a fuss.

Previously, previously, previously.

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