Tasty words

This is fascinating. This guy tastes words. Other people with synesthesia see vowels or numbers in different colours and so on. Synesthesia is a confusion of the senses, when the perceptions by one sense are triggered by the perceptions of another.

Chicks and science

A member of the audience asked the panel of thinkers and scientists: "What's up with chicks and science?" Neil deGrasse Tyson provided a brilliant answer:

Devious old ad - UPDATE

I received an e-mail with a bunch of old ads, which we have seen before in a previous post. This one was new to me and I found it shocking. The text on the picture is difficult to read, so here it is:

How soon is too soon?

Not soon enough. Laboratory tests over the years have proven that babies who start drinking soda during that early formative period have a much higher chance of gaining acceptance and "fitting in" during those awkward pre-teen and teen years. So, do yourself a favor. Do your child a favor. Start them on a strict regimen of sodas and other sugary carbonated beverages right now, for a lifetime of guaranteed happiness.

They invoke science, referring to laboratory tests, concluding that babies who start drinking soda at an early age will "fit in" better in later years. How can you test behaviour over a span of ten to twelve years in a lab? Did they keep a bunch of children captive, one group drinking soda and a control group having none? Then, after a number of years, concluded that the soda drinkers were more sociable?

It's a dishonest ad. Fortunately, attitudes have changed and this ad wouldn't be tolerated today, in view of the alarming rise in childhood obesity!

UPDATE

I'm relieved to find out that this ad is a fake! Thank you, Amy/Ottoline, for providing the following link:

The Museum of Hoaxes

Useful venom

Our friend Phuket Tom sent me some amazing videos of a deadly creature, the cone shell snail.

The first two videos show the cone snail in action:





In this third video, scientists explain the effects of the hundreds of different compounds that go into the venom of each type of cone snail, how they could be used as bio-weapons, but most importantly, how they can be used to develop new drugs to help control or alleviate the symptoms of many conditions.



Dr. Baldomero Olivera is a good friend of Tom's:

"The gentleman in the longest video about the lab in Utah is a good friend of mine, Dr. Toto Olivera. A few years ago he was named U.S. Scientist of the Year (I believe by Harvard University) for his studies of cone shell toxins and their possible use in human medicine - one of his discoveries is now in use and while more powerful than morphine has none of the side effects of that drug. In his research he has visited me here on Phuket several times, looking for additional species of deepwater cones in order to analyze their toxins."


Thank you very much for these videos, Tom. I find this research fascinating, tapping into Mother Nature's resources to produce drugs to help mankind...

Beautiful and useful

This beautiful thing has practical applications. Here are some examples:

Electronic devices
Ferrofluids are used to form liquid seals around the spinning drive shafts in hard disks. The rotating shaft is surrounded by magnets. A small amount of ferrofluid, placed in the gap between the magnet and the shaft, will be held in place by its attraction to the magnet. The fluid of magnetic particles forms a barrier which prevents debris from entering the interior of the hard drive.

Aerospace
NASA has experimented using ferrofluids in a closed loop as the basis for a spacecraft's attitude control system. A magnetic field is applied to a loop of ferrofluid to change the angular momentum and influence the rotation of the spacecraft.

Medicine
In medicine, ferrofluids are used as contrast agents for magnetic resonance imaging and can be used for cancer detection. The ferrofluids are in this case composed of iron oxide nanoparticles and called SPION, for "Superparamagnetic Iron Oxide Nanoparticles."

There is also much experimentation with the use of ferrofluids in an experimental cancer treatment called magnetic hyperthermia. It is based on the fact that a ferrofluid placed in an alternating magnetic field releases heat.

(Music: Gluck's Dance of the Spirits, from Orfeo et Euridice)