The Naked Scientist

Acknowledgements

It's all here in Naked Science, my first book, which promises serious science, but with a sense of humour.

There are over 250 true science stories, all written in a straightforward and amusing style. You can start and stop wherever you want and it will definitely provide you with the perfect "impress your mates" ammunition guaranteed to brighten up any dreary conversation.

If you like the Naked Scientists website, radio show and podcast, then you'll love Naked Science.

Buy Naked Science

ISBN 1-90577

A brain centre for sarcasm? Oh sure - I'm really going to believe that, aren't I?

Researchers from Israel's University of Haifa have described how they homed in on the part of the brain responsible for comprehending sarcasm. The team compared the ability of two groups of patients with brain injuries to understand sarcastic comments. One group had damage to the front-most part of the brain, known as the prefrontal cortex, whereas the second group had damage to structures further back in the brain. The patients with damage to the prefrontal cortex, and particularly the region known as the right ventromedial prefrontal cortex (just above the right eye), had the most difficulty understanding sarcastic remarks. It is a finding that fits with what we already know about this part of the brain which seems to be heavily involved in complex social interactions, personality and pragmatic language processing.

What could be more attractive than magnets . . . and swallowing them?

American radiologists in late 2004 warned parents of the dangers of swallowing more than one magnet at a time. Swallowing foreign objects is common among all children, but luckily, 80% of the swallowed objects pass harmlessly through the gastrointestinal system on their own, single magnets included. Consuming more than one magnet can spell disaster, however - because the magnets are attracted to each other across the walls of the intestines, with the result that loops of bowel become locked together. The ensuing life-threatening tangle can lead to tissue death and/or perforation of the intestinal wall.

But who wants a bird's-eye-view of
airborne pollution?

Scientists will soon be offering us a bird's-eye-view of pollution when they release a flock of 20 homing pigeons each equipped with a smog-monitoring backpack and a mobile phone. The birds are to take to the skies over San Jose, California, from August 2006 and beam back text messages detailing the pollution they run into as they fly to and fro. The data they collect will be plotted in real time on an interactive map in an Internet blog site ('PigeonBlog'), and cameras carried around their necks mean that the birds will also be sending back aerial photographs of their travels. The project is the brainchild of 'interdisciplinary artist' Professor Beatriz da Costa from the University of California, Irvine, and her two students Cina Hazegh and Kevin Ponto. The team have so far built a prototype system comprising a cellphone circuitboard and SIM card, a GPS receiver to pinpoint each of the birds' positions, and nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide sensors to monitor pollution. The next step is to shrink all of the components onto a single circuitboard to make a pigeon pollution-pack for the birds to carry on their travels.

Humans often have pacemakers fitted. Couldn't animals also benefit?

In September 2004 a team of surgeons from the University of Alabama successfully inserted the first cardiac resynchronisation therapy (CRT) device in a gorilla at Birmingham Zoo, USA. The recipient was Babec, the Zoo's 24-year-old western lowland gorilla, who began to show the symptoms of heart failure last year. The CRT inserted into Babec is an advanced form of pacemaker that allows both the right and left sides of the heart to be controlled. According to the Zoo, he is recovering well and beginning to return to some of his typical mannerisms - which presumably means eating a lot of bananas and beating his chest.

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ISBN 1741666902