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December 09 2011
Chocolate Science #539: Taking a Walk Makes You Eat Less Chocolate
It should come as no surprise that scientists have spent many hours contemplating new tortures for the chocolate-addicted. After all, how else will science know how much, say, boredom, will affect chocolate intake? Or stress? Or watching a psychologist unwrap a chocolate bar? These are the important things, people.
The latest edition of this research addresses a question close to many a cubicle drone’s heart: will exercise reduce the amount of chocolate you eat while at work? Even brief exercise gives the same kind of mood boost that chocolate consumption does, and researchers were interested in seeing whether 15 minutes’ walk would change how much chocolate people working on a computer ate from a nearby bowl. They had 78 people who were confirmed chocolate cravers abstain from chocolate for 2 days (that’s the torturous part), then brought them into the lab to either sit quietly for 15 minutes or walk briskly on a treadmill. They then took them to a desk, casually said that the subjects could help themselves to the chocolates, and had them complete tasks of various levels of difficulty.
This is the part where you lean in a little closer, because it turned out that ...
November 23 2011
6 Servings of Thanksgiving Science: Ideal Turkey Diet, Black Friday Sales Tricks, Turkey-Phobia…
It’s almost Thanksgiving here the US. Before you tuck into your stuffing, pumpkin pie, and cranberry sauce, save a little room for a big helping of science. Here are a few of our favorite Thanksgiving science stories from around the Internet, detailing the research behind fattening turkeys, giving thanks, post-holiday shopping, and more:
July 05 2011
Augmented Reality: Koreans Grocery Shop While Waiting For the Subway
For those of us for whom multitasking is a high art, a South Korean retail experiment combining grocery shopping with commuting looks like a godsend.
In a bid to boost online sales, grocery retailer Tesco covered the walls of a Korean subway station with photos of its merchandise arranged on store shelves. Each item was endowed with a QR code, those black-and-white squares recognized by smartphones, and commuters on their way in to work could snap pictures of the codes with phones to fill a virtual shopping cart. They paid for their items via an app, and the food was delivered to their homes after they got home from work.
No after-work grocery shopping crush, no squeaky-wheeled carts, no post-apocalyptic check-out lines. Just a little less time devoted to playing Angry Birds on the platform.
In terms of technology, nothing here is new: QR codes have been around since the 90s and began to appear on ads soon after the advent of smartphones, and grocery shopping online with services like Peapod is old (fifteen-year-old) news. But this appears to be the first time the two have been combined.
It’s certainly a more constructive use for QR codes ...
Why Can’t We Can’t Stop Snacking? Maybe Because of Pot-Like Chemicals
Have you ever eaten a single potato chip or French fry that sent you spiraling into nearly uncontrollable gluttony? Scientists are now saying that these sober binges are actually quite similar to pot smokers’ notorious bouts of the munchies: fatty foods cause your body to release marijuana-like chemicals called endocannabinoids, and this likely compels you to continue stuffing your face.
In a study to be published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Daniele Piomelli and his colleagues at UC Irvine investigated the connection between fat intake in rats and their production of endocannabinoids, natural compounds similar to THC, the main active ingredient in marijuana. They allowed the rats to sip on several types of drinks, including ones high in sugar, protein, or fat, and monitored the rats’ endocannabinoid levels.
The researchers learned that the high-fat drinks sparked the release of endocannabinoids, but the sugar and protein beverages did not. When a rat tasted a fatty drink, signals traveled from the rat’s tongue to its brain. The vagus nerve bundle in the brain then routed the message to produce endocannabinoids down to the rat’s gut. The researchers believe ...
June 30 2011
Sexy Ad Campaign Targeting Monkeys Makes A Splash
“Advertising for monkeys” is just too good a phrase to pass up.
Even since ads created for a study investigating whether monkeys respond to billboards debuted at the Cannes Lions ad conference, the headlines have been flowing freely. We learn Yale primatologist Laurie Santos and two ad executives came up with the idea at last year’s TED, after Santos gave a talk on her experiments showing that monkeys that learn to use money are as irrational about it as we are.
Ad firm Proton has now developed two billboards to hang outside capuchin monkeys’ enclosures, and the researchers plan to see whether they will prefer one kind of food, or “brand,” over another when it is shown in close proximity to some titillating photos, including a “graphic shot” of a female monkey exposing her genitals and a shot of the troop’s alpha male with the food.
Once the monkeys have been exposed to the ads for brand A, scientists will see whether they show a preference for it over brand B, which won’t be supported with a campaign. In essence, they’ll investigate whether sex sells for monkeys. Brand A will be ...
June 06 2011
To Keep to Your Diet, Pretend You’re Constantly Breaking It
Is this milkshake better than yours?
Congratulating yourself on that calorie-conscious salad might just make you feel hungrier, scientists are now finding—better to close your eyes, take a bite, and pretend you’re eating ice cream.
We’ve already heard in recent years that eating imaginary M&Ms or cheese cubes can give you some of the satiety of the real thing: In a 2010 paper, researchers found that contrary to popular belief, imagining eating such foods in vivid detail actually made subjects eat fewer M&Ms, cheese chunks, and so on. Now, scientists have found that if you believe a shake is low in calories, you’ll feel less satisfied than people who think the shake was an indulgence, even when you’re both drinking the same shake. What gives?
The team (from Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity) told subjects that a 380-calorie shake had either an indulgent 620 calories or a prudent 140 calories. Then they checked to see what effect that had on subjects’ blood levels of ghrelin, a hormone that triggers hunger and is high before meals and low after. They found that ghrelin didn’t subside afterwards in people who thought they ...
March 31 2011
Weight-Loss Supplement Has Teensy Potential Side Effect: You Might *Get Mad Cow Disease*!
Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (hGC), a hormone produced during pregnancy, is isolated from the urine of pregnant women and used to treat infertility. Since the 1950s, however, it’s also been used as a weight-loss aid—and still is, even though there’s no solid evidence showing it works.
But taking hCG could be worse than just ineffective: A new study shows that doses of the hormone can transmit prions, the misfolded proteins that cause mad cow disease and its human equivalent, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, an invariably fatal form of dementia that riddles the brain with holes (photo).
That’s right: There’s a potential risk of contracting deadly, brain-destroying illness by injecting yourself with proteins taken from other people’s urine—and you won’t even lose weight.
The New York Times lamely wrote earlier this month that hCG as a weight-loss regimen “has fans and skeptics”—but Travis Saunders at Obesity Panacea says that spreading mad cow is just one more reason to avoid “the most thoroughly debunked weight loss gimmick in medical history.”
No prion diseases have been transmitted through urine yet, the authors of the study say, but it is theoretically possible. And even ...
March 13 2011
Fondling Swan-Butts For Science
Picture yourself as one of England’s majestic Bewick’s swans, about to take off on your annual long-distance flight to Arctic Russia, when out of nowhere a scientist grabs you and methodically gropes and measures your butt. It’s all for your own good: Researchers are hurriedly sizing up as many round rumps as they can lay their hands on, in a bid to understand what’s wiping out their population.
Smaller than the more common mute swans, which stay in Britain yearlong, Bewick’s swan has seen its population in Europe decline from 29,000 to 21,000 between 1995 and 2005, and researchers at UK’s Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) in Slimbridge, Gloucestershire, are willing to fondle the birds to save them.
They’re sizing up swans to test whether changes in the their habitat are to blame for their decline: The size of swan keesters indicated whether they have enough fat to survive their over-2,000-mile journey. Basically, if the birds are plump, then that rules out the possibility that they aren’t getting enough food, and opens the playing field for other culprits, such as power line collisions, lead poisoning, and hunting.For those of you without ...
March 10 2011
Mentos Is to Diet Coke as Coffee Filter Is to Guinness?!
The SATs might have made you hate analogy problems, but this one sure is tasty.
That clangy thing taking up space in the bottom of your Guinness or Tetley’s can might soon be done away with and replaced by a coffee filter.
The ball inside the Guinness can, called a widget, contains a pocket of nitrogen gas held under pressure. When some lucky person opens the can, the pressure is released and the gas shoots out into the beer through a small hole and creates the foam.
You may now be thinking, Wait a minute—most beers seem to have plenty of gas bubbles even without some fancy widget. The thing is that Guinness and similar brews need the widget because nitrogen bubbles are smaller than those filled with carbon dioxide, the bubbling gas in other fizzy drinks. The small nitrogen bubbles make Guinness’ foam deliciously thick and creamy, but it’s harder to get the gas to come out of solution. The widget forces lots of excess nitrogen into the beer, setting off a well-timed bubble eruption.
But the widget is not the only way to send nitrogen bubbles cascading upward. In normal ...
March 09 2011
New “Gastric Pacemaker” Aims to Zap People Into Weight Loss
Not many people would be excited about getting shocks to their vagus nerve, but a new electronic device implanted into the abdomen does just that in an effort to keep appetites in check.
The tiny device, called abiliti and made by Intrapace, attaches to the vagus nerve, which sends status updates about the body’s organs to the brain. The pacemaker then hacks the nervous system’s normal communication, according to the company’s website:
The abiliti system is designed to support these good habits by making the patient feel full sooner when eating. The abiliti system may also help in keeping them satisfied longer and helping them to eat less frequently.
Intrapace reports that the 65 study participants in the initial trials have lost on average 22 percent of their body weight; the biggest loser dropped 38 percent. (These results haven’t been published or peer-reviewed.)
The device is billed as an alternative to more invasive weight-loss procedures, like stomach bypasses or gastric bands, and may have fewer side effects. It is implanted into the abdomen, where it floats around near the stomach, connected to nerves by electrodes through which it senses how extended ...
March 02 2011
3D Printer Plays With Its Food…and Makes A Miniature Spaceship
Most people outgrow the days of carving rivulets in mashed potato mountains or castles out of seasoned squash—but scientists aren’t “most people.” One ragtag team of researchers and culinary experts are harnessing the power of 3-D food printers to bring the science of playing-with-your-food to new levels, such as outer space.
In a project called fab@home, Cornell’s Computational Synthesis Laboratory and the French Culinary Institute have made a giant leap for mankind by fashioning a miniature space shuttle made of pureed scallops and cheese.
So what does it take to create such intricate food sculptures? Cornell graduate research student Jeffrey Lipton told CBC News:
“The process is pretty simple … Just as … your 2D printer puts droplets of ink onto a page to create an image, this draws lines of material on top of each other to create a 3D object.”
It’s the same technology as rapid prototyping machines, except you’re switching in food pastes for plastics and metal. Precisely-positioned nozzles squirt out edible creations of virtually every flavor, and so far, the lab has tackled various foodstuffs, including cheese, chocolate, hummus, and turkey.
But interesting shapes and ...
January 19 2011
January 18 2011
Booze-Soaked Superconductors Provide Hot Physics Results
A paper that explores the unlikely coupling of warm wine and the electric properties of iron is currently making its rounds on the media circuit—leading us to conclude that people get excited about science when there is alcohol involved.
“Drunk scientists pour wine on superconductors and make incredibly discovery,” declares the (slightly inaccurate) headline on io9. “’Tis the season to be pickling your liver in alcohol,” announces the (slightly irrelevant) opening line of a CNET article.
The researchers’ experiment—led by Keita Deguchi of the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan—involved first submersing an iron alloy in various hot alcoholic beverages, and then finding the temperature at which the treated alloy starts to display superconducting properties. A superconductor is a material that has no electrical resistivity, allowing electrons to flow through it with essentially zero friction.
The paper abstract, which was published on arXiv, gives an overview of the experiment’s findings and method (although there’s no mention of beverage consumption that might have inspired these scientific antics):
“We found that hot commercial alcohol drinks are much effective to induce superconductivity in FeTe0.8S0.2 compared to water, ethanol and water-ethanol ...
January 07 2011
Beef Fat Spill Turns the Houston Ship Channel Into a Clogged Artery
Fat is in the news: Not just because of the world’s obesity problems, but because one agriculture company accidentally fattened up the Houston Ship Channel on Tuesday by spilling 15,000 gallons of beef tallow into it.
The fat was in an onshore storage tank owned by agricultural company Jacob Sterns and Sons, which for unknown reasons leaked about 250,000 gallons of animal fat. About 15,000 gallons seeped into the channel through a storm drain, and immediately solidified after hitting the water, Coast Guard spokesman Richard Brahm told The Wall Street Journal:
“Luckily the stuff is easy to clean up,” Mr. Brahm said. “It solidifies at room temperature, so as soon as it hit the water it just kind of sat there.”
The floating fat looks like a collection of dirty little icebergs (officially called “patties”), but is causing some problems. Three quarters of the northern end of the channel had to be shut down for the cleanup effort–luckily it didn’t block tanker traffic along the waterway.
The US Coast Guard helped clean up the fat in the channel, and finished pitch forking and booming the ...
January 06 2011
Potty Trained Piggies Help Keep Taiwanese Rivers Clean
Toddlers can learn, cats can be taught–so why not take the next step and potty-train our livestock? Taiwan’s Environmental Protection Administration is encouraging its pig farmers to do just that with the countries’ six million pigs. The move will clean up the farms and help prevent water pollution, they say.
To keep the pig waste from flowing into the rivers (and to save water on cleaning up farms), the pigs are trained to relieve themselves in a trough. The “toilets” are smeared with feces and urine to attract the pigs–kinda like that spot on the carpet where the dog keeps relieving itself. All it took to start the porcine potty-training revolution was one genius farmer in 2009 trying to avoid the Taiwanese government’s “water pollution fee.” He noticed the difference immediately, he told the Mail and Guardian Online:
“The pig toilets on my farm help me collect about 95% of all pig waste, making cleaning much, much easier,” Chang Chung-tou, a pig farmer in Yunlin county, said.
After a trial of 10,000 pigs by Chung-tou and others in 2009, the Taiwanese ...
January 04 2011
What to Do With Troublesome Invasive Species: 1) Eat Them, 2) Wear Them
Sick of invasive snakes eating through your wiring and biting your babies? Don’t have any tylenol-doped mice to lob at them? You might be in luck, we have a few ideas of what to invasive species that insist on making pests of themselves.
Idea #1: Make Them Into Dinner
Become a part of the “invasivore” movement by ingesting some tasty lionfish (pictured) or asian carp, and by nomming on some kudzu or Japanese knotweed. One “almost serious” invasivore, Rachel Kesel, blogged on the subject and talked to The New York Times:
She said in an interview that she was studying in London when she wrote the post, which grew out of conversations about diet and ecology. “If you really want to get down on conservation you should eat weeds,” she decided. And so she blogged. She now works for the parks department of San Francisco and said she did indeed pursue the vegetable side of the diet she proposed. “I’m really looking forward to some of our spring weeds here,” she said, notably Brassica rapa, also known as ...
December 29 2010
Which Celebrities Are Science-Illiterate Whack Jobs? Find Out Here
Every year, the Sense About Science group puts out a list of some of the most egregious blunders made in science and medicine during the past 12 months. But they’re not talking about surgeons’ errors or the research mistakes of lab workers; instead, SAS focuses on celebrities who adopt fad diets and bogus healing remedies, and then spread the nonsense around the world.
In 2010, many celebrities–including David Beckham, Robert De Niro, and Shaquille O’Neal–jumped on the “Power Balance” sports fad (don’t actually go to that website, it will make you stupider). This absurd system suggests that plastic bracelets and pendants with holograms will optimize the body’s natural energy flow because they’re “designed to resonate with and respond to the natural energy field of the body.”
Sigh, I suppose we actually have to say this: There is no way a hologram could change your athletic ability. The website doesn’t even try to explain the company’s “science.” But just so we cheapies don’t all go around strapping our credit cards to ourselves before a long run, Michael Blastland responded to a claim from Shaq ...
December 28 2010
Are Booze-Drenched Societies More Likely To Be Monogamous?
A new study out in the American Association of Wine Economist’s “Wine Economics” journal suggests that monogamous societies are bigger drinkers than those in polygamous societies. Does this mean that being stuck with only one partner drives us to the bottle, or does drinking make us more likely to settle down?
Actually the answer is most likely neither. Both monogamy and drunkenness seem to be related to economics, or at least, that’s why both seem to have blossomed during the industrial revolution. Jo Swinnen, one of the study’s authors, told The New York Times Freakonomics blog (which seemed to have missed the actual conclusion of the study) that he noticed the correlation over, unsurprisingly, a glass of wine:
The inspiration came from a casual observation (over a glass of wine) that the two social/religious groups that do allow polygamy ((parts of) Mormonism and Islam) also do not consume alcohol. So we wondered whether this was a coincidence or not.
While many studies have compared alcohol and cultural traits, this is the study to look at its relationship with polygamy. The researchers compared the marital style and “frequency of drunkenness” of 44 well-documented pre-industrial societies (24 of which were polygamous; 20 monogamous) and found that monogamy was indeed positively correlated with drunkenness. The paper (pdf) says:
In societies that practice agriculture and animal husbandry drunkenness occurs less than in hunting, fishing and gathering societies….Hunting tribes are said to have more monogamous marriage arrangements than agricultural tribes.
Historically, this correlation seems to be found frequently, everywhere from the Roman empire to the Industrial revolution, as the researchers outline in the paper (pdf):
First, we find a historical correlation between a global transition from polygynous to monogamous societies and the growth of alcohol consumption. Second, the Greek and Roman empires were the only societies who consumed only wine in their era and at the same time were the only (and first) to introduce formal monogamy. Third, after the Roman Empire collapsed, formal monogamy was maintained and reinforced by the Christian Church–which was also spreading viticulture around Europe and which became the depositary of breweries and winemaking techniques. Fourth, the industrial revolution seems to have played an important role in the transition to effective/actual monogamy and in the growth in alcohol consumption.
During and after the industrial revolution drinking and the availability of cheap alcohol increased drastically the authors note (pdf):
Many people moved to urban and industrial areas and left behind the closer social structure and hierarchical organization in their villages. Heavy drinking became an important phenomenon among the new working class, induced by their subordinate and exploited status and less constrained by the social structure.
As the industrial revolution changed society, it also changed sources of wealth. Land became less important and human capital and intelligence became driving factors of wealth. The authors suggest that men began desiring “higher-quality” children, making their choice of mate more important. The authors believe these social and economic changes were the driving factor behind the correlation between monogamy and drunkenness, not any direct causal relationship between the two, the paper (pdf) says:
The industrial revolution brought about the major and definitive change towards effective monogamy and popularization of alcohol consumption. Both changes (in alcohol consumption and in marriage arrangements) were induced by changes in social structures, economic developments and technological innovations associated with the industrial revolution.
While this makes sense for the changes during the industrial revolution, it doesn’t seem to fully explain why polygamous societies today abstain from alcohol. Perhaps it has something to do with the recent finding that couples that drink together are happier.
Related content:
Discoblog: Alcohol Makes You Think Everyone Is Out to Get You
Discoblog: Why Do I Feel Woozy? I’ve Only Had One Enormous Glass of Wine
Discoblog: To Animate a Drunken Mess, Use New Algorithms for Wrinkled Clothing and Flushed Faces
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Sorry Pedobear, science proves drinking is no excuse.
80beats: Fetal Alcohol Exposure Makes for Booze-Loving Rats
Gene Expression: Polygamy and human evolution: maybe it’s agriculture
DISCOVER: Monogamy Kills
Image: Flickr/Rombla
Fridge of the Future is Predicting We Will Be Lazy
Future forecast: laziness ahead. Appliance designers are trying to make even eating and cooking as fool- and work-proof as possible.
The fridge of the future they are designing can do it all: order food, plan your recipes, and even count your calories.
This future-is-now technology is being created by a team of researchers at University of Central Lancashire (that’s in England, in case your fridge hasn’t told you) working with grocery delivery company Ocado. The fridge will automatically scan its contents and order groceries accordingly. It can even plan recipes around the fridge contents, designer Simon Sommerville told the Daily Mail:
“If the specific item for a recipe is not present, the refrigerator might suggest a delayed option, which allows time for delivery, or possibly attempt to find or propose a passable alternative for the missing ingredient.”
It will even clean itself and its nano-tile shelves will move older food and leftovers forward so it can be used. It will also detect decomposing food, keeping those stinky fridge smells from developing and reducing waste. Dieting will be easier, too, as the fridge has a built-in scale which can weigh and determine the calorie count of your foods before and after eating, keeping a food diary of your caloric intake.
Currently the fridge is just a gleam in its designer’s eye—and, frankly, it seems like it will probably remain just that—but it’s an interesting look at what kinds of tasks might be too much for humans of the future.
Related content:
Discoblog: Speed Bumps of the Future: Creepy Optical Illusion Children
Science Not Fiction: A Problem for Residents of the Future: Powering Those Futuristic Residences
Cosmic Variance: Spooky Signals from the Future Telling Us to Cancel the LHC!
DISCOVER: I’ll Have My Burger Petri-Dish Bred, With Extra Omega-3
DISCOVER: How—and Where—Will We Live in 2015?
DISCOVER: Conservation Cuisine: Is Vermin the Meat of the Future? (Gallery)
DISCOVER: 10 Zany (or Genius?) Plans for Green Cities of the Future (Gallery)
Image: Daily Mail
December 20 2010
Elephant Bird’s Tasty, Giant Eggs Were Most Likely Its Downfall
The extinct elephant bird could grow to over ten feet tall and weigh in at around half a ton, with its eggs about 180 times the size of a chicken egg. They lived well in Madagascar until about 2,000 years ago, when humans first settled the island; then, about 1,000 years later, they were extinct. In an upcoming documentary, Sir David Attenborough says it wasn’t the skill of human hunters that caused the big bird’s demise:
“I doubt it was hunted to extinction – anyone who has seen an ostrich in a zoo knows that it has a kick which can open a man’s stomach and an enraged elephant bird, many times the size of an ostrich, must have been a truly formidable opponent.”
Instead, he says, humans probably killed off the elephant bird by eating all their eggs—someone stumbling on a nest and stealing one of it’s calorie-rich eggs could keep their family happy for several meals.
Attenborough discovered the egg shells on a visit to Madagascar in the 1960’s. For the documentary he returns to the area which has changed dramatically in the 50 years since then, he told The Telegraph:
“I go back to a place where there was forest 50 years ago when I was there and it has all been knocked down the only thing that is there is an abandoned saw mill. It was sad to go back and see that. It is an example of the way the island has changed over the years. There are now three times as many people living on the island since I was there 50 years ago. The only places they can live and grow food were the only places that were wild. The wild places are being taken over by people building villages on them and rice fields.”
More information from Attenborough on giant birds in the video below. Attenborough and the Giant Egg will air on BBC Two in 2011.
Related content:
80beats: The Complicated History of the Domesticated Turkey
80beats: Study: Giant Storks Roamed the Island of the Hominid “Hobbits”
80beats: How Did the Giant Flying Reptiles of the Jurassic Period Take Off?
80beats: Jurassic Park Science: DNA of Extinct Bird Extracted From Eggshells
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Float like a butterfly, sting like a terror bird
Not Exactly Rocket Science: DNA from the largest bird ever sequenced from fossil eggshells
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Argentavis, the largest flying bird, was a master glider
Image: De Agostini Picture Library/BBC
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