I saw this headline and just had to share it. I mean how often does royalty get inducted into the higher echelons of chicken researchers? Exactly.

Dean of the Bogor Institute of Agriculture’s School of Husbandry did Prince Akishino the honours at the institute’s campus in Bogor, West Java last week.

Here’s what the institute’s spokesman Agus Lelana had to say according to The Jakarta Post: “Prince Akishino has shown his great concern for research of Indonesia’s local chicken, which has helped us describe in detail the genetics of the animal.”

Now I’ve dug around a bit and I can’t find exactly what it is that the Japanese prince did that was so valuable to local chicken breeds. But I’m sure it was pretty significant?

In any case it would make sense that the chicken breeds of Indonesia are of particular interest to chicken researchers, seeing as their initial domestication probably happened here some odd 5,200 years ago according to the delightful and forthright website Food Timeline. Seriously, it’s an amazing website. It can tell you that teriyaki chicken was first served in the 16th century. And chicken kiev in 1938. The same year “chicken and waffles” cropped up (I don’t know what this is. Nor do I want to. But I am glad to know about it).

We thought he was out there saving the planet, but we’ve clearly been barking up completely the wrong tree. This is what Big Al has been doing the whole time everyone thought he was being a lean, green fighting machine.

(PHOTO: ALEXDECARVALHO)

Today is the 50th birthday of lego. I used to love Lego when I was little. Back in my day it was all about being creative with the basic building blocks, now it’s all Batman and Indiana Jones and Mars Mission which are all well and good until you lose a key part and then the whole thing becomes much more complicated.

I spent many happy hours lego-ing and building, and I’m sure I could make some comparison with engineering or maths or physics or building blocks of life or something that would justify this post’s place on a science blog, but really the only reason why I’m writing this is because it gives me an excuse to post a link to this YouTube clip, of an Eddie Izzard sketch rendered in lego. I promise it will improve your Monday by at least a little bit. And I’ll post something else sciency later.

(PHOTO: HARTINI A)

Irony Incarnate is when you’re waiting at the bus stop. Forever. And one bus goes by and it’s full so it doesn’t stop. And more people pile up at the stop. And all the other buses you do not want go by three times over before yours arrives.

And in the meantime you’re listening to a BBC News podcast that is highlighting the new formula arrived at by Caltech and Harvard math gurus that breaks down whether or not its worth it to continue waiting for the bus that doesn’t come, or screw it and walk. And to make things even more ironic, their equation usually errs on the side of continuing to wait while me, this morning, in my frigidly cold and yet fuming state, could have walked to work in the time it took me to arrive on my tardy and stinky bus.

Now I know I’m not the only one afflicted. The waiting-for-the-bus-that-won’t-come conundrum is so widespread that it inspired a brilliant poem by Wendy Cope that starts off “Bloody men are like bloody buses. You wait for about a year And as soon as one approaches your stop. Two or three others appear.” She’s a wise one is that Wendy Cope. Sure enough, behind my packed Number 8 bus this morning (it was like lemmings jumping off a cliff but in reverse: humans irrationally jumping on in droves) were two others, empty and fancy free.

The other day I was watching some TV with my mother when an advertisement for probiotic yogurt popped up. The ad was suggesting that this particular yogurt’s combo of probiotic bacteria would boost immune system function and help digestion and blah blah goodness. So mom asks what probiotics were, exactly, and if they are any different than the bog standard bacteria used to culture milk into yogurt. It’s good question.

The most common probiotics - which generally refers to microbes that promote health in some way or another - are species from the Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium genera. Both of them can turn sugars in to lactic acid (ie ferment) and thereby make yogurt.

Which leaves us with two questions. 1) Do probiotics promote health? 2) Are the pricey probiotic-labeled yogurts better than your average tub?

1) Yes! Happy bacteria do seem to promote good health. The list of purported benefits is long indeed, but among the best proven is bowel problems… Take this 2005 study on preventing antibiotic-associated diarrhea in babies using two strains of bacteria often used in yogurt production: Bifidobacterium lactis and Streptococcus thermophilus.

There are a whack of other claims, but the science is still in its infancy, really. Here’s a sampling: Probiotics have show some effectiveness in combating stomach ulcers (likely by out competing off the bad H. pylori bacteria). Probiotics might help prevent allergies in kids...but a recent review from the Cochrane Database (who do very good, standardized and objective analyses) found little hard evidence of their powers.

2) For this, the answer is even more murky...for the people marketing the extra healthy yogurts would have you believe. that their special blend or unique species is the key to eternal life. While it’s true that clinical trials testing the effects of specific bacteria can only then be applied that same bacteria in the same dose, I don’t buy that their particular brand of oh-so-special bacteria is oh-so-special. The major mode of action of all these probiotics is out-competing bad bacteria, so if a species survives past the stomach and into the gut, it can probably do that. Maybe there’s some extra peppy bacteria, but I remain underwhelmed.

Let’s take my favorite brand of yogurt, Astro, as an example. Astro makes lots of different yogurts including their BioBest probiotic yogurt, BioBest Vitalite probiotic yogurt (special for digestion with prebiotics..the food that probiotics like to eat) and their normal stuff.

In the BioBest Vitalite we have “active bacterial cultures” comprising Streptococcus thermophilus, Lactobacillus bulgaricus, Lactobacillus acidophilus, Bifidobacterium lactis and Lactobacillus casei.
In the BioBest we have “active bacterial cultures” comprising Streptococcus thermophilus, Lactobacillus bulgaricus, Lactobacillus acidophilus and Lactobacillus bifidus (old name of Bifidobacterium bifidum)
In the regular stuff we have “active bacterial cultures”.

So what’s in the normal stuff? How much of the good stuff is in the probiotic-labeled stuff? My guess is that the regular stuff has the first two cultures - Streptococcus and L. bulgaricus - as they are very common yogurt bacterias. Researchers studying their survival in the human gut previously found conflicting results, but recent reports suggest that yes! they can live in the gut and yes! that makes them probiotics! Probably.

And while companies probably have lots of data saying that their blend can do this that or the other thing, until I see some controlled clinical trials showing that special health bacteria is better than the ho-hum brand of yogurt that I love (Astro Strawberries and Cream, no slimy fruit chunks and only 1% fat), I ain’t wasting my money on a marketing ploy.

PISSY PISSY VANCOUVER. PICTURED HERE IS THE GRANVILLE STREET BRIDGE HEADED DOWNTOWN. (PHOTO: TOM HARPEL)

I saw this headline and I nearly gleefully cackled so loud I fell off my chair:

”Scientists Produce Energy From Rain”

FINALLY. Seriously this is great, GREAT news. I hate the rain, which comes down in droves out here in Vancouver. All winter it’s wet. It’s damp. It’s cold. It’s never ending (seriously it rained FOR ALL BUT TWO DAYS last January. This actually broke a 1937 record for the most soused January. And the scary part was most of didn’t notice; it felt THAT normal to us long suffering and anemic citizens).

Anyways, it’s ABOUT TIME the rain made us rich in something other than damp and depression. See, we average about one meter of rainfall each year. That’s a lot of downpour to suffer and there had to be a silver lining somewhere in those never ending winter clouds…

Presto. Rain turned into power. The new technology, developed by scientists at the atomic energy commission (CEA) in Grenoble, France, takes the mechanical force produced by raindrops falling and converts it into electricity.

Here’s my favorite quote, as per the Red Orbit news article:

“We thought of raindrops because they are one of the still-unexploited energy sources in nature,” said Jean-Jacques Chaillout, who led the research, in an interview with the magazine New Scientist.

Yes, that’s right people. You read that right. “One of the still-unexploited energy sources in nature.” Cause we’ve raped and pillaged every other natural phenomena for energy.

Anyways, it might be too early to get all happy about the discovery - as far as us Vancouverites go. See, Chaillout’s system uses piezoelectric structures to convert the mechanical force of your raindrop into voltage. Now I don’t know how sensitive his little piezoelectric structures are but often what we call “rain” out here is really “to sit in a sopping wet cloud.” In this case we get less raindrops and than we do variations of drizzle, mist, spray, and when the weather is super gross, spit. 

I was in Seattle last weekend with my mother for some girly bonding. We went to Etta’s for dinner where we ate AMAZING FOOD, including THE BEST SALAD I HAVE EVER EATEN, a spicy tuna sashimi salad, complete with fried green onion pancake (yeah, I know..not really salad).

But according to this article published today in the NYTimes, I might have mercury poisoning!!! Yay! A while ago, I did a calculation of how much tuna I could eat per week given FDA measures of mercury levels and suggested EPA exposure limits. I calculated that I could probably safely eat between 1.5 to 4 tuna rolls per week. But this was based on mercury measurements for YELLOWfin tuna, around .325 parts per million (ppm). In the NYTimes piece, they found that all pieces of tuna sushi were above the FDA “action” level of 1 ppm. Bad. Most restaurants said they were BLUEfin tuna, which makes sense because bluefin is a larger, longer-lived species, which means more time for mercury to accumulate in their flesh. TASTY.

I don’t know whether my tuna was yellow or bluefin, but I kind of don’t care either way. I guess what I am saying here is that...I fear not the mercury. Talk to me in 20 years when my neurons have dissolved into toxic sludge, but hey. Life’s too short man, I and I love my freakin’ spicy tuna.

But alas, when it comes to tuna, it’s not only my brains and heart I must worry about. Environmental Defense lists both blue and yellowfin among their Eco-Worst fishes. Maybe that was my last tuna dish for a while..

Well according to Cliff Arnall, a psychologist from Cardiff University in Wales, that would make sense since according to his calculations, January 21st is the saddest day of 2008.

According to the shallow news reports that covered his discovery his equation goes like this:

His formula reads [W+(D-d)]xTQ MxNA, in which W is the weather, D is debt (minus the amount of money to be paid on your next pay day); T is time since Christmas; Q is the failed attempt to quit a bad habit; M is general motivational levels, and NA is the need to take action and have something to look forward to.

As a ying to January 21st’s yang, Arnall has also come up with some basic maths to calculate the happiest day of the year. Here’s that equation:

The formula, O + (N x S) + Cpm/T + He, calculates the variables of being outdoors and outdoor activity (O), nature (N), social interaction (S), childhood summers and positive memories (Cpm), temperature (T) and holidays and anticipating time off (He)

Which works out to Friday June 20th. Of course you could argue that this is all kablooey what with sketchy variables like “childhood summers and positive memoreis” and “general motivational levels.” I mean, really? REALLY??? Back in high school my friends and I would dorkily graph the attractiveness of men along various variables and how kickass the year was going against time. Now I see we should have submitted our sketches to the local science fair in expectation of making the news.

(PHOTO:MYLERDUDE)
I present to you a mini photo essay on the amazing jumping biomechanics of canines. Did you know they have dog high jump competitions? Well they do. (There is also a Guinness World Record for a pig jump)

Well, anyways. Four legged folk such as dogs, or pigs, can jump so high because of the design of their legs. Long, muscley (though very light) legs are better for jumping, as are legs with more joints. Insects do it best, really, having evolved a “catapult” type mechanism whereby they store up elastic energy and spring up. For example, in this 1967 paper on the mechanics of flea jumping, the authors estimated that some could jump 20 cm or 8 inches - more than a hundred times their own body length.

(PS. I found this photo while searching for “chicken”...HA)

Who hasn’t had a little food poisoning every now and then? Yeah? Everyone? Well here’s a creepy thought: once you’ve puked your guts out for 72 hours straight, the microfauna that glued you to the toilet could be the root cause of your kidney failure 20 years later. Sound fun, non?

The AP has put out a really interesting report on the poorly understood and woefully under-researched longterm effects of food poisoning. Remember the Jack-in-the-Box E. coli outbreak way back when? One little girl named Alyssa Chrobuck survived, but now she has high blood pressure, colon inflammation, a hiatal hernia, thyroid removal, endometriosis. I mean WOW. That is NOT GOOD.

Also, check this out:
“About 1 in 1,000 sufferers of campylobacter, a diarrhea-causing infection spread by raw poultry, develop far more serious Guillain-Barre syndrome a month or so later. Their body attacks their nerves, causing paralysis that usually requires intensive care and a ventilator to breathe. About a third of the nation’s Guillain-Barre cases have been linked to previous campylobacter, even if the diarrhea was very mild, and they typically suffer a more severe case than patients who never had food poisoning.”

Campylocater is spread not only by poultry but also RAW MILK. Definitely another “con” to add to the list when deciding whether nonpasteurized is the way to go.