Small Wonders: Feb. 11, 2011

In this week’s edition: telepathic dogs, using cobras to get high, and the mysterious magic of lithium.

* The movie titles that scientists love to riff on. (Discover such gems as “The Good, the Bad, and the Cell Type-Specific Roles of Hypoxia Inducible Factor-1 in Neurons and Astrocytes.”)

* Oliver Sacks loves herring, does not love Donald Trump.

* Are dogs telepathic? (Hint: No.)

* Misha Angrist holds forth on why subjects should be allowed to see the full sequence of their genetic data.

* An engineer designs a heart implant for himself.

* Vaughan Bell found it before I did: Case studies of people getting high from the bites of venomous snakes.

* Veterans trade tanks for tractors.

* “Playing by the same rules reduces the differences between humans, chimps, and monkeys.”

* D’oh: Scientist retracts paper after realizing that the compound he was studying had come from a mislabeled bottle.

* The Guardian has a profile of innovative neuroscientist VS Ramachandran.

* Lithium is a wonder drug. If only we had any clue how it worked.

* It’s hard to make stem cell breakthroughs when the regulatory landscape keeps changing.

* Why science writers should write for women’s magazines.

The Small Wonders: Feb. 11, 2011 by Wonderland, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.