Google’s AdWords division reporting from Ann Arbor:
We set up shop in Ann Arbor, Mich. nearly two years ago. And we’ve been so busy, we’ve barely had time to say hi. But before we tell you about the interesting things we’re doing in our new location, we figure you might want to know a little bit more about our state and our town.
If you take a look at the employee photo, everyone looks pretty young.
Nature posted a nice aging review article by Jan Vijg and Judy Campisi on its web site today.
What would Michael Phelps look like wearing a winged helmet instead of a gold medal? Phelps is 6-foot-4 and nearly 200 pounds of hulk. His wingspan stretches from hash mark to hash mark, and his body fat is lower than Minnesota’s winning percentage. There’s a guy that any football coach would love to have.
Since Phelps trains in Ann Arbor, surely Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez has dropped a hint. He is starting five freshmen in the Wolverines’ debut of his no-huddle spread Saturday against Utah. One more novice — one who would challenge Tiger Woods on the competitive spectrum — couldn’t hurt.
“Oh, I would put him at wide receiver,” Rodriguez said. “With those long arms, he’d be perfect.”
Earlier this year, researchers announced they had solved a mystery: how DEET works. DEET, the most popular mosquito repellent, jams odorant receptors in insect nervous systems, masking other odors that attract the bugs.
Not so fast, say Walter S. Leal and Zainulabeuddin Syed of the University of California, Davis. In a paper in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they have a simpler explanation. Mosquitoes, they say, smell DEET directly and avoid it.
All I know is that DEET is tremendously useful here in Woods Hole.
Tim Hunt discovered cyclins at the MBL during the summer of 1982. This work led to the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. I’ve been attending the MBL aging course, and found it to be a funny coincidence that the article came out in Cell this week.