Another weekend begins and as usual IST brings to its readers all the news that was unfit for the headlines.

Florida has its  problems and not all of them are DeSantis….there are alligators…..

For a guy who just lost part of his arm to an alligator, Jordan Rivera has a remarkably good attitude. The 23-year-old was at Banditos Bar in Port Charlotte, Florida, early Sunday when he had to use the bathroom, per WBBH. The lines for the restroom were long, however, so Rivera tells the station he decided to heed the call of nature in a pond behind the drinking establishment. “I either tripped or the ground below me kinda just went down,” Rivera says. “I ended up in the water. And that’s literally the last thing I remember.”

When he woke up, a disoriented Rivera was in the hospital. “I looked over and I saw my arm the way it was and I was like, ‘Whoa,'” he tells WBBH. “It kind of feels like my arm is just there, but not there.” Although he says what happened to him is “almost out of a movie,” he’s grateful to be alive and taking the partial loss of his limb in good stride. “I didn’t lose my life, I lost an arm,” he says. “They got my elbow. So, I don’t have an elbow. … It’s not the end of the world.” The FWC is continuing to investigate the incident, reports ABC News.

Moral of the story is….never pee outside in Florida.

I you have ever had a roommate then you know the frustration of having eat your last piece of pizza or donut….but the guy in Kentucky goes a bit far……

It’s that rarest of crimes: a Hot Pockets shooting. Police in Louisville, Kentucky, say a 64-year-old man shot his roommate in the derriere for eating the last one, reports WLKY. Clifton Williams allegedly got torqued and started “throwing tiles” at his male roommate when he discovered all the Hot Pockets were gone, according to the police report, per WAVE3. The roommate says he fought back and was trying to leave when Williams retrieved a gun from the house and shot him in the buttocks, say police.

Williams has pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree assault. His presumably former roommate managed to walk a few blocks for help before being to taken to a local hospital for treatment. Williams appears to be wearing a slight smile in his booking mug shot, though he faces 5 to 10 years in prison if convicted, notes NBC News. He is due back in court next week.

Moral of this story is….Hot Pockets can be hazardous to your health.

A giant story in the science world would make for numerous SciFi horror flicks…..

According to a report published in Nature, Professor Katsuhiko Hayashi, a Japanese scientist at Kyushu University, has engineered a method of turning male mice skin cells into pluripotent stem cells, which can potentially develop into various types of cells or tissues.

Professor Hayashi and his team then grew these cells with a drug that converted the male rodent stem cells into female cells, which produced viable egg cells.

These eggs were then fertilized, which produced newborn male mice.

“This is the first case of making robust mammal oocytes from male cells,” Dr Hayashi said of the study.

And, given this recent breakthrough, he said he could emulate this process in humans in the near future, predicting it would take around five years.

As the scientists could produce egg-like cells from two male mice, it also raises the possibilities of same-sex couples and their fertility options.

“It’s a very clever strategy,” said Diana Laird, a stem cell and reproductive expert at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the research, as per New York Post.

“It’s an important step in both stem cell and reproductive biology.”

https://www.unilad.com/technology/scientists-believe-labgrown-babies-could-be-a-possibility-in-5-years-734548-20230526

Can you see any way this could be abused?  I do!

Nanobots are coming!

A nanoscale robotic hand with four bendable fingers can grasp objects like gold nanoparticles or viruses.

Xing Wang at the University of Illinois and his colleagues constructed the nanohand using a method called DNA origami, in which a long, single strand of DNA is “stapled” together by shorter DNA pieces that pair with specific sequences on the longer strand. This method can be used to create complex shapes, from maps of the Americas to spinning nanoturbines.

The four fingers of the nanohand are joined to a “palm” to form a cross shape when the hand is open. Each finger is just 71 nanometres long (a nanometre is a billionth of a metre) and has three joints, like a human finger.

The researchers did a series of experiments to show what the hands could be used for. To demonstrate the grasping ability, they added strips of complementary DNA to particles of gold between 50 and 100 nanometres across and the fingers could grasp them.

In another test, they took the fingers and added extra bits of DNA that bind to the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The nanohands could then “grab” viruses and those that had been grabbed were unable to infect cells growing in a culture.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2375054-nanoscale-robotic-hand-made-of-dna-could-be-used-to-detect-viruses/

Maybe this will give my readers something to think about….if not all I can say is I tried.

Have a wonderful Saturday.

Be well and be safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”