Mayonnaise Flow Rate

As you eat your sandwich, you probably never realized all the science that went into it. Because, of course, some researcher had to study exactly how the mayonnaise flows off your knife onto the bread. [wiley.com]

Posted By: Alex - Sun Jun 30, 2013 - Comments (2)
Category: Food, Mayonnaise, Science

White Blood Cells in the Sky

NOTE: some enthusiastic swears.

Posted By: Paul - Wed Jun 12, 2013 - Comments (5)
Category: Annoying Things, Confusion, Misunderstanding, and Incomprehension, Science, Conspiracy Theories and Theorists, Air Travel and Airlines, Nausea, Revulsion and Disgust

Burpless Cows

Scientists at the University of Aberdeen are hoping to use selective breeding to breed burpless cows. Or, at least, cows that burp less often than average. This is possible because apparently there's natural variation in the frequency with which cows burp. Some burp all the time, and others not so much. So if you keep selecting the less burpy ones, eventually you'll produce a herd of burp-free bovines.

This is desirable — so much so that the EU is willing to put up €7.7 million in funding for the research — because it's the cow's belches that contain the atmosphere-warming methane. So the plan is that burpless cows will help save us from the spectre of global warming.

Posted By: Alex - Fri Jun 07, 2013 - Comments (5)
Category: Science, Cows

Eating Wood—the latest advance

I've posted before about the centuries-old scientific dream of using sawdust to feed the world. So the latest effort in this vein caught my eye. A Virginia Tech researcher has figured out a way to enzymatically transform indigestible cellulose into edible starch. The science seems sound. The only problem is that the process is too expensive for commercial production. But it's a start!

The article points out that most of us are eating wood (or cellulose) already. It's a common additive in the fast-food industry. But it's indigestible, so people couldn't survive on it. Its purpose is to add texture, or "mouth feel."

Posted By: Alex - Thu Jun 06, 2013 - Comments (6)
Category: Food, Science

Let Mr. Mouse’s Nightmare Help You!

Psychotherapy via mouse torture. Milwaukee Sentinel - Nov 16, 1941.

Posted By: Alex - Wed May 29, 2013 - Comments (7)
Category: Science, Psychology, 1940s

Earthquake-Predicting Dogs

Over in China, researchers decided to test the theory that dogs can predict earthquakes. So they housed four dogs at the Nanchang quake center and waited for them to show signs of "abnormal" activity, such as barking a lot.

They soon discovered that dogs (and apparently these dogs in particular) often bark a lot. According to local residents "every night at 11pm they start barking over and over." After fielding multiple complaints from angry neighbors, the researchers "offered to muzzle the dogs, but accepted later that this might impede their skills as quake-prognosticators." Finally, the experiment was shut down.

So maybe dogs can predict earthquakes, or maybe they can't. But until we learn to speak dog language better, it doesn't look like our canine friends will be much use to us as official quake predictors. [London Times]

Posted By: Alex - Fri May 10, 2013 - Comments (4)
Category: Science, Experiments, Dogs

The Experimenting Preacher

Back in 1959, Rev. David Allcorn mixed science and religion by conducting chemical experiments while at his pulpit in order to "enliven his sermons." He worked as a chemist at the National Biscuit Co. before becoming pastor of the Immanuel Evangelical United Brethren Church in Pittsburgh, PA.

Posted By: Alex - Thu Apr 18, 2013 - Comments (6)
Category: Religion, Science, 1950s

Quantum Daughter

Posted By: Paul - Wed Mar 20, 2013 - Comments (0)
Category: Science, Surrealism, Stop-motion Animation

Please Poop, Mr. Cow!

Although modern science has been able to send a man to the moon, it has not been able to make cows poop on command. An effort to solve this shortcoming is described in a recent issue of Applied Animal Behaviour Science.

The thing is, it would be really nice, for the purpose of general hygiene, if farmers could convince cows to stop pooping wherever they felt like it. So researchers devised a series of tests to see if prompts such as walking through a footbath, or being exposed to blasts of air or water, could stimulate bovine defecation. No such luck. The researchers concluded, "None of our tests reliably stimulated defecation, which seemed to occur most when cows were exposed to novelty."

Posted By: Alex - Sun Feb 17, 2013 - Comments (7)
Category: Science, Experiments, Farming, Cows, Excrement

The Origin of Feces

This looks like an interesting book. [Amazon Link]. Nat Geo has an interview with the author, David Waltner-Toews, that includes details such as, "in the slums of Nairobi, human poop powers hot showers and other services. In California, dog doo-doo keeps a dog park electrified."

The author offers this summary of his book: "as soon as you have life, you have essentially poop. As life developed, the waste for one animal became food for another animal. We depend on a web of recycling of nutrients, and poop is an important part of that. People get sqeaumish but they shouldn’t be. If you don’t think of it as poop, but instead think of it as recycling nutrients, this is a really interesting and sustainable way to produce food."

Posted By: Alex - Sun Feb 10, 2013 - Comments (5)
Category: Science, Books, Excrement