Excellent frog
According to Chattomongkol Suvarnabhumi and Masrin Osatanunkull, a good way to distinguish one type of fang-bearing frog from another is to perform a melting analysis.
Their report: Identification of fanged frog (Limnonectes) species (Amphibia: Anura: Dicroglossidae) from Thailand using high-resolution melting analysis describes how they achieved rapid and accurate identification of six species of animals, Limnonectes of L. Kuri Complex.
What they dissolved was a specific region of RNA in each frog’s ribosome. Plotting the temperatures at which frog ribosomal RNA melts and at which it does not creates a separate, easily distinguishable curve for each species of frog.
Visual inspection, the technically simpler method used by frog scientists back when they were called “naturalists,” has its limitations. Melting exceeds some of those limits.
cat smoking marijuana
The full effect of cannabis on humans, like the full effect of anything, when you think about it, still remains somewhat of a mystery.
Same goes for cannabis and cats. Chloe Lyons and her colleagues at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada have made some progress with this cat.
Write The forefront of veterinary medicine The researchers described what happened when 12 cats were given two oral doses of a cannabis herb extract (the acronym CHE), with some cats receiving more than double the dose than the others.
Reader Stephane Lalonde pointed out a photo of a profusely drooling cat as a highlight of the study. A second cat was also drooling. “Both cats were clearly producing excessive amounts of saliva,” the report states.
Researchers have expressed surprise about the cats. “In two cats in the high-dose group, salivation was observed immediately after administration. Cannabinoid concentrations in these animals were significantly lower than in other cats in this group.”
The team speculates as to how the drooling may have occurred: “Cats are notorious for ‘spitting up’ oral medications concealed in the mouth, and we could not determine whether all cats swallowed the entire amount of CHE,” the researchers wrote. “It is possible that residual oil-based CHE in the mouth stimulated cats to salivate, which was then expelled from the mouth.”
This unexpected development in the drooling data suggests that the relationship between hunger and cannabis consumption in cats may be complex.
Or that these two cats were eccentric in some way.
A wicked problem
There is spice in the sea. Oceanographers’ determination that some seawater can be described as “spicy” and others as “minty” still resonates today (October 8, 2022). Even better, there is a “stickiness” in the air.
Reader Earl Spamer has the latter news. “This is a paper brandishing a ‘new’ variable in climate research: stickiness,” he writes. “It takes a lot of math to explain what her grandmother knew just by sitting on her front porch.”
This paper is Stickiness: a new variable characterizing the contribution of temperature and humidity to moist heat by Catherine Ivanovich and her colleagues at Columbia University Journal of Atmospheric Sciences.
“We derive a new thermodynamic state variable, called ‘stickiness,'” they write, which is “similar to the oceanographic variable ‘spice,’ which quantifies the relative contributions of temperature and salinity to a specific water density.” Stickiness “quantifies the relative contributions of temperature and a specific humidity” to more traditional methods of measuring temperature.
The scientific profession takes everyday words and applies familiar, old, and cumbersome concepts and names to reveal and explore the often overlooked complexities of the universe.
Ketchup cardio claims
Feedback’s recent insight into ketchup (March 16) got at least one reader’s heart racing.
David Watson writes: “Many years ago, before the advent of disposable adhesive electrodes, I used to have an EKG. [ECG] At the time, electrodes were small rubber cups that used conductive gel to stick to the skin. I told my cardiologist that the gel was probably ridiculously expensive. He said it was indeed expensive and one group had researched cheaper alternatives. They found the right combination of surface tension, viscosity, and conductivity. Unfortunately, patient acceptance was low. Of course, it’s ketchup.”
There seems to be little evidence to back up the doctor’s claims (which may have been merely a joke). So far, the only evidence I’ve found is a 1981 study by Andrew P.B. Lee that gives a slight against them: Principles of Biotechnology Monitoring“, published in International Anesthesiology Clinic.
Lee writes: “Most commercially available electrode jellies are not as effective as KY jelly or tomato ketchup in lowering skin electrode impedance.”
If you find any convincing evidence that ketchup can be used as a conductive gel for electrocardiograms, please send it to us.
Mark Abrahams is the founder of the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony and co-founder of the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. He previously researched unusual uses of computers. His website is impossible.com
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