Plus: Arsenic-Based Lifeforms, Cancer Screening via Fingers, a Human Jukebox and MORE.

NASA Discovers Alien Life… in California
In a press conference yesterday, NASA scientists announced the discovery of a completely new form of life that is alien to anything else currently living on Earth. The discovery could dramatically change the way we understand biological conditions and alter our conception about possible extraterrestrial life.

According to NASA, researchers conducting tests in the harsh environment of Mono Lake in California recently found the first micro-organism able to thrive and reproduce on arsenic, a toxic chemical. The microbe substitutes arsenic for phosphorus in its cell structures, though phosphorus is one of the six basic building blocks — along with carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and sulfur — found in all previously known forms of life on Earth.

“[T]his bacteria is made of arsenic, something that was thought to be completely impossible,” Wired.com’s Wired Science blog reports. “While [NASA scientist Felisa] Wolfe-Simon and other scientists theorized that this could be possible, this is the first discovery. The implications of this discovery are enormous to our understanding of life itself and the possibility of finding beings in other planets that don’t have to be like planet Earth.”

The concept that life can not only exist but proliferate on a different set of basic chemical components opens up possibilities in searching for new life forms on Earth and in extraterrestrial settings. This may require a second look at environments that were previously thought incapable of supporting life.

“When looking for life in other worlds, especially promising places like Saturn’s moon Titan or in the Martian soil, scientists look for telltale signs of life as we know it. That means carbon-based life, respiration with oxygen and carbon dioxide, amino acids, and so on,” Popular Science explains. “This finding tells us that we should ditch these assumptions and broaden our horizons. If a humble Earthling bacteria can live on a poisonous chemical, then who knows what might lurk elsewhere in the solar system?”

Finger Length May Predict Disease Risk
New cancer research is likely to have every male reader taking a closer look at his hands, as evidence suggests that the length of a man’s fingers may be an important indicator of his risk for contracting prostate cancer.

Scientists from Britain’s Institute of Cancer Research recently determined that men whose index fingers are longer than their ring fingers run a significantly lower risk of getting prostate cancer. According to the team’s published findings, having an index finger longer than the fourth digit reduces the chances of contracting the potentially fatal illness by as much as 33 percent.

“We were very surprised by the findings,” Professor Ros Eeles, one of the report’s authors, told BBC News. “But there is a good biological explanation: we know that exposure to male or female hormones in utero determines how long your fingers are. We also know that prostate cancer is driven by testosterone levels later in life. Now we have a biologically plausible explanation for some of the early risk factors.”

The study took place over 15 years and involved more than 1,500 prostate cancer patients, as well as a control group of 3,000 healthy cases. More than half the subjects’ right index fingers were shorter than their ring fingers, and they had the same prostate cancer risk as those whose index and ring fingers were the same length, representing 19 percent of the overall test population.

The researchers believe their findings may help in developing a preliminary screening method for prostate cancer.

The Human Jukebox
The owner of an audio equipment store in Stockholm, Sweden, recently decided to venture into a new musical frontier by transforming himself into a virtual jukebox. No, he’s not being turned into a cyborg.

According to pop culture and tech blog Gamma Squad, Fredrik Hjelmquist swallowed a specially designed sound system, appropriately named the “gutPOD,” which features a wireless radio receiver, an amplifier, a power source and a speaker. This enabled observers to pick songs from a playlist, which would then play from inside Hjelmquist’s body.

Here are some videos of the human jukebox explaining the technical process and then following through on it:

Amazon Patents Bad Gift Detection System
The holiday season can be wonderful time of year, but receiving bad presents may take some of the joy out of the festivities. Although people say it’s the thought that counts, that line of reasoning may soon be obsolete as a new system for automatically detecting and replacing bad gifts is on its way.

Online retail giant Amazon.com recently patented a “gift conversion system” that which would allow users to fill out a specific profile on an online account detailing their preferences and the types of gifts they would or wouldn’t want to receive. The technology would then make sure a user’s holiday wishes come true.

“Here’s how the system would work, if implemented,” Fast Company explains. “If you are the victim of repeated bad gifts (that happen to be bought via Amazon), you would log on to the site and could tweak your profile. You could add Uncle Albert to a sort of ‘do-not-gift’ list; anything he bought for you in the future would be converted into an Amazon gift certificate.”

The gift conversion system would also send out an automated thank-you note to the purchaser of the unwanted present, according to Reuters. Although there are no clear signs of when, or even if, Amazon will introduce this system, it is already causing a stir between traditionalists and pragmatists.

What do you think? Is the gift conversion system a brilliant new technology that will improve online shopping or is it a violation of time-honored holiday principles?

Have a great weekend, folks.