Rollercoaster Science

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Thank you so much for nominating us in the Technology/Science category of the Podcast Awards. Please, now help us bring it home by casting your vote in the finals.

You can vote once every day between now and August 11th. While you're there, we also recommend:

• The Word Nerds
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Roller coaster physics

Jake and Erin from the Choose the Left podcast asked whether the front car or the back car offer a better ride on a roller coaster. We did a lot of investigation, but here are our primary sources:

Yahoo Answers
How Stuff Works
Glenco Online

Here's our answer about roller coaster physics.

We always take email questions, but if you'd like to call in a question our call in line is 206-338-4475.

Cat Brain Parasites

Here's the press release on the amazing story about cat brain parasites from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Bird Flu Update

There was a big paper in PNAS this week and the findings were widely misrepresented in the media, particularily in the headlines, which implied the bird flu risk was greatly diminished. Basically, what the paper showed is that when the researchers combined the current bird flu strain with a common form of the normal human flu, the combinations weren't easiy transmitted between ferrets (which are considered a good model), but that doesn't say anything about how transmisisble it would be after one or ten mutations, and viruses mutate really quickly, so the virus today is probably already different than the one they did the experiments with. The scientists themselves cautioned that "the genetics of flu viruses are unpredictable, and this study was based on one combination of viruses, when more than 50 possible combinations exist."


Funny Stuff

In a protein lab, it is common for people to set up their proteins as a
fusion with other domains which are easily purified through their affinity
to ligands attached to resin beads.  One of the most common of these
domains is the glutathione S-transferase protein or GST.  Typically, there
is a small linker region between the protein of interest and the fusion
parner and this amino acid sequence contains recognition sequences for
proteases.  After months in the lab, having limited success with her
proteolysis reactions, a young female grad student finally had her patience
and perseverence pay off when she destained yet another gel and saw that
her protein had indeed been cut by the protease.  In her joy, the young
woman ran out into the hallway, proclaiming proudly to all:
"I've got cleavage.  I've got cleavage.  Come over here.  Look at my
cleavage."

From Science Jokes, courtesy of what looks like a newsletter
Aliquotes Volume V Number xiii August/97     

Shout Outs:

• Joe from East Rochester, NY who listens while inline skating. He wrote in with some great questions and suggestions.
• Robert from Hong Kong (adam)
  
• PowerPoint Samauri (adam)
  
• All the students in Psych 101 at the University of South Dakota!

People seem to be using the Google Gadget we created that lets you play our show right from your personal Google Home page, so just a reminder that is easy to install using the (this link) "add to Google" button at welltopia.com

Song of the Week

In honor of our roller coaster question, our song of the week is "Upside Down" by ATOMICTOM, courtesy of Podshow.