Donating for dollars

Already, healthy people can donate blood, sperm and eggs, but now the nonprofit OpenBiome offers donors $40 for bowel movements — to supply “fecal transplants” for patients with nasty C. difficile bacterial infections. (“Healthy” contents are transplanted into the infected gut via endoscope or frozen swallowed capsules so that the good bacteria drive out the antibiotic-resistant bad.) Over 2,000 transplant units have been shipped to 185 hospitals so far, and OpenBiome allows daily “donations” so that, with bonuses, a donor could earn $13,000 a year. However, extensive medical questioning and stool-testing is required, and only about 4 percent of potential donors have exquisite-enough feces to qualify.

The job of the researcher

California State University Los Angeles researcher Marc Kubasak spent about 2,500 hours (sometimes 12 hours a day) training 40 brain-damaged rats to walk on a treadmill, after sewing little vests to tether the critters, suspended, to a robotic arm. His work paid off, though, according to the February Popular Science magazine, as doctors in Poland and University College London used his procedures to help a man with a damaged spine. (In the middle of the project, Kubasak developed a rodent allergy and was forced to wear a body suit every day with a respirator.)

Remembrance technology

In March, the U.S. patent office approved Google’s application covering robot software that mimics human personalities (voice, mannerisms) using a variety of moods (happiness, fear, surprise) with a notable use that family members might employ it to continue to “interact” with a loved one after he has passed. One disquieting possibility might allow a deceased person to be directed to act in ways that the person never acted while alive.

Entrepreneurship

A curious woman, inspired by her own mother’s attachment to her unlaundered pillowcases following the death of her dad, has partnered with France’s Universite du Havre to produce a person’s bottled scent by processing old clothing. A September rollout is planned, with the probable retail price of about $600.

Democracy in action

Just west of Ferguson, Missouri, is Kinloch (pop. 299), where newly elected mayor Betty McCray was unable to start work on April 23 because the losing incumbent administration merely locked her out of City Hall (“impeaching” her for “voter fraud” in the April 7 election, despite St. Louis County election officials having already certified her victory). Of McCray’s two predecessors, one was once also locked out of office by police, and the other had to go to court to get his mayoral job back after admitting that he had missed child-support payments.

Suspicions confirmed

The controversial ex-Greenpeace campaigner who years later turned against the environmental group’s program walked out of an interview in March for a French documentary in which he assured viewers that Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer was safe for humans. “You can drink a whole quart of it, and it won’t hurt you,” Patrick Moore told the interviewer for Canal Plus. The interviewer then offered Moore a swig of Roundup he had on hand. “I’d be happy to, actually,” Moore reportedly said on camera, but then quickly changed his mind. “No, I’m not an idiot.” At that point, Moore declared, the interview was “finished.”

Is this a great country or what?

The owner of a New York City condominium apartment that sold for $100.5 million recently received a property tax reduction of $360,000 last year — and is likely to keep receiving reductions over as many as 25 years, based on “Section 421-a” benefits the state enacted to encourage “affordable” housing in the most desirable parts of New York City. The tax abatements are available to developers that promise to create “affordable” units in the same zones (“affordable” to families making under about $40,000 annually), but in recent years, the new “millionaire” units (with tax breaks) have outnumbered the new affordable units by about 11-to-1, according to a February New York Times report, costing the city over $1 billion a year in revenue.

Bright ideas

Prison breaks in Latin American countries are often staged with cooperative, corrupt guards. However, the escape by 28 inmates in February from the Nova Mutum prison near Cuiaba, Brazil, was engineered by three make-believe “dominatrixes” (in police costumes), who playfully handcuffed the guards, knocked them out with sedatives and unlocked the cells. (The guards were found the next day, still handcuffed and naked.)

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