Laws of Etiquette

Its a list of different rules of etiquette written over 100 years ago and some of the suggestions are a bit archaic and random, the advice is still strikingly resonant. It manages to cover many, many of the gaps in etiquette which have transformed society into a veritable Swiss cheese of incivility. If a man puts these suggestions into practice, he will definitely set himself apart for the other knuckleheads out there trying to land a job or catch the eye of a good looking gal.

Here is to becoming more refined gentlemen & Women!

• Never exaggerate.
• Never point at another.
• Never betray a confidence.
• Never leave home with unkind words.
• Never neglect to call upon your friends.
• Never laugh at the misfortunes of others.
• Never give a promise that you do not fulfill.
• Never send a present, hoping for one in return.
• Never speak much of your own performances.
• Never fail to be punctual at the time appointed.
• Never make yourself the hero of your own story.
• Never pick the teeth or clean the nails in company.
• Never fail to give a polite answer to a civil question.
• Never question a child about family matters.
• Never present a gift saying that it is of no use to yourself.
• Never read letters which you may find addressed to others.
• Never fail, if a gentleman, of being civil and polite to ladies.
• Never call attention to the features or form of anyone present.
• Never refer to a gift you have made, or favor you have rendered.
• Never associate with bad company. Have good company, or none.
• Never look over the shoulder of another who is reading or writing.
• Never appear to notice a scar, deformity, or defect of anyone present.
• Never arrest the attention of an acquaintance by touch. Speak to him.
• Never punish your child for a fault to which you are addicted yourself.
• Never answer questions in general company that have been put to others.
• Never, when traveling abroad, be over boastful in praise of your own country.
• Never call a new acquaintance by their first name unless requested.
• Never lend an article you have borrowed, unless you have permission to do so.
• Never attempt to draw the attention of the company constantly upon yourself.
• Never exhibit anger, impatience or excitement, when an accident happens.
• Never pass between two persons who are talking together, without an apology.
• Never enter a room noisily; never fail to close the door after you, and never slam it.
• Never forget that, if you are faithful in a few things, you may be ruler over many.
• Never exhibit too great familiarity with the new acquaintance, you may give offense.
• Never will a gentleman allude to conquests which he may have made with ladies.
• Never be guilty of the contemptible meanness of opening a private letter addressed to another.
• Never fail to offer the easiest and best seat in the room to an invalid, an elderly person, or a lady.
• Never neglect to perform the commission which the friend entrusted to you. You must not forget.
• Never send your guest, who is accustomed to a warm room, off into a cold, damp, spare bed, to sleep.
• Never enter a room filled with people, without a slight bow to the general company when first entering.
• Never fail to answer an invitation, either personally or by letter, within a week after the invitation is received.
• Never accept of favors and hospitality without rendering an exchange of civilities when opportunity offers.
• Never cross the leg and put one foot in the street-car, or places where it will trouble others when passing by.
• Never fail to tell the truth. If truthful, you get your reward. You will get your punishment if you deceive.
• Never borrow money and neglect to pay. If you do, you will soon be known as a person of no business integrity.
• Never write to another asking for information, or a favor of any kind, without enclosing a postage stamp for the reply.
• Never fail to say kind and encouraging words to those whom you meet in distress. Your kindness may lift them out of their despair.
• Never refuse to receive an apology. You may not receive friendship, but courtesy will require, when a apology is offered, that you accept it.
• Never examine the cards in the card-basket. While they may be exposed in the drawing room, you are not expected to turn them over unless invited to do so.
• Never, when walking arm in arm with a lady, be continually changing and going to the other side, because of change of corners. It shows too much attention to form.
• Never insult another with harsh words when applied to for a favor. Kind words do not cost much, and yet they may carry untold happiness to the one to whom they are spoken.
• Never fail to speak kindly. If a merchant, and you address your clerk; if an overseer, and you address your workman; if in any position where you exercise authority, you show yourself to be a gentleman by your pleasant mode of address.
• Never attempt to convey the impression that you are a genius, by imitating the faults of distinguished men. Because certain great men were poor penmen, wore long hair, or had other peculiarities, it does not follow that you will be great by imitating their eccentricities.
• Never give all your pleasant words and smile to strangers. The kindest words and the sweetest smiles should be reserved for home. Home should be our heaven.

Wishing you a happy life ahead!

It's down to taste

Sea salt may have a natural, organic appeal compared with plain old table salt. 

But don’t be too quick to write off the household staple.

Sea salt and table salt are not all that different, although the differences may make foodies 

want to choose one over the other when cooking.

Most importantly, when it comes to health, sea salt is about as healthy as table salt, 

though it’s often marketed as a better choice.

Both types of salt are composed of two minerals, sodium and chloride in similar amounts, by weight.

For good health, adults are supposed to eat no more than 6g of salt a day, but the average consumption 

in the UK is around 8.6g, and even more for men.

Too much salt in our diet is linked to an increased risk of stroke, high blood pressure and heart disease, 

all major killers in this country. Switching to sea salt is unlikely to lower your risk, as it's the sodium in salt 

which is thought to be behind these conditions.

The main difference between the two types of salt is the way they are 

harvested and how they are processed.

Table salt is mined from underground deposits and is highly processed, 

to remove trace minerals and give it its fine, uniform texture. 

It usually has an anti-caking agent added, to prevent clumping and in the UK, 

some brands have added iodine.

The more expensive sea salt is produced by evaporation of the salt from sea water. 

It is generally less refined and so often contains trace amounts of minerals such as magnesium, 

calcium and potassium. It may also contain trace amounts of iodine, but shouldn't be relied upon 

as a dietary source of this essential nutrient.

You can certainly reach for the sea salt some of the time. 

Its minimal processing gives the salt its characteristic rough or granular texture. 

It comes in different grades of coarseness, so you can choose the one you like best. 

The coarseness of the salt has no effect on its nutritional value.

If your concerns are more culinary in nature, you should know that sea salt’s subtly unique taste 

comes only from the deposits left behind from its natural state, which are not processed away 

like they might be with table salt.

These deposits enhance the flavour of the salt when eaten raw, such as in salads or on 

roast potatoes, though they may become lost when it is used in cooking.

You might want to use sea salt for a crunchier texture or a bolder flavour, 

while table salt is good for cooking dishes where the salt is not meant to be a 

standout ingredient.

But none of sea salt’s natural deposits are harmful, and any taste difference

doesn't actually matter for your health. 

So it’s up to you to decide if you prefer sea salt’s taste over that of the traditional table variety.

8 Ridiculous Cooking Myths You Probably Believe

One don't expect all of our readers to know everything about cooking. At least some of the readers probably aren't expert chefs (though, yes, one can assume that most are). It's OK if everyone doesn't know how to properly prepare a blowfish, or how to pair the right wine with the right dinner. You're not a master chef by any means, but you still know a few basic food truths, right? 

Well guess what: You're wrong about those, too.

 

# 8. Bread Gets Stale Because It Loses Its Moisture 

The sandwich is, without question, the best thing ever discovered by man (suck it, penicillin!), and bread is the most dedicated soldier in the sandwich's army. Bread makes it possible for loose meats and stray condiments to transcend their differences, to come together and celebrate their tastiness in an organized and mutually beneficial fashion. It brings order to your fridge; without the bread's stern but fair confines, what would keep your deli meats in line? Or your peanut butter and jelly? You'd have to just eat a spoonful of peanut butter and then desperately chase it with a shot of jelly. You'd be pounding fistfuls of various meats into your maw and chugging Grey Poupon just to feel something. Bread fixes all that and keeps your food safe and easily transportable. It's like an edible envelope that mails food letters straight to your mouth. 

Time for Fed Ex overnight. 

That's why coming home to a loaf of stale bread is absolutely the single worst thing in life (suck it, AIDS!). You've got your meats, your cheeses, your oils and vinegars, but the bread is hard and brittle and utterly incapable of inspiring order in anything. It's dry. You must not have sealed the bag, or maybe you left the bread out on the counter in the sun, thereby robbing it of all of its sweet, precious moisture. Surely that's what happened, right? 

The Reality: 

Wrong. When your loaf becomes stale, it's not because it's dried out; the opposite is actually true. When bread gets too much moisture, the starches in the bread start to crystallize, making the bread tough and crumbly. Maybe you know some people who store bread in their refrigerator to prevent it from going stale. Those people are not your friends. Low temperatures actually help to speed up the crystallization process, like baguette Viagra. 

It's too late for this loaf. Just look away now. Look away. 

# 7. Lobsters Scream When Boiled 

OK, you can't make a sandwich because all of your bread is stale, so you've decided to make a nice lobster (often called "the sandwich of the sea") instead. There are so many ways to cook a lobster, but because you're still furious that the universe robbed you of your bread, you need to take your anger out on something. You've been told your whole life that lobsters scream when you boil them, so that's what you'll do. You need to boil a small sea creature alive just to hear it scream. That's you. (In this hypothetical, you are a socio-path.) 

Be honest. Half of you are cackling right now. 

The Reality: 

Except it isn't screaming. That sound you hear is actually steam escaping the lobster's shell. When you toss a lobster into a pot of boiling water, steam builds up in the recesses of its shell and it has nowhere to go but out, much like a tea kettle. A delicious, expensive tea kettle. 

Not only is it not screaming, your lobster isn't even all that pissed off at you, because its nervous system isn't very complex, so it's feeling little to no pain. So now you can't get a sandwich AND you can't even satisfy yourself with the tortured screams of a defenceless creature. What a sad day for you. 

Now this is just a useless pot of un-tortured meat.

 

# 6. Searing Meat Seals in Moisture 

Sometimes you just have to take a look at your life and say, "Steak, steak steak steak, steak, it's time for steak, steak steak, it's steak time." You've got a big steak and an even bigger appetite. But you don't want to just broil the steak or eat it raw. That steak has been marinating for 48 hours; you need to preserve those juices, you want to be able to jab a straw into that steak and drink those juices straight up. And how do you do that? Well, because you're cultured, you know that searing is the best way to preserve juices, a tip you learned in one of Auguste Escoffier's cookbooks. Escoffier was one of the most famous chefs of all time (once called "the king of chefs and the chef of kings"), and he swore by searing. His cookbook is still used today, but not as a cookbook -- as a textbook in the school of cooking. He must know a thing or two, so if he says searing preserves juices, you are going to fire up the grill and slap the meat right down on it as hard as you can. Those juices will be yours.

Somebody should bottle that into a soda.

Or maybe you can't cook at all. Maybe you went out to a restaurant to have someone else sear something for you, a nice tuna or swordfish, or perhaps some seared chicken nuggets, if the restaurant is particularly fancy. You don't care what you eat, as long as it's juicy, and that means you need some searing going on. 

The Reality: 

Not by a long shot. Searing meat doesn't do a thing to keep juices inside. When you sear your steak, you're actually creating a tougher crust on the outside of the cut, which just makes the inside seem juicier by comparison. That great chef Auguste Escoffier whose work is still used as a reference today? He's not just wrong, he's dead wrong. (Also? Dead.) 

"I'll haunt your food! French toast? More like French ghost! I'm so lonely." 

Meanwhile, the totally alive renowned chef and food scientist (?) Alton Brown did an experiment testing the myth, and he found that searing meat causes it to lose more moisture than meat that hasn't been seared. So the next time you want your steak to be juicy, don't get rough with it. Show it some love and cook it ever so gently. 

Alton Brown, serious scientist. 

# 5. Alcohol Completely Evaporates When Cooked in Food 

Penne with vodka sauce. Chicken Marsala. Rum cake. They're all delicious and they're all made even more exciting thanks to their loose associations with alcohol. Sure, you'll never get drunk while eating something that has vodka sauce on it, because all of the actual alcohol gets cooked off, but you still appreciate that, at some point, alcohol was involved, even though it's gone now. 

Now all we need is a Coca-Cola cake. 

It is gone, right? Surely the alcohol has been cooked off or evaporated away or ... something. We need an answer on this, people, we let children eat penne with vodka. We're not feeding our children alcohol noodles, are we? 

The Reality: 

Yep! Depending on the method of cooking, the heat and the time the food is left sitting, up to 85 percent of the alcohol can remain. Even if the alcohol is put into boiling water, it can still retain its intoxicating qualities. For alcohol to completely cook out of food, it needs to be cooked for upward of three hours. Go ahead and look on-line and through every cookbook available; you will not find a single recipe for vodka sauce, Marsala wine sauce or rum cake that suggests you cook for three freaking hours. Unless you cook your beer-battered onion rings for three cool hours, you'll be ever so slightly on your way to a nice buzz. 

Warning: Whiskey-battered cheese ball vomit is caustic enough to melt linoleum. 

If you want an alcohol-free pasta dinner for 7 o'clock, that's totally fine. Just make sure you start cooking at 4. 

# 4. Cooking in a Microwave Destroys Nutrients 

You're hungry as all hell, but still a little bit hungover from last night's penne, so you're just not feeling up to cooking. You decide that you're going to pop some leftovers into the microwave. After you press the "Start" button, you remember something you've heard a million times: Cooking your food in a microwave destroys all the precious nutrients that that food has. So, now you're going to lose all the vitamins and minerals in your leftover lobster sandwich and pizza rolls thanks to that nuclear box, right? 

"Time to turn this into cardboard!" 

The Reality: 

Wrong. Cooking in a microwave doesn't start a war on nutrients any more than cooking on the stove top or in your oven does. In fact, microwave cooking helps to preserve nutrients more than other methods of cooking. 

Because microwave cooking often consists of less heat and shorter cooking times than more conventional cooking methods, it actually does the least amount of damage when it comes to nutrients. 

Above: The most damage. 

So, while cooking in your microwave probably won't cook everything in the way that you want it, it will keep those Hot Pockets nice and, uh ... healthy 

 

# 3. Putting Oil In Pasta Water Keeps the Pasta from Sticking 

We've neglected a big portion of our audience so far. We've covered the people who like to cook and the people who like to go out to eat. But what about those who can't cook lobster and steak and who can't go to restaurants because they're too poor, or they can't stop farting or whatever? What about them? 

What if you're too terrified of explosions to risk cooking Hot Pockets again? 

Well don't worry, because this entry's about pasta. Anyone can make pasta. Boil some water, throw some pasta in and, unless you want the pasta to stick together and get all blobby and horrible, you add a little oil to keep everything separate. That's all it takes. You get out the vegetable oil and generously get that pasta all lubed up. It is the only cooking trick you have ever learned. 

The Reality: 

And it's wrong. As long as we're talking about "facts" that you know, here's an actual fact: Water and oil don't mix. They just straight up hate each other. 

And pasta makes for awful threesome. 

Here's a cool thing about pasta you may not know: The different pasta shapes are not meaningless. There isn't a shady organization of pasta designers trying to trick people into buying arbitrarily shaped pastas for no reason. Different pasta shapes serve different functions. Some are good for soups and broths. Angel hair is better for thinner, delicate sauces, and spaghetti is better for thicker sauces. Fusilli (the twisty kind) is good with any sauce, but cavatelli (the little hot dog bun kind) is best with thick, chunky sauces. Hundreds of years ago, ancient pasta architects used science and alchemy to come up with the noodle designs that were most conducive to catching and storing different sauces, because they want you, the eater, to have the best experience possible.

You know what happens when you add oil to pasta water? The pasta, regardless of the shape, will be so slippery that it will no longer absorb your sauce. After all of the work that those diligent pasta magicians went through, you ruin all of it by pouring oil all over your pasta, and it won't even keep the pasta from sticking together.

Laugh it up

# 2. Cooking Vegetables Makes Them Less Nutritious 

By this point in the article, you're probably just fed up with cooking in general. You don't even know what to believe any more, so you've decided that you're just not going to cook from now on. Raw food, all day. Why? It's healthy. You've been enveloping yourself in all of this information and one thing really stands out: Cooking vegetables causes their enzymes to die. You'd get more nutrients if you printed out this article and ate it, a thing we in no way are suggesting you do, even though we think it'd be really funny to see you try. 

Come on. Do it. 

It makes sense, when you think about it (the vegetable-cooking thing). The enzymes in the vegetables die off when they're heated, which is common sense that anyone can understand, because everything dies when you heat it up too much. So, the cooked vegetables must be less nutritious than raw ones, right? 

Might as well switch those out with some Cheetos. 

The Reality: 

Nope. It turns out that when you eat raw vegetables, even though their enzymes are intact, they dissolve and get washed away in your digestive acids. Just like a body in a vat of hydrofluoric acid. And the thing is, the enzymes in plants are what helps them grow; they're not needed by humans because we have digestive enzymes of our own, rendering plant enzymes pretty useless. 

So the next time you think that your vegetables aren't nutritious when they're cooked, just think of Walt from Breaking Bad as he's dissolving a body in acid. It'll help to curb your appetite, too. 

Hydrofluoric acid is hell on nutrients.

 

# 1. Salt Is Salt 

You have a ravenous craving for cookies that can only be described as "monsteresque," and you don't have any Oreos or Chips Ahoy kicking around in your cabinet, so you decide that you're going to take a step back in time and make them from scratch. You really want these cookies. 

Only about 30 percent of cookies get past the "dough" stage. 

You've got all the right ingredients, except you have table salt when the recipe calls for kosher salt. What are you, a Rockefeller? You're not in the business of having a variety of salts lying around your house like some big fancy chef guy. Salt is salt. You get out a big mixing bowl and mix everything together, and then you lay them on a cookie sheet and stick them in the oven. Even though you used table salt, they'll turn out fine, right? Salt is salt, right? Maybe kosher salt is more flavourful, or maybe sea salt is slightly better for you, but salt is still salt, right? They all serve the same salt-like purposes, right? 

The Reality:

We wouldn't include it in this article if it wasn't a lie.

Begone, false temptress. 

Because table salt is much finer than kosher salt or sea salt, using it in recipes that call for the latter two can absolutely ruin a dish. Bitter and not at all like the real thing. When you use table salt in place of sea salt or kosher salt, you're going to wind up with over salted, briny food every time. 

Next time, spend the extra few bucks and pick up kosher salt if the recipe calls for it. Or just screw the whole thing and spend that money on cookies instead. Do something and do it fast because, if you're anything like us, this article made you absolutely starving. 

You'd better hope the chef is smarter than you.

Biggest Scientific Breakthroughs of 2011

From law-violating subatomic particles to entirely new, earth-like worlds, 2011 was an incredible year for scientific discovery. In the past 12 months, scientific breakthroughs in fields ranging from archaeology to structural biochemistry have allowed humanity to rewrite history, and enabled us to open to brand new chapters in our development as a species.

Here are some of our favorites.

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The world's lowest density material

With a density of less than one milligram per cubic centimeter (that's about 1000 times less dense than water), this surprisingly squishy material is so light-weight, it can rest on the seed heads of a dandelion, and is lighter than even the lowest-density aerogels. The secret — to both its negligible weight and its resiliency — is the material's lattice-like structural organization, one that the researchers who created it liken to that of the Eiffel Tower.

"Feeling" objects with a brain implant

It could be the first step towards truly immersive virtual reality, one where you can actually feel the computer-generated world around you. An international team of neuroengineers has developed a brain-machine interface that's bi-directional — that means you could soon use a brain implant not only to control a virtual hand, but to receive feedback that tricks your brain into "feeling" the texture of a virtual object.
Already demonstrated successfully in primates, the interface could soon allow humans to use next-generation prosthetic limbs (or even robotic exoskeletons) to actually feel objects in the real world.

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Astronomers get their first good look at giant asteroid Vesta

In July of 2011, NASA's Dawn spacecraft entered the orbit of Vesta — the second largest body in our solar system's main asteroid belt. Just a few days later, Dawn spiraled down into orbit. Upon reaching an altitude of approximately 1700 miles, the spacecraft began snapping pictures of the protoplanet's surface, revealing geophysical oddities like the triplet of craters on Vesta's northern hemisphere — nicknamed "Snowman" — featured here. Dawn recently maneuvered into its closest orbit (at an altitude averaging just 130 miles). It will continue orbiting Vesta until July of 2012, when it will set a course for Ceres, the largest of the main belt asteroids.

NASA's Kepler Mission changes how we see ourselves in the Universe

2011 was a fantastic year for NASA's Kepler Mission, which is charged with discovering Earth-like planets in the so-called "habitable zone" of stars in the Milky Way. Kepler scientists announced the discovery of the first circumbinary planet (i.e. a planet with two suns, just like Tatooine); located the first two known Earth-sized exoplanets; quadrupled the number of worlds known to exist beyond our solar system; and spied Kepler-22b — the most Earth-like planet we've encountered yet. And here's the really exciting bit: Kepler is just getting warmed up.

Heartbeat-powered nanogenerators could soon replace batteries

In a few years, you may never have to recharge your phone again — provided part of you keeps moving. Back in March, scientists announced the world's first viable "nanogenerator" — a tiny computer chip that gets its power from body movements like snapping fingers or - eventually - your heartbeat.
The researchers can already use the technology to power a liquid crystal display and an LED, and claim that their technology could replace batteries for small devices like MP3 players and mobile phones within a few years.

Neuroscientists reconstruct the movies in your mind

Back in September, UC Berkeley neuroscientists demonstrated their ability to use advanced brain-imaging techniques to turn activity in the visual cortex of the human brain into digital images. So far, the researchers are only able to reconstruct neural equivalents of things people have already seen — but they're confident that other applications — like tapping into the mind of a coma patient, or watching a video recording of your own dreams — are well within reach.

100,000-year-old art kit found in South Africa

Researchers investigating Blombos Cave in Cape Town, South Africa uncovered the oldest known evidence of painting by early humans. Archaeologists discovered two "kits," for mixing and forming ocher — a reddish pigment believed to be used as a dye. The find pushes back the date by which humans were practicing complex art approximately 40,000 years, all the way back to 100,000 years ago.

Online gamers solve a decade-old HIV puzzle in three weeks

Foldit is a computer game that presents players with the spatial challenge of determining the three-dimensional structures of proteins, the molecules comprising the workforce that runs your entire body. In diseases like HIV, proteins known as retroviral proteases play a key role in a virus's ability to overwhelm the immune system and proliferate throughout the body.

For years, scientists have been working to identify what these retroviral proteases look like, in order to develop drugs that target these enzymes and stymie the progression of deadly viral diseases like AIDS. It was a scientific puzzle that managed to confound top-tier research scientists for over a decade... but Foldit gamers were able to pull it off in just three weeks.

"The ingenuity of game players," said biochemist Firas Khatib, "is a formidable force that, if properly directed, can be used to solve a wide range of scientific problems."

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Ancient settlement upends our perception of human evolution

Tools discovered during an excavation in the United Arab Emirates were found to date back at least 100,000 years, indicating thatour ancestors may have left Africa as early as 125,000 years ago. Genetic evidence has long suggested that modern humans did not leave Africa until about 60,000 years ago, but these tools appear to be the work of our ancestors and not other hominids like Neanderthals. That being said, our understanding of how and when humans really evolved continues to take shape…

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Confirmed: Neanderthal DNA survives in Modern Humans

Some of the first hard genetic evidence that early Homo sapiens got busy with Homo neandertalensis actually came in 2010, but it was experimental findings published in July of 2011 that really drove the point home. But don't worry — there's still plenty of research to be done on everything from the details of human/neanderthal culture, to the enduring significance of Neanderthal genes in the modern human genome, to the mysterious humanoids, Denisovans.

IBM unveils brain-like "neurosynaptic" chips

Back in February, IBM's Watson made history by trouncing Jeopardy champs Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in an intimidating display of computer overlord-dom. But to compare Watson's computing power to the complexity of a brain would still constitute a pretty epic oversimplification of what it means to "think" like a human, as the way each one processes information could not be more different.

Watson is impressive, to be sure, but in August, IBM researchers brought out the big guns: a revolutionary new chip design that, for the first time, actually mimics the functioning of a human brain.

NASA launches the most advanced Martian rover in history

Currently in transit to the Red Planet, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory — aka theCuriosity rover — was launched on November 26th. The rover is scheduled to touch down on Mars inside the mysterious Gale crater in August of 2012. Once it's made landfall, Curiosity will make use of one of the most advanced scientific payloads we've ever put in space to assess whether Mars ever was, or is still today, an environment able to support life — a mission that could redefine the way we think about life in our solar system and beyond.

A device that lets you see through walls

Radar systems that can see through walls (aka "wall-through" radar systems) aren't unheard of, it's just that most of them are burdened by limitations (like a prohibitively low frame rate, or a short range of operation) — that make their use in real world settings pretty impractical. But that could soon change in a big way. The team of MIT researchers featured in this video has developed a device that can provide its operators with real-time video of what's going on behind an eight-inch-thick concrete wall — and it can do it from up to 60 feet away.

Electronics and biometric sensors that you wear like a temporary tattoo

Engineers John Rogers and Todd Coleman say that their epidermal electronic system (EES) — a skin-mountable, electronic circuit that stretches, flexes, and twists with the motion of your body — represents a huge step towards eroding the distinction between hard, chip-based machines and soft, biological humans.

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Culling senescent cells postpones age-related disease in mice

In the latest effort to make mice immortal, researchers revealed that flushing out so-called senescent (aka old and defunct) cells from the bodies of mice genetically modified to die of heart disease extended the health span of the mice significantly. If you can imagine taking a pill that could stave off the effects of age related disease, then you can appreciate why science and industry alike have demonstrated considerable interest in these and other age-related findings. [Photo by Jan M. Van Deursen Via NYT]

Scientists engineer highly virulent strains of bird flu

Two independent teams of researchers recently engineered highly virulent strains of H5N1, more commonly known as the avian flu virus. On one hand, the researchers' work is absolutely vital, because it allows us to get a head start, so to speak, on understanding viruses that could one day pose a serious risk to public health. On the other hand, there are many who fear that findings from such research could be used to malevolent ends were they to wind up in the wrong hands. Included in the latter camp is the federal government, which went to unprecedented ends to make sure that the experimental methods behind creating the strains never made it to the pages of either Nature or Science.

Regardless of your position, the development of these strains raises important questions about the nature of dual-use research, transparency, and censorship.

The hunt for the Higgs boson nears its conclusion

It's been a long, long time coming, but earlier this month, representatives from the Large Hadron Collider's two largest experiments — ATLAS and CMS —announced that both research teams had independently uncovered signals that point to the appearance of the Higgs boson — the long-sought sub-atomic particle thought to endow all other particles with mass. "Given the outstanding performance of the LHC this year, we will not need to wait long for enough data and can look forward to resolving this puzzle in 2012," explained ATLAS's Fabiola Gianotti. If the puzzle is resolved with the discovery of the Higgs, it will represent one of the greatest unifying discoveries in the history of physics.

Faster-than-light Neutrinos

By now, the neutrinos that were supposedly caught breaking the cosmic speed limit in Gran Sasso, Italy need no introduction. Scientists the world over continue to offer up critiques on the OPERA collaborative's puzzling results, especially in light of the team's most recent findings — acquired from a second, fine-tuned version of the original experiment — which reveal that their FTL observations still stand.

Of course, the most rigorous, telling, and important tests will come in the form of cross-checks performed by independent research teams, the results of which will not be available until next year at the earliest. And while many scientists aren't holding their breath, the confirmation of FTL neutrinos could very well signal one of the biggest scientific paradigm shifts in history.

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