Men have always suspected it, but now there’s scientific evidence: chocolate makes females more interested in sex. OK, so maybe that’s oversimplifying. What the study announced just before Valentine’s Day (appropriately enough) really said was that a “messenger protein” called DARPP-32 makes female rodents more interested in sex. But even the study’s lead author, Dr. …
Category: Blog
Artificial muscles
It’s not often that a three-year-old makes a significant scientific contribution, but one did recently–inadvertantly. Ron Pelrine, a senior research engineer with Stanford Research Institute International, wanted to keep his toddler out of the refrigerator, so he and his wife purchased a latch which attached to the side of the refrigerator with a special adhesive. …
Alison Lohans
When Regina author Alison Lohans was four, she spent hours pretending to read to her little sister. At five, she discovered that just because you stop dreaming when you wake up, the dreams don’t have to end: she’d lie awake continuing the dreams in her head. When she was seven, her father let her use …
The Assiniboia Gallery
The Assiniboia Gallery is 23 years old this year. So is its new owner Mary Weimer, who took over from the founders John and Monica Kurtz, in September. Running one of the city’s best-known, established art galleries was hardly what Mary had in mind when her mother called her one day in 1998, while she …
Bad hair
Toques are lovely devices for keeping one’s head warm, but they have a very unfortunate effect on hair. Those who complain of “bad hair days” in warmer climes will never truly understand bad hair until they’ve worn a tuque all day and pulled it off just before going in for a job interview. There’s more …
Sundogs
When it’s -25 and the wind’s blowing, we tend to keep our faces turned firmly to the ground, with occasional glances up to make sure we’re not about to walk into traffic. But if, during the recent cold spell, you were brave (or foolish) enough to raise your head, you may have been treated …
In praise of the amateur
“Amateur” is a word with a split personality. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad. Many of the world’s top athletes are “amateurs,” and nobody suggests they’re not as good as the “professionals.” In fact, I’ve heard many people say they’d rather watch amateur figure skating than professional skating, because the amateurs put more into it …
Crying
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who cry at movies and those who don’t. I freely admit I’m one of the former. I even cry during TV sitcoms. Heck, sometimes I even cry during commercials (only the really good ones, though). Just why some people cry more easily than others isn’t …
Ars longa, column brevis
Welcome to the newest feature of inregina.com, a weekly column on the arts. Which arts? Why, all of them. Music, mime, fiction, film, painting, poetry, drawing, dancing–if it involves human creativity in the pursuit of beauty, truth, or just a good belly laugh, then this column is interested in it. OK, OK, “this column” can’t …
The winter brain
On a cold, dark January day, your brain just slips into neutral. Thoughts crawl along like a snail on sedatives, you can barely remember your own name, and higher functions like mathematics are simply beyond your ability. Right? Not according to a recent study. Apparently, our minds are actually sharper in the winter than in …
Clocks
The passage of time has had a lot of attention lately–which makes this the ideal time to honor the clock. The earliest timekeeping device, used as far back as 3,500 B.C., was a vertical stick that casts a shadow. As the sun crossed the sky, the shadow moved; by measuring its movement, the ancients could …
The thermodynamics of turkey
“Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat,” goes the old song, but these days, goose is a rare sight on the Christmas table. Instead, the place of honor goes to the turkey. Turkeys are native to North American. In 1519 Spanish ships introduced them to Europe. By the 1700s turkey drives were being held …
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