Got some fun and cool science stuff for you today, after yesterday’s emotional expectoration.

First off we have a completely awesome bit of technology that might just tempt you into thinking you are a superhero : an armored glove with a built in high powered taser.

It’s a elbow-length glove, and has a built in video camera and laser pointer. It was originally inspired by tales of a fatal mountain lion attack, but now it’s intended for use by law enforcement, corrections, security, and other such situations.

Here’s the description of a possible scenario :

A robber is cornered in a dead-end alley. He turns to face the police officer pursuing him, ready to fight. He pauses. The officer’s left forearm is encased in ballistic nylon, and half a million volts arc menacingly between electrodes on his wrist. A green laser target lands on the robber’s chest. He puts his hands up; it’s a fight he can’t win.

Note the complete and total awesomeness of having lighting arcing across your fingers. That fact alone makes me want one of these. You have to admit, that would be pretty damn intimidating!

Next up : turning a foreskin into a spine!

Perhaps I should explain.

Scientists have succeeded in transforming skin skills into living, working neurons for the first time ever. This isn’t stem cell research, technically, although it draws from the same science of cell plasticity. The skin cells are being turned directly into neurons, without becoming stem cells in between.

Oh, and the foreskins come in because discarded foreskins from the millions of circumcisions per year are a great source for skin cells.

The idea is that with this technique, plentiful skin cells could be turned into highly valuable neurons, which could in turn be used for a wide variety of cutting edge regenerative therapies that could repair the previously irreparable tragedies like spinal cord damage.

Imagine a future where people who have been paraplegic or quadriplegic for decades due to a spinal cord injury are given the full use of their bodies back.

It’s not that far away!

Who lets the blind see and the lame walk again? SCIENCE, BITCHES!

And speaking of the miracles of science, get this : at the University of Montreal, they have developed a drug that suppresses the recall of bad memories… and ONLY bad memories.

Go Canadian brain science!

Specifically, the drug, called metyrapone, blocks cortisol production in the body, and is normally used to treat abnormalities of the adrenal glands.

But it also affects your cortisol levels, and recent research has suggested that the stress hormone cortisol plays a vital role in the process that creates post traumatic stress disorders.

Basically, PTSD is created by an over-strong memory process. Very stressful events, for sound evolutionary reasons, create extremely strong and vivid memories that burn deeply into our brains. Evolution figures that if it’s that stressful, it’s probably very important that you remember everything about the event and that is remains prominent in your mind, so you can avoid it in the future.

And that’s fine in a state of nature, with familiar environments and relatively simple events like an encounter with a mountain lion. From that point on, you can just avoid that part of the woods, or remember extra hard to keep an eye out for mountain lion shit, or whatever.

But modern human life interaction with a modern human’s complex and rich emotional life can create situations which are many magnitudes more traumatic than a run-in with a predator, situations so incredibly emotionally damaging that the psyche simply cannot process them, and so the PTSD victim becomes locked in a cycle where the mind is continually trying to process the memories and failing, and so the memories keep coming back with terrible vividness.

And because the point of this mechanism is to create a powerful association that steers you to avoid that same situation, the victim often finds their post-traumatic flashbacks being triggered by nearly anything which connects with the traumatic event. Depending on the severity of the emotional trauma, this can range from small highly specific triggers, easily avoided, to broad and crippling triggers that leave a person unable to cope with life at all.

This can cause severe disruption to a personal’s life, and lead to depression, anxiety, and even suicidal thoughts. The idea is that a drug like this one would suppress the cortisol and hence prevent these too-vivid memories from being formed in the first place.

That could go a long way to reducing the emotional havoc wrought by terrible events.

Finally, we have some somewhat NSFW technology to show you.

This is a video clip of “the skweel”, a sex toy designed to simulate licking.

Warning, this video is probably NSFW, even though technically, we see people’s tongues all the time.

It also might make you explode in giggles, as it did me.

That is just hilariously wrong. I am sure it functions decently for its intended purposes and I am never one to knock anything that brings people pleasure and joy.

It’s just really funny to watch the thing in action. It’s so obscene and bizarre that you would almost think it was just some lesbian artist’s art piece rejecting the phallocentric world of women’s sexy toys, or something.

But no, it’s a real product you can actually buy!

I wonder how it lubricates itself?