It's rare that I see something that simultaneously astonishes, horrifies, and humors me. Joss Whedon's recent genre-busting slasher flick, Cabin in the Woods, provoked this amalgamation of emotion, but a film like that doesn't come to theaters every year.

Then, the other day, I saw this report on my local news station that, for me, mixed the exact same cocktail of emotions:



For those of you not interested in watching the report, or its preceding advertisement, it covered the growing field of chiropractic care for babies. When watching the story, I was astonished at the fact that this is actually a profession, horrified at what was being done to the infant, and slightly humored because -- well -- it was a cute baby and it did some funny things in the video.

Now, I readily admit that I am not a fan of chiropractic care to begin with -- I firmly believe that it's a pseudoscience, as numerous systematic reviews have demonstrated. I also believe that there are better, less "woo" (thank you, Orac for the term) ways to alleviate the ailments supposedly treated with chiropractic care, by engaging in exercises that promote good posture and strengthen supporting bones and muscles, by seeking a trained, specialized physician with knowledge concerning the certain problem one is having, or by taking a Tylenol, for example.

However, despite my inherent bias against chiropractic care, I really have nothing against its use. A great many people appear to be satisfied or extremely satisfied with their manipulative treatments, so I see no reason to poo-poo on their placebo. If it works for them, great!

But, what I do find rather abhorrent is when innocent babies are exposed to this pseudoscience. The cartilaginous growth centers in the spines of infants are very vulnerable and simply should not be subject to spinal manipulation, no matter how gentle the manipulations may be.



I can abide chiropractic care when it is chosen freely by adults, but I draw the line when infants are involved. That's my opinion. What do you think?

Throughout history, humans have played diverse forms of hide and seek. From parents concealing Easter eggs for children to track down, to drug enforcement officers searching for illegal paraphernalia in a crack house, to a homeowner stashing away a lock box filled with valuables, all humans, at one time or another, engage in hiding objects or searching for them.

This actuality prompted University of Alberta researchers Eric Legge, Marcia Spetch, Andrew Cenkner, Vadim Bulitko, Craig Anderson, Matthew Brown, and Donald Heth to examine human hiding and seeking strategies in their study "Not All Locations Are Created Equal: Exploring How Adults Hide and Search for Objects," recently published in the open-access journal PLoS ONE.

The researchers first aim was to examine the feasibility of utilizing virtual settings. To do this, they compared subjects' hiding and seeking strategies in both a real environment and a similar virtual environment, finding that strategies were nearly identical in both settings. Thus, the researchers determined that virtual environments can effectively simulate a real-world setting.


At this point, the researchers sought to delve a little deeper, specifically with regards to where humans are inclined to hide objects and where they tend to search for them.

In one experiment, the researchers asked subjects to examine a virtual setting and hide three objects in locations they thought would be most difficult for others to find. When subjects were searching for objects, researchers instructed them to select locations in the virtual environment that were most likely to contain a hidden object.

After conducting numerous trials with 394 participants, the researchers gleaned some interesting results. Most notably, they found that participants preferred different locations when hiding objects compared to when they were searching for them, despite the fact that the same subjects took part in both hiding and searching tasks. The researchers surmised that "people may apply a theory of mind and 'over think' where others might hide objects."

Overall, hiders tended to conceal objects in the center, "high visibility" areas of the virtual room, while searchers tended to be more drawn to look for hidden objects in dark or corner areas of the environment. Both searchers and hiders tended to avoid hiding or looking for objects near windows.

One limitation of the study was that it only took into account two environmental features, darkness and windows. Undoubtedly, other environmental characteristics, such as furniture, affect hiding and seeking preferences.

The researchers suggested that their methods be replicated in other varied settings, such as multiple-room or outdoor environments. They also indicated that their approach can be applied for further study in both police and military settings, such as when searching for improvised explosive devises or illegal contraband.

Citation: Legge ELG, Spetch ML, Cenkner A, Bulitko V, Anderson C, et al. (2012) Not All Locations Are Created Equal: Exploring How Adults Hide and Search for Objects. PLoS ONE 7(5): e36993. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0036993

Hi, everybody; it's me, the Neutrino! Sorry I haven't taken time to speak with you lately, but I've been busy traveling at close to the speed of light. Oh what a wild ride it's been!


At first, I was rather surprised. Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity had stood untarnished for over a century, and now it seemed that I, the meager neutrino, had put a serious crack in its foundation. To be honest, I was skeptical that I had really traveled faster than light, but then the physicists at OPERA re-ran their experiment and discerned that I had once again broken the light barrier! Now even I was starting to get convinced.

Of course, my moment in the limelight abruptly ended in February when the scientists at CERN admitted that there appeared to have been some flaws with their original experiments. An optical fiber connection may have been faulty, and the oscillator used for Global Positioning System time synchronization could have been malfunctioning.

It's been over two months since this revelation, and it feels like I have been somewhat forgotten. Frankly, I'm feeling a little lonely, so I'm here to formerly introduce myself and say, "Hey! I'm still cool!"

First off, I come in three flavors that scientists are aware of -- electron, muon, and tau. (Note: Electron-flavored neutrinos aren't the same thing as electrons!) Tau is the biggest type of me by far -- about 3,500 times heavier than electron. Muon comes next; it's about 200 times heavier than electron. Overall, I'm very small relative to, well, most anything else in the universe. In fact, I'm so small that scientists didn't even think I had mass until 1998, over 42 years since I was formerly discovered!


Now that you know a little about me, if you don't mind, I'd like to mention some of my more interesting attributes. For instance, did you know that in every cubic meter of space, there are about 340 million of me? That means that there are approximately 30 million neutrinos like me inside every human being on Earth! (I hope this doesn't weird you out! I'm actually pretty harmless.)

Also, did you also know that I have no electric charge, and thus am not bound by electromagnetic forces? The only things that hinder me are gravity and the weak nuclear force. This may sound somewhat boring, but it means that I can easily pass through a lead wall or even the entire Earth like an animal walking through a watery mist! If that's not weird enough for you, I might even be my own antiparticle!

I've also been around for a long, long, long, long time. Physicists estimate that I came into existence mere milliseconds after the Big Bang!

Though my faster-than-light hype seems to have diminished, physicists are still conducting amazing research on me everyday! In March, researchers at Fermilab used me to send a message through the ground for the first time. I'm also being used at the South Pole to detect exploding stars, gamma ray bursts, and other cataclysmic astronomical phenomena. 

Pretty cool, huh?

Recently, a certain virus has the scientific community in an uproar. The culprit, H5N1, is the virus that causes the bird flu. H5N1 is usually only transferred from birds to humans, but two teams of researchers decided to try and manipulate the virus so that it could theoretically be transferred from human to human.

The task turned out to be pretty simple, with only four mutations required to make the virus spreadable between ferrets (a commonly-used model for humans). The whole controversy arose when the researchers tried to submit their findings for publication. When it heard wind of the studies, the U.S. government became concerned that bio-terrorists could use the information to threaten public safety.

After much debate and deliberation, the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, supported by the government, recommended that the articles be published without the important methods and data. Last week, Nature decided to publish one of the articles independently of the board's decision.

While the research community primarily deals with pathological viruses like H5N1, popular culture has come up with several additional uses for the microorganisms.  In fact, alternative uses for viruses are very prevalent in mainstream media and the entrainment industry. The question is, are the references based in science?

Computer viruses

Although the metaphor can only stretch so far, it seems that computer viruses are aptly named. Biological viruses are small pieces of DNA or RNA that are injected into living cells, while computer viruses are small pieces of software that latch onto an existing program or document. But both kinds of viruses lack the ability to replicate themselves, so they use their hosts' resources to replicate, spread, and cause harm to the host from the inside.

One important difference between biological and computer viruses is that computer viruses are man-made while biological viruses come about through natural selection. This means that biological viruses (like the bird flu virus) undergo mutations, while a computer virus code stays the same as it is passed between computers.

Continuous advances in technology might facilitate interactions between computer viruses and the human body. If implanted electronic devices, like pacemakers, were "infected" with computer viruses, the devices could cause harm to the people who have them.

Internet ideas "going viral"

The term "viral" actually came from another term commonly seen on the internet: "meme." When you see this term, you might think of internet memes like LOLcats, Philosoraptor, or Condescending Wonka. But actually there's a more general definition.

Essentially, theorists say that a meme is the most basic unit of culture. If you were to dissect culture down to its fundamental building blocks, you would find that its made up of many small ideas, which are called memes.

A theory called memetics came up when researchers decided to study the evolution of memes--or how memes behave like genes. Memes are spread from brain to brain in the same way DNA is spread by viruses. Like viral DNA, memes also change and evolve as they propagate, and if they don't keep spreading they might die. However, memetics has been contested by some who think the meme can't be categorized, and by some who say it deviates from the original idea of the meme.

Viruses in the movies

Basically, movies about viruses portray exactly what challengers to the bird flu article publications are afraid of. Movies like I am Legend, 28 Days Later, and Contagion, show what might happen if enemies used a viral plague to take over the world. Possibly because this catastrophe has never actually happened, movie-goers seem to be absolutely fascinated by the idea.

The most recent virus-related movie, Contagion, seems to have a firm basis in science. In an interview with io9, the movie's screenwriter, Scott Z. Burns, tells how he relied heavily on input from virologist and epidemiologists from the Center for Disease Control. Some scenes in the movies were even shot at the CDC's facility.

In fact, the CDC seems to be doing everything it can to increase its popular appeal. Last year, a CDC blogger wrote a post about how to survive a zombie apocalypse. And actually, as the article suggests, a zombie attack bears a lot of resemblance to a virus outbreak.

So I would suggest reading up on the CDC's helpful tips, just in case we are overridden by zombies or (God forbid) virulent ferrets. 

Bacteria are everywhere; in, on and around us. They pervade every part of your day, beginning right from the moment that you wake up...

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP CRASH

The sound of your alarm clock being thrown against the wall is jolting to the senses, but it's still far more pleasant than the sound of the alarm, itself. In a daze on account of your sudden arousal, you scramble out of bed and examine the victimized clock. No lasting damage. Darn...

Sitting down on the edge of the bed, you smack your lips and wet your dry mouth with saliva. The sourness you taste is due to a build-up of bacteria at the back of your tongue. When awake, your saliva -- which contains a bacteria-killing enzyme called lysozyme --  restricts this growth. But when asleep, saliva production is significantly ramped down, allowing foul-tasting bacteria to grow relatively unchecked.

After freshening up in the shower and getting dressed, your thoughts turn to the rumbling in your tummy. Your appetite, which is often affected by the trillions of resident bacteria in your stomach, is ravenous.

Sifting through the pantry and refrigerator, you select a tasty combination of breakfast foods -- yogurt and granola -- and blend them in a bowl. Each spoonful of the delicious concoction delivers a dose of friendly probiotics, including Lactobacillus bulgaris, Streptococcus thermophilus, and Bifidus regularis. These, and other strains of bacteria, may help lower blood pressure, treat diarrhea, improve immune function, and potentially even provide a boost to your metabolism.


When finished with breakfast, you casually drop the dirty bowl into the kitchen sink, where it will accumulate countless numbers of bacterial residents by the evening. And when you use your worn kitchen sponge to clean the bowl at the end of the day, each milliliter of fetid water you squeeze out will contain up to ten million bacteria!

After breakfast, your next notable brush with bacteria will arise from your toothbrush. That's because every time you flush the toilet, it releases an aerosol spray of miniscule water droplets -- almost "like the Fourth of July" -- which can spread about 6-8 feet from the source. If your toothbrush is within range, fecal bacteria will latch on.

Fed, freshened, and fully attentive, you stroll out the door. A spring rain fell overnight, leaving traces of wetness on the ground and a musky, yet reinvigorating aroma in the air. That bracing smell is produced from the Actinobacteria that inhabit the soil, specifically a type of chemical called "geosmin".

After inhaling and exhaling a lungful of the crisp morning air, you head off to your next destination. Whether that destination is work, school, the grocery store, or pretty much anywhere, more bacteria will undoubtedly be waiting.

But don't be afraid, bacteria and humans have coexisted and competed for eons. It's just the world we live in.

April showers have given way to... May showers and thunderstorms. With all the electricity in the air, it is natural to ask, "Can I use this stuff to power my hairdryer?" Famous madman genius Nikola Tesla certainly pondered this idea.

It's commonly accepted that two things will survive the apocalypse: cockroaches and Cher. Cockroaches are believed to have survived on Earth for well over 300 million years (longer than the dinosaurs), can live without their heads for up to a month, and can withstand a 1,000 rad dose of radiation (more than ten times that of humans, though actually less than the forgotten flour beetle, which can survive a dose of up to 100,000 rads). As for Cher, after numerous plastic surgeries she has evolved into an indestructible, bionic super-life form more than capable of surviving till the end of eternity.

The noble cockroach and the cyborg Cher have comprised this mythical list of apocalypse survivors for decades, yet I wonder, is there something else we can add?


Last week, the above picture surfaced on message boards and blogs around the internet. It depicts a variety of fast food meals purchased a little over two years ago, each looking just as mouthwatering as the day the were served. This is somewhat staggering, but it's not quite as staggering as 2008's twelve year-old burger. These examples beg the obvious question: Can fast food survive the apocalypse?

The simple answer is no. Like the vast majority of organic matter, a hamburger will be either obliterated by raging torrents of fire, pulverized by monstrous tidal waves, or consumed by one of the Four Horsemen for a quick lunch before the ensemble finishes up wiping Switzerland off the face of the planet.

"The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It's run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data. It's all just electrons."                                                                           
                   
That weighty line may have been questionably true in 1992, but it's definitely true now. In 2011, humans were estimated to create and store approximately 1.8 zettaybtes (1.8 trillion gigabytes) of information! Whoa. That's crazy.

Yeah... so what the heck does that even mean? Well, it first requires a simple realization.

All that information you consume on your smartphone, your tablet, or your computer, it's not some immaterial, transfixing light show. What you see, it's real. It takes up physical space.

Almost all of the data that graces your glossy touch screen is stored in and transmitted from massive data centers all around the world. Trekking inside one of these computational behemoths is like taking a trip inside the brain of Technology, itself. All around you, fans whir and lights radiate a soft, otherworldly blue glow. The aisles upon aisles of rack-mounted servers are like the brain's lobes. Protruding cables connect the servers and fire blasts of information, like neurons.


It's difficult to calculate the exact number of data centers worldwide, but one estimate from Emerson Networks puts their number at 509,147. For some perspective, that means they take up 285,831,541 square feet of space, or about 5,955 football fields.

That may seem like a lot -- and it is -- but it could be a whole lot more. In the last decade, the storage capacity of the average server has increased 45 times!

But data centers don't just occupy space; they utilize an incredible amount of energy. In 2005, data centers consumed about one percent of the world's electricity, and required seventeen one-gigawatt power plants to remain operational.

Statistics like these currently beg the rapt attention of numerous companies building new data centers to meet the demands of Tweeters, bloggers, home moviemakers, Facebookers and e-consumers everywhere. 

Facebook recently opened its new data center in Forest City, North Carolina, and touts it as one of the most energy efficient in the world. Apple has announced plans for its new data center in Maiden, North Carolina, complete with fuel cells and solar panels to supply about 60% of the facility's 20-megawatt energy demand. Data centers are also cramming larger and larger capacity servers into tighter and tighter clusters and making use of virtualization.

All of this is good news, because the world's total amount of computer data is on pace to double every two years. The future of our global society and economy appears to be based upon creating and consuming massive amounts of data. We're going to need to put it somewhere.

When you look at a letter or number, is there a specific color that comes to mind? Do you think of the same color each time you see the letter or number? If so, you may belong to a lucky fraction of the population with a neurological condition called synesthesia, which I suspect may be a superpower.

People with synesthesia (or synesthetes) have different brains from the rest of us mere mortals. They have extra connections between brain regions so that perception in one region can stimulate another. The effect, in my opinion, is amazing.

Although the color association with numbers and letters is probably most common, synesthesia can take may forms. Instead of color, some people ascribe personalities to written figures. Others syntesthetes get specific tastes in their mouth when they hear or read spoken language. As if that isn't cool enough, some people with synesthesia have crazy good memories and many are more artistic than the general population.

On a sweltering summer's eve lit faintly by the glow of the setting sun, there's naught more refreshing than a light summer rain. As dusk turns to dark, reinvigoration becomes relaxation as the soft pitter-patter of raindrops on windows ease the transition from wakefulness into a restful night's sleep.

What can we thank for picturesque moments of precipitation like this one? Give your gratitude to evaporation and cloud formation, but don't forget bacteria.

That's right, bacteria.

A growing agglomeration of research is now showing that bacteria whipped up into the sky by winds can play a central role in forming snowflakes, raindrops, and hail across the globe.

For years, atmospheric scientists have understood that precipitation is formed when microscopic water droplets from clouds latch on to tiny dust particles. The water freezes around these ice nuclei, which then fall to Earth as rain, snow, or hail. But increasingly over the past four years, scientists are finding that bacteria, often Pseudomonas syringae, frequently play an identical role as dust particles in producing precipitation.

One of these scientists is University of Wyoming professor Gary Franc. From Storm Peak Laboratory, resting atop 10,500 foot Mount Werner in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, Franc literally spends his days up in the clouds studying precipitation-causing bacteria at the source.

"I'm sure there's a whole ecosystem in the sky going on that we are just getting an inkling about," he recently told the Laramie Boomerang.

Franc has also built further upon the mounting evidence that these bacteria actually enable water molecules to solidify above their normal freezing temperature. The organisms accomplish this by using a special substance that binds water molecules in an orderly arrangement conducive to forming ice particles.

"Basically, these bacteria have proteins that line up water molecules that mimic the crystalline structure of ice," Franc told the Laramie Boomerang.

Franc, and other scientists like Montana State University's David Sands and Louisiana State University's Brent Christner, all believe that research into these "rain-making" bacteria may furnish knowledge that could eventually aid drought-stricken areas across the globe.

The research could also be used to modify the good old idiom, "When it rains, it pours."

Because when it rains, it occasionally pours bacteria.

(Image: Bob Jones, Geograph)

Mistakes, blunders, gaffes, errors: we all make 'em, scientists included. Mistakes aren't bad, especially when they occur in the pursuit of understanding. For in making them, something is learned, and a new path may become clear.

But touchy sentiments aside, some mistakes are incredibly humorous, which makes them rather enjoyable to expose. In addition, I think it's fair to say that any hilarity is exacerbated when the blunder occurs by a scientist. When learned marble men and women mess up, the results can provide a certain jocular satisfaction to us mere mortals.

Take, for example, the events of two weeks ago, where Chechen scientists were absolutely ecstatic when they discovered perhaps the largest dinosaur eggs ever found. Containing roughly 40 eggs, the cache was believed to date back around 60 million years. The scientists tempered their excitement to some degree, however, saying that they were "90% sure" of their discovery.

This reservation proved to be wise; because two days later, a prominent Russian paleontologist examined the evidence and said that the eggs weren't eggs at all... they were rocks. Which, I suppose, is a pretty easy mix-up to make.


Scientists examining un-fossilized remnants of life have also been known to commit comical blunders. In 1996, a world-class team of scientists was assembled to study whether mad cow disease had infected British sheep at the end of the 1980s when they were fed the same contaminated feed as cattle. After five years of research and £217,000 spent, the team concluded their work when they discerned a monumental discovery: They had been mistakenly examining cow brains instead of sheep brains the entire time. Whoops.

But enough picking on poor scientists, after all, there are many grander and better-known scientists to jape at, like Carl Sagan! In 1983, Sagan, one of the most respected scientists and educators of the last century, co-authored an article in Science on the dangers of nuclear winter. The piece reported that a nuclear war would create a huge plume of dust, effectively blocking out the sun and sending the Earth spiraling into an ice age. But seven years later, Sagan penned another article in Science, this time admitting that the conclusions of his earlier article were flawed. As it turned out, an all-out nuclear war could probably only reduce average temperatures by up to 36 degrees in the northern climes. As Judith Newman jokingly remarked in Discover Magazine, "The chilling effect, in other words, would be more of a nuclear autumn."

Scientists' gears of thought are constantly grinding in the search for knowledge and the quest to make the world a better place. Mistakes have been, and will be, made along the way. Some of these are minor and can easily be made light of. For example, educational researchers at the University of Saskatchewan once used a logo of three-interconnected cogs to symbolize cooperative learning and how students can work together. The irony here is that three interconnected gears won't move -- they'll be deadlocked and static. Not exactly a great metaphor for learning.


But other scientific mistakes are major and consequential. The Challenger explosion and Fukushima-Daiichi come to mind. From these, we must learn, adjust, and advance, not languish in a state of fear and uncertainty. After all, as the Greek thinker Plutarch once said, "To make no mistakes is not in the power of man; but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future."

How is this possible when we humans can barely travel a few miles without getting lost? We have known for years birds are able to sense and follow the Earth's natural magnetic field; this is the very same field that makes compasses work. (Compasses being those old-fashioned GPS units that don't bark orders at you.) Research published in the past week shows that some migratory birds have specific neuronal pathways in their brains that are highly sensitive to magnetic fields. This then, is the brief answer: they map the earth by its magnetic field.

Bugs like ants, bees, wasps, and termites are about as ubiquitous as they come. They're everywhere; on the ground, in your food, within the walls of your house eating away your floorboards.

So what is it that makes these eusocial insects so darned  annoying successful? Actions such as cooperative care of young and participation in common defense are two key contributors, but there is another, not quite so apparent behavioral trait that plays a big role in these creatures' prevalence. It's their advanced "undertaking" behavior -- in other words -- how they treat their dead.

Over time, eusocial bugs have developed sophisticated responses to dealing with their deceased mates. This is vital to the health and fitness of the entire colony because it guards against the spread of dangerous pathogens.

These undertaking behaviors were the focus of a recent study appearing in the online open-access journal PLoS ONE. In their study, "Do Termites Avoid Carcasses? Behavioral Responses Depend on the Nature of the Carcasses," researchers Kok-Boon Neoh, Beng-Keok Yeap, Kunio Tsunoda, Tsuyoshi Yoshimura, and Chow-Yang Lee of Universiti Sains Malaysia and Kyoto University brought four different species of subterranean termite into the lab and examined their responses to the introduction of termite carcasses in varying forms of putrefaction.

Previous research demonstrated that termites tend to be necrophobic in nature -- they avoid dead bodies, but the new study found that termites engage in numerous, complex behaviors in handling their dead, not all of them exactly very ceremonious.

When worker termites detected a carcass introduced by researchers, their first response was to immediately evacuate the area and recruit other, unexposed workers to return to the site and examine the carcasses.

Once this action occurred, behaviors varied distinctly between the separate species of termite. Two of the species swiftly returned to the site, where they immediately began grooming the carcasses. The researchers theorized that termites groomed the carcasses to discern the viability for cannibalization, as many of the groomed carcasses were dragged off and consumed.

Other termite species were slightly more "respectful" of their dead, electing instead to bury the carcasses by walling off the locations where they were discovered.

Adding to the complexity of their behaviors, the cannibalization-prone termite species consumed freshly deceased carcasses and chose to bury those that had been dead for longer durations of time, usually 3-7+ days. For termites, necrophagy -- feeding on carrion -- serves as an excellent source of dietary nitrogen, but this act has to be appropriately carried out, because consuming older carcasses potentially infected with pathogens and overgrown with fungus would be hugely detrimental to the colony's collective health.

Over time, humans have established highly advanced methods of handling our deceased in a respectful and sanitary fashion. Examining termites' sophisticated, albeit slightly less reverent undertaking behaviors, goes to show how ecologically essential these behaviors truly are to highly social and population-concentrated species.
 

Citation: Neoh K-B, Yeap B-K, Tsunoda K, Yoshimura T, Lee C-Y (2012) Do Termites Avoid Carcasses? Behavioral Responses Depend on the Nature of the Carcasses. PLoS ONE 7(4): e36375. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0036375

Throughout history, people have found interesting uses for earwax. Seamstresses used it to keep their thread from fraying and medieval scribes used it to illuminate their manuscripts. Now, scientists are questioning whether a person's earwax type could show if they are susceptible to breast cancer.

Earwax comes in two varieties, and both are equally disgusting. Some people sport a wet, yellow-brown goo, while others have dry, grayish crumbs.

Interestingly, earwax type seems to be based on ethnicity. Most people from Europe and Africa have wet earwax, most people from East Asia have dry earwax, and people from Central and Southern Asia could have either type. This trend led scientists to think that earwax type could be determined by your DNA.

A few years ago, scientists found the genetic difference that determines what type of earwax you have. It's a matter of one tiny nucleotide. At a certain spot in your DNA, you either have a G (guanine nucleotide) or an A (adenine nucleotide). If you have an A at the spot on both of your chromosomes, you will have dry earwax. If you have a G on both chromosomes or an A on one chromosome and a G on the other, you will have wet earwax.

The gene where this difference occurs is used to make a specific transport protein. Then a certain type of gland in the body uses the transport protein to secrete gross substances, like earwax.

This gland isn't just found in the ear, however, it's also found in breast tissue. In fact, the transport protein in question was first discovered because there is an unusually large amount of it in cancerous breast tissue.

What's more, one researcher noticed that there were fewer incidences of breast cancer among populations of women with dry earwax. He even found that Japanese women who had breast cancer were slightly more likely to have wet earwax than Japanese women without breast cancer. In 2010, another group studied the earwax-breast cancer correlation at the gene level. As you might expect, they found a higher incidence of the wet earwax variation of the gene in Japanese women with breast cancer.

It seems, however, that the possible link between wet earwax and breast cancer risk might not hold for Caucasian women. One study published last year compared the earwax genes of 1,342 women with breast cancer and 2,256 women without breast cancer. The researchers found that the prevalence of the two earwax gene variations was the same in both groups of Caucasian women. Another 2011 study had similar results.

While it's exciting (albeit revolting) that earwax type could useful for catching breast cancer, it seems that there are still reasons to be skeptical of the correlation. But even if earwax can't be used as a diagnostic tool, it still has important uses for your body. It keeps your ears clean and free from intruders, and it lubricates the ear canal.