Discover magazine

Jan

2011

Beef Fat Spill Turns the Houston Ship Channel Into a Clogged Artery

Discover, January 7 2011.

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. Read More >

Jan

2011

Aflockalypse: The Media Goes on Apocalyptic Overdrive

Discover, January 7 2011.

Since Monday’s news that a few thousand birds fell from the sky on New Year’s Eve over Beebe, Arkansas, the world has gone a little crazy with talk of the “aflockalypse”: the mass bird deaths that have been documented worldwide. Bird die-offs have been reported in not only Arkansas but also in Italy, Sweden, Louisiana, Texas, and Kentucky. Die-offs of other animals, including thousands of fish in Arkansas, Florida, New Zealand and the Chesapeake Bay have also been noted, while dead crabs washed up on UK shores.

Causes ranging from UFOs, monsters (our personal favorite), fireworks, secret military testing, poison, shifting magnetic fields, and odd weather formations have been blamed for the deaths, but researchers are saying these types of die-offs are normal. Read More >

Jan

2011

Potty Trained Piggies Help Keep Taiwanese Rivers Clean

Discover, January 6 2011.

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. Read More >

Jan

2011

Your Morning Toothpaste: Now With Weather Reports!

Discover, January 6 2011.

Mmmm… it tastes like rain today. Or at least this toothpaste tastes like it’s going to rain today. The toothpaste in question was created by the MIT Media lab as your own personal early morning weather station–it changes flavors based on the day’s forecast.

So when you’re half asleep and drooling white toothpaste foam out of your mouth onto your clean shirt, at least you know which jacket you should bring to cover that toothpaste stain. Read More >

Jan

2011

Cocaine Vaccine Could Stop Addiction in Its Tracks

Discover, January 6 2011.

By combining a cocaine analog with part of a common cold virus, researchers have created a “cocaine vaccine” that tricks the body into attacking the drug, neutralizing its high-giving powers. It has only been tested in mice so far, but the results are good:

“Our very dramatic data shows that we can protect mice against the effects of cocaine, and we think this approach could be very promising in fighting addiction in humans,” study researcher Ronald Crystal, a professor of genetic medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, said in a statement. Read More >

Jan

2011

Drug Users Are Mining the Scientific Literature for “Legal Highs”

Discover, January 5 2011.

When it comes to recreational drugs, many assume that most of the dangerous compounds that people get high on are illegal. But drug makers, dealers, and users know better. They are mining the scientific literature for psychoactive drugs, making them in kitchen labs, and selling them to users on the street. And though this poses a real risk for users, it’s perfectly legal.

Purdue University chemist David Nichols says he’s haunted by the knowledge that his scientific research has led to unsafe–and sometimes even deadly–drug use. Read More >

Jan

2011

Astronomy Gets Adorable: Ten-Year-Old Girl Discovers Supernova

Discover, January 5 2011.

Most ten-year-olds don’t have the patience to sift through star images for thousands of hours. But Kathryn Aurora Gray was on a mission: She wanted to become the youngest person to discover a supernova.

And luckily for her, Kathryn’s work didn’t take thousands of hours–she discovered an exploded star about fifteen minutes after starting her career as an amateur astronomer. After looking through four of the 52 pictures provided by family friend and astronomer David Lane, she saw it. Read More >

Jan

2011

Power Balance: Our Product Is Backed by “No Credible Scientific Evidence”

Discover, January 5 2011.

In a completely shocking and unexpected turn of events, the company behind Power Balance wristbands has officially admitted that the product isn’t backed by any scientific studies–and that the company’s advertisements were misleading. And right after the holographic technology to improve “balance, strength and energy” was named CNBC’s Sports Product of 2010! Did you catch that? That was sarcasm.

And while we here at DISCOVER may have our own opinions, the product was endorsed by SHAQ (whose name is also spelled in all caps). SHAQ, how could you lie to us after we supported you through the Kazaam! days? Power Balance claims that the holograms (which are exactly like the ones in your credit cards) embedded in their wristbands or pendants have some sort of “energy flow” which can be manipulated to “resonate” with the body’s natural “energy flow.” Read More >

Jan

2011

What to Do With Troublesome Invasive Species: 1) Eat Them, 2) Wear Them

Discover, January 4 2011.

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. Read More >

Jan

2011

Our Ancestors’ Big Babies May Have Shaped Human Evolution

Discover, January 4 2011.

Babies: As we reported yesterday, they just keep getting bigger. And while they haven’t always been trending towards obese, human babies have always been larger, relative to their mothers, than the infants of most other species. This make birth difficult and could have even changed the social structure of early hominids, steering human evolution.

Human babies are about 6.1 percent of their mother’s weight at birth, while chimp babies are about 3.3 percent. A new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences takes a look at our extinct relatives to determine when this shift occurred, and suggests that it could even have encouraged our ancestors to come down from the trees and to form more complex social arrangements. Read More >