Flash in the Pan

The New York Times science Q&A section has a question on mold: If there's some on the surface of food, has it permeated throughout? Their answer, quoting the US Department of Agriculture, is yes, it may well have. By the time you see the surface mold, root threads are embedded.

Some molds can cause strong allergic reactions, including respiratory problems, in susceptible people. And in some varieties, the threads produce toxic substances called mycotoxins, which can make people very sick.

Eww, not good. If you're really feeling adventurous, go for a "safe" mold: blue cheese.

Labels: food safety, mold, science

The New York Times has a short science piece on whether mayonnaise increases the danger of food poisoning as the weather gets warmer. The good news: a number of studies suggest that commercial mayonnaise is not at fault, as the degree of acidic ingredients makes the substance pretty unpopular with the microbe crowd.

One prominent study published in The Journal of Food Protection found, for example, that in the presence of commercial mayonnaise, the growth of salmonella and staphylococcus bacteria in contaminated chicken and ham salad either slowed or stopped altogether. As the amount of mayonnaise increased, the rate of growth decreased. When temperatures rose to those of a hot summer day, the growth increased, but not as much as in samples that did not contain mayonnaise.

However, summer brings another danger - cold drinks and condensation that can leave water marks. Luckily, mayonnaise can bring a solution. You smear mayonnaise over the spot, leave it overnight (or even a day or more), wipe it off, and the spot is gone. There are a number of sites online that describe this technique; I know about it because my wife read it in some book, tried it, and was delighted to find that it worked. No, adding bacon, lettuce, and tomato is not necessary.

Labels: food safety, mayonnaise, science

When you're a big chocolate company like Mars, you think about cocoa, without which you cannot make a thing. You think about diseases and changing climate and other factors that could cut production and raise your costs - and the 6.5 million or so cocoa growers in the world, most of which work on small family farms, have as much attention on a "luxury." According to the New York Times, Mars is working with IBM to map the cocoa genome - not to create genetically modified plans (at least supposedly), but to be smarter and more efficient in how cross-breeding and plant development in the greenhouse work:

Computational biologists and supercomputers can drastically accelerate the pace at which promising new strains of cocoa trees come out of the greenhouse, from the traditional length of five to seven years down to 18 months or so, Dr. Shapiro said.

That is a huge time and money savings. It's easy to forget that it takes significant time to grow a tree, and that to avoid GM methods, you have to bring plants to maturity and work through a line of generations to get the eventual results that you want. If mapping the genome helps them move through the process more effectively, it takes some of the pressure off switching to more artificial and potentially risky approaches, like swapping genes around.

Labels: chocolate, genome, GM, science

The New York Times has a funny article - well, at least I was amused - about a negative correlation between the amount of beer scientists drink and the amount of successful papers they publish:

According to the study, published in February in Oikos, a highly respected scientific journal, the more beer a scientist drinks, the less likely the scientist is to publish a paper or to have a paper cited by another researcher, a measure of a paper’s quality and importance.

The results were not, however, a matter of a few scientists having had too many brews to be able to stumble back to the lab. Publication did not simply drop off among the heaviest drinkers. Instead, scientific performance steadily declined with increasing beer consumption across the board, from scientists who primly sip at two or three beers over a year to the sort who average knocking back more than two a day.

But, as one source pointed out, there's a difference between correlation and causality. Two things happening at the same time are not necessarily linked by one causing the other. And it would be possible to get this completely backwards. Maybe, instead of beer drinking causing lack of publishing productivity, it is low spirits over being at the back of the pack that pushes some scientists to seek consolation with barley and hops.

Labels: beer, news, science

Scientists in Australia are working with beer company Foster's on a project to power a giant fuel cell with brewery waste water. Researchers expect the 660-gallon fuel cell to generate 2 kilowatts of power - enough for the average household down under - while acting as a waste treatment plant and producing clean water as a byproduct. Holy Vats of Volts, Batman! It's just a way that people get juiced at the same time they get juiced.

Labels: Australia, beer, Foster's, fuel cell, power, science, water