Sci is at Neurotic Physiology today talking about a new study in naked mole rats! Because everything is better when there are naked mole rats in it. It turns out that naked mole rats are resistant to cancer? Why? The answer may be called hyaluronan. Head over and check it out!

People who suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) can’t help some of their actions. They suffer from severely intrusive thoughts and anxiety, which they know are not right. And they feel a compulsion to do rituals to get rid of them. Maybe it’s repetitive hand washing. Maybe it’s checking that the stove is off exactly [...]

Leprosy is one of those diseases that, when I first read about it, haunted my imagination. I had sad pictures of haggard, dirty people, wearing sackcloth, covered in sores or maybe with toes, noses, or hands missing, shuffling alone, wearing a bell to make that no one would go near…the leper. To be a leper [...]

Sci is at Neurotic Physiology today, talking about an interesting new study. There’s one gene that, when you knock it out, produces obese mice. There’s another that, when you knock it out, produced overgrooming mice, a model of OCD. When you knock BOTH the genes out, what do you get? And overgrooming obese mouse? NO. [...]

When I am stressed (and I’m stressed a lot of the time, as I bet a lot of you are as well), I turn to coffee. Not just to keep me going through the time when I need to get things done, but also for relaxation. For me, the smell and taste of coffee brings [...]

There once was a moth Who lived on a sloth And its larvae they did eat sloth s**t For the sloth is so slow The moth’s nowhere to go So try as it might, it can’t quit. Sci is at Neurotic Physiology today for Friday Weird Science! Head over and check it out!

I’m featured in this month’s Best of the Blogs video! You know you want to check out my Daisy Buchanan voice.

In light of some of the recent twitter happenings around evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller, I’ve got to thinking about practices and pitfalls in science and social media. And I think Miller’s example provides a good story for how NOT to do twitter. Here’s a social media tip: we can hear you. But that shouldn’t scare [...]

Most people have heard of ECT: Electroconvulsive Therapy. A lot of people will immediately think of the scene during One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which doesn’t give you a very good picture. People think of ECT and think of horrible seizures, something terribly dangerous. But it’s not like that anymore. Now, ECT is usually [...]

Yes. You read that correctly. Someone did this. And I’ve written about it! Why? How? Wherefore? Head over to Neurotic Physiology to check it out!