Nature Matters
I discuss the myths about why our fingers go “pruney” in the bath or swimming pool in my book Deceived Wisdom, the truth seems to lie in the work of Mark Changizi. In this cartoon, we see the explanation and get to hear his hypothesis in his own words. Scientists at Newcastle University subsequently successfully tested his hypothesis.
The tabloids were screaming at new parents this week desperately yelling at them not to share a bed with their newborn because it could be lethal, causing sudden infant death syndrome, or cot death. The research said so. SIDS is tragic, of course, but a little composure, please.
As NHS Choices explains: “The researchers estimate that the absolute risk of SIDS for room-sharing infants was 0.00008 (eight per 100,000) when neither parent smoked and the baby was less than three months old, breastfed, and had no other risk factors.”
That’s for babies sleeping in the same room, not the same bed as their parent(s). The research showed that bed-sharing increased this death rate risk to 0.00023 (that’s 23 per 100,000). Both tiny proportions of the total number of deaths. There is a world of difference between absolute and relative risk. The tabloids said a fivefold increase in risk (actually looks like it’s less than threefold), but the risk is tiny either way. Absolutely tiny. Of every 100,000 babies that die, the “cause” is referred to as SIDS is just 0.023%.
Exactly what SIDS is and what causes it are yet to be determined. Two of the bullet points given in the article hint at the specific risks: “do not share a bed with your baby, particularly if you have been drinking or have taken drugs”, do not let your baby get too hot and keep your baby’s head uncovered.
NHS Choices alludes to the fact that smoking, alcohol and drug use are also risk factors and that the risk of SIDS decreases as baby gets older. Like I say, tragic for the parents and families affected, I’m not belittling the tragedy, just trying to point out that the risks are small and while parents should listen to advice from their healthcare workers, they shouldn’t become neurotic about the safety of their child on the back of tabloid headlines.
Sharing a bed with your baby ups risk of cot death – Health News – NHS Choices:Â https://www.nhs.uk/news/pregnancy-and-child/sharing-a-bed-with-your-baby-ups-risk-of-cot-death/
As the average age of the population goes up with people surviving many years more than their allegorical three score years and ten, the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of senile dementia will rise too. Many people can suffer symptoms for many years and yet live independent lives or at least with minimal care intervention, so it is critical for designers and manufacturers to take this into account if their products are to have usability in this group and help not hinder users.
Adam Glasgow and Peter Higgins of Swinburne University of Technology, in Hawthorn, Australia recently offered seven general design points for appliances – ovens, washing machines, dishwashers etc – for older people with some form of dementia:
They add that for appliances with several functions, the information display should adapt to the specific and immediate needs of the user to avoid distractions. The ultimate aim of this new approach to appliance design would be to extend the person’s independence at home and maintain or even restore their self-efficacy.
Glasgow A. (2013). The use of domestic appliances by cognitively impaired users, Int. J. Cognitive Performance Support, 1 (1) 40-53. DOI:
Carl Zimmer offered some insights at TED-Ed into how dinosaurs got their plumage and evolved into the flying birds, excellent birds, we see today. This is witty animation plucks up the courage to fill in the gaps.
On an entirely unrelated note, I wrote a song about flight, which you can hear on my SoundCloud page or via my Songs, Snaps and Science site.
Next time you’re sipping on your skinny, frothy mochachocafrappalatteccino with maple syrup and cinnamon at the local Costabucksorthree coffee shop and surfing on their EasyHack(TM) wireless internet spare a thought for the grounds. The burnt out and scalded fragments of beans gone by that in this household are recycled via the compost bins but on the industrial scale represent an international commodity waste product you might not at first appreciate but represents a truly pressing issue.
Thankfully, there are researchers who are working on potential alternative uses for this organic waste material. Indeed, I vaguely recall writing for New Scientist back in the early 1990s about an alternative outlet for waste coffee grounds…but it may well have been Brazil nut shells, or both. Anyway, a team based at Boumerdes University and the National Polytechnic School in Algeria know all about the problem of coffee grounds. There are an estimated two and a half billion cups of coffee consumed each day (I know at least one classic radio presenter who imbibes a goodly proportion of that number) with Algerians using about 3.5 kilograms of coffee per head annually. That’s slightly behind the US at 4.2 kg, but way behind Finland at 12 kg. UK is 2.8 kg, global average is 1.3 kg.
However you look at it, it’s a lot of grounds to cover.
The Algerian team, writing in the journal IJEWM (reference below) explain how they can use zinc chloride and phosphoric acid to convert coffee grounds into “activated carbon” at 500-700 Celsius in just quarter of an hour. The final product, they also show, can be used as a potentially sustainable filtration materials for waste water treatment to remove organic pollutants and dyes. Coffee grounds as a source of activated carbon might preclude the need for using coal, wood or peat, and co-exist with coconut shells as a source. Given that in Algeria alone there are about 300 tonnes of coffee grounds generated daily, that could be a useful feedstock for the activated carbon industry provided sustainable collection and processing infrastructure can be put in place.
Mekarzia A. (2013). Chemical production and characterisation of activated carbon from waste ‘coffee grounds, Int. J. Environment and Waste Management, 12 (2) 154-166. DOI:
The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of planet Earth taken in 1990 by NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft (launched 1977) when it reached 6 billion kilometres (3.7 billion miles) from Earth in 1990. In the photograph, Earth is shown as a tiny dot (0.12 pixel in size) against the vastness of space. The Voyager 1 spacecraft, which had completed its primary mission and was leaving the Solar System, was commanded by NASA to turn its camera around and to take a photograph of Earth across a great expanse of space, at the request of Carl Sagan.
You can learn more about the NASA image here. The sound with which the song fades is a snippet from the NASA Voyager 1 audio repository with a little added digital delay echo just for fun. I hope it evokes the feeling of Voyager racing endlessly away from our planet. At the time of writing, the space probe was almost 18.5 billion kilometres from Earth, about 125 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun.
I’ve written a song about our Pale Blue Dot, which you can hear via my Songs, Snaps & Science site or on my SoundCloud page.
Pale Blue Dot
Although I know that the world keeps turning
It never stops, my stomach’s churning
But, I worry about how much we’re burning
The fantasy of a global village
We pull together in some kind of New Age
But there are those set on rape and pillage
I took a trip, a billion miles I was to roam
Looking back on the place that we call home…
This old planet is broken in two, f you like it or not
Some with panic deep in their hearts, Others won’t stop the rot
This old planet is broken anew, If you like it or not
But, I’m worried about it, our pale blue dot
Although I know that we can heal the divides
It will take time coming up to size
Beyond our world, she won’t hear our cries
Something happened and we don’t know why
When we look up, we can’t see the sky
And in the end, it means we just might die
This old planet is broken in two
Whether you like it or not
There is panic deep in our hearts
I’m just worried about you, our Pale Blue Dot
Pickler Andrew Dalby responded to one of my recent tweets about not cooking asparagus in lemon juice because it discolours it. He had found that his garlic cloves turned blue when he pickled them in spiced malt vinegar. The discolouration doesn’t mean that the pickles are inedible.
Now plant material turning blue in acid (vinegar is weak acetic acid) is the basis of the litmus test and is more obvious with red cabbage, which shuttles between a deep red colour and a definite blue depending on the acidity. So, I assumed that was perhaps what was happening with the garlic, but couldn’t think what would be colourless in unpickled garlic that might go blue-green in acid.
A quick Google turned up this page in which they report that the most common pigment, anthocyanins, are colourless in raw garlic, can be red at high pH, but are blue-green at low pH. So, that might be it.
But, scientists have also homed in on amino acids as possible villains for giving garlic the pickled blues. J Cho of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Seoul National University in Korea suggests that green discolouration arises as a combination of amino acids that are yellow and blue in the presence of thiosulfinates released enzymically from the garlic to give an overall green hue.
This overturns earlier research that suggested just one blue pigment was to blame and instead suggests that eight are involved: thiosulfinates of free glycine, arginine, lysine, serine, alanine, aspartic acid, asparagine, glutamic acid, and tyrosine.
Cho J., Lee E.J., Yoo K.S., Lee S.K. & Patil B.S. (2009). Identification of Candidate Amino Acids Involved in the Formation of Blue Pigments in Crushed Garlic Cloves (L.) , Journal of Food Science, 74 (1) C11-C16. DOI: 10.1111/j.1750-3841.2008.00986.x
Instructables had a Q&A on the issue back in 2011, but had presumably overlooked this research. This is probably not the end of the story as yet more research papers come up in PubMed.
What if Dr Gregory House were on twitter?
You can grab a copy of my book Deceived Wisdom, as narrated by actor Kris Dyer (Radio 2, Nice Mum, Edinburgh Fringe etc), for free with the Audible introductory offer.
Sign up for a free trial here, download my book and listen on your iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Phone or any of more than 500 compatible mp3 players. With your trial, you also get exclusive access to member sales and promotions. You can exchange any book you don’t love with their Great Listen Guarantee, no questions asked! Cancel your membership at any time. All purchased titles are yours to keep. After the 30-day trial, you will be billed monthly, which lets you choose from their catalogue of 60,000 titles.
Kris does a great job on the audio book and told me at the time he did the sessions that he could barely keep a straight face while reading one particular NSFW chapter…
Here’s the sample chapter I promised you, as read by Kris Dyer, we picked “The Most Embarrassing Sting”. I have a couple more chapters to shares, so grab this one while it’s live.
Austerity measures – cutbacks in other words – are taking their toll on science. A special issue of The Euroscientist brings together an analysis of the impact of austerity on scientists and their research and the growing brain drain.
The magazine is also encouraging other scientists, including those based beyond Southern Europe, to share their experiences and to discuss how crowd sourcing and citizen science might overcome the deficits caused by funding cuts.
Scientific austerity.