Discoblog » Scat-egory

Portland’s Tips for Making Public Potties That Last

Veronique Greenwood — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 18:03:35 +0000

Breezy and exposed! That’s the secret to bathrooms no one, not even street people, wants to live in.

Many cities have had epic, expensive public toilet fails. Seattle, we’re looking at you and your $5 million self-cleaning toilets that wound up trashed.

But over at The Atlantic’s Cities site, John Metcalfe has a piece detailing why Portland’s public potties have survived the aggressions (and heavy use) of the citizens. Here are Portland’s tips for defecation success.

1. Make it open to the elements: we’re talking bathroom stall, sans the bathroom. People walking by on the sidewalk should be able to see the peer’s feet and hear every little splish, splash, and sploosh in that potty. A comfortable, enclosed public bathroom is a bum’s living room, but an open-air crapper is just an open-air crapper.

2. No sink. Bums like to wash clothes in sinks. Instead, provide a spigot outside the stall with cold water.

3. No mirror. People like to break mirrors. It’s just a thing.

4. No nice, homey touches or comfortable detailing. Stainless steel all the way, with a graffiti-repelling coating. People can and will take bats to it; don’t make it easy on them.

And yet, Portlanders ...

Dizzy Discus Throwers, Horny Beer-Bottle Beetles, and the Wasabi Alarm Clock: the 2011 Ig Nobels

Veronique Greenwood — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 16:07:20 +0000

Those classy folks at the Annals of Improbable Research are at it again. Last night, they announced the 2011 winners of some of the most coveted awards in science: the Ig Nobels.

You should watch last night’s ceremony in its entirety, but here are (drumroll) the winners:

First off, in Physiology…from the Cold-Blooded Cognition Lab at the University of Vienna, Anna Wilkinson, Natalie Sebanz, Isabella Mandle, and Ludwig Huber for their paper No Evidence of Contagious Yawning in the Red-Footed Tortoise, published this year in Current Zoology. As it turns out, if one tortoise is yawning, its buddies won’t join in. Not even if you show them movies of yawning tortoises. In Chemistry…Makoto Imai, Naoki Urushihata, Hideki Tanemura, Yukinobu Tajima, Hideaki Goto, Koichiro Mizoguchi and Junichi Murakami for determining what concentration of airborne wasabi can awaken sleeping people in case of emergency. They are the inventors of the wasabi alarm, described in US patent application 2010/0308995 A1. In Medicine…Mirjam Tuk, Debra Trampe and Luk Warlop, and Matthew Lewis, Peter Snyder and Robert Feldman, Robert Pietrzak, David Darby, and Paul Maruff for illuminating how an intense need to pee can affect your decision-making capabilities in their papers Inhibitory Spillover: ...

Success! Functioning Anal Sphincter Grown in a Petri Dish

Veronique Greenwood — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 19:59:51 +0000

Eyes, sperm, you name it: these days, chances are someone’s cooking it up on a little slab of agar and gearing up to graft/sew/implant it in anything that comes near. Today’s body part is the anal sphincter, that handy little ring of muscle that maintains the separation between your insides and your outsides. Researchers grew them from cells, implanted them in mice, and compared the new sphincters’ function with the animals’, ah, native orifices. And apparently, they were quite satisfactory.

You young whippersnappers out there might not realize it, of course. But malfunctioning sphincters are a big, messy problem as you get older, and a lot of people suffering from fecal incontinence (including women recovering from births, which can put everything down there out of whack) could benefit from this research. Right now, Depends or surgery with high rates of complication are what people with damaged sphincters have to choose from, and the possibility of replacing the muscle is intriguing.

The major step forward made here is that these sphincters, which were grown in a circular mold from human muscle biopsy cells and mouse nerve cells, could, by virtue of those nerve ...

When Biologists Wear (Faux) Fur, It’s With the Babies in Mind

Valerie Ross — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 16:54:45 +0000

Don’t worry, this is for science.

It’s not easy being a parent. There are the constant feedings, the sleepless nights—and of course, the time-consuming task of shimmying into that unwieldy animal suit.

When the offspring of endangered species are orphaned or abandoned, scientists and vets fill the pawprints of the missing parents. But animals raised by humans can develop all sorts of issues; they’re not prepared to fend for themselves in the wild, they don’t play well with others, and they have an unhealthy interest in humans, cozying up to hikers and hunters.

So while humans are busily looking for Mommy’s nose in Junior’s face, these scientists take things in the opposite direction. Here’s how they make themselves over to look, act, and even smell like the animals they raise:

Scientists at the Hetaoping Research and Conservation Center for the Giant Panda, part of China’s Wolong Nature Reserve, donned full-body plush panda suits to raise a four-month-old cub. The result is both adorable and more than a little absurd: Look, it’s a panda! Walking on two legs. And weilding a measuring tape. Uh, what happened to its head? At the Wildlife Education and Rehabilitation Center in California, vets ...

Newsflash: Civilization Was Built on Llama Dung

Valerie Ross — Tue, 24 May 2011 12:48:32 +0000

Far before the looming pyramids and the learned librarians at Alexandria, Egyptian civilization sprung up from the fertile banks of the Nile. Long predating the Inca empire and the sprawling structures of Macchu Picchu, Andean civilization emerged from a whole bunch of llama poop.

For civilizations to take root, people need to have enough food on hand to put time and energy into activities like waging war, building stuff, and composing epic poetry. In the high and rugged Andes, growing that much maize—the staple crop of ancient South America—isn’t easy. That’s what llama droppings are for, a new study suggests.

Digging through some deeply buried and really old dirt from a spot in the Andes two miles above sea level, paleoecologist Alex Chepstow-Lusty found two things: pollen and bugs. In particular, he found maize pollen from 2700 years ago—and, from the same period, a population explosion of little crap-eating critters called oribatid mites, which are known to make a meal of that which llamas leave behind. The local people were suddenly able to cultivate maize with such success, Chepstow-Lusty surmised, because they had growing herds of llamas, and therefore an ...

Vets-in-Training Plunge Their Hands Into Rectal Simulators to Learn Their Craft

Patrick Morgan — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 22:46:17 +0000

When you have your hand up a cow’s behind for the first time, you’re literally groping in the dark. Unable to see what you’re touching and armed with only textbook knowledge of cow anatomy, it’s easy to make a wrong move, which in your first rectal class can mean misdiagnosing a cow pregnancy or not even feeling your first uterus. That’s all changed with the advent of rectal simulators.

Dubbed Breed’n Betsy, this metal-framed simulator with a latex back-end and internal organs allows students to perfect their pregnancy-testing, artificial-insemination, and embryo-transferring techniques before they touch a living cow. After you put on your lubricated glove, you just plunge your hand into the cow and feel around to learn the positions of latex uteri, ovaries, and cervixes. There are also upgrades: A water-filled acrylic tube simulates real-cow temperatures, and you can switch out the latex organs for real ones from your local slaughterhouse (oh goodie!). So after you’ve grown comfortable performing rectal exams on this Frankensteinian mishmash of organs, you can confidently do the same to a living, breathing bovine.

England’s Bristol University snatched up two Breed’n Betsy models—replacing six living cows per ...

New Zealand Enlists Dung Beetles to Deal With Piles and Piles of Crap

Patrick Morgan — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 17:11:22 +0000

In New Zealand, there’s a running joke that the sheep outnumber the people. What’s not funny is the consequence of all those woolly creatures: poop. Piles and piles of it. To reduce this overflowing cornucopia of crap, the government is calling in reinforcements in the form of 11 Australian dung beetle species.

The country’s excess poo not only finds it way into water reservoirs, it also releases nitrous oxide into the atmosphere–and to put that in perspective, cow crap alone accounts for 14 percent of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions. “One of the big things basically is the accumulation of dung on pasture surfaces,” Landcare New Zealand research scientist Shaun Forgie told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. It’s bad for cattle because more dung increases the “zone of repugnance, which means there’s an area around dung which is basically offensive to grazing livestock…. They don’t want to eat around that, so unless you break feed, you’re losing that surface area to graze on.”

Dung beetles cut the crap by feasting on it: adults lay eggs in manure, and the baby beetles feed on the scrumptious scat, ...

Gorgeous Guts: Pretty Photos of Fly Intestines Reveal Digestive Secrets

Sarah Stanley — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 16:58:35 +0000

Click here to view gallery

Are ATMs as Filthy as Toilet Seats?

Patrick Morgan — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 21:37:57 +0000

Cue the “filthy money” jokes: The same germs that touch your bum in public potties also touch your fingers during ATM transactions.

In response to a survey of 3,000 British adults, a majority of which believe that public toilets out-filth everything else, the company BioCote–a producer of anti-bacterial coatings–decided to get to the bottom of the issue by comparing ATMs and toilets. Researchers scoured England, swabbing heavily-used ATM key pads as well as nearby public toilet seats. After letting the swabbed bacteria grow over night, they compared the cultures and discovered that both contained bacteria from the groups Bacillus and Pseudomonadaceae.

The Daily Mail quotes BioCote microbiologist Richard Hastings:

“We were surprised by our results because the ATM machines were shown to be heavily contaminated with bacteria; to the same level as nearby public toilets. In addition the bacteria we detected on ATMs were similar to those from the toilet, which are well known as causes of common human illnesses.”

But one should always consider the source: BioCote specializes in selling anti-bacterial products. How convenient, then, that they are able to find so much bacteria on ATMs. And the company’s finding has garnered at least one detractor.

Potty Trained Piggies Help Keep Taiwanese Rivers Clean

Jennifer Welsh — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 16:38:47 +0000

Toddlers can learn, cats can be taught–so why not take the next step and potty-train our livestock? Taiwan’s Environmental Protection Administration is encouraging its pig farmers to do just that with the countries’ six million pigs. The move will clean up the farms and help prevent water pollution, they say.

To keep the pig waste from flowing into the rivers (and to save water on cleaning up farms), the pigs are trained to relieve themselves in a trough. The “toilets” are smeared with feces and urine to attract the pigs–kinda like that spot on the carpet where the dog keeps relieving itself. All it took to start the porcine potty-training revolution was one genius farmer in 2009 trying to avoid the Taiwanese government’s “water pollution fee.” He noticed the difference immediately, he told the Mail and Guardian Online:

“The pig toilets on my farm help me collect about 95% of all pig waste, making cleaning much, much easier,” Chang Chung-tou, a pig farmer in Yunlin county, said.

After a trial of 10,000 pigs by Chung-tou and others in 2009, the Taiwanese ...

Pee-based Gaming Coming to a Urinal Near You (If You’re in Japan)

Jennifer Welsh — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 16:38:11 +0000

For you men, peeing has become complicated these days: You have to deal with everything from tests judging your ability to pick a urinal to pictures of women laughing at you. It’s about time someone put the fun back in pee time, and SEGA thinks they have just the thing: urinal gaming. As Pocket Lint describes:

This wacky video (filmed in Japan, where else?) shows off the pee-based game in which the speed and accuracy of your urine stream is judged and converted to a cartoon-like mini-game display on the LCD.

Games to play with you pee include a graffiti cleaning task, a Marilyn Monroe-esque trick that blows wind up a lady’s skirt, and a game that asks you to shoot milk from your character’s nose. You control the game by hitting the sensor in the urinal, which rates you on how long and hard you can pee. The aim of the game is to help dudes stay on target, Popular Science explains:

If you can’t go standing up, perhaps Toirettsu isn’t for you (sorry ladies, but your hands-free method allows you to play Angry Birds on the ...

A New Treatment for Bowel Problems: Eating 1,000 Parasitic Worm Eggs

Jennifer Welsh — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 22:09:14 +0000

Intestinal parasites might turn most people’s stomachs, but for some people suffering from ulcerative colitis, the creepy crawlies might actually reverse intestinal discomfort and symptoms. A new study found that infestation with whipworms, aka Trichuris trichiura, can ease the symptoms of an inflammatory bowel disorder, possibly by stimulating mucus production in the intestines.

Ulcerative colitis is an intestinal auto-immune disease causing inflammation and ulcers, which can bleed. Patients can either take immune-suppressing steroids (with lots of side effects), or have parts of their intestines and bowel removed to reduce symptoms.

One colitis patient, on a lone voyage to cure his bowel problems, went in search of worms after hearing about a researcher, Joel Weinstock, who believes that intestinal parasites like whipworms and hookworms can cure autoimmune diseases. In 2004 he was able to get his hands on a batch of human whipworm eggs from Thailand. He ingested 500 of them, and the eggs hatched inside him and set up shop in his intestines (want to see a picture? Beware: linked photo may make you revisit your lunch). Three months later, he ...

In the Glorious Future, Could Space Travel Be Poop-Powered?

Jennifer Welsh — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 17:04:37 +0000

Since we’re experimenting with using human excrement to power all kinds of things on earth, from buses and cars to natural gas for our homes, why not try renewable poop power in space?

That’s the mission adopted by a team at the Florida Institute of Technology–they hope to bring the flexibility and sustainability of poop power to space. As a first step towards that goal, they’re testing the ability of a special hydrogen-creating bacteria, called Shewanella MR-1, to live aboard a UN satellite, says Fast Company:

The goal is, to put it bluntly, to see if Shewanella can convert astronaut feces into hydrogen for use in onboard fuel cells. “The bacteria generates hydrogen. If we give waste to bacteria, it converts to hydrogen that could be used in a fuel cell. We’re looking at how reliable the bacteria are,” explains Donald Platt, the Program Director for the Space Sciences and Space Systems Program at the Florida Institute of Technology.

The bacteria will be going up ...

Meet Dr. John, the Fancy Japanese Toilet That Gives Check-ups

Joseph Calamia — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 14:58:18 +0000

Instead of going to the doctor’s office for simple health tests, some Japanese can now go to the bathroom. The “Intelligence Toilet” can measure blood pressure, body temperature, weight, and urine sugar levels, all while you… well.

The toilet is the latest in a family of smart loos called “washlets.” Other toilets in manufacturer Toto‘s fleet feature water jets for cleaning, warmers for comfort, driers for after the water jet, and “otohime” or “princess of sound” speakers for drowning out any unpleasant user noises.

The toilets also have automatically opening and closing lids, resetting after every use to keep his and her bathrooms in bliss and to help young children or elderly people who may have trouble reaching or bending down. In Japan, the toilets run for around 400,000 yen, about $5,000.

Once the Intelligence Toilet has your health stats, it will display them on a wall monitor, though the toilet has the potential for more. An architect for the firm Daiwa House, which will install a set of the toilets in a retirement home, told the AFP:

“With the current model, your data is sent automatically to your personal ...

Look at the Size of That Chinchilla Poop–to Know How Much It Rained

Joseph Calamia — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 20:22:16 +0000

The bigger the fossilized feces the more ancient rain. A team of paleontologists has uncovered this apparent correlation during a study of chinchilla scat at nine sites in South America’s Atacama Desert.

Claudio Latorre Hidalgo of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago presented his findings on this rainfall metric at a talk held yesterday during the ongoing American Geophysical Union’s Meeting of the Americas. Science News, where we found the story, reports that Latorre Hidaglo looked at fossilized feces from middens–shared rodent poop piles that contain “fecal pellets cemented together by crystallized urine.”

Latorre Hidaglo’s team carbon dated organic bits from the largest twenty percent of the chinchilla pellets (so as to exclude pellets from rodent youth). Given information on rainfall from other sources, they correlated the larger feces with periods of greater rainfall. According to Science News, Latorre Hidaglo suggests that the more rain, the better the environment to support bigger chinchillas; the bigger the chinchillas, the bigger the chinchilla poop. The poop test, the researchers say, may provide a way to estimate past rainfall when other tests aren’t available.

The American Geophysical Union talk announcement ...

This Poop Mobile Could Get All Its Energy From 70 Homes’ Worth of Methane

Joseph Calamia — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 23:46:47 +0000

Last week, we discussed a poop-powered rocket. Now a new car promises we’ll see human waste’s potential closer to home–or further from home, but not as far as space. The Bio-Bug, a modified Volkswagen Beetle, can run on fuel made from raw sewage.

“Biogas upgrading” has allowed GENeco, Bio-Bug’s developer and part of the British waste-processing companies that make up Wessex Water, to create methane from human waste.

The process starts with anaerobic digestion: Microbes eat through waste in an airtight, oxygen-free container. They leave behind only digestate, which works as a fertilizer, and a gas mixture that is mostly carbon dioxide and methane. Methane is combustible in the modified car’s engine. So, after removing the carbon dioxide, the company has poop power.

Mohammed Saddiq, GENeco’s general manager, says on the company’s site, that human waste is only the beginning.

“Waste flushed down the toilets in homes in the city provides power for the Bio-Bug, but it won’t be long before further energy is produced when food waste is recycled at our sewage works. . . It will mean that both human waste and food waste ...

Finally! A Self-Sustaining, Sewage-Processing, Poop-Powered Rocket

Allison Bond — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 16:51:36 +0000

Today’s sewage is tomorrow’s rocket fuel–at least, according to Stanford researchers. Raw sewage has long posed a problem for scientists who aim to get rid of it. That’s because the chemical byproduct of the bacteria that break down waste is nitrous oxide–a greenhouse gas also known as laughing gas.

The proposed solution? Using the nitrous oxide produced by waste as rocket fuel, of course, according to Popular Science:

“[The] rocket thruster, which was designed for use in spacecraft, can consume the excess nitrous oxide to produce heat. In a Stanford press release, [researcher] Cantwell says the nitrous oxide can heat an engine to almost 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit and expel nitrogen and oxygen at 5,000 feet per second.”

Hot oxygen and nitrogen are far less harmful to the environment than nitrous oxide, and the methane that also is produced can help power other wastewater plants, the researchers say. This method, in which bacteria break down the waste in the absence of oxygen, is faster and cheaper than letting sewage decompose in an oxygenated environment, in which “wastewater treatment plants pump oxygen into a roiling mix of raw sewage, to encourage good bacteria to break down organic matter.”

So the ...

Using Urine to Make the Garden Grow

Eliza Strickland — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 14:03:28 +0000

By Mara Grunbaum

They were perfectly lovely, the beets Surendra Pradhan and Helvi Heinonen-Tanski grew: round and hefty, a rich burgundy, their flavor sweet and faintly earthy like the dirt from which they came. Unless someone told you, you’d never know the beets were grown with human urine.

Pradhan and Heinonen-Tanski, environmental scientists at the University of Kuopio in Finland, grew the beets as an experiment in sustainable fertilization. They nourished them with a combination of urine and wood ash, which they found worked as well as traditional mineral fertilizer.

“It is totally possible to use human urine as a fertilizer instead of industrial fertilizer,” said Heinonen-Tanski, whose research group has also used urine to cultivate cucumbers, cabbage and tomatoes. Recycling urine as fertilizer could not only make agriculture and wastewater treatment more sustainable in industrialized countries, the researchers say, but also bolster food production and improve sanitation in developing countries.

Urine is chock full of nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus, which are the nutrients plants need to thrive—and the main ingredients in common mineral fertilizers. There is, of course, a steady supply of this man-made ...

Buzz Aldrin Explains: How to Take a Whiz on the Moon

Joseph Calamia — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 18:47:47 +0000

Charged with writing to an astronaut, a five-year-old boy asked a burning question: How do you pee and poop in your astronaut suit?

In an interview with Buzz Aldrin just published in Vanity Fair, contributing reporter Eric Spitznagel finally got this answer:

“We were well skilled in the art of disposal waste. There was such a thing called a ‘blue bag,’ which was kind of messy. There was a stickum on it, and you could stick it around your posterior. For urinating we had an ego-buster, which was like a condom catheter. We were cautioned not to overestimate our size. (Laughs.) Because if the condom was too big, there might be a little leakage.”

The story continues: Aldrin describes in full detail what happens if you *do* have a little “leakage” (wiggle it out into a larger bag) and where astronauts flush those blue baggies. Aldrin tells Spitznagel about a newbie mistake of tossing the bags (during extra-vehicular activity) in a trajectory that brought them straight back at their capsule.

“We looked out the window and there were three bags in a row, heading straight ...

Mozart’s Glorious Music Wasted on Waste-Eating Microbes

Joseph Calamia — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 20:41:18 +0000

An hour southwest of Berlin, in the town of Treuenbrietzen, Mozart has played non-stop for two months. The classical composer’s audience? Waste-eating microbes.

As Spiegel Online reports, the German waste-facility’s owners believe the music, coupled with more oxygen, will make their microbes eat biosolids more efficiently, saving money and leaving less residual waste. Their idea comes from the German firm Mundus, headquartered in Wiesenburg, whose founder cites Mozart’s “very good effect on people.”

It’s fairly easy to poo-poo this experiment, especially given other wildly-marketed but later refuted claims attributed to the man’s music. Many of these Mozart miracles first surfaced after Frances Rauscher at the University of California, Irvine questioned in a 1993 paper (pdf) in Nature if listening to classical music could increase adolescent performance on IQ tests. Though Rauscher found that the music did seem to increase performance, later studies showed no effect.

Though the waste-facility spent hundreds on fancy stereo equipment, management hopes the scheme will save them thousands in expenses each year. One only hopes that the music will make their human employees a bit happier at a job that might otherwise stink.

A Novel Geoengineering Idea: Increase the Ocean’s Quotient of Whale Poop

Smriti Rao — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 16:26:47 +0000

The fight against global warming has a brand new weapon: whale poop.

Scientists from the Australian Antarctic Division have found that whale poop contains huge amounts of iron and when it is released into the waters, the iron-rich feces become food for phytoplankton. Phytoplankton absorbs carbon dioxide from the air, the algae is in turn eaten by Antarctic krill, and baleen whales eat the krill. Through this neat cycle, globe-warming CO2 is kept sequestered in the ocean.

Scientists have long known that iron is necessary to sustain phytoplankton growth in the oceans, which is why one geoengineering scheme calls for adding soluble iron to ocean waters to encourage the growth of carbon-trapping algae blooms. While environmentalists have fretted over the possible consequences of meddling with ocean chemistry that way, this new study on whale poop suggests an all-natural way to get the same carbon-trapping effect: Increase the number of whales in the ocean.

When Stephen Nicol of the Australian Antarctic Division analyzed the feces of baleen whales, he found an astounding amount of iron in it. New Scientist reports:

Nicol’s team analyzed 27 samples of faeces from four species ...

The Coolest Carnivorous Plant/Toilet Plant You’ll See This Week

Smriti Rao — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:00:08 +0000

The giant montane pitcher plant is a botanical predator, ruthlessly luring in prey and feasting on its victims–except when it’s not. Researchers have discovered that the carnivorous plant is mighty adaptable; when there’s no prey around, it thrives just fine on the poop of a tree shrew that lives in Borneo’s mountains.

The pitcher plant is the world’s largest meat-eating plant; in low altitudes it feeds on ants, small insects, and possibly even small rodents. The plant entices its prey with tasty nectar, and when the animals lose balance and drop into the fluid-filled pitcher, they’re drowned and ingested.

But in Borneo’s higher altitudes, there aren’t enough gullible and clumsy insects to keep the plant alive. So, evolutionary forces pressured the plant to tweak its design a bit to entice the tree shrew to pay it a visit and poop into it.

The BBC describes the unique toilet-shaped plant:

N. rapah pitchers have huge orifices, but they also grow large concave lids held at an angle of about 90 degrees away from the orifice. The inside of these lids are covered with glands that exude huge amounts of nectar. Most importantly, the ...

NCBI ROFL: “Back and forth forever” (or, DIY poop therapy).

ncbi rofl — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 12:00:32 +0000

Success of self-administered home fecal transplantation for chronic Clostridium difficile infection.

“Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) can relapse in patients with significant comorbidities. A subset of these patients becomes dependent on oral vancomycin therapy for prolonged periods with only temporary clinical improvement. These patients incur significant morbidity from recurrent diarrhea and financial costs from chronic antibiotic therapy. We sought to investigate whether self- or family-administered fecal transplantation could be used to definitively treat refractory CDI. We report a case series (n=7) where 100% clinical success was achieved in treating these individuals with up to 14 months follow up.”

Thanks to Caryn for today’s ROFL!
Photo: flickr/★Debs★

And in case you didn’t get our title reference:

Related content:
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: One rat, one cup.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Rectal impaction following enema with concrete mix.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Rectal oven mitt.

NCBI ROFL: Asparagus, urine, farts, and Benjamin Franklin (Part II)

ncbi rofl — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 14:00:14 +0000

Identification of gases responsible for the odour of human flatus and evaluation of a device purported to reduce this odour.

“BACKGROUND/AIMS: While the social significance of flatus derives mainly from its odour, previous studies have focused on the non-odoriferous components of rectal gas. The aims of the present study were to determine the role of sulphur-containing gases in flatus odour and test the efficacy of a device purported to reduce this odour. METHODS: Flatus was quantitatively collected via rectal tube from 16 healthy subjects who ingested pinto beans and lactulose to enhance flatus output. The concentrations of sulphur-containing gases in each passage were correlated with odour intensity assessed by two judges. Odour intensity was also determined after treatment of flatus samples with zinc acetate, which binds sulphydryl compounds (hydrogen sulphide and methanethiol), or activated charcoal. Utilising gastight Mylar pantaloons, the ability of a charcoal lined cushion to adsorb sulphur-containing gases instilled at the anus of eight subjects was assessed. RESULTS: The main sulphur-containing flatus component was hydrogen sulphide (1.06 (0.2) mumol/l), followed by methanethiol (0.21 (0.04) mumol/l) and dimethyl sulphide (0.08 (0.01) mumol/l) (means (SEM)). Malodour significantly correlated with hydrogen sulphide concentration (p < or = 0.001). Zinc acetate reduced sulphur ...

NCBI ROFL: Asparagus, urine, farts, and Benjamin Franklin (Part I)

ncbi rofl — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 14:00:10 +0000

A polymorphism of the ability to smell urinary metabolites of asparagus.

“The urinary excretion of (an) odorous substance(s) after eating asparagus is not an inborn error of metabolism as has been supposed. The detection of the odour constitutes a specific smell hypersensitivity. Those who could smell the odour in their own urine could all smell it in the urine of anyone who had eaten asparagus, whether or not that person was able to smell it himself. Thresholds for detecting the odour appeared to be bimodal in distribution, with 10% of 307 subjects tested able to smell it at high dilutions, suggesting a genetically determined specific hypersensitivity.”

Face it: your pee smells after you eat asparagus. (And if you think yours doesn’t, it’s because you can’t smell it.) This phenomenon (which is caused by various malodorous sulfur-containing compounds) has tickled the fancies of many researchers, as well as such luminaries as Proust, who wrote of asparagus: “exquisite creatures who had been pleased to assume vegetable form, and whose precious essence when, all night long after a dinner at which I had partaken of them, they ...

Carl Sagan Sings Again: Symphony of Science, Part 4

Andrew Moseman — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 17:48:09 +0000

Ladies and gentlemen, for your viewing and listening pleasure, it’s the fourth installment of “Symphony of Science.” If you missed the first three iterations of John Boswell’s creation, he auto-tunes the syncopated scientific stylings of Carl Sagan’s monologues from “Cosmos,” combined with guest stars like Stephen Hawking, Neil deGrasse Tyson (of DISCOVER’s StarTalk podcast, among many other media ventures), and Richard Feynman. If you need to catch up, all four are available on Boswell’s site. The first can even be had on vinyl through the label of the White Stripes’ Jack White—Third Man Records.

Here’s the newest, “The Unbroken Thread.” Watch and enjoy.

Related Content:
Cosmic Variance: AutoTuned Sagan
The Loom: The Continuing Return of Carl Sagan
Bad Astronomy: What I Learned from Carl Sagan

Frogs Pee Away Scientists’ Attempt to Study Them

Brett Israel — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 21:45:22 +0000

Researchers from the Charles Darwin University in Darwin, Australia (they really like Darwin there, apparently) thought they had schemed up a clever way to study how Australian Green Tree Frogs regulate their body temperature.

They surgically implanted temperature-sensitive radio transmitters inside the frogs’ bellies, but months later when they went to retrieve the frogs, the scientists found the transmitters scattered on the ground. Like so many great scientific discoveries, the researchers eventually went from “huh?” to “aha!” according to Nature News:

Researchers have discovered that these amphibians can absorb foreign objects from their body cavities into their bladders and excrete them through urination.

For the frogs, this means that any thorns or spiny insects they swallow while hopping around trees are safely (but painfully?) removed from the body.

This is the first time this phenomenon has been observed in an animal’s bladder, but some fish and snake species can absorb objects into their intestines from their body cavity and remove them by defecation.

Talk about adaptations that would make Darwin proud.

Biology Lesson a Little Too Raw for Mass. Parents

Andrew Moseman — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:41:33 +0000

Tales of grown-ups trying to ruin science in the schools usually seem to involve anti-evolutionists. But in Massachusetts, science education has clashed with a different force: squeamishness.

We here at Discoblog love the yuck factor of science. Can’t get enough of it. But for some parents in Sandwich, Massachusetts, a presentation in their kids’ 5th grade class went too far. From MyFoxBoston:

Parents of some fifth-graders at a Sandwich school were horrified when their teacher decided to invite a presenter to class who showed them cell development at different stages of growth.

It happened during a class last Thursday at the Forestdale School. The teacher allegedly had the presenter come into her class with embryos, hearts and lungs at different stages of development.

Besides concerns that their kids were exposed to—gasp!—biology during a science glass, some Sandwich parents also complained that the fifth-graders were allowed to handle jars containing formaldehyde. Fair enough. Formaldehyde is dangerous stuff that shouldn’t be handled without supervisors… like a science teacher and the pathologist assistant who gave the presentation.

Between embryos and chemicals, perhaps a protective parent freak-out was inevitable. But hopefully ...

So Long, Colostomy Bag: British Man Gets Remote-Controlled Sphincter

Andrew Moseman — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:15:40 +0000

Briton Ged Galvin survived that vicious car wreck that nearly took his life. Unfortunately, the accident crushed some of his organs and left him needing a colostomy bag to go to the bathroom.

That was until his doctors created his cyborg sphincter. Yes, you read that correctly. Doctors removed muscle from above Galvin’s knee, wrapped it around his damaged sphincter, and attached electrodes to the nerves. Now, when Galvin goes to the bathroom he simply presses a button on a remote control.

From The Telegraph:

Mr Galvin, who had previously endured the indignity of carrying a colostomy bag, added: “I thought that in these days of modern medicine surely there was something they could do. They’d mended everything else – why not this? Anything was better than a colostomy bag.

“The operation changed my life and gave me back my pride and confidence. Because of the remote control I can lead a normal life again.”

Outstanding. Though hopefully Galvin’s remote has a lock that prevents him from accidentally triggering it while it’s in his pocket.

Related ...

Thanksgiving for Fish: Food Chemicals Go Through People & Back Into Water Supply

Brett Israel — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:06:16 +0000

Pulses of certain Turkey Day food ingredients are detected in the water supply in the days after the holiday, according to researchers. But as reported in National Geographic News, it doesn’t stop there:

For instance, thyme and sage spike during Thanksgiving, cinnamon surges all winter, chocolate and vanilla show up during weekends (presumably from party-related goodies), and waffle-cone and caramel-corn remnants skyrocket around the Fourth of July.

A research team from the University of Washington tracked pulses of food ingredients that enter Washington’s Puget sound to learn more about how our actions on land affect the water supply, and to determine what slips through sewage treatment plants. Similar monitoring is underway worldwide, and scientists have turned up things such as flu vaccines, cocaine, heroine, rocket fuel, and birth control in waterways.

Click on over to team leader Rick Keil’s lab Web site to learn more about the Puget Sound research. But Keil told National Geographic News that the no one knows yet whether the subtle seasoning of the water is having an impact.

For now, there’s no evidence that a sweeter and spicier sound is a ...