Category Archives: Other science
Awesome
As If It Matters
Why a piece of pizza is so tempting after a stressful day
A new animal study has found that exposure to stress post dieting can increase chances of binge eating.
I'm Half Curious About This
The Epochal Top-Ten List
Consequences of Having Evolved
2. Hiccups
The first air-breathing fish and amphibians extracted oxygen using gills when in the water and primitive lungs when on land—and to do so, they had to be able to close the glottis, or entryway to the lungs, when underwater. Importantly, the entryway (or glottis) to the lungs could be closed. When underwater, the animals pushed water past their gills while simultaneously pushing the glottis down. We descendants of these animals were left with vestiges of their history, including the hiccup. In hiccupping, we use ancient muscles to quickly close the glottis while sucking in (albeit air, not water). Hiccups no longer serve a function, but they persist without causing us harm—aside from frustration and occasional embarrassment. One of the reasons it is so difficult to stop hiccupping is that the entire process is controlled by a part of our brain that evolved long before consciousness, and so try as you might, you cannot think hiccups away.
Not to Be Confused With Medium-Rare Earths
US reserves of rare earth elements assessed for first time
“Rare earth” is an alternative name for the lanthanides – elements 57 to 71 – plus yttrium and scandium. The elements are integral to modern life, and are used in everything from disc drives, hybrid cars and sunglasses to lasers and aircraft used by the military.
China controls 97 per cent of the world’s supply and has been tightening its export quotas, sparking concerns that the rare earths could live up to their name.
Not Talking About Ice IX
American Drink: Ice Part 2: How to Make the Best F***ing Ice Ever
3. Boil the water
Totally optional in my opinion. If you want super clear ice, boil it to get rid of trapped gasses. I don’t bother much. I’ve already impressed myself just by getting out of bed in the morning and getting out of my jammies. j/k I’m still in my jammies. If you happen to boil water for French Press coffee in the morning, boil extra but don’t go out of your way for it and again, filtered tap water is just fine.
A particular ice tray is recommend in the post, and I had seen it before, but it (and other new silicone ice trays I’ve seen) suffer from one major flaw: there is no “cheater” slot connecting adjacent cube spaces, which would allow water to move between them and even the levels. This makes it hard to fill with water that’s not straight out of the tap, without spilling; one hand is occupied by pouring, and for most of us that leaves only one hand to hold the tray (if you aren’t named Zaphod Beeblebrox). I’m not sure if this is a design oversight, or a structural limitation imposed by using silicone.
Stonecutters Call 312
What a Hundred Million Calls to 311 Reveal About New York
The 311 system has proved useful not just at detecting reliable patterns but also at providing insights when the normal patterns are disrupted. Clusters of calls about food-borne illness or sanitary problems from the same restaurant now trigger a rapid response from the city’s health department. And during emergencies, callers help provide real-time insight into what’s really happening. “When [New York Yankees pitcher] Cory Lidle crashed his plane into a building on the Upper East Side, we had a bulletin on all of our screens in less than an hour explaining that it was not an act of terrorism,” Morrisroe says. After US Airways flight 1549 crash-landed in the Hudson in 2009, a few callers dialed 311 asking what they should do with hand luggage they’d retrieved from the river. “We have lots of protocols and systems in place for emergencies like plane crashes,” Morrisroe explains, “but we’d never thought about floating luggage.” This is the beauty of 311. It thrives on the quotidian and predictable—the school-closing queries and pothole complaints—but it also plays well with black swans.
Brother Maynard! Bring Up the Holy Hand Grenade!
Radioactive rabbit trapped at Hanford
Workers first found contaminated rabbit droppings last week in the 300 Area, said Todd Nelson, spokesman for Washington Closure Hanford, the Department of Energy contractor cleaning up Hanford.
Several rabbits were trapped and the one was found to be highly contaminated with radioactive cesium.
I wonder what superpowers (of a non-breeding nature) you would get if bitten by a radioactive rabbit?
Rotten Burgers
Dozens of other examples exist, and most of them come to the same conclusion: McDonald’s hamburgers don’t rot.
The problem with coming to that conclusion, of course, is that if you are a believer in science (and I certainly hope you are!), in order to make a conclusion, you must first start with a few observable premises as a starting point with which you form a theorem, followed by a reasonably rigorous experiment with controls built in place to verify the validity of that theorem.
Thus far, I haven’t located a single source that treats this McDonald’s hamburger phenomenon in this fashion. Instead, most rely on speculation, specious reasoning, and downright obtuseness to arrive at the conclusion that a McDonald’s burger “is a chemical food[, with] absolutely no nutrition.”