Author: David Bradley

Soybean Sperm Assassin

According to the BBC today, soybeans, peas, and French beans can affect fertility. Apparently, women shouldn’t eat these leguminous veggies because they can damage sperm. Surely it should be men that ought to avoid these vegetables…or is it that eating them releases something into the female reproductive tract that seeks and destroys sperm? The BBC didn’t say.

One thing that should be pointed out is that the researchers in question have only demonstrated the effect in the laboratory, said The Beeb. I reckon those researchers ought to be more careful about what they get up to in their lab, testing out their fertility on each other…

One other thing, before I go, according to http://www.nulldrweil.com/u/QA/QA89074/ if you’re undergoing IVF then both partners need to up their zinc intake and guess what he cites as the best vegetarian sources of Zn…legumes (dried beans, garbanzos, black-eyed peas, lentils, peas, soy products and whole grains).

Talk about conflicting evidence.

Joni Mitchell would be turning in her grave

US researchers (Geological Survey and the City of Austin (Texas)) has discovered that runoff from the shiny coating, sealcoat, they apply to asphalt car parks is a previously unrecognized source of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). The study is online today (June 22) in Environmental Science and Technology. Is this yet another justification for reducing car use, or environmental whinging? You decide.

Copyright Free Articles

A new service is being touted around the journalists’ discussion groups I frequent. The organisation in question, is offering “Free, Non-copyrighted Feature Stories and Photos”. Sounds rather tempting, doesn’t it? Us writers could save ourselves a whole lot of time and effort by justing downloading and re-using these ready-made words, couldn’t we? Do I sound cynical? Well, one of the articles available for download and publication in my “newspaper” is entitled: “Survey Finds Writing is Key to Workplace Success” and it’s already found its way on to several dozen websites who have simply reproduced it verbatim. I reckon there must be several dozen writers at those publications feeling rather redundant at this time…

Is there a material that blocks magnetic forces?

A hit on my sciencebase article about frustrated magnets came about through a visitor searching Yahoo! for “material that blocks magnetic forces”.

Physlink provides a nice answer to the question of whether a “magnetic insulator” exists. The simple answer is no: Is there any material that can block a magnetic force?

Lead certainly doesn’t do it, and it’s all because of Maxwell’s Equation. You can of course re-route a magnetic field and supposed shielding materials exist.

Orgasms fill the news

Orgasm seems to be the hot topic for science news this summer. We had the genetic basis of female orgasm a couple of weeks ago and now The Register is reporting how women’s brains switch off when they are brought to orgasm by their partner. How can they tell? Bedside MRI apparently. So if you have a few million dollars to spare, says the naughty little publication, you can spot a fake.

A cup of hot tea does not cool you down

nice-cup-of-teaAt the time of writing, the UK was in the middle of a rare heatwave, and my mother, as usual, suffers when the mercury rises about 25 or so (it’s 33 here today!) and, as usual, is suggesting everyone has a nice cup of hot tea to help them cool down.

Of course, it is easy to mock the underlying physics of such a suggestion (Does Hot Tea Really Cool You Down?), and I have explained to my mother that it’s a myth, but such conventional wisdom seems to persist and someone only this morning visited the sciencebase site searching for an answer to the question, does hot tea cool you down? Or more generally “does a hot drink cool you down?” Someone, even asked the presumptuous question: “Why does drinking hot drinks cool you down?”

Bluntly, no.

However, even as a hot drink, it can make you feel refreshed even when the air is still and humid and as long as you don’t gulp it down too quickly it won’t make you even more sweaty. I guess there may be a psychological effect, if the air is warm and humid and you drink something hot, that will heat you up more and make you sweat, sweat evaporates from your skin cooling your skin, so maybe you end up feeling slightly cooler, but I’m still not convinced. In fact, sweating inflames the skin in some ways as capillaries open up and you actually feel hotter when you sweat more, unless you’ve got a very strong fan. Anyway, from the thermodynamics point of view adding a hot liquid to a cooler container (your body) will raise the temperature of the container.

Now, iced tea is a different matter – make mine a peach one! And, plenty of ice!

Of course, there’s also this well-known 19th century quotation from Gladstone

If you are cold, tea will warm you. If you are too heated, it will cool you. If you are depressed, it will cheer you. If you are excited, it will calm you.

For more on teatime etiquette, check out this item.

Fucnose – carbohydrate nomenclature

Molecule of the day – Fucnose – any carbohydrate of indeterminate structure. These sugar molecules are so tough to crack that you may hear chemistry professors shout its name from the top of their voice in exasperation at just how hard it is to identify. Fucnose is loosely related in structure to godnose (an early name for vitamin C, having originally been known as ignose!). Check out Paul May’s silly molecules site for more (genuine) molecules with (you guessed it) silly names and to read the complete tale of godnose and ignose.

Red meat linked to increased risk of bowel cancer

The UK media today reported that red meat increases the risk of bowel cancer: e.g. Telegraph

35% increased risk screamed the headlines. But, as fascinating as the finding is none of the reports I saw mentioned the incidence rate and how low that actually is compared to, say, deaths from road accidents or obesity-related heart disease. No absolute risk was mentioned. If it’s 100 in a ten-thousand, then a 35% increase would then be 135 in 10000…

So, a 35% increased risk of something not very risky is not necessarily as significant as the cancer research organisations are claiming. Moreover, just one portion of any fish once a week can reduce the risk by 30%. So, presumably you can eat bacon, burgers and bangers 5 days a week and fish at weekends to almost cancel the positive effect with a negative.

Do you want Rosemary with that?

It’s not the most likely request you’ll hear at your local flame-grilled burger joint, but according to (KSU researchers, antioxidants in rosemary could help reduce the potentially harmful formation of heterocyclic amines during the “barbecuing” process. That’s all well and good, but who wants a burger tasting of rosemary, now if they could demonstrate the same benefits with onions, and a six-pack of beer, that would be a different matter.

Onion Skin

Many readers found my recent article in Reactive Reports (Picking up the sweat scent, issue 41) rather interesting, not least a 54-year old massage therapist from Houston, Texas, who emailed me to ask my advice on her body odour problem.

Apparently, she had only been working at her present fitness centre for a few months when she noticed the scent of her axillae (armpits to you and me) and arms had changed from the usual smell to an onion-like fragrance. She asked whether there were an enzyme available that might be taken orally to combat the bacteria producing this smell (no, enzymes are digested in the stomach, like other proteins), and whether or not she may have “picked up” the microbes in the health club.

It’s a possibility, I guess, especially as she is working in such close contact with clients.

Solutions? Using a pH balanced soap instead of shower gel? Switching deodorants? Maybe just wearing long sleeve tops 24/7 is the best option.