A newly discovered receptor in a strain of Escherichia coli might help explain why people often get sicker when they’re stressed.

Severe Headaches Associated With Higher Temperatures, Lower Barometric Pressures
Although large numbers of headache sufferers, particularly individuals who struggle with migraines, attribute their pain to the weather, there has been little scientific evidence to back up their assertions.

Scientists at the Justus Liebig University of Gießen and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena discovered a new form of electrical signaling in different plant species. This electrical signal — called “system potential” — is induced by wounding of the plant tissue and then passed from leaf to leaf.

A new option for car pooling
Colorful poison frogs in the Amazon owe their great diversity to ancestors that leapt into the region from the Andes Mountains several times during the last 10 million years, a new study from The University of Texas at Austin suggests.

Not So Sweet after all
We know that lifespan can be extended in animals by restricting calories such as sugar intake. Now, according to a study published in the journal PLoS Genetics, Université de Montréal scientists have discovered that it’s not sugar itself that is important in this process but the ability of cells to sense [...]

Oh so you stink thats perfect
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security plans to study the possibility that human body odor could be used to tell when people are lying or to identify individuals in the same way that fingerprints can.
In a federal procurement document posted Friday on the Web, the department’s Science and Technology Directorate [...]

Now here is a real cheapskate
Amy VanDeventer has always been a cheapskate. The recession is taking her to new extremes.
Before the economy tanked, she was still wearing maternity clothes from her last pregnancy, clipping coupons and using hand-me-downs to dress her daughters, ages 2 and 3. Now, she’s salvaging bagel scraps left on their plates [...]

Some pretty cool ideas come out of hard times
Brightly painted walls surround a mini-soccer field, video games, a climbing wall and play areas. The converted warehouse also has a new thick concrete roof, a half dozen shelters and an alert system to give a 15-second warning of incoming rockets.
The children of Sderot finally have a [...]

Pick your Vice

Last year, vise-grip manufacturer Irwin held a contest called “Tell Us Your Vise-Grip Story” where people share their personal experience of using the tool. They’ve chosen 3 finalists, one of which is this one by Bryan from Chesapeake, VA:
As a US Navy spine surgeon, I routinely deal with dozens of different types of [...]

Pixies With A Purpose

Meet the Planet Pixies, a trio of eco-friendly soft dolls for ages 3 and up that are designed to raise your ankle biter’s awareness about the environment-and encourage him or her to make pro-planet decisions. In other words, the Bratz they ain’t and we are quite thankful for that.

Smell a Trekkie a mile away!

Genki Wear, a company specializing in science-fiction-inspired jewelry (mostly in the Buffyverse, it seems), will be releasing three new Star Trek colognes to go along with the reboot of the franchise this year: “Tiberius”, a scent that is “difficult to define and impossible to refuse”; “Red Shirt”, with the brilliant [...]

Dry All The Time!

Sun Dry Swim has produced a swimsuit made of nanomaterials that repel water, so it never gets wet.  Water will just roll off of it, and it will be instantly dry, because technically it never got wet in the first place.

In search of a future for Brentwood, CA … and the U.S. work force
Raymond Alvarez:  Earthquakes, a great flood, fires – seemingly nothing could stop the rocking ’90s and California’s Contra Costa County, an area bounded by high tech companies to the south and industrial giants in the north.
Then came the fourth horseman of the [...]