Beach patrol: Ma'am, I am going to have to ask you to put on your top. This is not a "clothing optional" beach.
Man sitting with topless woman: Leave her alone. She is trying to get a full body tan.
Beach patrol: Sir, I think you are asking quite a bit from the sun.
--Fort Macon, North Carolina
Overheard by: El Gee
Like humans with a nose for the best restaurants, roundworms also use their senses of taste and smell to navigate. And now, researchers may have found how a worm's brain does this: It performs calculus.eat spicy chili peppers...
Worms calculate how much the strength of different tastes is changing - equivalent to the process of taking a derivative in calculus - to figure out if they are on their way toward food or should change direction and look elsewhere, says University of Oregon biologist Shawn Lockery, who thinks humans and other animals do the same thing.
Observing the worm responding to changes in concentration suggested an experiment to see if the worm's brain computes derivatives. The mathematical concept of a derivative indicates the rate at which something, such as salt concentration, changes at a given point in time and space. So Lockery tried to verify that these neurons recognize changes in salt concentration and then tell the worm where food is and where it is not.Full story here: Worms Do Calculus to Find Food (Yahoo/LiveScience.com)
To do so, he artificially activated each neuron with capsaicin, the spicy component in chili peppers, which worms naturally cannot detect. Worms with capsaicin applied to the left neuron crawled forward. When the worm's brain indicated that the current motion leads to increasing salt concentrations, it continues moving in its original direction. But when the worm's right neuron is activated by capsaicin, it is duped into thinking the salt levels are decreasing. So the worm changes direction, hoping to find salt elsewhere.
Conductor to a group of passengers: You should flip the seats back, this is going to be a crowded train.
Passenger #1: Well, what if we lied down and pretended to be corpses or something? People wouldn't take our seats then.
Conductor: No, people would just come and sit on you.
Passenger #2: But what if we were just like "We're not dead yet!"?
Conductor: Well, they'd still sit on you, so you probably would be dead soon.
--NJ Transit
Overheard by: alison
