Science News
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A microscopic fungus known as Streptomyces avermitilis could be the solution to a problem that has dogged sailors for centuries. Barnacles attach to the hulls of boat, incre... |
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Researchers at the University of Georgia, US, have developed a technique for rapidly identifying minute traces of viral genetic material, using just light. The method pioneered by Ralph Tripp and his ... |
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Lizards have evolved to play it cool, blending into background foliage to remain hidden from predators. But what do they do when they actually need to get noticed - for example, to attract a mate? New... |
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US researchers have found a way to turn corn on the cob leftovers into gas storage tanks for cars running on methane (Liquified Natural Gas - LNG). The problem with LNG tanks is that... |
| Interviews
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Dr Mark Booth, University of Cambridge
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Kitchen Science
How to make strange unearthly glows by torturing sugar cubes...
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Questions
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Is the human bladder like a sponge or more like a balloon in the way it holds liquid?
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The answer is that it's more like a balloon. It's made mostly of smooth muscle and holds all your wee inside. The more you pump into it, the bigger it gets and it's actually quite good to train your bladder because the more you stretch it, the more it gets used to holding things. I don't mean that you should get it to bursting point, but if you can train it so that you don't need to go too soon then it means you have more control later. Many women have problems controlling the muscles when they get older, so a little bit of training is probably quite good.
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Why does cheese make you sweat? Sometimes if I have too much cheddar, I start feeling sweat creep across my brow. Is this just me?
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The reason I believe that this isn't just you is that there's something that's been known about by pharmacologists for a long time called the cheese reaction. This was first noticed when scientists invented a type of anti-depressant called monoamineoxidase inhibitors, which block up this enzyme monoamineoxidase. This enzyme usually breaks down things that contain amines or nitrogen-containing groups in them. The cheese reaction that people experienced when they ate cheese while on these drugs was that they had very high blood pressure, their heart went very fast and those are all actions of adrenaline. This is because cheese has something in it that acts a bit like adrenaline, and the key one is called tyromine. I wonder whether when you eat a bit of cheese, it stimulates the part of the nervous system that adrenaline would usually stimulate, and thus causes sweating.
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How do mobile phones affect fuel pumps, if at all?
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As far as I'm aware, the answer is that they don't. There was a bit of a scare that mobile phones could spark off an explosion but there's no evidence that they do.
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Could you confirm why chicken eggs sometimes contain blood in them? I thought they were unfertilised.
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To a certain extent you can get some red dots in chicken eggs because they've been fertilised, but it's perfectly possible to get red dots and a little bit of blood if they're not fertilised. That's because the egg gets made in the chicken's oviduct. It descends the oviduct and has the shell made around the outside. Sometimes as it's going down the oviduct, a blood vessel in the wall of that oviduct in the mother chicken can burst and spill out and get into the material that's being laid down in the egg. This means that you have a little blood spot in the egg that then gets wrapped up in the shell. Most egg producers shine lights through the eggs in order to see if that's happened and weed them out. Pale eggs are easier to weed out than the brown ones, which is why you tend to see it more often in brown eggs. It's not in any way pathological having the spot in them and you can eat those. They're harmless.
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