Cocktail Party Physics

bath salts for turkeys

A very happy, albeit jet-lagged Thanksgiving to you all.  Major apologies for not getting this up earlier, but it represents my first attempt at vlogging and the learning curve ended up being a little steeper than I anticipated.
I just returned from London last night (this morning?) and, after trying to figure out the correct encoding right up to the time I had to leave for the airport, I dragged the whole project with me to England, only to find out that my poor little underpowered laptop didn't have the horsepower to run Adobe Premiere Pro.  Thanks to a lack of Cornish game hens in the area, I'm making chicken and stuffing this holiday, which means I have a little more time this morning to get the video uploaded.
The video is a little on the long side, and I know there are some lighting problems - I am learning about that you can know all you want about optics, but it doesn't mean you know anything about lighting.  The vlog features the science behind - as Jennifer pointed out - why brining a turkey is the absolute best way to make Thanksgiving dinner.  Luckily for me (as it is probably a little late to start on your T-bird now), it's such an easy technique that I use it when we're barbecuing chicken, or basically anytime I am cooking fowl.

A couple additional links for more information.

• If you're going to try brining, I recommend the original Martha Stewart recipe that got me started.  The ingredients sound a little odd, but believe me, they turn out a really tasty bird.  Pay attention to the concentration of salt and sugar in the water, though!
• One hint I forgot to add in the video: It's really important to let the brine cool before you dunk in your birds, so I like to use about 1/4 of the water to heat and dissolve the salt/sugar in, and then make up the other 3/4 of the water with ice, so the liquid cools down and you can start with the brining faster.
• I recommend the scanning electron micrograph images at the Internet Microscope for Schools site for looking at the different types of salt a little closer.
• The Salt Institute, for everything else you ever wanted to know about salt

I'm still experimenting with the vlog format, so please be gentle with your comments about the strange blue cast of some of the scenes and a couple of awkward cuts! My big challenge now is translating the British recipe I brought home for sticky toffee pudding into U.S. measurement (and words!) Muscavato sugar anyone?

a moveable feast

The Spousal Unit and I are in Vegas for a long Thanksgiving weekend, because nothing says "Turkey Day" like poker, fine dining, and spa treatments, possibly with a bit of early Christmas shopping thrown in. So Jen-Luc Piquant is left to her own devices to find amusing holiday-related science tidbits for your reading pleasure. Fortunately, the Interwebz provide a rich cornucopia of T-Day scienc-y goodness, so she didn't have to forage very far.

First up: over at Scientific American, there's a featured interview with "turkey researcher" Richard Buchholz. Actually, he's an animal behaviorist at the University of Mississippi who specializes in turkeys. Over a decade ago, he made a few headlines with his findings about what evolutionary advantages a turkey's bald head might convey, other than as a useful signal to prospective females that he was, shall we say, "available" for a booty call. But Buchholz hypothesized that the bald head might also help the turkey cool off -- it made for a better release of excess body heat. To test this hypothesis, Buchholz literally put socks on turkey heads to trap heat, and found that the fowl didn't really like it at all, particularly in warmer climes. Or maybe they just didn't like the itchy wool. Hard to tell with turkeys.

His latest work has focused on the question of whether a male's ornamentation -- which definitely plays a role in sexual selection in that females prefer males with larger (size matters!), brighter ornaments -- is related to their resistance to parasitic infection. Buchholz says that it's possible such desirable males get that larger, brighter ornamentation because they have fewer parasites. That makes them genetically desirable, particularly since male turkeys aren't the nurturing type: they're pretty much just sperm donors, while the females do all the work of protecting the eggs and raising the young. And the more resistant the offspring are to parasites, the better their chances for long-term survival.

It's also possible that this particular trait might be related to how ultraviolet light reflects off turkey feathers. Humans can't see UV light, but turkeys can, along with some other species of birds and many insects. "I was curious about whether turkeys could see changes in feather reflections -- the colors -- coming off the feathers when they are parasitized that we can't notice," he tells SciAm. He collaborated with colleagues at Auburn University to demonstrate that infected turkeys had fewer UV reflections from their shiny breast feathers and wings than healthy uninfected turkeys.

"So a parasitized turkey looks completely different to another turkey than a non-parasitized one and in ways that we can't really appreciate," because humans can't perceive UV light, he says. Now they're looking into whether female turkeys (a) can perceive this difference in UV reflections, and (b) rely on this feature to help them select the healthiest male turkeys with whom to mate.

Buchholz isn't the only researcher interested in turkeys: a team of scientists at the University of Sheffield have identified the genetic switch that may determine the formation of white meat versus dark meat in turkeys (and other animals as well, one assumes). White meat is made up of "fast switch" muscle fibers that give the animal short intense bursts of energy, while dark meat is made of "slow twitch" muscle fibers, perfect for extended exertion -- think sprint versus marathon.

Philip Ingham et al studied the muscle cells of zebrafish and identified one gene in particular that seems to play a key role in determining which muscle fibers develop. It's dubbed u-boot (ubo), and works by controlling a transcription factor protein that is linked not just to muscle development, but also to determining white blood cell type. Quoth Ingham to SciAm: "This finding has implications for future research into how muscle genes are switched on and off and could provide new ways of manipulating the proportions of slow and fast twitch fibers in muscles." I'm sure he's focusing on medical treatments and such, but sooner or later, we're going to have genetically engineered turkeys with higher percentages of either white or dark meat. I just know it.

Okay, then, now that we have the scoop on the science of living turkeys, we can move on to the more important question of how best to cook them to achieve the highest degree of yumminess. Anyone who's seriously cooked a turkey knows that brining is key to a moist, succulent bird (it's less critical for the Tofurkey favored by your local vegetarian). Just take it from celebrity chef Alton Brown, who has his own unique approach to preparation: deep fry the sucker! All you need is a big enough vat of grease, and a special contraption to ensure you can lower the entire turkey into the vat from a safe distance. This is particularly critical if said turkey happens to be frozen at the time. When Brown did this for his TV show, fire ensued. But it did result (eventually) in a delicious meal. Here's Brown recapping that experiment for an audience at Google:

That's one spectacular method of turkey preparation, but it's not for everyone. If you have world enough and time, live in a region with copious sunlight, and are looking for an environmentally friendly method of food preparation, there's always solar cookers. There's different models, and the maximum temperatures attainable in the kind of cooker you have varies a bit. A single-reflector solar cooker, for instance, has top temperatures of about 300 degrees F, although food usually cooks just fine at temperatures in the 200 degree F range, according to the fine folks at Solar Cooking. The higher temperatures just mean you can cook more food a little faster. The nice thing about slower cooking in a single-reflector box is that the food won't burn after it's done, so you can put the food in, go about your day, and come back when you're ready to eat and find it done and kept nicely warm for your consumption. It's like a sunlight-powered crockpot.

A more patient, thinking-ahead approach is probably a good idea, since it takes, in general, twice as long to cook something in a solar cooker than it takes in a conventional oven. Just make sure you haven' inadvertently bought a parabolic cooker. The parabolic shape is great at focusing sunlight, hence the legend about how Archimedes used an array of mirrors in the shape of a parabola to set fire to invading Roman ships intent on conquering Syracuse. (As brilliant as Archimedes was, when the Mythbusters and a team from MIT tried this, it proved incredibly difficult. The Mythbusters failed; the MIT team managed to start a tiny fire on one boat that fizzled out very quickly. Flaming arrows would have done the job much faster. And looked way cooler.) So food cooked in a parabolic solar cooker might cook faster, but needs to be stirred and watched carefully. Which kind of defeats the purpose of just being able to put the food items in and walk away.

My personal favorite recipe for turkey preparation can be found on Cooking for Engineers: Smoked Beer Can Turkey. He adapted the recipe from a similar one for chicken, although a turkey is a much larger bird, and hence a standard 12-oz beer can wouldn't suffice. What does work is a "24-oz microkeg shaped can of Heineken." There's a bunch of preparatory steps outlined in the recipe, but the idea is that inserting a beer can into the turkey's derriere provides flavored steam to the inside of the bird as it cooks, keeping it moist and delicious.

Our friendly cooking engineer is skeptical that the beer adds flavor to the meat during the cooking process: "If the beer is giving off steam, then most of that steam is just going to be water... most of the beer flavor will just be concentrating in the can." Nonetheless, he included the beer, along with some crushed herbs (six chopped bay leaves and two teaspoons of dried thyme), because hey, it's all about the principle of the thing. (Emeril, BTW, has demonstrated beer-brined chicken on his cooking show, which combines beer-can chicken with the brining process, and in that case the beer really does impart flavor to the bird.)

The other major food tradition for Thanksgiving is pumpkin pie. There are any number of great recipes available online, but a pumpkin pie tastes better if you use fresh pumpkin guts, rather than the canned pumpkin puree most of us resort to in the interests of saving time.  And what dessert would be complete without yummy homemade ice cream? The Spousal Unit loves to make his own ice cream, but it's a lengthy process that generally takes two days. For more impatient sorts, who also have access to science labs and liquid nitrogen, it's far more efficient to create instant ice cream by freezing it instantaneously with said liquid nitrogen. You can find recipes here and here. It's a staple of physics demonstrations dealing with cryogenics and/or phase transitions.

I hope a cultural historian eventually gets around to examining why we abuse the humble pumpkin so much: we gut them, and carve scary faces and other designs on the shells for Halloween; use their innards as baked pie filling; and every year around Halloween, Caltech's Dabney House has its annual Millikan Pumpkin Drop Experiment, in which pumpkins frozen in liquid nitrogen are dropped from the top of Millikan Library (the highest point on campus). The idea it to test the hypothesis that when a frozen pumpkin hits the ground and shatters, it will produce a triboluminescent spark (a.k.a., "the Wint-O-Green Lifesaver Effect"). I'm not sure if anyone's ever witnessed such a thing; these days, the fun is all in the dropping and smashing of the pumpkins.

The annual Punkin Chunkin contest is even more popular. It's been running for over 20 years, ever since 1986, when Sussex County in Delaware held the very first contest. People basically compete to see who can hurl a pumpkin the farthest without it coming apart in the air -- "pumpkin pie in the sky" -- using a number of contraptions they design and build themselves. There are different categories based on how you choose to chunk your pumpkin: catapults, trebuchets, and air cannons are the most popular. The current world record is 4,438 feet, a mere 800 feet shy of a full mile. The World Championship Punkin Chunkin Contest for 2009 will be aired on the Science Channel on Thanksgiving Day, at 8 PM, hosted by comedian Brad Sherwood and complete with tips about the science and engineering behind the contest by Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek. Sit back and watch the pumpkins fly!

So there you have it: some fine science to reflect while you're digesting your fine Thanksgiving feast. And if you feel incredibly sleepy after said feast, don't blame the tryptophan. This is an amino acid present in turkey (and various other meats and proteins) that allegedly causes drowsiness because the body uses it to make seratonin, a neutrotransmitter that has been experimentally shown to put flies to sleep. ALl of which is true as far as it goes, but the reality is a bit more complicated than that. See, tryptophan is just one of several amino acids found in turkey and other protein-rich foods, all of which are competing for the shame "shuttles" (special transport proteins) for transport beyond the blood-brain barrier. Tryptophan isn't even the most abundant of those amino acids, so the likelihood of a significant amount of the stuff getting to your brain and making you sleepy by increasing serotonin levels are pretty slim.

Unless -- you happen to follow the turkey with a nice helping of pumpkin pie, liquid nitrogen ice cream and a hefty dollop of fresh whipped cream. A massive infusion of carbohydrates also increases serotonin in the brain, without any need for tryptophan. Dessert causes the pancreas to secrete more insulin, which helps the body's tissues absorb glucose and most amino acids -- but not tryptophan. This has the effect of winnowing out the competition for those protein transports to the brain, meaning more tryptophan is likely to get there, increase the synthesis and serotonin, and voila! You fall into a satisfied state of drowsiness. At which point, you may as well give in and relax with a dose of the Three Stooges. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

The Three Stooges - The best video clips are here

taster's choice

Over at Swans on Tea, Tom expounded recently on how cooking isn't "really" science, recalling a family holiday gathering where his grade school niece wanted to bake something for her school science project. For Tom, this bit of information "elicited a mental face palm." He has a point: what he's really objecting to is not cooking per se, but the blind following of a recipe/instructions, which isn't any more scientific than rote memorization of scientific facts. Science is a process, and Tom goes on to suggest a couple of ways to make baking more like "real" science: you know, making a prediction about what might happen if you change one of the ingredients, or combine them in a different, and then testing your hypothesis. As Tom says, "In any reasonably complicated experiment, something will go wrong, and it's the job of the scientist to figure out why and track down where the problem is." And he went to relate how he solved a problem with his spectroscopy setup.

With all due respect to Tom, cooking, done properly, is not about blindly following recipes: it involves a lot of prediction and testing by experiment to get a dish just right. The recipes just give you the basic framework. It's even more of a science these days, with the rise of molecular gastronomy (about which I blogged three years ago), sous vide (read Lee's take here), and other cutting edge techniques that combine technology with basic chemistry to create new dishes that appeal to our taste perception. There's probably half a dozen potential science projects there. For starters, there's just the basic chemistry that takes place when we prepare various foodstuffs. As Lee said,

Cooking is really a type of chemistry, dependent upon the reaction of molecules to the application of heat, as much as anything. Proteins, lipids, and complex carbohydrates break down and/or change their shape when they're heated. McGee ... is the author of On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, which is a history of food and cooking, a technical manual, and a chemistry text that explains what happens to various foods when you cook them using different methods and temperatures. Many foods, McGee explains, lose flavor, color, nutritional value, and texture when you cook them at high heat. This is because heat increases the action of enzymes before it stops them. Enzymes are another type of protein that increases the rate of chemical reactions, like breaking complex, long-chain proteins into digestible bits in your stomach. This is what happens in cooking, too, to a lesser extent.

So cooking is definitely a science, drawing on chemistry and physics and basic biology/anatomy among other fields, not to mention engineering to come up with innovative preparation techniques. It's become so much of a science, in fact, that the University of Copenhagen is currently advertising for a professorial appointment in culinary chemistry, part of an ongoing effort to establish molecular gastronomy as a serious field of scientific study. Kitchens today in fine restaurants are as likely to use liquid nitrogen as more conventional ingredients to achieve unique shapes and textures.

You may have learned the basics of how we taste in school. Here's a refresher, courtesy of How Stuff Works:

Taste begins with sensation in the form of electrical impulses. Sensations, however -- responses to stimuli like pressure, light or chemical composition -- become perceptions like touch, vision or taste only when they reach the brain. In humans, the chemoreceptors that detect taste are called gustatory receptor cells. About 50 receptor cells, plus basal and supporting cells, make up one taste bud. Taste buds themselves are contained in goblet-shaped papillae -- the small bumps that dot your tongue. Some papillae help create friction between the tongue and food. Every gustatory receptor cell has a spindly protrusion called a gustatory hair. This taste hair reaches the outside environment through an opening called a taste pore. Molecules mix with saliva, enter the taste pore and interact with the gustatory hairs. This stimulates the sensation of taste. Once a stimulus activates the gustatory impulse, receptor cells synapse with neurons and pass on electrical impulses to the gustatory area of the cerebral cortex. The brain interprets the sensations as taste.

There are four basic tastes that can be detected by receptors on the tongue: sweet, salty, sour and bitter. Well, actually, there's a fifth one now, too. It was first discovered in the early 1900s by a Japanese scientist named Kikunae Ikeda, who investigated how we detect the unusual flavor of savory seaweed common in Japanese cuisine, and ended up isolating glutamic acid as a fifth taste (umami) that has its own separate receptor. His study on taste wasn't translated into English until 2002, which is why umami has yet to make it into school textbooks.

In truth, our perception of taste is even more dependent on our sense of smell -- as much as 80% of the tasting experience, in fact. That's because the tongue has 9000 taste buds; but humans have between 5 and 10 million cells or receptors for detecting smell, which is how we can make subtle distinctions between how different foods taste. A scientist named Francois Benzi first proposed that because smell is so important to how we taste food, that certain food pairings should work well if they shared the same major volatile molecules. He first experimented with jasmine and pork liver, since both contain indole -- success! It proved an excellent match, and the field of molecular gastronomy was launched.

MG pioneer Hester Blumenthal, who runs The Fat Duck in England, built on this work and discovered that caviar and white chocolate are also a perfect match, since they share trimethylamine. There's now quite an extensive list of scientifically based flavor pairings, including such unusual combinations as carrot and violet; strawberry, celery leaves and mint; banana and parsley (or cloves); and salmon and licorice.

Our favorite restaurant is Alinea in Chicago, run by chef Grant Achatz, who excels at these sorts of flavor combinations. Every "course" is specifically designed to make you appreciate textures, flavors and unusual pairings of food ingredients in surprising and innovative ways. He even has to design his own dishware to serve some of his more unusual concoctions, like the delicate metal trapeze-like contraption on which he serves bacon with butterscotch paste and dehydrated apple (see photo above). Another course is served atop a lavender pillow that slowly deflates as you eat the main dish, providing just the subtlest infusion of lavender without overpowering the other flavors. (Achatz had tongue cancer a couple of years ago and many feared he would lose his world-famous sense of taste; but doctors were able to beat back the cancer without resorting to damaging chemotherapy.) 

Even the amateurs are getting into the act. Martin Lersch, a resident of Oslo, Norway who holds a PhD in organometallic chemistry, writes one of my favorite blogs, Khymos. He started a regular feature called "They Go Really Well Together," wherein he and others passionate about experimenting with food and cooking compete to create innovative recipes based on unusual food pairings. The first such challenge was a doozy: garlic, coffee and chocolate. Garlic and chocolate have nothing in common, but they both share volatile molecules with coffee. The trick was to combine all three in such a way that no one flavor dominated too much, and thus achieve a perfect balance.

Lersch and his blogosphere buddies love food, and science, and have a blast experimenting with these unusual food pairings. As with any science, something inevitably goes wrong, and they finesse their inventive recipes over time, through trial and error. Take Lersch's dish pairing dark chocolate and smoked salmon (pictured above): he encased the salmon in an agar cocoa gel served with sugared slices of lime for garnish. Anyone who's had a really good chicken or beef mole knows that chocolate pairs nicely with savory meats, but smoked salmon? Apparently so.

Lersch ended up with something that worked on the taste front, but fell short in presentation. In particular, he struggled with the preparation of the layered agar gel. Among the lessons learned: "It's crucial that the next layer is poured while piping hot so that it can melt a little into the layer below. Because of agar's significant hysteresis the gelled agar must be brought up to around 80-90 degrees Celsius to melt." The layers also tended to stick together, and fell apart when he tried to get it out of the prep box. And he mused about what might happen if he replaced the hot smoked salmon with cold smoked salmon, concerned that it could change color and texture when the hot agar solution was added -- more chemistry. I eagerly await the outcome of his experiment to test that theory.

The point is, Lersch started with an hypothesis: that because dark chocolate and smoked salmon had certain volatile molecules in common, they would pair well in a dish. He then created an experiment (his own recipe) to test that hypothesis, and he had to solve numerous problems that cropped up during the preparation process. Then he wrote up the results, and outlined the next step for further study. I'm sure Tom would agree: that's the essence of science. I doubt we'll be seeing molecular gastronomy in grade school science fairs any time soon -- but we should certainly see cooking-related projects that go beyond merely blindly following a recipe.

bad moon rising

Halloween may be over, but Jen-Luc Piquant is all aflutter about the forthcoming release on November 20 of New Moon, the film adaption of the second book in Stephanie Meyer's bestselling Twilight trilogy. (She is equally aflutter over Lady Gaga's awesome new video for "Bad Romance," the perfect mix of high fashion, catchy technopop, and edgy burlesque performance art. Ooh la la! A huge number of women -- and possibly a few men -- dressed up as Lady Gaga for Halloween, precisely because she has so many different incarnations, you can pretty much throw on anything skimpy with a blonde wig to build your Halloween ensemble.)

Yes, the sparkling Emo-Vampires are back, along with Bella the Whiny -- teenage angst was never so broody and overwrought after Edward Cullen abandons Bella to basically keep her from getting eaten by his fellow vampires. Longtime Buffy and Angel fans know this was a wise move: humans fare badly when they mix their lot with supernatural creatures. C'mon, do you think it's a coincidence that none of the humans survived Angel's climactic final battle? A facility with weapons can only get you so far. Bella, naturally, sees it differently, and we are treated to the tedium of her rebellious acting out for at least 100 pages (in the novel).

What New Moon has going for it (apart from director Chris Weitz, who sadly won't be directing the third film in the trilogy) is werewolves: the perfect metaphor for the onset of puberty and all those confusing bodily changes and heightened hormonal emotions that make teenagers so annoying. We were all teenagers once. We were all annoying. I, personally, was insufferable until 20. But some teens have more angst than others, and that's where the werewolf legend comes in. Buffy explored these themes to great effect in the character of Oz; in New Moon, the were-focus is on Jacob Black, who befriends the weepy and suicidal Bella after Edward's departure even though he's experiencing, shall we say, some "changes" in his own life.

Confession: I love werewolves, and have done ever since I first saw the classic film I Was a Teenaged Werewolf as a kid during a sleepover at a friend's house. My folks didn't like me watching horror films, mostly because I had a vivid imagination and inevitably suffered nightmares afterward. This was no exception. I woke suddenly in the night, and realized there was the vague outline of a furry human being near the foot of my bed. Terrified, I lay as still as possible and tried to regulate my breathing, figuring if the werewolf thought I was still asleep, it wouldn't eat me. It was a good 10 minutes before my rational brain re-asserted itself and I realized it was a poster of David Cassidy my friend had hung on her wall. (I'm sure the therapists out there could have a field day with this one.)

The werewolf legend -- and shape-shifting in general -- is quite possibly as old as civilization itself. How Stuff Works points to "The Epic of Gilgamesh," one of the oldest written works, as a possible "first mention" source for werewolves. Gilgamesh discovers that the goddess Ishtar -- who has amorous designs on his virtue --turned one former lover (a shepherd) into a wolf. Gilgamesh wisely refuses her romantic overtures. Ovid's "The Metamorphosis" tells the story of King Lycaon of Acadia, who is visited by the god Jupiter in disguise and dares to serve human flesh to the immortal. Jupiter frowns on cannibalism, it turns out, so he turns Lycaon into a wolf. It's not a coincidence that his name comes from lykos, meaning "wolf" -- which is also a root word for lycanthropy, the delusion wherein someone believes he or shehas been transformed into a wolf or other kind of animal.

The earliest film about werewolves is The Wolfman, in which those bitten by a werewolf transform into the same half-human, half-wolf hybrid. Originally, the transformation took place in the autumn, commonly the season when monkshood or wolfsbane is in full bloom. People in the movie attach wolfsbane flowers to their clothing to ward off attacks, but in reality, the plant is very poisonous so it wasn't the smartest protective mechanism. Those who work with these plants typically wear gloves and give their hands a thorough washing after.

Jacob Black's unique condition runs in the family, and it turns out that there is a genetic disorder called hypertrichosis that gives rise to excessive hair growth, in the most extreme cases all over the body. It is sometimes called "werewolf syndrome," and may be the root of the werewolf legends. In the mid 16th century, a man named Petrus Gonzales was brought to the court of King Henry II of France as a novelty: he had long soft hair all his body. Nonetheless, he married and fathered three children who inherited his condition.

His was not an isolated case. In the mid 19th century, a Mexican Indian woman named Julia Pastrana had hypertrichosis terminalis: her face and body were covered with straight black hair and she achieved some measure of fame as the "Bearded and Hairy Lady" on the freak show circuit. She could read and write in three different languages, but people still gawked at her as if she were just an animal.

The person responsible for exploiting her was none other than her husband, Theodor Lent, who had no compunction about selling her body to a Russian anatomist after her death to scrounge a few extra dollars out of his "investment." And when the anatomist returned the mummified body, Lent took his wife's remains on the road. Julia's mummy was lost for many years, but was rediscovered in 1990 at the Oslo Forensic Institute in Norway, where it still resides today.

Many of those who suffered from hypertrichosis found themselves on the freak show circuit, figuring it was better to make the best of a bad situation and get paid for their unfortunate appearance. Other famous examples are Stephen Bibrowski, a.k.a., Lionel the Lion-Faced Man, the so-called "wolf-boy" Jesus Aceves, Annie Jones the Bearded Lady, and Fedor Jeftichew, known to fans of P.T. Barnum's traveling circuses as JoJo the Dog-Faced Boy. It was certainly preferable to the fate of sufferers who had the misfortune to live in the 16th century: in 1573 an alleged werewolf named Gilles Garnier was burned at the stake.

Apart from obsessive shaving and depilatory techniques, there is no treatment or cure. Back in 1995, a team of researchers managed to identify the gene that in its mutant form causes congenital generalized hypertrichosis, the rarest form of the disease. The rare modern cases largely are confined to one particular Mexican family, 32 of whom agreed to donate their blood for genetic screening to participate in the study. Nearly all exhibit excess body face and body hair, but the condition is more pronounced in the males, because hypertrichosis is an "X-linked trait." Daughters only inherit one copy of the mutant X chromosome responsible for the disorder, but their other normal X chromosome counters the expression of the gene. So they usually only have patchy spots of excess. The male members, alas, only inherit one X chromosome, but has no second X chromosome to offer any protection. So the mutation is active in every cell of the body resulting in a more uniform coat of hair. So there's a scientific basis for the Twilight werewolves only being male.

More interesting that the gene itself -- which has not been completely isolated, but has been localized on the bottom half of the X chromosome -- is the fact that it seems to belong to the class of atavistic mutations: the re-emergence of a genetic trait that lies dormant because the organism has evolved in such a way that it's no longer needed, and the gene is set aside. But it doesn't disappear from the genome completely, and the working hypothesis is that occasionally such atavistic mutations can reawaken those genes. Why is the body such a pack rat when it comes to hoarding no-longer-used genes? Per the New York Times article about that research:

"Biologists propose that the reason atavisms exist at all is nature's propensity for recycling old ideas. Rarely is a gene used for a single purpose in the growth and health of an organism. Instead, most genes are Renaissance artists, able to work in a range of styles and media depending on the needs of the species. A gene involved in hair growth may also play a role in the development of skin or bones. Thus. even a relatively naked ape like Homo sapiens cannot afford to lose the hair gene for fear of jeopardizing the rest of the body's architecture and packaging."

This is not a new idea in evolutionary theory. Charles Darwin himself suggested that the condition of having more than the usual number of fingers or toes (polydactyly) was an ancient trait, now mostly formant, that occasionally reappears due to some hereditary misstep. In the case of hypertrichosis, the scientists speculate that humans way back in their earliest days still possessed some semblance of a protective "fur coat." The research could also tell scientists more about how hair grows, in theory producing a treatment for baldness. (Whoever figures that one out stands to make a fortune.)

Given the rarity of hypertrichosis, it's unlikely this alone fueled the widespread versions of werewolf legends and other shape-shifting stories around the globe. The psychological disorder known as clinical lycanthropy is a bit more common, and has been known for centuries. The Greek physician Paulus Aegineta wrote about the syndrome in the 7th century, and the Biblical king Nebuchadnezzar is believed by some historians to have suffered from lycanthropy following a seven-year bout of depression. In 1589 a German named named Peter Stubbe was executed in Cologne for cannibalism and multiple murders; he claimed he had a magical belt that enabled him to turn into a wolf.

In France a decade or so later, a man named Jean Grenier claimed he had a skin that allowed him to become a wolf, and said he was responsible for several murders and disappearances. The court ruled he was insane and confined him to a monastery for the remainder of his life, but his was a common delusion. Some historians estimate that between 1520 and 1630, there were over 30,000 recorded cases in France of people who thought they were werewolves. Robert Burton mentions the syndrome in his 1621 treatise The Anatomy of Melancholy:

"Lycanthropa, which Avicenna calls cucubuth, others lupinam insaniam, or wolf-madness, when men run howling about graves an fields in the night, and will not be persuaded but that they are wolves, or some beasts. Aetius and Paulus call it a kind of melancholy, but I should rather refer to it as madness, as most do."

The disorder, while rare, is still around today. Some 30 cases have been reported in he medical literature since 2004 alone although only a few involve wolf or dog transformations. Despite its name, those suffering from lycanthropy believe they are transformed into various different animals, such as a 34-year-old schizophrenic woman who thought she could turn into a frog and often exhibited frog-like behavior, or another schizophrenic woman who believed she was turning into a bee.

Those who study these sorts of psychiatric conditions believe lycanthropy is usually linked to other conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or clinical depression, but that doesn't explain why those episodes take the form of lycanthropy. There might be neurological factors at play. For instance, certain parts of the brain are known to play a role in shaping body image, and at least one brain imaging study revealed that those suffering from clinical lycanthropy show an unusual level of activity in those parts of the brain. So the transformation process would feel extremely "real" to them. That still doesn't explain why they feel transformed into specific creatures; that may be due to cultural influences.

It certainly can make for some interesting family gatherings. One famous case involved a 49-year-old married woman who began experiencing delusions of being a wolf, culminating in disrobing at a family dinner and, well, basically behaving like a dog in heat. She had episodes of growling, scratching and gnawing at the furniture, and when she looked into the mirror, her body image was so distorted she saw the head of a wolf instead of her own face. Fortunately, nine weeks in an institution under medication for schizophrenia controlled her behavior sufficiently that sh was discharged.

None of this sort of thing is evident in New Moon: not only are the werewolves completely sane, with no embarrassing displays of inappropriate behavior, but they aren't covered in body hair, either -- at least not until they change. That's Hollywood for you. Check out this latest trailer:

Or you can just have fun with the over-heated teen angst, like Taylor Swift and the SNL crew did with this spoof, "Firelight":

the mayans warned us: don't trespass in yellowstone

Last night I settled down into a cushy high-backed chair, got comfortable, turned off my brain and let my mouth hang open for three hours, while Hollywood spoon feed me a sweet gruel made of the worst dialogue, cheesiest moments and most unnecessary (but awesome) special effects they had to offer. I got to see a preview screening of 2012, the latest in a long line of terrible end-of-the world blockbusters. And you know what? Not that bad! Not nearly as bad as The Day After Tomorrow which was bad even as far as bad things go. But 2012 was pretty entertaining because it totally realized how ridiculous it was and then it featured some really amazing images.

Let me say something kind of controversial: 2012 was not very scientifically accurate. I know. I realize that you probably just let out a very loud "Whaaaaaatttt??" and now people in your office are coming over to see what you are gaping about, and then you show them that sentence and they all lift their eyebrows at this controversial blog you are reading. But it is true.

So I am not here to review the scientific accuracy of 2012. To do that would take up this entire blog plus a livejournal and even then I would not have enough room to explain all the ways in which 2012 is not even logically accurate (and I should point out that contrary to what the above trailer says, the Mayans were not even close to being the earliest human civilization. The Mayan culture peaked about 1350 years ago*). See? And if I took the time to point out all the inaccuracies then everyone would wonder why the hell I did that because who cares? It's a movie. It was fun. It was totally ridiculous and utilized every end-of-the-world-movie cliche that exists, but whatever. So I don't want to analyze the whole movie, but I thought I'd take a whack at the first four minutes.

There are no plot spoilers here, as if anyone cares about the plot in a movie like this. Actually, I guess I already told you that I will spoil the first four minutes, but this movie is over two and a half hours long, so there is still plenty of unspoiled movie (insert joke about how this movie is already spoiled). Really, I should tell you what happens in the last half hour and then you can just get up and leave the theater at a time when this movie should have ended. But I'm not actually going to do that.

The movie 2012 is hinged on the (fictional) idea that the Mayan calendar says that the world will end in the year 2012. First of all, the Mayan calendar doesn't actually say that. Problem solved, this movie is never made. Roll credits.

Just kidding, this movie is made. Know why? Because a movie doesn't have to be scientifically accurate to be made. Thank you, America! But what is troubling about this particular falsehood is that there are people out there who believe this stuff, and there are people who hear the craziest folks screaming the loudest and don't know what to think (even when we have wonderful, clear debunkings of all the bull). Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures decided to capitalize on people's real yet unfounded fear by launching realistic looking ad campaigns about preparations for the end of the world in 2012. Very nice, Columbia and Sony.

But again, just so we are clear, the world will not actually end in 2012. 

Sigh. Ok, let me just say this little bit. There is a line in the movie that goes something like "We have all these fancy machines and the Mayans saw this coming." That statement sort of encapsulates the point of view that makes people think the 2012 shenanigans might be right. Yes, scientists can be wrong. Sometimes fancy machines fail. But science doesn't come down to fancy machines, it comes down to an unwavering methodology. With science you always have the opportunity to find out why you are wrong because you can apply your methodology as many times as you want, and with a little creativity, you can find different ways to arrive at the same place. Mystical predictions don't give you that. It might be comforting to think that we could get the answers to all our questions from a crystal ball, but it wouldn't be half as much fun, and doesn't actually seem like the most efficient way to get information. Like, the conspiracy theorists say the Mayans knew about the end of the world but they didn't know about antibiotics or electricity? The Magic 8 Ball just skipped over those, I guess. With science we are listening to nature in a way that is most reflective of nature's own processes. It actually seems very unnatural to think that such predictions of the future would reveal themselves in any way other than how all of natures mysteries unveil themselves - through cause and effect.

OK, now we can get on with having some fun with this movie. 2012 starts out with some really beautiful images of the planets and flares on the surface of the sun (I could have watched 2.5 hours of that and been fine). Then the movie goes to India where two scientists who are friends (established by horrible dialogue) go down into a very deep mine shaft where one scientist is looking for neutrinos. So far so good - neutrino projects are often underground because neutrinos travel right through the Earth, but the cosmic rays that can mess with neutrino detectors do not. Put it underground and you get less disturbance from those cosmic rays and other particles. (Shown - the MINOS project rests in Minnesota's deepest iron mine).

So for a moment, the neutrino science is accurate. Scientist 1, who is running the lab, tells visiting Scientist 2 that the neutrino count hitting the Earth has doubled because of solar flares (neutrinos do come from the sun and from solar flares!), and now they are seeing the largest solar flares in human history!

Initially I thought this was a silly thing to say - assuming that we could only know about solar flares as far back as we have been watching for them, and that prior to the satellite age, people couldn't detect them. And for very small flares, that's true. But it turns out that some solar flares do leave traces on Earth.

The largest example is the 1859 solar storm. This massive solar flare, noted by an observer on the ground as a bright white spot (I do not fully understand how he was looking right at the sun) sent a bubble of hot, charged particles soaring toward Earth. Normally the Earth's magnetic field can deflect charged particles, but this flare was too great. It sent positrons careening down magnetic field lines to Earth, which made the norther Auroras visible as far south Florida. It also short circuited telegraph wires, causing a lot of fires. A less intense solar flare in 1989 caused a blackout in Quebec. This one was more than three times as powerful. Besides the bubble of charged particles and the neutrinos, solar flares can also pummel Earth with radiation; usually it's low frequency X-rays that overlap with high frequency radio waves, interfering with anyone using those radio waves to communicate.

In a New Scientist article on March 23 2007 titled "Solar 'superflare' shredded Earth's ozone,' Kelly Young writes about the evidence and records we have of the solar storm of '59. From the article:

For roughly two days after the flare, high-energy protons entered the atmosphere through the polar regions, channelled there by the planet's magnetic field lines.

The protons ionised nitrogen and oxygen molecules in the atmosphere, which then formed nitrogen oxides.

The nitrogen oxides rained down as acid rain, and traces were found many decades later in ice core samples.

So because of these deposits on ice cores, paired with the human documentation, we know that this solar flare did occur. So I guess it's possible that we would be able to determine when the most powerful solar flare occurred, possibly even before human civilizations.

But let's be clear that while solar flares can definitely cause damage, they can hardly lead to the end of the world.

So Scientist 1 tells Scientist 2 that they have seen an increase in neutrino counts and the largest solar flares ever. Then the two scientists have an exchange that goes something like this:

Scientist 1: Normally, the neutrinos pass through the Earth because they don't interact with regular matter.

Scientist 2: That's right.

Scientist 1: But now the neutrinos are  changing; they are interacting with the Earth's core.

Scientist 2: That's impossible.

Yes, it is. Surprise, this movie is four minutes long. Roll credits.

Just kidding. This movie is two and a half hours long, remember? Scientist 1 continues to explain how the neutrinos are not only interacting with matter, but they are acting like microwaves and heating up the Earth's core! VERY DRAMATIC MUSIC! Scientist 1 opens up what looks like a submarine hatch and inside is...BOILING WATER WITH WEIRD LIGHTING BEHIND IT! WHAT?! DID YOU JUST OPEN UP A SAFE THAT CONTAINS THE CENTER OF THE EARTH?! IS THE CENTER OF THE EARTH A WITCH'S CAULDRON FROM A CHILDREN'S HALLOWEEN PARTY?!

  +   =
This is the equation this movie was based on.

And then my logic drowned in an avalanche of questions (like why would the particles heat up the Earth's core, but not first heat up the oceans?) and I realized I was not meant to win this battle and I let my brain go to sleep and enjoyed watching Woody Harrelson play a crazy conspiracy theorist  living in Yellowstone National Park. Which brings me to the meaning of this post title:

I know we have established that the remaining four hundred hours of 2012 are pure fiction, but please DO NOT CLIMB OVER FENCES IN YELLOWSTONE PARK THAT SAY KEEP OUT. Most of the time it is not a government conspiracy that you should investigate, but a warning that the area contains hot springs and the ground is weak. No matter how much the park tries to keep it safe, people still die in Yellowstone and nearby wild lands because they go walking in areas they shouldn't, the ground gives way and they fall into hot springs. It's very sad and worth noting for safety's sake.

On a happier note, I promise to write a post about the physics of geysers very soon.

I leave you with Carl Sagan in autotune.

*As was pointed out by you wonderful readers, my post skipped over the fact that the real victims in all of this 2012 hoopla might be the Mayans themselves, and I'm sorry didn't do justice to their history. The Mayan civilization included peoples living from what is now southern Mexico down through the Yucatan Penninsula. They were extremely advanced in math, science and language, having come up with the concept of 0 very early on, one of the earliest and fully developed written languages of the Americas, and yes, some very intricate calendars. The roots of this culture go back to 2600  BC (thanks, Richard). My comment above referred to the peak of Mayan civilization, which took place between 250 and 900 AD and I apologize because my past tense (since edited) did imply that they had ended, when in fact they carry on to this day (thanks, HP). Plus, and I'm not an expert here, but there are some sources which argue that Mayan culture was intact before 200 AD and began to disintegrate under the force of some totalitarian leaders shortly thereafter. Various factors may have lead to break up of the Mayans, including political revolt and ecological disasters, but mysteries also remain about why the Mayan people began to abandon some of their largest cities. Spanish explorers arrived in that area in the 1500's and began a long history of repression and mistreatment of all the native people there, as well as destroying text that might have answered many questions about Mayan history. Still, the Mayans persevered  and their culture survives and carries on to this day.  I found one article online in which a Mayan elder talks about having to field questions about the 2012 ridiculousness, and I think there should be more of that. Thanks so much you guys for keeping me on my toes and helping to fill in the conversation.

batteries not included

I love my three-year-old MacBook Pro, but it does run through the batteries, no matter how regularly I calibrate the darn things. I'm on the third replacement battery, and it's barely holding a charge anymore, lasting for, oh, 30 minutes at most. I expect it will give up the ghost any day now. The question now becomes, do I replace the battery one more time, or upgrade to a new MacBook Pro? The new version supposedly comes with batteries that last up to 8 hours, which would be pretty darned handy on a long flight.

The explosion of portable computers (laptops, smart phones, etc) has brought the problem of battery power to the forefront of technological concerns for those in the business of selling such devices. Computers keep getting smaller thanks to continued shrinking of chips and other microcomponents, but batteries necessary to operate them remain pretty clunky in comparison, and thus they add considerable weight to any product -- the largest portion of my laptop's weight is due to the battery. It's just the latest chapter in mankind's quest for the perfect power source.

Some historians believe primitive batteries were used in Iraq and Egypt as early as 200 B.C. for electroplating and precious metal gilding. Around the 1790s, through numerous observations and experiments, Luigi Galvani, an Italian professor of anatomy, caused muscular contraction in a frog by touching its nerves with electrostatically charged metal. Later, he was able to cause muscular contraction by touching the nerve with different metals without a source of electrostatic charge. He concluded that animal tissue contained an innate vital force, which he termed "animal electricity."

One person didn't think Galvani was right. Count Allessandro Guiseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta was born in Como, Italy, in 1745, and eventually grew up to be a professor at the Royal School, where he studied the chemistry of gases. In 1776 he discovered methane by collecting the gas from marshes, and experimented with igniting the gas in a closed container. And he devised an intriguing method for remotely operating a pistol: he used a Leyden jar to send an electric current all the way from Como to Milan via a wire insulated from the ground by wooden boards. Once the current reached its destination, it set off the pistol. One might think this was just an exercise in futility -- unless Volta had plans to become Dr. Evil and this was his way of killing a captive Austin Powers from a distance -- but in fact the experiment was one of many that laid the groundwork for the invention of the telegraph.

Volta also studied electrical capacitance, although at the time that term wasn't known. He set out to prove that Galvani had drawn the wrong conclusions from his frog experiments. Specifically, he wanted to prove that electricity did not come from the animal tissue but was generated by the contact of different metals in a moist environment. So in 1800 he replaced the frog's legs with alternating layers of brine-soaked paper and two metals, zinc and silver, and also detected the flow of electricity. This was the first voltaic pile, and the first electrochemical cell. It inspired a slew of similar devices, including the so-called "wet cell" or Daniell cell, which became the workhorse for operating telegraphs and doorbells. It's called a wet cell because it relies on liquids rather than dry solids for electrolytes.

To make a Daniell cell, a copper plate is placed on the bottom of a glass jar and then covered with a copper sulfate solution until the jar is half full. Then you hang a zinc plate and add a zinc sulfate solution to the jar. Since copper sulfate is denser than the zinc sulfate, the latter "floats" on top -- much like certain specialty cocktails require "layering" of liqueurs of varying density. The downside to the Daniell cell is that it has to be kept stationary: it's not good for powering portable devices, such as flashlights.

Nowadays, we use the common household battery for our portable devices. It's still the same fundamental concept. There is a positive and negative terminal; electrons are produced by chemical reactions inside the battery, and collect on the negative terminal because they are negatively charged. Connect a wire between the two terminals, and the electrons will flow to the positive terminal. This wouldn't be helpful all by itself, but the wire usually also connects a "load" -- a light bulb, a motor, a radio circuit -- and the energy is used to power said device(s).

So that's the old-school technology, which hasn't changed all that much since Volta's day. There's all kinds of interesting new twists on conventional batteries, mostly based on unusual fuel sources. Back in 2006, a team of MIT researchers led by Angela Belcher created a new battery technology based on a genetically engineered M13 virus -- fortunately harmless to humans. Their battery is flexible and small enough it could be used to power tiny sensors, useful as detectors for cancer or heart disease, among other implantable devices, not to mention existing lab-on-a-chip technology.For instance, implant a small device under the skin, powered by the virus, and it could light up a small visible LED if cancer proteins were present.

Among the many challenges is devising a cheap means of mass production of these microscopic batteries. Last year Belcher and her colleagues published a refined version of their viral battery, which involves stamping silicon film in such a way that the negatively charged 13 virus and a positively charged cobalt strip will self-assemble based on their charges and how the stamp is patterned. Now they've got a device that could potentially be woven into fabrics, for instance -- turning almost any surface into an energy-storing device. "We provide the surface and the ions, and the batteries build themselves," Belcher told Discovery News.

If viruses don't float your boat, Sony has a prototype biotech battery (technically a fuel cell) with a sweet tooth: it needs a sugar fix to operate the four-cell array, which is capable of producing up to 50 mW of power -- sufficient to power a desk fan, or speakers, or other small devices. And where does that glucose come from? Why, sugary sweet fruit drinks of course. That includes an unusual Japanese beverage called Pocari Sweat, which seems to bear a close resemblance to Gatorade: its ingredients include water, sugar, citric acid, sodium citrate, sodium chloride, potassium chloride, calcium lactate, magnesium carbonate, and "flavor."  (According to Wikipedia, the name derives "from the notion of what it is intended to supply to the drinker: all of the nutrients and electrolytes lost when sweating." In other words, Gatorade.)

Know what else contains glucose? Blood! So it was only a matter of time before scientists started investigating blood as a possible fuel source. A few years ago, other Japanese researchers built a fuel cell that runs on blood, drawing electrons from glucose (blood sugar) to generate about 0.2 milliwatts of electricity. The feat has also been done by scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, drawing on the naturally occurring electrolytes in bodily fluids -- not just blood, but tears or even urine. The RPI version is thin as paper-- in fact, it pretty much is paper, being made of 90% cellulose and 10% carbon nanotubes to make it conductive. You can imprint the nanotubes directly onto nanocomposite paper, and like the virus-based battery, the RPI device is flexible, thin enough to fit under the skin, with the potential for cheap mass production. It even has similar potential applications: it can be used to power medical implants such as pacemakers, artificial hearts, or prosthetics.

Most recently, a team of researchers at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver created yet another tiny battery that runs on human blood -- also useful for things like pacemakers. (Hey, it's an important energy application, and one for which we need biologically compatible and renewable battery sources -- hence the strong academic interest.) The core of this particular version of the blood battery relies on a small colony of yeast -- Saccharomyces cereyisiae, commonly used in brewing and baking -- that sets up shop inside the core, drawing energy from the glucose in blood flowing around it.

Energy is produced as the cells start to break down food, and a chemical called methyl blue (used to stain biological samples) serves as an electron mediator, stealing some of the electrons produced during the metabolization process and delivering them to the anode, thereby creating a small current.  So now we've got an actual living source of power that can regenerate itself -- although it also produces waste products that must be removed before they leach into the bloodstream. So we won't be seeing this device hit the clinical market any time soon. 

What might blood-based fuel cells be good for? How about a novel nightlight? An English designer named Mike Thompson was studying for his master's degree in the Netherlands, researching chemical energy, and was intrigued by luminol -- the chemical forensic scientists use to detect traces of blood at crime scenes. Basically, luminol reacts with the iron in red blood cells, producing a bright blue glow. That set Thompson to thinking that perhaps folks would appreciate the energy they consume a bit more if it cost them their own life blood.

And so he built a simple lamp that uses blood to create light as it reacts with luminol. For the strong of stomach, there is a video showing how to use the lamp. You mix in an activating powder, then break the glass, cut your finger on the edge, and let the blood drip into the opening. The result is a soft blue glow -- and it can only be used once. "You have to really decide when to use this lamp because it's only going to work once," Thompson told LiveScience, adding his project was intended "to challenge people's preconceived notions about where our energy comes from," forcing users "to rethink how wasteful they are with energy, and how precious it is."

All this cutting-edge research on glucose and blood-based fuel cells inspired a couple of other British designers -- those Brits are a morbid bunch -- to create a prototype flesh-eating clock. I kid you not. Fortunately, it eats the flesh of insects, but it's only a matter of time before it starts craving human flesh (fresh braaiiins). It's pretty ingenious, actually. James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau stretched some flypaper across a roller system; as flies are caught, the roller dumps them into a vat of bacteria that "digest" the bugs, and the resulting chemical reactions are used to power an LCD clock. There's another version that feeds on mice, and also an insect-powered lamp -- the creatures are lured to their doom by ultraviolet LEDs.

*Le sigh* Whatever happened to conventional alternative energy sources, like wind, solar, or even nuclear power? Heck, even Mother Nature has built her own nuclear reactors; there are about 16 of them, two billion or more years old, buried in the rocks beneath Gabon, according to Australia's Curtin University of Technology. (h/t: Geoff Manaugh of BldgBlog) The phenomenon was first predicted in 1956 by physicist Paul Kazuo Kuroda, who argued that a chain reaction could be set off in natural uranium deposits, thereby generating heat in much the same manner as a nuclear power plant.

In 1972, scientists discovered exactly that type of natural nuclear reactor in the middle of the Oklo uranium mines in Gabon. One even pulsed in a three-hour regular cycle, "running" for 30 minutes, then shutting down for two-and-a-half hours before running another 30 minutes, and so on for over 100,000 years. Who needs batteries with that kind of energy source? Well, (a) the "reactors" no longer operate, ad (b) the conditions necessary to produce them turn out to be pretty rare. According to Wikipedia, these are "the only known sites in which natural nuclear reactions existed. Other rich uranium ore bodies would also have had sufficient uranium to support nuclear reactions at that time, but the combination of uranium, water and physical conditions needed to support the chain reaction was unique to the Oklo ore bodies."

And yes, there would have been nuclear waste products, including plutonium. Fortunately, the radioactivity has long since decayed away. Even more interesting, the deposits of (formerly radioactive) waste products haven't shifted much in location -- the plutonium hasn't even moved 10 feet from the spot where it was first formed almost two billion years ago. So naturally the Department of Energy is studying the rocks at Oklo to figure out how Nature managed to contain her nuclear waste. It should help us figure out how to better contain our own nuclear waste products.

Jen-Luc Piquant, meanwhile, is far more intrigued by the notion of hooking up hamsters and other small rodents to power small generators. It's the sort of thing we used to joke about in college (my car was notoriously slow to accelerate, especially uphill), but Jen-Luc found the following YouTube video (via io9) by scientists at Georgia Tech showing a hamster running on its little wheel while connected to a generator via tiny nanowires. Okay, you'd need four nanowires to generate a measly 200 millivolts; that won't solve the global energy crisis. But it can power a tiny nanobot of the future. I say, let the Rodent Green Energy Nano-Revolution begin!

the science of skymall

Okay, so pretty much all the bloggers at the Cocktail Party suck of late when it comes to keeping things current. We're trying. But life has a way of throwing curve balls and I know I'm not the only one desperately juggling a myriad of activities that keep interfering with blogging. For instance, there was all that traveling I did last month, with spotty Internet access. And did I mention I'm now revising The Damn Book? (As a result of everyone's input here and on Facebook, it's now titled The Calculus Diaries: How Math Can Help You Lose Weight, Win in Vegas, and Survive a Zombie Outbreak.) The Spousal Unit has been helpfully pointing out all the niggling errors of nuance in my initial draft; let's just say I have a habit of getting things not quite wrong, and not quite right (my very own personal superposition of states).

Here's a handy travel tip: be sure to pack sufficient reading material for your six-hour return flight to Los Angeles. After whipping through a new (forthcoming) biography of reclusive mathematician Grigory Perelman, I found myself at loose ends halfway through my flight home, even after perusing the in-flight magazine detailing glorious three-day vacations in exotic locales I could never afford. So I found myself browsing the Skymall catalog in desperation. You know the one: it features merchandise you never realized you needed, from a variety of outlets, all readily available for order on the in-flight phone. It also features no small measure of Science!

Let's leave aside the obvious scientifically dependent products -- all those radio-controlled model airplanes and such -- and focus on other examples of "found science" in Skymall. Because we love a challenge...

Solar Recharger (Item #WGN132J). Okay, this one is pretty obvious; solar cells and photovoltaics are all the rage in renewable energy circles these days, because they can turn natural sunlight into electricity. (I sometimes fantasize about having the funds to outfit our Southern California townhouse in solar panels, since why let the constant sunlight go to waste? But they are prohibitively expensive.)

Sunlight hits the cell and is absorbed by a compound semiconductor material (pure silicon is not a good conductor of electricity, so impurities are deliberately introduced). That infusion of energy knocks electrons loose from the silicon atoms, and these free electrons are then steered by one or more electric fields so that they all flow in the same general direction. The biggest problem with solar cells, for years, has been not just the high cost, but the poor conversion efficiencies. Thanks to the laws of thermodynamics, converting from one form of energy to another always incurs some losses -- often quite substantial. Scientists have been chipping away at this problem for decades, and efficiencies are now almost on a par with conventionally generated electricity -- in the lab at least. Still, the progress is encouraging.

Sanitizer/Germ-Eliminating Toothbrush Travel Kit (Item #72478J). Tired of those cheap plastic toothbrush cases that really don't do much to protect the bristles from invading germs? Never mind that the human mouth is riddled with bacteria -- in this antimicrobial world, germs are instruments of evil and must be killed! This handy little device sanitizes with ultraviolet light -- i.e., electromagnetic waves with frequencies higher than what we perceive as the color violet.

Fun historical fact: we've known about UV light since 1801, when the German physicist Johann Ritter noted that paper soaked in silver chloride darkened when exposed to invisible "chemical rays"; he called them de-oxidizing rays, as distinguished from "heat waves" -- we now know them as UV and infrared radiation. The UV light used for sterilization generally has wavelengths below 200 nm; another German named Victor Schumann found those in 1893. According to Wikipedia, "UV light at those germicidal wavelengths causes adjacent thymine molecules on DNA to dimerize. if enough of these defects accumulate its replication is inhibited, thereby rendering it harmless, even though the organism may not be killed outright." In English: UV light damages the DNA structure of germs and basically sterilizes them by preventing them from reproducing. It's the kinder, gentler way to sanitize: the germs live out their empty, all-too-brief non-replicating lives on your toothbrush bristles, only to have their dead selves washed down the sink's drain at day's end. Oh, the humanity.

Silestone Natural Quartz Counters. Speaking of antimicrobial surfaces, the Skymall catalog also offered a plug from E-Counters for Silistone (95% natural quartz, 5% polymer resins) countertops, with special Microban coating to do just what UV light does: penetrate the microorganism's cell wall and prevent it from being able to reproduce. Granite has been all the rage for kitchen remodels for at least the last decade, and it's more resistant to heat than quartz, but it's also more porous, and thus needs to be treated and sealed on a regular basis. (The kitchen countertops in our new house are polished concrete and hardwood -- much more sustainable, and actually quite pretty.)

Granite is gorgeous, and will probably always be popular for home remodels despite being so high-maintenance, but I'd like to give a shout-out to the scientific relevance of quartz, or, as the Irish call it, grian cloch ("stone of the sun"). In ancient Rome, Pliny the Elder called quartz "water ice," since he believed it to be permanently frozen; it's understandable, since raw quartz has the spiky look of ice crystals turned to stone. And quartz is often found near Alpine glaciers, yet not in volcanic regions.

It took the foundation of modern crystallography in the 17th century to change that perception, when Nicolas Stenos looked a bit more closely at quartz and made the remarkable discovery that no matter how distorted a quartz crystal might appear, the long prism it forms always makes a perfect 60-degree angle. Nature knows what it is doing, people. And of course, quartz has natural piezoelectric properties, producing an electrical charge when it is squeezed -- hence the widespread use of quartz in clocks and watches.

Special Brownie Baking Pan (Item #81606J). Don't you just hate it when you're baking a batch of brownies and they're soft and chewy in the center, but hard and maybe even a little over-browned at the edges? Wouldn't it be great to have a baking pan made of cast aluminum with a handy non-stick finish that distributed the heat from the oven evenly as the brownies baked? And since nobody likes the outer edges of brownies, problem solved with a nifty "double-S" shape; now everyone can enjoy the nice chewy centers! Seriously, I'm a fan of this new trend in foolproof baking. One of my favorite pieces of cookware is a special scone pan from Williams Sonoma that distributes heat evenly, so my scones come out perfect every time -- even in the new gas stove, in which the flames make contact with only parts of the pan first before the heat spreads out over the rest of the surface.

Uneven heat distribution is why food will burn in some places and remain somewhat uncooked in others -- who hasn't ended up occasionally with a bit of meat that is charred on the outside and practically still mooing in the center? The point is that thermodynamics is critically important to good cooking, which is why constant vigilant is required: stirring, turning, poking, and of course, investing in good "induction friendly" cookware.

Cordon bleu chefs favor copper cookware, since copper is the most thermally conductive and thus provides the most even heating. Copper is highly reactive, however, so copper cookware requires a thin layer of tin or other protective layer to keep the copper from reacting with acidic foods. Copper is also high maintenance: unless you like that verdigris look, you'll need to polish your copper regularly. (I finally gave up and replaced my copper teakettle with a more low maintenance stainless steel variety.)

Other popular cookware varieties include cast iron, which has the disadvantage of rusting easily, but a good cast iron frying pan is de rigeur for a well-equipped kitchen. (And, as demonstrated in an opening scene from Season 1 of Six Feet Under, a cast iron skillet makes an excellent murder weapon for the frustrated housewife married to a nattering bore.) Stainless steel is a cheap alternative, but because it's basically an alloy, it has poor thermal conductivity; manufacturers try to address that shortcoming by incorporating a copper or aluminum disk at the base.

Carbon steel is an excellent choice for flash-cooking pots and pans, such as woks, crepe pans, or paella pans, because in those cases you want one section of the pan kept at a different temperature than the rest. Looking for the perfect stockpot for killer homemade soups? You can't go wrong with enamel over steel, which combines the excellent heat conduction of carbon steel with a non-reactive, non-sticky cooking surface. And finally, bargain hunters who want the performance of copper without the high maintenance and high price tag can opt for clad aluminum cookware. Cladding is just a technique for making pots and pans with a thin layer of conductive material (usually aluminum or copper), covered by a non-reactive material like stainless steel.

T-2 Skull Blu-Ray discs, Skynet edition (Item #0122361022981). Count us among the diehard fans of Terminator 2: Judgement Day -- a rare sequel that actually surpassed the original Terminator film, and not just because Linda Hamilton rocked the hard-body look (with big gun accessories). Even so, we're not sure how we feel about this collectible, limited edition, 14-inch T-800 Endoskull with creepy glowing red eyes, holding six discs of the Blu-Ray Skynet edition of Terminator 2. Sure, the original film was only two hours, but now you can watch multiple versions in high-definition and indulge in a full 8 hours' worth of interactive content. Or you can have some semblance of a life.

Blu-Ray takes conventional DVD players to the next level, just as high-definition is becoming ubiquitous. A high-def film takes up five times more bandwidth than a conventional digitized film, and Blu-Ray disks offers that much of an improvement in storage capacity. A quick perusal of the Internet would tell you that DVDs store video and audio information in "pits": spiral grooves running from the center of the disc out to the edges. The other side of the disk thus has "bumps," and scanning those bumps with laser light enables the DVD player to "decode" the information and play it back for our viewing pleasure. DVD players use red laser light to read and write data; Blu-Ray players use blue (duh!) laser light, which has a shorter wavelength and hence a smaller beam, so it can read and record information in much smaller pits or grooves than red laser light. 

That's why a Blu-Ray disc can hold as much as 26 GB of data. Plus, there's that added capability for interactive features, which are all the rage now for bonus features on Blu-Ray editions of films and TV series (check out Season 5 of Lost and Season 1 of Fringe for spiffy examples of this sort of thing -- or the Skynet edition of Terminator 2). You can connect directly to the Internet with your Blu-Ray, download extra features, and instantly skip to any spot on the disc. We can download movies directly from Netflix on our new Blu-Ray player, or indulge in the vast musical selections on Pandora from a single home entertainment source. Convergence is the wave of the future.

There were several other examples of products in the Skymall catalog that could serve as a jumping off point for science, but I leave those as an exercise to our readers. Next time you're bored on a long flight, try to see what "found science" you can spot. S'fun!