PIONEERING researchers often have to battle to get their work accepted. Take
the case of parasitologist Koichiro Fujita, who decided to put into practice his
belief that a clean environment is destroying our immunity to germs and
parasites.
When Fujita, from Tokyo Medical and Dental University, studied tropical
diseases in Borneo he noticed how healthy children were, despite—or was it
because of?—the large number of parasites they carried. So four years ago
he introduced a tapeworm into his own gut.
It has done so well that his intestines now house four tapeworms, all of them
thriving, he says. But for some reason Fujita is having trouble getting his
message across.
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“Corporate sponsors stopped funding my research after I started saying
obsession with cleanliness is a bad thing,” Fujita told the Japan Times.
“I am often not invited to important meetings and my colleagues make sarcastic
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BRITISH Standard 6841 is about the effects of vibration on the human
body—or some of them. It concludes with this comment: “Note: Although
pleasurable sensations may be experienced with some types of oscillatory motion
they are outside the scope of this standard and they will not usually be
confused with those causing discomfort.”
What could they be referring to?
BUSINESS magazines are as keen as anyone to latch onto science buzzwords. A
subsidiary of the American publisher IDG has launched a magazine called
Darwin—”Business evolving in the information age”—for top
management who need to learn more about the pressures of technology on their
business.
It sounds good, but the publishers seem to have missed part of Darwin’s
message—that only the fittest survive. A promotional flyer opens to a
spread heralding the success of Garden.com. Unfortunately, evolution caught up
with Garden.com at the end of last year, and it went extinct, leaving behind the
fossil imprint of its website “currently not accepting orders”.
RUSSIAN innovation advances apace. The perfect end to a less than perfect
meal has been developed by scientists in Siberia—ice cream which not only
tastes good but also fights freshly ingested bacteria that can cause
diarrhoea.
The medicinal dessert differs from normal ice cream through the addition of
microcultures effective against various gastric disorders, say workers at the
Novosibirsk Centre for Virology and Bacteriology.
Not to be outdone, researchers at the Saratov Biochemical Institute have
devised a spray-on edible coating that keeps bread fresh. It’s made of natural
polysaccharides that are apparently harmless and undetectable to the eye or
taste buds. Used twice, before and after baking, the resultant film keeps bread
fresh by simply preventing air from drying it out and forming mould.
It all sounds yummy, doesn’t it.
IDLING away the night-time hours while some talks in Geneva were locked in
diplomat-only closed session, a colleague resorted to reading the packets of
sugar he was pouring into his double espresso in the conference centre’s
café. “Sprechen und Zeichen der Welt”, they read, and “Langues et
alphabets du Monde” and “Lingue e alfabeti del mondo”.
And, true to its polyglot word, there on the other side of one packet was
“hello” in Armenian—which is much more attractive in Armenian script than
the transliteration, parev. And on the second packet was the Thai for
“hello”—sawaddi. But the third packet—yes, the need was
that desperate—came as a bit of a shock. Quapla’ is, apparently,
the Roman-alphabet representation of “hello” in Klingon.
ձᷡ鷡’S nothing like a film version to boost the sales of a novel. Recent
films and TV serialisations of Jane Austen’s books, for example, have hugely
increased their circulation—especially when there’s a picture of the star
on the cover.
Poor Jane, of course, hasn’t made an extra cent out of this, but her
publishers are doing fine. So Princeton University Press certainly knows what it
is doing with its new astronomy handbook. The promotional letter it has sent out
states: “One of 88 constellations in Stars and Planets, Draco was made
popular recently by the movie Dragonheart.”
Which kind of stars will appear on the cover of this book, we wonder.
HERE is an illuminating bit of product information. A one-gallon container of
Absopure purified drinking water has this to say about itself: “Nutrition
Facts—Serving size, 8 fluid ounces (240 millilitres). Servings per
container, 16. Amount per serving: calories, 0 per cent. Daily value: total fat,
0 grams (0 per cent). Sodium, 0 milligrams (0 per cent). Total carbonates, 0
grams (0 per cent). Protein, 0 grams (0 per cent). Not a significant source of
Cholesterol, Dietary Fiber, Sugars, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Calcium and Iron. Per
cent daily values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.”
FINALLY, more of the blindingly obvious. The instructions for Jessica Fryer’s
new Espresso KT04 kettle tell her: “The appliance is switched on by setting the
on/off switch into the ‘on’ position.”
