geekosystem

Looking for a way to make sure your clothes don't burst into flame? A team of researchers at the Polytechnic University of Turin has come up with a method I'm willing to wager you've never tried before -- rubbing herring sperm into the fabric. Because seriously, who would have thought of trying that? I can't even take a guess at where you'd find that much herring sperm. You can't argue with results, though, and whatever else you can say about it, herring sperm seems to make a pretty reliable flame retardant, even if it's not a perfect process yet.

60 years ago today, one of the most important discoveries in the history of modern science was announced, as is right and proper, at a bar. On February 28, 1953 in the Eagle Pub, James Watson and Francis Crick first spoke publicly about their discovery of the structure of the most fundamental building block of life, deoxyribonucleic acid -- or DNA if that's too much of a mouthful.

Whether or not you're a gun fan, you're pretty used to seeing police officers -- and even some private security guards toting guns around to protect citizens and property. But not every criminal enterprise is a hanging offense -- or a shooting offense, as it were -- and if you're leveling a firearm at someone who is stealing a candy bar, chances are you're overreacting at least a little bit. That doesn't mean you have to let a criminal get away -- after all, look how that turned out for Spider-Man. Thanks to British security company Selectamark, though, you can now serve up appropriate justice through the barrel of a gun -- a gun that fires soft bullets filled with unique DNA that can be used to tag and help convict a suspect later on.

I recently picked up a 32 gig micro-SD card, and I was impressed by how much data could fit into something so small, but that's nothing compared to the research being done in DNA data storage. Science has been able to code information with DNA, but the amount of data capable of being stored was low, while the error rate was high. New techniques have allowed scientists to encode large amounts of data into DNA, including all 154 Shakespeare sonnets, a photo of their lab, a PDF file, and an MP3 of a portion of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, and to decode the information from the DNA successfully.

A team of researchers at Cambridge University have spotted the first instances of DNA with four helices present inside human cells. The Cambridge team hopes their findings could have implications for treating cancer, but the discovery more broadly suggests that we still may have a lot to learn about the basic structure of DNA and the shapes it can potentially take.

Need proof that the rich really aren't that different from you and me? How's this -- they don't pick up their dog's poop when they think no one is looking, either. No, not even when they're only walking their dog on the turf at their luxury condo. That's why a condo community in Florida is making residents enter their dog's DNA into a new genetic database that will be used to match a poop to a pooch and identify which owners aren't cleaning up after their pets. Which is really nice to hear, because you know once resources start being devoted to things like this, we've clearly solved the big problems like world hunger, and can now put science to work on the really important issues of our age.

You can eat all the salads in the world or run track into infinity, but as perfectly health conscious as some of us are, the human race will always remain an imperfect being. Well, on the genetic level, at least. Recent research has shed light on the fact that the human body plays host to a large amount of mutated genes, more so than what once was originally believed. While carrying defective, mostly harmless, genes isn't a new development, housing so many of them in combination with ones that can incite disease and other harmful maladies certainly is. In other words, no, we won't be firing crimson energy blasts from our eyes at any point soon.

A team of researchers at Cornell University have created a gel built from synthetic DNA that remembers its own shape, and can return to that form after being reduced to a free-flowing, formless goo. Researchers are studying the gel to learn more about its potential as a drug delivery system, which, to our minds, really sells short its obvious future making those little sponge dinosaurs totally obsolete and replacing them with staggeringly detailed hydrogel statues. Get on it, science!

After 16-year-old Marianne Vaatstra was raped and murdered in the Netherlands in 1999, the case quickly went nowhere. Those responsible were were never found, though the police conducted a thorough investigation. There were, however, traces of matching DNA on both the girl's body and a lighter in her bag. This summer, the police decided to conduct a mass DNA dragnet of around 7,000 local men. Compliance wasn't mandatory, but that didn't stop the man that appears to be Vaatstra's killer from submitting his own.

Do you have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning? Good news -- it's probably not your fault. Researchers are offering more insight into a gene that seems to govern people's sleep cycles -- mutations and variations in this gene can render people genetically predisposed to being early birds or late risers. So thanks, genetics,for taking one more item off of the "Aspects Of My Personality That I'm Actually Responsible For" list. Oh, also interesting about this gene? It may help researchers predict when you're going to die, like a gypsy made of DNA.

When a class of animal is made up of only one gender, those animals tend to go extinct. That's not the case with the bdelloid rotifers, which have been exclusively female for around 80 million years. Just like we learned in Jurassic Park, life finds a way. For the bdelloids, that way is by hijacking the DNA of other species for its own benefit. Clever girl.

Have you ever wanted your own army of nightmarish strawberry monsters, ready and willing to carry out your terrible whims and crush any who would dare oppose you? Of course you have! You're only human, after all! If there's one thing that science fiction novels and comic books have taught us over the years, though, it's that the first step to anyone's dream of a horrible mutant army is the extraction of DNA from the innocent organisms you want to breed into horrible mutants. Now, the Internet has taken all of the mystery right out of that all important first step, and thanks to the following handy video, you can extract DNA from a strawberry in your kitchen using things you (mostly) already have around the house. Just, when you do conquer the world, please, remember us fondly. We don't ask much. Maybe one of the smaller continents. You know. If you're not using it.

Your hopes of ever visiting a real-life Jurassic Park -- yes, we all still hold onto that dream, minus the rampaging dinosaurs part -- may have just been dashed upon the jagged cliffs of science fact. A team of researchers from Australia's Murdoch University released a study today suggesting that the very longest DNA could survive in a fossil intact is about 6.8 million years, meaning that giant lizards from the Cretaceous period are not viable candidates for cloning, no matter how sweet that would be.

A new genome sequencing technique in use at Children's Mercy Hospitals and Clinics in Kansas City has sped up genome sequencing, sifting through the DNA of ailing newborns in just over two days, rather than the weeks it can often take to fully sequence a genome, thus speeding up being able to detect genetic disorders.

Today in Bad News: Stem cell research could have hit a sizable stumbling block today as researchers at the University of California - Davis released a study demonstrating similarities between laboratory processes that turn adult cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and natural processes that turn cells cancerous. The troubling research adds to a growing body of evidence that iPSCs, while promising, are not ready for primetime. The silver lining though, is that understanding what's wrong with iPSCs today is the first step towards fixing it tomorrow.