Slice of Life: "Nerd-Out"

If you were to ask my friends they would tell you it does not take much to entertain me. From watching my roommate do daily tasks to pretending that the apartment has landmines so I don't cause the floor to creak, it's never a dull moment for me.

Lately I have been into things that cause me to "nerd-out" though. Like today for instance, I saw that there was an article about how there is research being done on Vitamin D and it's effects on uterine fibroids in rats which may lead to a non-surgical way of treatment. I mean, come on, how is that not cool?

Every time I go off on one of my tangents my friends tend to give me weird looks, which means that my eyes have gotten to twice as large and my words are flying out faster than the speed of light. I just get so excited and think that they will get equally excited, but in most cases not so much. But hey, at least they continue to let me talk about all the things that I nerd-out about.

Here are just a few of the subjects that get's my heart racing:

• The microbes found in the rumen of a cow can essentially turn poor quality feed into something great that will get digested and absorbed by the cow leading to excellent milk quality/production. 

• There is a type of nocturnal squid that has a type of glowing bacteria growing inside of it. The squid also has sensors on it's skin that can detect the amount of moonlight shining and takes that information to determine how much light it puts out from the bacteria to match the moonlight. This essentially causes the squid to have no shadow! Crazy, right?

• With all the drug-resistant pathogens out there, there has been more and more research done on how they communicate. Scientists have found that cells communicate by sending out a signal to let each other know they are near and once enough are present they "turn on." Now that they found how they act, researchers are making similar shaped molecules that will fit in the communication receptors that will disrupt that process so they will be "off." This is effective on all pathogens whether they have drug-resistance or not. I hope this technique gets approved soon that's all I got to say. 

• Anything that has to do with anatomy and physiology (human or animal). Learning how the body works just makes me slack jawed and wonder how more things don't go wrong. I also took an entire class on embryo transfer in animals last semester and was amazed at how that all worked. 

I could go on and on, but I just don't think my heart can take much more haha. I can't be the only one that "nerds-out" to things though, so tell me what gets your blood pumping. Don't leave me hanging out here alone.