How Recent Science News Affects The Twins

I'm sure you're just like the vast majority of Twins fans. You read a lot of news about scientific discoveries about this or that, and you wonder, "All of this science stuff is well and good, but how will this affect my favorite baseball team?"

Never fear, because Twinkie Town is here to help. Our staff of particle physicists, geneticists, theoretical mathematicians, longshoremen, and unicyclists is constantly studying the latest news to determine how the Twins will be affected. Here are just some of the latest science stories that will be making waves - or waves and particles, in the case of photon news! (Ha ha, just a little wave-particle duality humor there!)

News: The Higgs boson has been discovered at CERN in Geneva.
What it means for science: Predicted in 1964 by British physicist Peter Higgs, this subatomic particle is the final particle that makes up the Standard Model of the universe. Without it, the whole model falls apart, as without it in the model, objects cannot have mass.
What it means for the Twins: Matt Capps' plan to eat nothing but barbecued ribs and ice cream "because the standard model has flaws, man" is probably over for good.

News: Chemical engineers at MIT have invented an artificial cell that can manufacture specific proteins within the body.
What it means for science: If they can work out how, this technology might serve as a much more efficient way of delivering drugs to where they're needed in the body, rather than the current "swallow and hope" or "inject and hope" methods.
What it means for the Twins: Someday, the Twins medical staff might be able to have treatment options more sophisticated than leeches, trepanning, and bloodletting.

News: Psychologists at the University of Waterloo discovered that people who are sitting in wobbly, unstable chairs both view the relationships of others as weaker, and exhibit a stronger desire for stability in their own relationships.
What it means for science: This experiment deepens our understanding of the link between our environment and our emotions and desires.
What it means for the Twins: Drew Butera should steal another wheel from Ron Gardenhire's chair before the skipper realizes that "dependably useless" is not a positive.

News: South African scientists have discovered a two-million-year-old hominid skeleton.
What it means for science: It's yet another discovery that helps us piece together the history of man.
What it means for the Twins: Jamey Carroll finally found out where his grandpa was buried.

News: New research shows that eye direction, contrary to popular opinion, has no relationship to lying or truth-telling.
What it means for science: Deception detection is an important field, one that has applications in such fields as security and negotiations.
What it means for the Twins: When Rick Anderson tells us that Nick Blackburn looks great in the bullpen, it's his words and not his eyes that prove he's lying.

Thanks for following along on our journey through science! Tune in next time, when we present the results of our recent quantum theory paper. "Schrodinger's cat and Alexi Casilla: Terrible when we look, but simultaneously awesome and terrible until then".