I arrived in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park yesterday afternoon, just in time for the opening keynote address at the ScienceOnline2011 conference. Robert Krulwich gave a wonderful presentation on how he and Jad Abumrad make science accessible to everyone – really, EVERYONE – on their NPR program Radiolab. If you aren’t familiar with the program already, you really owe it to yourself to check it out.

I finally met Carin Bondar (who will be leading a session on producing science videos today!), and I also had a fascinating discussion with a guy who has patented a skin treatment (“Nitrocell”) that ostensibly replenishes your body’s natural biofilm of ammonia-oxidizing bacteria, helping your body maintain proper levels of nitrous oxide (NO). This biofilm, he claimed, gets washed away when you bathe. Anyway, this fellow claimed not to have taken a shower or bath in… wait for it… over 8 years. But because he had a healthy biofilm goin’ on, all was well I’ll give this to him: he didn’t smell like a guy who hasn’t washed himself in nearly a decade. So maybe there is something to these ammonia oxidizing bacteria? Anyway, his biofilm-restoring treatment is for those of us not adventurous enough to embark on a multi-year non-bathing experiment.