Still Alive! (contrary to rumor)

Although the almost criminal level of neglect my blog has been subjected to lately might suggest otherwise, I am actually still alive and thriving like a weed. For the last six weeks I've been spending my energy and time on physics, o-chem, and various other academic and sometimes less academic interests. Finally break week is here, but don't let the "break" part fool you. It is really just an opportunity to finish homework for those disciplined enough to do it. So far I haven't been one of those. I've spent the week trying to get caught up on some projects at work during the day and cooking wonderful meals with some friends at night. Monday we had salmon with Dijon sauce and noodles, on Tuesday we made some awesome chicken curry with rice, and on Wednesday we had sushi and miso soup. The curry cooking session was interrupted by a trip to pick up Reuter's kitten which is now staying as a guest and harassing the other cats to no end. (Yes, I'm kitten sitten.)
The "break" week has provided me with enough time to run across some incredible articles however:

1. Nerve cells from a rat have been cultured in a dish, and through interactions with tiny electrodes implanted in the dish, have learned to fly a computer simulated airplane. Basically the nerve cells formed a small network, and became intelligent. Amazing. With a few million more, maybe they could do my o-chem for me?

2. Apparently testosterone/estrogen levels in the womb are closely linked to the length of the index and ring fingers in humans. Using this knowledge, Dr. Mark Brosnan at the University of Bath has determined that men involved with hard-sciences tend to have higher estrogen levels than average, and women involved in social sciences have higher testosterone levels than normal. So, whip out your rulers folks, and participate in the study. Depending on how I measure, I get between 6.6% and 5.1% difference, my brother is around 1.5% difference, no wonder he's always been better at spacial reasoning then me! According to the researcher:
"As the levels of testosterone decrease in males, performance upon visual-spatial measures increase whereas comparable cyclical declines in female testosterone result in decreased performance upon visual spatial measures (Moffat and Hampson, 1996; see also Sanders et al., 2002). Thus those with the greatest visualization skills will be females with the lower male-typical digit ratio (0.98) and males with the higher female-typical digit ratio (1.0)." So, males with low testosterone, and females with high testosterone should be especially proficient at math-like subjects.
Anyway, record your scores below....

3. This article does a nice job of debunking the "Windows is more secure than Linux" myth.

4. If you are horribly allergic to cats, but have always wanted one, genetic engineering might just save the day (hope you brought your checkbook though...).

5. And finally, a major new discovery in Indonesia shows that there were once 3' tall human-like creatures running around making tools, starting fires, and hunting pygmy elephants. Apparently there are lots of legends about these creatures to this day, so maybe they aren't quite extinct? And people tell me not to worry about Yeti....