Science Made Cool

Why Didn't I Ever Think of Making Cookies Like These?

I bake a lot. But most of my creations, although I've had people rave about the way they taste, aren't going to win any beauty contests. Ginger crinkles? Round and brown. English-style gingerbread? Square and brown. Grandfather's rugelach? Light brown and blobby. So I'm consumed with envy by the science cookie creations over at Not So Humble Pie. Fruit flies, lab mice, gingerbread microbiologists, and beautiful sparkly zebrafish are just a small sampling of what Ms. Humble does with cookie dough and royal frosting. That woman wields a mean icing tube. 

I know I'm too much of a klutz to even attempt most of these designs, but maybe I can manage a simple batch of petri dishes this holiday. (Aren't they awesome?)

Fish Tales in Sushi Restaurants

Confessions first – I love sushi. But getting hedonistic pleasure from biting into a firm, cold piece of fish paired with salty-sweet vinegared rice doesn’t mean that I also want to be chowing down on an endangered animal. Unfortunately, according to a study published in PloS ONE last week, there’s a good chance that the fish inside my tuna roll came from an endangered or threatened species.

There are eight species of tuna in the genus Thunnus, any of which may be served up as sushi: yellowfin, bigeye, longtail, blackfin, albacore, as well as the threatened Pacific bluefin and northern bluefin, and the critically endangered southern bluefin. Conservation organizations urge consumers to avoid eating any kind of bluefin tuna, but unless your ahi is a slice of the light-fleshed albacore tuna, it’s hard to tell which species you’re getting on your plate. Tuna species look different from one another when they’re whole fish, but slice them into filets and they all look pretty much alike. People may want to avoid eating endangered types of tuna, but they can’t do it effectively unless they can identify the fish in the restaurant or the market. (They could, of course, give up eating all tuna. But few people are willing to push their convictions that far.)

Jacob Lowenstein and his colleagues at the American Museum of Natural History tackled this problem by developing a DNA barcode system for all eight species of tuna. By looking for small, species-specific differences in the DNA sequence for a single protein – an important mitochondrial enzyme called cytochrome c oxidase – they developed a key that could match the DNA from a piece of tuna with the species of fish it came from. They tested the accuracy of their method by collecting samples from the places where most people meet tuna – sushi restaurants.

Science In Your Wine Glass

It's always cool when scientists examine conventional wisdom. Sometimes they discover that it's just plain wrong, and that's fun because you can then lord it over the poor ignorant dupes who haven't read the latest postings on Science Made Cool. But it's even more interesting when researchers figure out why something "everybody knows" is actually true.

The Man Who Fed The World

Dr. Norman Borlaug died late Saturday, at the age of 95. If anyone deserved to end his life at a great age laden with honors, he certainly did. Dr. Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work in developing new crop strains which increased food production by as much as four times. His grains transformed India from a nation perpetually on the verge of famine into a food exporter.

One result of Dr. Borlaug's work has been to throw into clear focus the true causes of famines. Everyone now recognizes that low yields or crop failures alone aren't the cause. In the modern world it's blatantly obvious that famines are political events, usually involving men with guns somewhere in the heart of the matter.



 

Mind Your Manners

There's a tendency to think of manners as mere useless ritual -- table etiquette in particular is often dismissed as a matter of "knowing which fork to use," of interest only to grandmothers and Judith Martin. Paying attention to manners means you're anal-retentive, sexually frustrated, and don't know how to enjoy life.

Ha! Turns out the development of table manners may have been a major step in the formation of human civilization. Dr. Mary Stiner of the University of Arizona has been researching Paleolithic remains at Qesem Cave in Israel. The earlier Lower Paleolithic hunters were evidently just as capable of bringing down big game as the later Upper Paleolithic humans were. But their descendants were noticeably more polite about serving it out.

Earlier bones show a variety of cutting methods used on the same bones, suggesting a kind of self-service scramble which wasted some of the food. Later animal bones show a more orderly approach indicating that one person carved the meat, and didn't waste as much. Table manners ("meat-sharing rituals," in anthropologist jargon) were a survival trait allowing tribes to make better use of the animals they killed. One suspects they also cut down on dinnertime fights over who got the bigger piece. Over time, one can assume that well-mannered tribes out-competed their boorish neighbors.

So:  mind your manners or your descendants won't thrive.

Eat Healthier, Die Younger

Following a link from the always-intriguing Gene Expression Web log, I found my way to this post on the Low Carb Art & Science 'blog, which asks the simple question: has eating a more nutritious diet made Americans healthier? If their data are to be believed -- and the author certainly makes a good case -- Americans have cut down on our consumption of red meat and dairy products in the past two or three decades, and switched to eating more grains, more chicken and fish, and more vegetables. The result? An "epidemic of obesity" and higher rates of heart disease (even though we're also drinking more wine than ever before). What gives?

The Taste Map

There's an interesting study out from some researchers at the University of Nottingham, plotting regional differences in food preferences in the United Kingdom. The study was sponsored by a coffee firm, which I'm sure was gratified to hear that coffee is among the earliest taste memories for most Brits.*

The Orbital Gourmet

Cooking in space seems to be all the rage right now. Astronaut Sandra Magnus has been developing techniques and recipes during a stint aboard the International Space Station. Discovery Channel News has the story.

Meanwhile India's space agency is working on developing curry for space explorers. (Spotted by David Szondy, who knows a thing or two about space food.)

Bottled EVIL!

I tend to be skeptical when professional concerned citizens release dire warnings about various consumer products. As long as the manufacturers aren't putting glass shards in the yogurt or disgruntled employees in the potted meat products, I figure it's buyer beware. You want to buy something that's bad for you, it's your money.

But. I just want to point out a unique piece of idiocy: bottled water. In places where drinking water supplies may not be safe, it's a literal lifesaver. In places like, well, most of the developed world, bottled water is incomprehensibly pointless. Nobody has a palate refined enough to detect the differences in trace elements, and they're all equally pure, so there's no difference in quality. It's just water; why does anyone buy it? (Coca-Cola produces Dasani water, and I sometimes wonder if senior Coke executives lie awake at night, thinking "People used to complain because we were selling nothing but carbonated sugar water. We took out the carbonation and the sugar, and they pay even more for it!" But I digress.)

Anyway, dropping out of rant mode, here's an interesting study of how much energy it takes to make and distribute bottled water. Short answer:  a lot. Long answer:  a whole heck of a lot.

And if you like rants, here's a much better rant on the subject, courtesy of Penn & Teller