Category Archives: science

food+drink, natural history, science

Oddity of the Week: Blue Honey

French beekeepers were recently shocked when their bees started producing thick, blue and green honey.
After investigating, they discovered their bees were feeding on the colourful shells of M&Ms — a Mars processing plant was located just 4 km away.
The Mars waste-processing plant has now solved the problem and are cleaning any outdoor or uncovered containers that M&M waste was stored in, so it’s unlikely you’ll see the blue honey on the market any time soon.


As Reuters reports, the unsellable honey is a new issue for the beekeepers, who are already struggling with high bee mortality rates and dwindling honey supplies.
From http://sciencealert.com.au/news/20142405-25561.html

beliefs, links, medical, natural history, nudism, science

Your Interesting Links

More interesting items you may have missed. Lots of science and medicine curiosities in this edition, but its should all be accessible to the non-scientist.
Who thinks mathematics is boring? You won’t when you see the beauty of mathematics in pictures! I’m definitely worried about image four.


Chemicals have a bad name. Wrongly! Manmade or natural, tasty or toxic, they’re all chemicals.
Shifting to the zoo-world, here’s a piece on the curious and improbable tale of flatfish evolution.
Beaver! No not that sort! Honestly your minds! I’m talking about the beavers that have been reintroduced to Scotland, and which are doing well.
Concrete jungle. Yes, it certainly is a jungle out there. Our cities, yes even the most urban and built-up parts of them, can be important wildlife habitat.
Bananas are in trouble and we don’t have a solution to save our favourite fruit. Oh and they’re quite an interesting plant too.
All our food is toxic, innit. Actually, no. But here’s why the fear, uncertainty and doubt are far too easy to believe, and how to counteract it.
On the continuing saga of why chocolate is good for us, but just not in the form you like it.
Five-a-day doesn’t add up. It’s not all marketing hype, except when the arithmetic is wrong.
Turnips. The humble vegetable that terrorised the Romans and helped industrialise Britain.
What do you mean you thought apples grew on trees? Well, OK, they do but originally not the trees you thought. An interesting piece on saving the wild ancestor of modern apples.

Farting well? It could mean you have a good healthy collection of gut microbes.
Just don’t read this next story over dinner. It seems we eat parasites more than we realise.
And another that’s definitely not safe for mealtime reading … A long read on some of the work going on behind faecal transplants, and how they’re being so successful in treating stubborn illnesses.
Lads, here are three cardinal rules from a urologist about care of your plumbing.
Phew! So now let’s leave the scientific and medical behind us and more on.
Naturism is the practice of going without clothes — and it’s not shameful, embarrassing or ridiculous.
Still on naturism, here’s one young lady’s experience of being clothes free at home.
image6

And here are some more views on the way the new Nordic sex laws are making prostitutes feel less, not more, safe.
From
Vagina in the workplace — a story. The closing ideal has to be a good way forward, surely.
Changing tack (yes, OK, about time!) here’s part five of the ongoing series from a black cab driver about Waterloo Station. OK, hands up, how many of you knew it was a war memorial?
And finally, the BBC have unearthed a box of forgotten letters sent from occupied France during WWII. See you never know what’s in that dusty box in the attic!

books, science

Book Review: The Disappearing Spoon

Sam Kean
The Disappearing Spoon and Other True Tales from the Periodic Table
Black Swan, 2011
This is a science book for the interested layman. Its premise is to tell interesting stories about the elements, their discoveries and their properties.
Each of the 19 chapters follows the fortunes (or otherwise) of several, not obviously related, elements — who discovered them and how; why they are interesting and idiosyncratic. Kean is certainly able to tell the stories well and keep the reader engaged; as the cover quote from New Scientist says:

Kean has Bill Bryson’s comic touch … a lively history of the elements and the characters behind their discovery.

I found the book easy, but engaging, reading and quite hard to put down to the extent that I had to ration myself to a couple of chapters a night rather than stay up reading all night.
It is an interesting read although for a trained chemist it doesn’t really go deep enough. There are almost no pictures, diagrams or chemical formulae. That’s fine as it does make it accessible to the intelligent layman and means the book can be printed cheaply in monochrome on poor quality paper. But as a trained scientist I found I wanted more explanatory images and formulae. To that extent I was disappointed.
Overall a book I enjoyed and which should appeal to those with a scientific interest, although I would have liked something deeper.
Overall Rating: ★★★★☆

science

Oddity of the Week: Penis Shaving

At the end of 2009 … researchers at the University of California published a paper describing a method of shaving fruit-fly penises with a laser. Not only could they shave off the bristles, but they could even perform the task with such accuracy that only the top third of each bristle was trimmed.
From: William Hartston, The Things that Nobody Knows: 501 Mysteries of Life, the Universe and Everything

amusements, science

Oddity of the Week: Poronkusema

A contender for probably Feedback’s favourite-ever unusual unit arrives in an email from Mark Dowson, and it has the more unusual cachet of likely great antiquity. Apparently, reindeer are unable to walk and pee at the same time: they have to pause at set intervals of distance.
In Finnish, this interval is known as poronkusema or “reindeer’s piss” and was an old-fashioned description of rural distances. By Mark’s calculation, it is about 320 blue-whale-lengths.


This is a WikiFact, but it seems almost too nice to be true. So Feedback asked a friend — the Finnish journalist Heikki Jokinen. He confirms that it is used in Lapland and was delighted to be diverted from other work to discover its actual value, which is about 7.5 kilometres for a reindeer drawing a light sledge — and that it is important: reindeer eating lichen produce urine as strong as battery acid, he says, and they get sick if deprived of their comfort breaks.
From “Feedback”; New Scientist; 22 March 2014

science

Oddity of the Week: Cat Pawedness

In 2009, scientists at Queen’s University, Belfast published the results of a study on paw preference in cats. When cats are playing with a fishing-rod toy, the scientists found that they were equally likely to use either left or right paw, but when posed with the more complex task of getting food from a glass jar, male cats were found to show a strong preference for using their left paw, while females used their right.


In humans, left-handedness has been associated with the hormone testosterone (which has been used to explain why more men than women are left-handed). Exposure to testosterone has also been shown to result in a female cat changing her paw preference from right to left. Scientists do not yet know why the hormone has this effect, or whether it is testosterone that is responsible for the initial handedness.
From: William Hartston; The Things that Nobody Knows: 501 Mysteries of Life, the Universe and Everything

science

Oddity of the Week: Speed of Chocolate

I’ve been meaning to write about this for some time, and having come across the instructions again the time is now.

Measuring the Speed of Light Using Chocolate, a Microwave and a Ruler

It took over 300 years of experimentation and refinement to arrive at the figure for the speed of light which we use as standard today. That being the case, this method for determining that speed yourself might seem more than a little surprising. All you need is some kind of food that can melt (chocolate is good but you can also use marshmallows or cheese), a microwave oven, a microwave-safe dish to put the food in, and a ruler.

  • Place the food on the dish.
  • Remove the turntable from the microwave — it’s important that the dish can’t move.
  • Put the dish in the microwave.
  • Cook on a low heat until it’s clear the food is beginning to melt in spots. Begin by trying 30 seconds. These spots relate to the peaks of the ‘wave’ — the distance between two peaks is half a wavelength.
  • Once the melted spots appear, remove the dish and measure the distance between the centres of these spots. One distance should repeat again and again.

Now look on the microwave (it might be on the back) to find its frequency — this is typically 2.45GHz.
We know that c = λν, or the speed of light = wavelength multiplied by frequency.
So, ν is the frequency of the microwave. If it’s 2.45GHz then the figure you will use in your calculation will be 2,450,000,000 (whatever the frequency listed is, it will almost certainly be in gigahertz — 1GHz is 1,000,000,000 so make sure your calculation reflects that). You now need to multiply this by λ, which is double the distance you measured in metres (for example 15cm is 0.15 metres). See how close to the true speed of light, 299,792,458 ms-1, you get.
And having done that you can eat the chocolate!
From: Simon Flynn, The Science Magpie (2012).

books, medical, science

Book Review: The Secret World of Sleep

Penelope A Lewis
The Secret World of Sleep: The Surprising Science of the Mind at Rest
Palgrave Macmillan, 2013
This is another of those books which I wanted to read and which appeared for either Christmas or my birthday (I forget now which as they are quite close together). This is what the cover blurb says:

A highly regarded neuroscientist explains the little-known role of sleep in processing our waking life and making sense of difficult emotions and experiences.
In recent years neuroscientists have uncovered the countless ways our brain trips us up in day-to-day life, from its propensity toward irrational thought to how our intuitions deceive us. The latest research on sleep, however, points in the opposite direction. Where old wives’ tales have long advised to “sleep on a problem,” today scientists are discovering the truth behind these folk sayings and how the busy brain radically improves our minds through sleep and dreams. In The Secret World of Sleep, neuroscientist Penny Lewis explores the latest research into the nighttime brain to understand the real benefits of sleep. She shows how, while our body rests, our brain practices tasks it learned during the day, replays traumatic events to mollify them, and forges connections between distant concepts. By understanding the roles that the nocturnal brain plays in our waking life, we can improve the relationship between the two and even boost creativity and memory. This is a fascinating exploration of one of the most surprising corners of neuroscience that shows how science may be able to harness the power of sleep to improve learning, health, and more.

Yes, OK, I guess it does do all of that and at a level which is likely OK for the intelligent layman. But as a scientist I found it somewhat lacking, or maybe more correctly it felt loose, in the details. I don’t profess to be very knowledgeable about the neurology of sleep, but I had the feeling that there was more there which is known and which would tie everything together. I may be wrong, and in fairness to Lewis she does say at a number of points “we don’t know how this works”.
Did it tell me anything I didn’t know? Well nothing which I found helpful and which has stuck sufficiently that I could recite it now. As always, yes, OK, I’m probably way above the audience this was written for. I found it an easy but not compelling, or gripping, read — sufficiently so that I whizzed through it far faster than I had expected.
All of this is a shame because I wanted to get that “Wow!” inspirational insight and it didn’t happen. I still feel it should.
As with many modern books it is a slim volume (about 190 pages) and it could have been much slimmer: as always there is too much white space on the page. Even if you don’t want to reduce the font size the leading could certainly be reduced, as could the margins slightly. That would make it a more compact volume, both in looks and physically.
I was also not struck on the cartoon-style illustrations. I didn’t find them illuminating (indeed at times downright confusing) and felt that maybe a few more, better, diagrams were needed for the target audience.
One thing which Lewis does however do well is to write a summary paragraph or two at the end of each chapter. Other authors please copy.
Is this a bad book? No, certainly not. It would likely work very well for an intelligent layman. It is merely that it didn’t work for me; but then it probably wasn’t intended to.
Overall Rating: ★★★☆☆

amusements, science

Oddity of the Week: Banana Radiation

We are exposed to ionising radiation every minute of every day, much of it in the form of background radiation including cosmic rays, rocks in the ground, radon gas, water and food.

banana

Bananas, for example, contain naturally occurring potassium-40, a radioactive isotope of potassium. Incredibly, there is even something known as the ‘banana-equivalent dose’, an attempt to contextualise artificial radiation exposures for the general public.
An X-ray screening at a US airport is roughly two and a half times a banana-equivalent dose.
From Simon Flynn, The Science Magpie (2012)

books, environment, history, science

Coming up in February

Interesting events and anniversaries in the coming month.
1 February
Start of the last London Frost Fair, 1814 which lasted four days, during which time an elephant was led across the river below Blackfriars Bridge. This was the last frost fair because the climate was growing milder; old London Bridge was demolished in 1831 and replaced with a new bridge with wider arches, allowing the tide to flow more freely; and the river was embanked in stages during the 19th century, all of which made it less likely to freeze.


2 February
Candlemas. This is the Christian festival 40 days after Christmas of the presentation of Jesus at the temple. This day is also celebrated as Imbolc in the Wiccan/Pagan calendar (although some traditions celebrate on 1 February) in honour of Brigid, the goddess of fertility, fire and healing. It is also a time of increasing strength for the sun god and is Groundhog Day in the USA.
2 February
British Yorkshire Pudding Day. What better way to cheer up a miserable winter’s day than with Yorkshire Pudding? Read more here >>>>
10-16 February 2014
Go Green Week. The idea for Go Green Week is to encourage people, especially young people, to think about the environment and climate change. Read more here >>>>

12 February.
Bagpuss. On this day in 1974 BBC TV showed the first ever episode of the children’s animated series Bagpuss, an old, saggy cloth cat, baggy, and a bit loose at the seams. Sadly it was a bit too late for my childhood (I was a research student by then) but it was (and is) still fun and became one of Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate’s iconic series. Read more here >>>>
14-21 February 2014
National Nest Box Week. Run by the British Trust for Ornithology, National Nestbox week is to encourage us to put up nestboxes for the birds. Why? Because so often these birds are declining due to a scarcity of nest sites as mature trees are cut down. This is also a good time to check existing nestboxes and (if they’re not inhabited by anything hibernating — insects, dormice, etc.) to clean them our before the new nesting season begins. Read more here >>>>
15 February.
Galileo Galilei was born this day in 1564. Galileo was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher who played a major role in the scientific revolution. His achievements included improvements to the telescope (and thus astronomical observations) and support for Copernicus’ theory of heliocentrism. For this latter Galileo was arraigned by the Inquisition, made to recant and sentenced to house arrest for the remainder of his life. Galileo was one of the all time giants of science. Read more here >>>>
17-23 February 2014
Chip Week. It seems that we Brits can’t get enough chips, so let’s admit defeat and celebrate! What? You mean they’re bad for us? I don’t believe it! Read more here >>>>

25 February.
Sir John Tenniel, British illustrator, graphic humourist and political cartoonist, died this day in 1914 just a few days short of his 94th birthday. He is perhaps best known today for his illustrations to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There. Read more here >>>>