A technician looks over history’s first satellite prior to its October 5, 1957 launch.

Happy anniversary, outer space.

PhysOrg reports on a Northwestern University research team that’s found evidence linking Alzheimer’s disease to brain insulin:

They have shown that a toxic protein found in the brains of individuals with Alzheimer’s removes insulin receptors from nerve cells, rendering those neurons insulin resistant. (The protein, known to attack memory-forming synapses, is called an ADDL for “amyloid ß-derived diffusible [...]

Science Daily reports on a veterinarian, Janice A. Dye, who might have found the cause of feline hyperthyroidism, an epidemic that’s been afflicting cats for nearly three decades. It’s dust from chemicals found in our homes… and in canned cat food:

Dye, a toxicologist, began by hypothesizing that prolonged contact with certain polyurethane foams and components of carpet padding, [...]

A study from the University of Guelph finds that men often feel “coerced” into sex because we’re subject to the myth of the massive libido. In other words, social constructions do have a measurable effect on behavior, and it cuts across both genders:

A study of 518 university students found that 38.8% of men and 47.9% [...]

Physical anthropologists with Washington University of St. Louis have looked over some pretty old bones from a site near Tblisis and found humans were in Europe a lot earlier than we thought… a lot
closer to Lucy than to the Neanderthals:

The fossils, dated to 1.8 million years old, show some modern aspects of lower limb morphology, such as long [...]

Antioxidants are good for you! They help prevent cell damage and heart disease! Except when they don’t, as researchers at the University of Utah discovered. They were studying a gene called alpha-B crystallin, which can mutate and cause oversupply of one particular antioxidant:

Glutathione, one of the body’s most powerful antioxidants, is regulated at multiple steps principally by [...]

SONG: “An Awful Lot of Empty” (To download: right-click & “Save As”)

ARTIST: grant. I’m the guy responsible for this questionable corner of the internet.

SOURCE: “Colossal void may spell trouble for cosmology”, New Scientist Space Blog, 29 August 2007, as mentioned in the post “There’s a hole…”.

ABSTRACT: This article [...]

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Read more on Scottish traveler Constance Gordon-Cumming and her experiences with the unique geothermal phenomena of Yellowstone (pdf file) – as well as her tours of New Zealand, the Far East and the South Pacific before retiring… and developing a Braille system for Mandarin [...]

New Scientist reports on a new way to propel nanomachines – using wiggly little germs as propulsion (or models for propulsion) because they’re kinky:

The motion of Spiroplasma swimming through fluid by sending kinks down its body has been described perfectly by a new computer model by physicists in Germany. They believe their results could be important for [...]