Someone Think of the Children: Could There Really Be a Fifty Shades of Grey Baby Boom? [Fifty Shades Of Grey]

Jul 31, 2012 6:15 PM   You ladies! Ever since you picked up E.L. James' adult Little Golden Book Fifty Shades of Grey, you can't stop getting it wet. But, seriously, did you ever think that all of your freewheeling fucking might have real life-altering consequences? You know what they tell you in middle school — all it takes is one trip to the Red Room of Pain and you can come back pregnant, which is why, much to the embarrassment of everyone involved, Good Morning America is predicting a Fifty Shades of Grey baby boom in just a matter of months. Dubious? You're right to be. Their only proof is that several babies — or greybies, if you really want to sound like an asshole — could be born in Febuary, which is approximately 9 months after the book series peaked in sales. There are, however, a few pregnant couples willing to admit that it was actually the fan fiction-turned-best seller that motivated them to get crawl back into the sack and get to child-making again, with some even considering naming their unborn children after the novels' main characters Christian and Anastasia. Do this at your own risk, parents — giving your kids the names of characters famed for tampon sex play is like giving carte blanche to CPS to have them taken away. E.L. James' '50 Shades of Grey' Causing New Baby Boom [GMA]

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All that Stress Could Be Rapidly Eroding Ladies’ Lady-Brains [Brains]

The female brain, according to some recent scientific gleanings, might be so overloaded with stress that it actually ages faster than the male brain, but don't stress about that because, first of all, nobody really knows for sure yet if this is true, and, second of all, stress is a rapacious zombie that may right this very moment be clamoring for your braaaaaaaiiiiiins.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley went rifling around through some old brains to find out what the differences in gene activity between male and female brains were. They compared the "transcriptome" — a set of RNA molecules that indicate the activity of genes within a population of cells — of 55 male and female brains of different ages and found, much to their collective chagrin, that the pattern of gene activation and deactivation that occurs with aging seemed to occur faster in women than in men.

Overall, men seem to hasten to their mortality's logical conclusion faster than women, so researcher Mehmet Somel was a little surprised to find that the male brain seemed to age slower than the female brain. Not all organs age at the same rate, however, so the surprise, presumably, soon wore off. Somel and his team compared the expression of over 13,000 genes in four brain regions, finding in the superior frontal cortex that 667 genes expressed themselves differently in aging men and women, with 98 percent on a speedier ageing monorail in women.

Many of these changes have been linked to cognitive decline and degenerative diseases, though the researchers noted that the changes were not uniform among all women, meaning that environmental rather than strictly biological causes were probably at play. Somel explained that "a higher stress load could be driving the female brain towards faster ageing-related decline," and pointed to his team's work with monkeys, where stress seemed to induce similar changes in the transcriptome.

Cyndi Shannon Weickert from Neuroscience Researcher in Sydney says that the Berkeley team's study is fine and everything, it's just that the connection between aging female brains and excess stress is really speculative. It could be stress that's making the lady-brain wear away like an old penny, or it could be inflammation, which could lead to similar genetic changes. This much is certain, however: scientific certainty and consensus remains as elusive as the mysterious dancing walrus.

Stress may cause women's brains to age prematurely [NewScientist]

Image via eurobanks/Shutterstock.

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Defcon’s NinjaTel cell network could solve real-world problems

The Defcon security and hacker conference in Las Vegas is home to a unique cell network built using GSM and Wi-Fi. The private network was built for fun, but it could have a serious purpose when governments try to lock down cellular communications.

At the Defcon hacker convention going on now in Las Vegas, roughly 650 attendees received a custom phone that allows them onto a secret local cell network called NinjaTel. Both Ars Technica and The Verge have stories offering screen shots and details, but I’m curious about the real world implications of this experiement.

Ars Technica says the network uses both a GSM network (not sure what frequency it’s operating in, or if it is indeed a real “pirate” network as The Verge asserts) and secured portions of the conference Wi-Fi :

For redundancy and reliability, Ninja Networks engineers took advantage of a feature added to the Ice Cream Sandwich release of Android that makes it easy to route calls over GSM or, using the SIP, or Session Initialization Protocol, over a private portion of the Defcon WiFi. As each subscriber was added to the network, a syncing app added the user to the list of contacts contain on all other phones, giving each person a way to text or call the other. An app contained on the custom phone made it easy for other users to write apps for the device.

Those with phones can only use voice or SMS, and are all visible as contacts on the network at any one time. There are peer-to-peer modes where folks can converse without going over the wider network as well as apps that let users interact with each other or other Ninja-approved devices. But outside creating some fun for hackers at a security conference, this type of network might be useful for places like Syria or Egypt where governments can control and shut down cellular networks as a means to cut off unrest.

I’ve written about a variety of projects–from Serval to OpenGSM — that could be used to create peer-to-peer or actual cell phone networks for groups of users to rely on when their own communications are spotty or compromised by hostile governments. Such networks could be a boon for democracy and freedom worldwide, but could also easily become a headache for law enforcement when in the wrong hands.

But the implementation of such networks by technologists, much like the development of the Internet, could provide a platform that helps democratize the flow of information. And trying that out, and possibly making versions of it that are ever easier to use on handsets could create yet another avenue for information sharing.

And for those who think that such technology isn’t needed in the U.S. or developed countries, just recall when the Bay Area Rapid Transit authorities shut down cell phone access on platforms because it was concerned about protests or when India wanted the ability to snoop on BlackBerry devices. So NinjaTel may be a cool one-off experiment today, but with time and work it may become the next-generation’s Internet. A massively democratic and redundant way to share information — even when governments would rather shut such information sharing down.

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