Category Archives: Other science

aka stamp collecting

Is That What I Sound Like?

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To Deter Plague of Bark Beetles, A Boombox Blasting Bug Sounds

[T]he NAU scientists started by blasting rock music and backwards recordings of Rush Limbaugh (presumably because playing the Rush Limbaugh recordings forward is a punishment too terrible even for the beetles). Unfortunately, the beetles quickly became immune to the sounds of heavy metal and heavy bloviating.

The researchers then struck back with an even more annoying sound: recordings of the beetles themselves.

It worked with then bugs, but would it work with Rush? Somehow, I think not.

Getting High to Lose Weight

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Watch out, Colorado

Altitude Causes Weight Loss Without Exercise

The scientists ferried 20 overweight, middle-aged men by train and cable car to a research station perched 1,000 feet below the peak of Germany’s highest mountain, Zugspitze. During the week-long stay, the men could eat and drink as much as they liked and were forbidden from any exercise other than leisurely strolls. The team measured the men’s weight, metabolic rate, levels of hunger and satiety hormones before, during, and after their mountain retreat.

After a week up high, the subjects lost an average of 3 pounds. A month later, they were still 2 pounds lighter. The sceintists’ data showed this was likely because they ate about 730 calories less at high altitudes than they did at normal elevations. They may have felt less hungry, in part, because levels of leptin, the satiety hormone, surged during the stay, while grehlin, the hunger hormone, remained unchanged. Their metabolic rate also spiked, meaning they burned more calories than they usually did.

I love the imagery of “ferrying” the test subjects. Like they were cargo, or veal. “Easy there, young man, you’ll only make yourself tired and stringy. Now, to check on the free-range children.”

Anyway, it’s not all beer and skittles. It’s not clear if fat was lost (vs muscle or water) and there are certain risks involved.

Ooh, I Just Love those Convective Fingers

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Chemistry Drives Convection

Convection occurs when lower density fluid is located below higher density fluid–the lower density material rises, and the higher density material sinks. The best known case is where the lower density fluid is warmer, but it need not be. Since the 1980s researchers have been studying convection triggered by “autocatalytic” reactions, which are self-promoting. But there has been little study of the effects of more common chemical reactions on fluid flow, which could be relevant to many areas of science, such as the geology of Earth’s mantle.

Anne De Wit and her colleagues at the Brussels Free University (ULB) looked at the general case where two reactants come together to produce a single product (A+B→C). They developed a hydrodynamic model and then performed several computer simulations in which a less dense solution containing reactant A was placed on top of a more dense solution with reactant B. This normally stable configuration was disturbed by the appearance of the product C at the boundary between the two solutions, which led to convective “fingers.”

Don't Call Him a Prophet

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NASA’s Prophet Will Give You Nightmares

Professor Hansen has been driven into a strange situation, and produced a strange book. For one-third of a century now, this cantankerous scientist has been more accurate in his predictions about global warming than anyone else alive. He saw these disastrous changes coming long before others did, and the U.S. government has tried to censor or sack him for his prescience. Now he has written a whistle-blower’s account while still at the top: a story of how our political system is so wilfully, deliberately blind to environmental realities that we have no choice now but for American citizens to take direct physical action against the polluters. It’s hardly what you expect to hear from the upper echelons of NASA: not a call to the stars, but a call to the streets. Toss a thousand scientific papers into a blender along with All the President’s Men and Mahatma Gandhi, and you’ve got this riveting, disorienting book.

Square Peg, Round Hole

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Bubbles Break Spherical Mold

Not all bubbles are round. In fact, a new laser-based technique has been developed to make square bubbles, donut bubbles, and V-shaped bubbles. The researchers claim in the January Physical Review E that many other shapes can be made on-demand. These vapor bubbles and the liquid jets they create could have practical uses in moving and bending nanostructures, as well as for manipulating biological cells.

Great Turtle Farts!

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Aquarium lowers water levels after feeding turtles brussel sprouts

[T]he turtles, like humans, are prone to heavy bouts of flatulence after eating the vegetables.

Last year a turtle at a Sealife Centre triggered overflow alarms in the middle of the night after the splashes from gassy bubbles hit overflow sensors.

Now the Yarmouth turtle tank -12 feet in depth and width holding 250,000 litres of water along with George the 3ft long green turtle – has been partially emptied for the festive season.

I wonder how this affects their buoyancy and swimming speed.