You know those nice guys who just can’t seem to find a special someone? Meet Polo, a 36-year-old male who’s been unattached for the past eight years, ever since his mate died in 2000. Originally from Dublin, Ireland, he now lives in southern India—in a zoo. Polo is the only gorilla left in all of India. (Although in Spain, he’d practically be considered human, for legal purposes.)

Zookeepers say Polo is healthy, friendly, and bilingual (he understands both English and the local Kannada language), but extremely lonely. “The few joys he enjoys are bathing and searching for food that his keeper hides in blocks of ice or in bamboo to keep him energized,” says Vijay Ranjan Singh, the director of the zoo. Polo is a western lowland gorilla, an endangered species found in central Africa. In the wild, a handsome silverback like Polo would be leading a troop of up to 30 gorillas, most of them female.

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· A Netherlands court decides Second Life goods have real life value, and sentences teenagers to community service for nabbing another player’s amulet and mask in a virtual reality game. In Japan, a woman faces jail time for murder of virtual ex-husband.

· Meanwhile, back in real-reality, here’s a Golden Orb Weaver (aka a really friggin huge spider) chowing down on a Chestnut-breasted Mannikin. Ew.

· Now cleanse your eyeballs with a photo of a really cute squid (Helicocranchia pfefferi) that appears to be a hybrid of Piglet and Gonzo.

· Scientists develop a teeth-operated piano pedal for paraplegic musicians.

· Work off your carbon footprint by boogying down at Watt: the world’s first sustainable dance club.

· Then grab a bottle of Tap’d NY: “Not From the Top of Some Far Away Mountain.”

It’s been a breakthrough week for office supplies. First came X-ray shooting Scotch tape, and now surgical-grade Sharpies. It’s common practice for surgeons to outline operation sites with Sharpie markers so they won’t cut in the wrong place, but the markers are thrown out after just one use to prevent passing germs from one patient to another.

Now a study by Canadian doctors has concluded that it’s actually safe to reuse Sharpie markers, since the alcoholic base in the ink kills off any lingering bacteria. The finding is huge for hospital administrators , who are thrilled at the prospect of saving thousands of dollars by reusing the markers, which cost $2 each.

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If you’re flying to Australia anytime soon, be prepared to show a lot of skin at the airport. From now until the end of November, Melbourne airport is testing out new X-ray scanners that can see through clothing and leave little to the imagination. The scanners may soon replace pat downs with “virtual strip searches,” which officials say will save time at security check points. For the trial period, only passengers who volunteer will be scanned.

The full-body scanners use low-energy X-rays that reflect off skin to provide chalky images of naked bodies. They will reveal any hidden objects, even nonmetal ones that would be bypassed by traditional metal detectors.

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Here’s one for the Holden Caulfields of the world: If you’re good at spotting fake smiles, you’ve probably been given the cold shoulder a lot in the past. Scientists at Miami University in Ohio found that the memory of social rejection makes a person more wary of phony goodwill.

The researchers enlisted 32 people and asked some to write down a situation in which they’d felt accepted, while others were asked to note a situation in which they’d felt excluded. A football player, for example, wrote about an injury that prevented him from playing, and the subsequent rejection he felt from his football buddies.

The subjects, now primed with either fuzzy feelings of acceptance or chilly feelings of rejection, were shown video clips of “happy” people. The acceptance group spotted fake smiles about 60 percent of the time, while the rejection group spotted them about 80 percent of the time.

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Got a smelly weirdo sitting next to you at work? Need a place to stick an intern? Well it looks like cubicle life as we know it is about to change. If some cutting-edge companies have their way, we may all soon be working from mobile workstations.

What those spaces will look like all depends on the designer. Here’s a look at the most notable designs:
• Michiel van der Kley’s Globus folds up into a globe and unfolds into a desk and a chair.
• The ScooterDesk by Utilia may look uncomfortable, but its barstool design with wheels makes it highly portable.
• The Surf Chair Workstation by Kenneth Lylover brings your computer, and your bed, into the workplace. With a built in LCD display, a strategically placed spot for the keyboard and mouse, and a padded lounge chair, a nap at your desk might not be so far fetched.

And our favorite: Robert Preger has created a “living laboratory” at Carnegie Mellon to develop an ideal green workplace.

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Do you dream in color, or black and white? The answer may depend on the TV you watched as a child. New research shows that baby boomers who grew up watching black and white TV still often dream in grayscale while their kids dream only in color.

Eva Murzyn of the U.K.’s University of Dundee asked 60 people, half over age 55 and half under 25, to keep detailed dream diaries. She also collected information about the kind of TV and films they watched as children. More than 20 percent of the older group reported having black and white dreams, but less than 5 percent of the younger group reported them. A few of the older subjects who’d been exposed to color film and TV as children also rarely dreamed in black and white. The shift in dream palette directly coincided with the popularization of color TV in the 1960s. (It also means that pre-TV generations would have dreamed only in color.)

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Think you might have a problem with body odor? Here’s a dose of perspective: A 41-year-old woman in Australia has smelled like rotten fish all her life. The pervasive smell emanates from her sweat, breath, and urine, and cannot be washed off or covered up. After being “sniffed” by doctor after doctor, all of whom waved her off as a hypochondriac or even prescribed vaginal cauterization, she was finally diagnosed with trimethylaminuria, or “fish malodor syndrome.”

Though she can now put a name to her condition, the bad news is that there is no cure. Trimethylaminuria is a rare genetic disorder that prevents the body from producing an enzyme that breaks down trimethylamine, a fishy smelling substance found in foods like  meat, eggs, peas, soy beans, and er, fish. Only about 600 cases of fish malodor syndrome are known in the world. Cutting out trimethylamine from the diet can help, but there is no effective treatment.

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First the dogs, then the infants—it was just a matter of time before the melamine scandal would hit the adult entertainment sector. And then word came last Friday that the U.K.’s Food Standards Agency was issuing an alert against certain “novelty products” —namely, strawberry-flavored body pens and chocolate-flavored “willy spreads,” an edible balm that can be slathered on the penis.

The sex products contained levels of melamine up to 100 times over the legal limit, set at 2.5mg/kg. Melamine is a nitrogen-containing toxin that has recently been found in pet foods, baby formulas, and White Rabbit candies manufactured in China. It’s added to spike the amount of protein that shows up in food tests.

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Is that an amoeba crawling on your eyeball? If you wear contact lenses, the answer is probably yes. Scientists testing contact lenses and lens cases found that more than 65 percent were infected with Acanthamoeba, a pathogenic amoeba. These bacteria-eating amoebae can cause extremely painful eye infections which may even lead to blindness.

Acanthamoeba is a common microbe found in soil and fresh water. It often makes its way into tap water and swimming pools, which is why rinsing out your contacts with tap water or wearing them while swimming increases your chances of infection. It also prefers warmer climates—including your eyeball.

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