Strange Science
Page 4
WASTE NOT
Thanks to nano-gold, sewage treatment plants could go from consuming energy to producing it. How? By using the microbial fuel cell, a device that converts chemical energy to electrical energy. Bacteria from sewage are placed in the anode chamber of the cell, where they consume nutrients and grow, releasing electrons in the process. Result: electricity! Engineers at Oregon State University have discovered that coating the anodes with nano-gold increases the amount of energy released twentyfold. Sewage treatment plants might produce their own operating power, and even become “brown energy” generators.
DIVIDE AND CONQUER
More than a third of all Americans—about 120 million people—will be diagnosed with cancer sometime during their lives. When the wife of Dr. Mostafa El-Sayed, a Georgia Tech professor, was fighting breast cancer, he began looking into cancer research. “In cancer, a cell’s nucleus divides much faster than normal,” says El-Sayed. “If we can stop a cell from dividing, we can stop the cancer.” El-Sayed felt that the properties of gold might be useful in killing cancer cells, and he designed nanometer-sized spheres of gold to test his theory. He and his team harvested cells from cancers of the ear, nose, and throat and coated them with a peptide that would carry the nano-gold into the cancer cells, but not into healthy cells. Result: The cancer cells started dividing, then collapsed and died. Though the discovery came too late to save El-Sayed’s wife, nano-gold may save many lives in the future.
RESIGNED IN
PROTEST
WHO: Bruce Boler, a water quality specialist with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
BACKGROUND: Boler was assigned to southwest Florida in 2001 to assess the impact of development in and around the area’s wetlands. In the course of his work he refused several permits for golf course developments because of the amount of pollutants the developments would discharge into sensitive wetland areas. Outraged developers funded their own “scientific” studies, which determined that developments such as golf courses were actually better for the environment…than natural wetlands. Amazingly, in 2003 the EPA accepted the studies.
RESIGNATION: Boler immediately resigned, calling the findings “absurd,” and went public with the information. (He now works at Florida’s Everglades National Park.)
IT’S SCIENCE!
Thoughts on the joys and frustrations of scientific discovery.
“Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The task is not to see what has never been seen before, but to think what has never been thought before about what you see every day.”
—Erwin Schrödinger
“The whole of science consists of data that, at one time or another, were inexplicable.”
—Brendan O’Regan
“A good scientist is a person in whom the childhood quality of perennial curiosity lingers on. Once he gets an answer, he has other questions.”
—Frederick Seitz
“Science belongs to no one country.”
—Louis Pasteur
“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny…’ ”
—Isaac Asimov
HE DID IT
HIMSELF
Medical breakthroughs sometimes begin with a visionary who asks, “What if…” and then proceeds to do something reckless enough to land him a write-up in Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Werner Forssmann was just such a man. It was this 25-year-old German medical student who asked in 1929, “Can I thread a flexible tube all the way to my heart through a vein, and then photograph it for the rest of the guys to see down at the beer hall?” Without waiting for an answer, Forssmann cut an incision into the basilic vein in his upper arm. The plucky student then threaded a urethral catheter—a transparent tube used to help patients who can’t urinate—into the vein. Werner walked down a flight of stairs with the tube in his arm, entered the radiology department, sat down on a table, and continued threading the tube toward his heart, using a mirror to watch his progress on a primitive X-ray device known as a fluoroscope. When he threaded the tube all the way into his heart’s right atrium, Forssmann X-rayed the event for posterity. At that moment, the diagnostic tool known as angiography was invented.
English physician William Harvey had proven in the 1600s that the blood circulates through the body and that the heart is the center of circulation. So, in theory at least, Forssmann had known it should be possible to measure the activity of the human heart by determining pressures inside the heart’s chambers. If pressures were good, the heart was functioning normally; if low or erratic, the physician could diagnose faulty cardiac function.
A year later, Forssmann repeated his trick. Only this time, he injected an iodine compound through the hollow catheter and into the right atrium of his own heart for the world to see. So now not only the catheter but the area of the heart injected with iodine could be seen with an X-ray.
Because of Forssmann, the diagnostic tool known as cardiac angiography was invented…and patients everywhere could now get big fat bills for “diagnostic procedures.”
CHEMICALS ARE COOL!
In 1997 high school students across America got time off from class to attend “Chem TV.” Supposedly designed to get kids excited about chemistry and science, it was a traveling extravaganza featuring music, videos, lasers, games, skits, dancers, free T-shirts, a huge set with giant TV screens, and enthusiastic young performers.
Educational? Sort of. Chem TV (meant to sound like “MTV”) said it was about chemistry, but it was really about the chemical industry. It was part of a million-dollar public relations campaign by Dow Chemical to help change its image. Dow had a controversial history: It supplied napalm and Agent Orange to the government during the Vietnam War, and lawsuits over faulty breast implants nearly bankrupted the company in 1995.
Critics charged that the Chem TV presentations were misleading (in one, an actor took off his clothes to demonstrate that “your entire body is made of chemicals”). Chem TV didn’t differentiate between a chemical (a man-made combination of ingredients) and an organic compound (molecules that fuse together naturally—like water). Even so, the program toured for three years and won numerous awards. And it was tax exempt because it was “educational.”
THE STINKY CHEESE STUDY
When most people think of a smelly cheese, Limburger is what comes to mind. Even though Mighty Mouse had a weakness for it, the stuff’s indescribable scent repels most people. Researchers at the Netherlands’ Wageningen Agricultural University found that the mosquito species Anopheles gambiae “loves both stinky feet and Limburger cheese.” Limburger’s uniquely smelly properties come from B. linens—the same bacteria that attract malaria-carrying mosquitoes to stinking feet. But despite that fact, Limburger is not the world’s stinkiest cheese.
The B. linens bacterial strain is shared by many other washed-rind cheeses, including Muenster. During the ripening process for washed-rind cheeses, cheesemakers rinse the cheeses with a liquid (usually wine or beer), which encourages bacteria to grow and gives the cheeses a reddish-brown rind. Many people associate smelly with moldy, and moldy with old. But washed-rind cheeses are young cheeses, and the washing process is what brings this type of cheese to maturity. They’re most common in Europe.
In 2004, scientists at Cranfield University in Bedfordshire, England, conducted a study to determine the most fetid fromage out of 15 contestants. The panel of pungency used 19 human testers backed up by an electronic “nose” to make its determinations. The electronic nose was made up of an array of sensors, each of which responded to the presence of chemicals in a slightly different way. The sensors were linked to a computer that interpreted their responses and rated them.
OLFACTORY ASSAULT
The winner was Vieux Boulogne (“Old” or “Aged Boulogne”), a washed-rind cheese from France that testers likened to a combination of garlic, unwashed feet, and unwas
hed cat. But like Limburger, the actual taste of Vieux Boulogne (also known as Sable du Boulonnais) isn’t as disgusting as its description. It’s tangier and alcoholic because of the bière blonde (pale ale) used to wash its square rind. In fact, the owner of Le Fromagerie, the only store in London that stocks Vieux Boulogne, describes it as “a young, modern cheese with a surprisingly mellow and gentle taste that’s perfect served with some crusty bread and a beer. It’s a great cheese to try, as it doesn’t have the earthy, farmyardy flavours that some people find overpowering.”
Vieux Boulogne is made in the northernmost reaches of Normandy, a region of France renowned for its dairy products. The rich, flavorful milk from the cows near the city of Boulogne-sur-Mer contributes to its “mellow and gentle taste.” But don’t expect to sample it at your neighborhood grocery store. Vieux Boulogne is an unpasteurized milk cheese, so it’s not legal in the United States.
The Tech Conference Hoax
BACKGROUND: Massachusetts Institute of Technology student Jeremy Stribling submitted an academic paper to a leading technology conference. The paper, entitled “Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy,” was accepted, and he was invited to speak at the World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics, and Informatics in Orlando, Florida.
EXPOSED! The paper was nothing but gibberish generated by a computer program. The program, written by Stribling and two fellow students, automatically spit out important-sounding nonsense, such as: “We can disconfirm that expert systems can be made amphibious” and “We concentrate our efforts on showing that the famous ubiquitous algorithm for the exploration of robots by Sato et al. runs in ►((n + log n)) time [22].” Stribling later admitted to the hoax, adding that they’d done it because they were tired of being inundated with e-mail spam soliciting research papers for the conference. His conference credentials were subsequently revoked.
THE ICEMAN COMETH
On September 19, 1991, two German hikers spotted a body protruding from a glacier in the Ötzal Alps along the Austrian/Italian border.
•When scientists carbon-dated the remains, Ötzi the Iceman (as dubbed by the press) turned out to be more than 5,300 years old. Ötzi, a dark-skinned male around age 45, stood 5'5" tall and weighed about 134 pounds. He lived in the Copper Age around 3350 BC, and he continues to provide a treasure trove of information about Stone Age humans.
•Ötzi was the world’s oldest fully preserved intact prehistoric human—a wet mummy complete with skin, hair, bones, and organs. Previous bodies had been dissected, embalmed, or destroyed by animals. Archaeologists were surprised by his shaved face and freshly cut hair.
•His body was found with everyday clothing and supplies—a copper ax, flint, dagger, bow, quiver, and arrows, which shed more light on daily life than the ceremonial objects typically uncovered with other bodies. (Unfortunately, visitors soon arrived, destroyed his clothing, and apparently stole his private parts.)
•Ötzi is the oldest tattooed human mummy yet discovered. So far 61 tattoos have been mapped on his body. They were made not with needles but with charcoal rubbed into cut marks. Their locations are consistent with acupuncture points, thus predating the first known use of this healing technique by 2,000 years.
•Theories about his death abound, but the latest forensic evidence suggests that Ötzi was murdered. He sustained defensive injuries in the weeks prior to his death that were consistent with a physical altercation. Pollen in his body shows that 24 hours before his death he climbed from the valley floor to the glacier where he died, perhaps to evade his adversary. The arrow found in his shoulder seems to have been launched from a great distance below Ötzi’s location. The fact that the ax and other valuables were not stolen suggests that robbery was not the motive.
•DNA tests and body-scans reveal that he suffered from hardening of the arteries, gallstones, worn joints, parasites, gum disease, and that he was the first diagnosed victim of Lyme disease. Later DNA studies have revealed at least a dozen living genetic relatives in the Tyrol region. Ötzi’s remains are stored in a special cold cell in Italy at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, where scientists continue to study his life and cause of death.
“Scientific” Theory:
Rain Follows the Plow
In the 1860s a theory became popular in the United States: It said that, when humans planted crops in dry, previously unsettled regions, moisture was released into the air, with the result being a change in climate and more rainfall. This became known as the “rain follows the plow” theory, and it was pushed by scientists, the local railroad company, and then the press, just as the government was trying to get people to settle the Great Plains—a region long known as a dry and barren wasteland. (The fact that the region happened to be experiencing a rare wet spell in the 1870s helped the theory take hold.) The theory comforted the millions of people who over the following decades moved to the Plains and built farms. No need to worry, promoters said—build it and the rain will come! It didn’t. Millions of acres of farmland were subsequently wiped out during the repeated droughts that followed, culminating in the devastating Dust Bowl years of the 1930s.
According to the Latest Research…
•In a 2009 study by Oxford University, scientists gave a group of ducks full access to a pond, a water trough, and a shower. They found that the ducks preferred standing under the shower to standing in still water. The three-year study cost more than half a million dollars.
•In 2003 researchers at Plymouth University in England studied primate intelligence by giving macaque monkeys a computer. They reported that the monkeys attacked the machine, threw feces at it, and, contrary to their hopes, failed to produce a single word.
•In 2001 scientists at Cambridge University studied kinetic energy, centrifugal force, and the coefficient of friction…to determine the least messy way to eat spaghetti.
•Researchers at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest analyzed videos of the “Wave” at sporting events. Results: it almost always moves clockwise around the stadium, travels at about 40 feet per second, and the average width of a wave is 15 rows of seats.
•A 2002 study by the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Vermont found that studies are often misleading.
ACCIDENTAL DISCOVERY:
INSULIN
In 1889 Joseph von Mering and Oskar Minkowski, two German scientists, were studying the digestive system. As part of their experiments, they removed the pancreas from a living dog to see what role the organ plays in digestion.
The next day a laboratory assistant noticed an extraordinary number of flies buzzing around the dog’s urine. Von Mering and Minkowski examined the urine to see why…and were surprised to discover that it contained a high concentration of sugar. This indicated that the pancreas plays a role in removing sugar from the bloodstream.
Von Mering and Minkowski were never able to isolate the chemical that produced this effect, but their discovery enabled Canadian researchers John J. R. MacLeod and Frederick Banting to develop insulin extracts from horse and pig pancreases and to pioneer their use as a treatment for diabetes in 1921.
Go to page 106 for the rest of the story.
IT REALLY IS A
MELTING POT
In 2006 Professor Peter Fine at Florida Atlantic University asked his class to do a project on their own racial identities, and to submit to DNA tests as part of it. Twelve of the students considered themselves white with European ancestry; one considered himself black and of African descent. Results: Only one of the white students turned out to be completely European, and the black student turned out to have 21% European ancestry. The rest had various degrees of European, African, Native American, and East Asian genes. Professor Fine himself, who considered himself of typical white European stock, found out that he had 25% Native American genes. “I honestly think these tests could have a large effect on American consciousness,” Fine told the U.K.’s Observer newspaper. “If Americans recogni
ze themselves as a mixed group of people, that could really change things.”
THE HAWKING
WORMHOLE
“Wormholes are all around us, only they’re too small to see,” says physicist Stephen Hawking. He describes wormholes as “tiny crevices, wrinkles, and voids” in the universe that connect separate areas of space and time.
If scientists could devise a machine that would make a wormhole bigger—say, large enough for a human to pass through—it might make a handy time machine. Unfortunately, right now, Hawking doesn’t know how to do that. What he does know is what he’d do with a wormhole time machine if he had one: “If I had a time machine, I’d visit Marilyn Monroe in her prime or drop in on Galileo as he turned his telescope to the heavens.”
A vampire bat drinks more than its own weight in blood every night.
WEIRD ENERGY:
BODY HEAT
Cremation is an increasingly popular way of dealing with the dead—it’s cheaper and more ecologically sound than traditional burials. In a typical crematorium, the furnace reaches a temperature of about 1,800°F. The deceased’s body is reduced to ashes, but that’s not the whole story. All the organic matter in the body, which is mostly water, vaporizes and becomes gaseous. Most nations require that the gases be treated before they’re released. So the gases are passed through a cold-water chamber, which cools them to 350°F, and then a filter traps any gasified toxins—primarily the mercury in tooth fillings. The gas is released into the air, but the water in the cooling chamber is now very hot and nonpotable because it had cremation gases passed through it.