How to Make a Tornado: The Strange and Wonderful Things That Happen When Scientists Break Free

Does Anything ') Eat Wasps. ...1110\ ather intriguinGscieoce ...... J How to Make a Tornado The strange and wonderf...

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Does Anything ')

Eat Wasps.

...1110\ ather intriguinGscieoce ......

J

How to Make a Tornado The strange and wonderful things that happen when scientists break free

Edited by

Mick O'Hare

p PR OFILE BOOKS

•

First publl.5hcd I" Greal Britain in lOO9 by Profile Books Lid Exmouth Uouse PineStreet Exmouth Market )..1.

London fl:laU/1i

www.profilrl!ool.s.R1m

10 9 8 7 6 , . ) 1 1

Copyright CI New ScientisllOOlJ TIl e moral right of the authors has been~. All rights reserved. Witooutlimiting the rights undl.'t' copyright mlt>rvl1Clabo... c, no part of this publiCiltion may M rq>roduced. .tom! orinttodl>C«l into II retrieval system. or transmittftl. in any form or by any means (flectronic. mechanical, photocopying. l'K'Ofdil18 Oc otheT'wiH). withou.t the prior written p!'~ of both the ropynghl OWMI" Ill\d the publisher 01 this book. It. CIP(iIIIlI~ record for this book is a,-aJllMe &om the BtitWi Ubi'll)'.

ISBN 9781 &4668187 :I Text de!l;,sn by Sue lambie Typeset In I'.latino by MKGuru Ud 1n~""'.MJ . 1Il J>nr,~.nd b..-,W'd In Ctftl Bri~in by CPI Bool.:n\IIrqut'. Croydon eRa 4TD

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Contents

lntnxiuction

,

1

Mad inventions, mad ideas

2

Mad research

40

3

The yuck factor

63

4

Death, doctors and the human body

86

5

Blunders - big and small

"0

6

Love, sex and all that stuff

'3·

7

Animals and their ilk

' ..

8

The world looked different back then

'59

Index

>1)

Introduction

Charles Darwin turned science (and religion) up!oide down with the publication of hill research, but he has no chance of appearing in this book In 2009. while the scientific establishment celebrated 200 years slI1ce his birth, we took a less enthusiastic view of his work. His theory of evolution may have startled the world and he may helVe ~n a meticulous experimenter but, as far as we can see, all thai Darwin did to reach his conclUSIOns was merely observe, record and rig('lrously document, before piecing together the - admittedly very clever - theory for which hE' is famous. And that, quite frankly. doesn't put him in the same bracket as the rather more intrepid researchers you will find here - people like August Hildebrandt or Mark Grabiner. In order to find a strong anaesthebc that worked without knock.ing a humaJl uul, HiltldJram.1t's tutur injedt't.! tht! student's spine with cocaine. Hildebrandt asked his tutor to tickle his feet - he felt nothing. He then handed his tutor .. needle and asked him to stab him in the leg There was no pain. So Hildebrandt demanded that a knife should be plunged into his thigh. When he still smiled benignly. the tutor stubbed out a cigar on his leg. Nothing. But Hildebrandt wasn't finished. To check the anaesthetic was remaining local to his lower body, his pubic and nipple hair was ripped out. Only the nipples hurt. After SUrvlVmg hamm@rbloW!' to h.ts shins and a hearty tug at his testicles, presumably with some relief, he deemed the exJX!riment a success. An important

1

How to Make iI Tomado

experiment for medical science, indeed. but a pretty bonkers way of going about it. All of which goes to show, as surely everyone would agree, that Darwin had it easy. If he'd wanted 10 find fame in this book he should al least have injected himscU with the droppings of one ofms famous finches jusl to see if il C'lIused him to grow an oddly shaped, bul strangely useful beak. Even better, he should have dressed himself up as a finch, sat among them and waited to be fed. By the same token Mark G rabiner IS In the book. but Isaac Newton isn'l From observing a falling apple Newton came to the conclusion thal50mething was pulling it down. But Mark Grabiner wasn't prepared Just to sit and watch apples. He used gravity to moA!' spectacular effect - trjpping people up to see what lcind of injuries they were likely to sustain and IlOw such faUa might be avoid«l. Coillare research at its beAt. And 50 Cl'olbiner made it, Nev.-ton didn't. Of course, August Hildebrandt's outlandish experiment had a positive and beneficial outcome. But he remains one of the few true Sutte96 stories in this book. Plenty of science is dead-end research. We can learn as much from the experiments that fail as from the ones that succeed. Quite often research is dull and repetitive (even Darwin would have had days when he couldn't wait to break for a cup of tea). And anybody who has studied science at school will know what a serious and sometimes dull business it can be. Note: can be ... But ocrasionally, and sometimes U{1(")tpectedly, the ruu~ becomes outrageous and o utlandish, absurd even. That's why we are prepared here to celebrate the likes of Oscar Pike of Utah who proved that eating old odds and ends of food that people have found lying around in their ceUars or out· houses needn't kill you. 'I1ti.s has produced no discernible benefit to society but, as we said, nobody died (surprisingly) and it's earned tum a platt in this book. The experiments of Hildebrandt, GrabineT and Pike are, in fact. a microcosm of what this book represents. Science can

IntrodUCtIon

be intense, creative, often amusing.. but beyond aU that,

science can fire the imagination like nothing else. And sometimes it's daft. That's because science researchers question everything and are prepared to tad:1e anything Gust check o ut Ole chapter on love and tOex) SciPnti!Ot$ a~ u~ by govi!rnments 10 wage WiU, they are used by private companies to invent frivo lous nOllSel15(!, and they are used by sports bodies to make better equipment and - in some cases - better athletes. How do you fancy airbags up your rectum to make you swim better? There 15 very little on this planet and beyond that refThlUb untouched or unconsidered by the minds, if not the hands, of scienbsts. So we've plundered the archives of 53 years of NewScien· tist magazine to bring you the science of farts and how 10 n!qde your urine. You'U find out how to get rid of underpants in spaee and how t'NO 1i'l81.'1' bottJes brought a particle acre1erator to a stuttering haJt. And while we reaJise that science in many of the 6elds covered in this book will have moved on somewhat since most of these reports appeared, we are happy to print them almost as they fll'St appeared in the pages of New Scientist. We are certain readers will spot that events and more recent research have rendered one OT two a little obsolete - nuclear-powered aeroplanes anyone? However, we make no apology. Our bunch of free-thinking. no-holds-barred soenbsts will remam stuck m thelf own era, beacons to their limitless enthusiasm and seemingly boundless flights of fancy. Of course, Darwin's great idea nmsand runs and isdeveJoping stil),. something that you can't say for the majority 0/ researdu~rs and projects that appear in this book. Which is why, frankly, the.y deserve a second airing. The rigorous examination or the universe around us knows no bounds and is limited only by imagination. a surfeit of which imbues this collection of researchers. Wclcome to How to MDu 0 Thrl1odo which, if we'd had more room on the cover, might have been titled 'Whal

1

4

How to Make a Tornado

scientists will get up to if you give them half a chance'. MickO'Hare London, 2009

Especial thanks are due to Jeremy Webb, Helen Thomson, Catherine Brahic. Sandrine Ceurstemont, Liz Else, Richard Webb. John Hoyland. Paul Marks, Justin Mullins, Lucy Dodwell, Eleanor Harris, Ben Longstaff. Judith Hurrell, David Prichard, the staff of New Scitmlist down the years, illustrator Christian Northeast, and Paul Forty, Valentina Zanca, Andrew Prank1in and Lisa Owens among many at Profile Books whose enthusiasm for this project has seen it overcome many obstacles. A list of story authors from down the years appears at the end of this book. However, many of the writers were not named alongside their articles, so we can only offer our hearlfeillhanks to alilhose who may i'\.'\.."O~nist:: their work. Lastly, special thanks must go to Sally and Thomas for putting up with the grumpy man by the computer, ..

,

1 Mad inventions, mad ideas

It may be apocryphal, but it's a stOf)' too delightful to ignore A minor researcher in the physics department attending a Princeton University party was writing in his notebook, and failed to recognise Albert Einstein, who had sat down next to

him. 'What are you writing?' asked the great physicist. 'Whenever I have a good idea., I write it down to make sure I don't forget replied tllf' researcher. 'Perhaps you'd like to try it.' Einstein shook his head sadly, and said: ' ( doubt it. 1 have only had two or three good ideas in my life.' Of course, not everybody who has an idea turns out to be an Albert Einstein, as this chapter reveals. NoneUu!lessl as Newlon's third law of motion states, 'to every action there is an equal and opposi te reaction'. Or, in other words, Einstein's genius needed its counterbalances. which - as yOIl can find out below - the likes of Louis DougJas mseemed more than happy to provide. Douglas cleverly invented an ent,:rtainmen! aid for anybody using a public convenienct'. Eat yo ur heart out Albert. Of course, Douglas's urinary invention is scientifically about as fa r from Einstein's speciaJ and general theories of relativity as it is possible to get. But while relativity may have transformed our knowledge of physics, space-time and the cosmos, it never had a chance of making it into this chapter. That's becaU5e'. in the main, the ideas 1k'Tt" are more earth-grounded .. , and more ludicrous. outlandish and in the spirit of this book, entirely bonkers.

it:

6

! tOll! 10 M.IA!. rOt ttiido

You see, Einstein cleverly thought about light bending around galaxies, while Sean McKee, instead. thought about making ice lollies in the shape of pop star Madonna and other sex icons to encourage people to lick them. Einstein considered how time could slow down when humans travelled al high velocities. Eugene Politzer, on the other hand, decided to use a laser to bum off ius beard. So none of them were ever likely to steal Albert's clever-ness crown, but without them and their esoteric endeavours we wouldn't have this chapter, which pays homage to the archetypaJ idea of the 'mad scientist', beavering away in the lab, attempting to out-mvent Heath Robinson.

Tire irmely, Impoverishl!d artist ill his garrd hilS Ilis scien tific counterpart III l/r~ rl/ldisco~red, bespectacled boffin Hiddnr bclr",d bubbling test tllbes alld clouds of "oxious gas, he fm-r-. ishly di!IXJtes Q lif~iime to coming rip with Q pointless idell tlmt will bajJ11' or, bettllr 51111, oil/rage Ille 100rJd at large (not that he tilt, actually participates ill th~ world at largt!). New Scientist has, down tilt. years. been keen 10 counter thIs stereotype - inde~d yorl'lI/lrver find thl! word 'boffin' in 111~ pages of tlrl' ",aga:!.;III'. 8111. t(1e' Irave to admil, tllI!re arl' tlmes when it would Sl'rve us well. Thkto this balch of ideas. So I1Illfly l/rmKS you really did,,'/ h,ow you /ludell ...

:if Sobering thoughts Normally it takes between 4 and 10 hours to sober up a drunk. In ICJ9'l, the University of Georgia tried patenting a highspeed method. The drawback? A catheter had to be pushed up the nose or the rectum. The patient was given an enzyme to drink, yeast alcohol dehydrogenase, mixed with an acetate buffer to stabilise the

Mad !nve~tIOI\S, mad Ideas

~tomach's pH. A catheter was then inserted. This fed pure l)1(ygen into the small intestine. The enzyme and oxygl!ll togl..'ther would accelerate the conversion of blood a1cohollnto aceta tes and regenerate enzymes in the liver. This technique could lower the concentration of alcohol in the blood to below the lethal level of about 1 per cenl in less than haU an hour.

Clearly /llere (Ire tlUmerOtiS adVllntages 10 be gained from this ((lrm. of interHJ1./ vt'tllilalion ...

:.c\: Sporting chance In his book Gut ReactlOIlS; UrnlerstD71dmg symptoms of the dlgesG. Thtlmsnn wrote thaI 11\ preparahon for the 1"176 Olympics. East Gennan swimmers had 1.8 litres of air pumped into their colons 10 improve buoyancy. Thompson said: 'It apparently helped crawl and backstroke specialists, bUI a breaststrokercomplainm that his gas-filled gut caused his leet to stick out of the water. Perhaps sports authorities will need to lest athletes for HalUs, as well as steroids.' tlfl<' trod, W.

Alfd presumably l/UOir lumllfi~sliff~d somewhat franlbloating ...

>t Gutted to 1999. James Stage of Aberdeen l'ame up with a simple idea for helping oven\'eight people hold their bellies in. A small device that looked like a pager was worn on the trouser belt. The ' pager ' had a microswitch which rested against thE' stomach. Pressure on the switch dosed a circuit and current flowed through il small motor with a deliberately unbalanced

7

10

How to Make it TClnlldo

;¢ The ea rs have it Some animals prick up their ears to get messages across. Karola Baumann of Dusseldorf bel.ieved, therefore, thaI we cowd communicate better w ith animals if they cowd lift us pricking up our ears. In 1998 Baumann and colJe"iUes described a device that they hoped would transfol"fl'l the wearer into a latter-day Doctor Doolittle. II was a skulkap with two short 'masts' at either side over the ears, each wrying a large replica of an anima l's ear. These ears could be moved as the human ' talked' to an animal, so the bEast's attention was, Baumann claimed, g'rablx!d and held.

And IS thm~ really a social requirtl1ltrlt for tllis "ext idta?

~ Here we go round the dining table Want to get away from a crashing bore at Christmas dinner? Or escape hnm an unruly toddler who's flicking food at you? In 2001, Paolo Rais came up with a solution: a diningtabJe whose chairs kept moving SO that nobody spent more than ten minutes sitting opposite anyone else. It was whlle sitting at a wedding dinner thdt Rais, n civil engineer from Lugano, Switzerland.. realised that the trnJitional rectangular dining table meant he could only talk to a few friends seatoo. around him. 'So 1 wondered how I muld help people talk to more of the people around a long table: he said. His answer was an 18-seater, mains-powered rectangular table that cleverly concealed what might otherwise be an ugly drive mechanism in a neat central pedestal. An electric 1I',\rtor drove two hid den chains: one hawed the chairs around while lhe o ther, benea th the wooden tabletop. pulled around

Mad u1'o'entlol'lS, mad idus

wooden trays on which you placed your food or documents. ·So your tray of stuff always stays in front of you': s., id Rais. The chairs' connection to the drive chain was covered by a foot platform. 50 there was no chance of gelting your feet Irapped in the mechanism. And al a sleady s peed of 9 ('('nli· metres per minute, d iners didn't really feel they were moving at aU. said Rais - and they could leave or join Ihe table al any hme withoul problems. Rttis tested his table out in a r3tauranl and a hotel meeting room - with mainly posith't> reactions. And he also had §Ome gt"i1ndt>f designs. 'I've WTitten to the British royal family, because such a table would be a great way for the Queen to ml"el all her guests at banquets: he said. 'But I have had no reply:

N()r, II/deed, is tllere a pmsing rtqlllrem~l for any of IIle followmg. fill tif w/zich are IndlcatlfJ~ rif the desire of sciCttis/s to fulfil !iQ(il/1 /leeds which

14)f"d s Zlgg/!$1

dOll't roc" nist .,.

~: TriaI5 of life 11}9O, parents looking for a toy to educate their children in the facts of mammalian life needed look no further than the toy blrthmg apparatus ......ith chugging·like delivery motion' patented by Douglas Raymond. His toydogcontaincd acorn· plicatoo combmabon of pistons, spnngs, air-bleed orifices and grommet seals. When <1 spring Wa.!I wound up Md released, the pistons chugged backwards and fOr'oY8rds IOrcing a collection or fetal dolls, fashioned as puppies, down it tube and oul through a spring·loadoo valve at tht> animal's rear Each delivery was accompanied by loud barking from the dog and yelps from the newborn pups.

iI)

11

12

How to Make a Tornado

$ Dogs of stun In the 1990S, people were becoming so' litigious that even criminals were suing ii they were bitten by a guard dog. In 1997, things had reached such a state, according to Harvey Allen, WiIl.i.azn Buerke and Gary Erwin of Orange, California. that guard dogs had to be muzzled. However, as they so:succinctly pointed out, 'criminal suspects are less likely to submit to apprehension by . dog that is unable to bit(>'. So the inventoro:; proposed using the d og " a mooile stuJ1 gun. Beneath tl\(> dog's muz.z.l(> was a leather or plastic pod

containing a pair of metal electrodes. These were connected toa battery·powered circuit that generated brief. high-voltage pulses. When the dog's handler pressed a button. spark.c; jumped between the electrodes. The dog would prod the alleged criminal and shock the victim into submission.

;¢ Off the leash Keeping pets can be expensive and inconvenient. Back in the 1990S. Daniel Klees and Terri Shepherd of illinois believed they had the answer. They filed patents fof' a 'novelty leash' that let people pretend they had a pet. The leash was a length of thick cord like an ordinary lead. but with a core of strong wire so it kept its shape. 'The lead contained batteries and a loudspeaker that was preprogrammed to make a variety of ani.mal sounds, such as a dog badting or cat meowing. Owners could take walks by holdmg the leash out in front of them like a metal detector. The inventors lold purchasers that they would need 'a degree of imagination'.

:tSafety brolly An ideal present for the afl):ious is an umbreUa that protects them f.rom fire. to 1991 , Taiwanese inventors proposcdsuch a broUy: it would look like an ordinary umbrella, but would be dad with ceramic insulation. So if the owner was caught in a fire. the broUy would protect the head . If thai failed, said the mventors, the broUy could be used as a parachute ' to help the U~ escape from a high·rise building'

;>.}: File nirva na 00 you feel uneasy when you delete files from your computet? Does it seem somehow wrong to consign all those oncevalued words to a state 01 nonexistence, simply by pressing a button on your keyboard? in 1997. a Buddhist monk in Japan set up a virtual temple on the internet to have memorial services performed for obsolete software, failed business pro)ects and information that had been lost or deleted. Shokyu Ishiko, the chief priest of the Daioh Temple in Kyoto. dedicated his virtuallnfomlation Temple to Manjusri. the Buddhist incarnation of wisdom. He a lso offered rounsdling on his website.

Wi' rreton tile Buddhist approoch IS marc socially acctptable tlum atlackmg your PC with yaur pllOtlf lumdsc, bllt we'" nol .Hat II'S as siltisfyilig. And will/lie Daioh Ttmple ~ "bit to cope witll Vogo" poetry?

14

How to Make it TOI'~

~ Poetry

website goes from bad to verse

Vogons, fans of The Hitchhiktr'll Guilh to the Galaxy will recall, w rote poetry so bad 1t could kill In 2(0), an experiment to create poems on the web looked set to automate the IlIwfulness of Vogan verse. David Rea of Greenwich, Connecticut, wrote a program that allowed a poem to evolve, to see if people wi.th diverse tastes in poetry could work together to create attractive verse. Rea's program started off with 1()(l(l 'poems', each comprising four lines of five randomly chosen words. People visiting the website chose betw"een two randomly selected ve~ from the population. The bad ones were killed off and the fittest those with the most positive votes - underwent further evolution. Each word within 8 verse was thought of as a poetic gent'. There W{'>fe a J>05Sible 30,000 words. and as people voted, some , genomes proved more popular than otheJ1l as they fanned semi-meaningful phrases. So the fittest verses were 'mated' to form new verses, and the offspring again put to the public vote, With more than 16,000 votes in, Rea believed poetic structure was emerging. But in evolutionary terms, the poems were still a metaphor short of a mudskipper, When this s.tory first went to press in 2(0), one poem read: 'You with life down the swords I How quieting tressed I Prince. held by po,.". / Could be honking fight treklri'1g.'

~: Real ice In their efforts to diversify into other technologies in the t9f\os. lapanese steel company Nippon Kobo (NKK) came up with ice that crackled. NKK scientists brought back ice (rom the Antarctic for research but found that when used in

Mad invenlions,madldea:li

.llcoholic drinks. it crackled distinctively thanks to the release ul air bubbles. which had been trapped inside the ice for thousands of years. NKK managed to improve on nature their ice. called Exice and based on the Antarctic original. craclJed even loudef'. A glass of whisky on the rocks at about 40 per rent alcohol could produce a 1O-decibel crackle eVd)I &t.'COnd, while a cocktail with only 11 per cent alcohol gave put 65 dea'bels every 2 seconds.

,I' Burnt offering In 19B6. French inventor Eugene Politter believed that shllving could, one day, be a matter of burning half away, mlher than cutting it, He filed patents around the world on a laser shaver He IIilld that this would overcome the problem of 5 o'clock !lhadow, where new growth starts showing through even Mter a close conventional shave. According to Politzer's plItt-nt, the power fo r the laSl?r would be generated by a fixed supply connected to a hand· held unit, which contained a tllnaU helium neon tube. This would beam laser light along thl' inside of a protective grid mesh, simila.r to that used in a conventional razor. Arty hairs protruding through the mesh would conduct heat down to their base and be burnt off. To stop the mesh overheating and burning the owner, a small motor and fan would circulate air through the mesh..

"',/'Sun/ubly Polltur was olrtody a big fan of lOll lAllw ...

15

16

How to Ma'(e a Tomado

:{j: Cutting edge In the mid·t9B06. a SoUUl African designer. Jan Louw, devised an attachment for a vacuum cleaner which let people cut their own hair. The cutter looked like a hair dryer but was ron· nected to the hose of your vacuum cleaner. 111e air sucked In through the open end of the 'hair dryer ' nozzle would drive a turbine which rotated onc blade over another stationary blade to mimic the action of scissors. The uscr would slide the end the no.z.zle over the scalp and hair would be sucked in to be sliced by the blades. The shorter the nozzle length, the shorter the haircut. Cui hair ended up in the bag of the vacuum cleaner

or

Meanwhtlt, In a rrsearcl, illS/Illite Jar away from II,o~ trymg to

rectify society's most obvious ills, a wllole different grolll' of IIIvtntors was worklllg on ways to help us xet about, safely or othmui~.,

1f.The saucer at Platform 9 ... Anyone spurred on by an interest in flying saucers to think of building one for themselves could do little better than to tum to British patent number t,JIQ,9I}O. Filed in 1970. this described an atomicopowered. saucer-shaped space vehicle. But the patentee, none other than national railways operator British Rail, didn't pay the renewa1 fees 50 the patent lapsed, meaning anyone would be allowed to construct the saucer according to the specifications. These explained that powerful electromagnets deflected charged particles produced by a thermonudear fusion reaction to create Uft and drive Electrodes in the pulsed field were bombarded by charged

Mad InverllJons, mad

idea~

vtltlU:1cs and generated electric power for the craft. British Rillilitiid the idca was less crazy than it SOW"lded., insisting it Wi'l~ invented by an experienced nuclear physicist.

. On the hoof hl 1981, Philip Barnes of Cambridgeshire, UK. filed a patent lin what was literally a one-horsepower road verucle. A small mJlllbus with !feats for five passengers and oJ driver was 1'oQ ..,,,,: I\.'(! b)' .t horse. which walked aJons a com'eror belt in Ihl' ct.'I1tTal aisle of the coach. The conveyor was an endless, h·........running loop with its axles connected to a gearboK Bnd "hemator. The horse. tethered by a harness, would plod oIlong the conveyor belt to propel the vehicle and ch,uge its lMttcry. while the driver steered with a wneel The inventor claimed several advantages. The horse WQuld be walking on a clean. nat surface so could not damage itt hoofs. A thermometer under its collar would alert the driller to any overheating of the 'engine'. The horse would be Jucll\..>d from a food box under its head and panels would protect the passengers from stray JdOO. The vehicle would be started by prodding the horse with ,.mop.

•How to brake bl inking fast Mnny car accidents C)CCUT because of the relatively long lime dl1l1ers take to react when driving. Drivers view the road II.he;,d. pass the picture from the retina to the rorteJo. and the brain, then after a Jag caused by fear or other psychological l'\'llsons, the brain computes the action to be taken and sends nW!;S3ges to the foot to apply the brakes. The total delay can h.' .1S much as haU a second. Back in the IgOOs, Professor

17

18

How to MakeaTomado

Vadovnik of Ljubljana University in Yugoslavia suggested using other muscles closer to the brain to initiate braking under emergency conditions. He elected to use the eyebrow muscles, because these are small and can react in 0.1 seconds if suitably trained. He mounted a pair of e.Iectrodes on a spectacle frame - these were kept in contact WIth the eyebrows by small springs. When drivers encountered an emergency situation, they were expected to blink rapidJy to send an electrical signal to the car's braking system. Professor Vadovnik believed that practised blinkers would be able to cut braking time by o.} seconds.

.~ I'm not moving In 19<)8, Samsung proposed a voice-rontrolled car with a difference. The dashboard used standard voice-recognition circuitry to respond to such phrases as 'start engine', But a sample of the driver's speech, when sober, was also stored. When the dIi,ver spoke to the car, a comparntor program looked for any sign of a slur. U the verdict was 'sober', the engine sprang into Life. U 'drunk', a speech synthesiser warned: ' Please don't drink and drive as you are putting your life and property at ri$;k.'

And, perlraps "'or~ importQlllly we techm, /lIe lives oj pedestrians and olher road u.strS, tvtn if they wert clefmi11g their teeth witll tllis ... ,

~ Warning smile In 1967, from the research laboratories of American industry there came a toothpaste which glowed in the. dark and.

Mad inventions. mad ideas

l'cf1l'Ctcd the headlights of motor cars. It was the first toothp"~le that could be advertised as milking a definite contributl'IflIOroad safety-so long as those who used it remembered 10 walk facing the traffic and to keep grinning.

Bu Ik tra nsport 10 1iJ94. a design finn called Teague, in Rt'dmond. Washing',\noproposed carrying tourist-class air passengers in cylin,trical pods. The pods would be loaded and unloaded from ·hlgh-capactty' planes with the passengers inside. They would tnclude self-contaIned entertainment systems, plus an 'lIdjustable form-filting cushion'. A life-support system would provide ilir 10 the enclosed passenger.

/1011111 tilt years a ft!lU ideas seem to Irave gone up ;1M JU!if figuratively.

jll

smoke, and

'Smoker's cough In 1992, Wan Chung of Taiwan filed a patent application for designed to turn against smokers. It had a slot at

011' ,,~htray

till! lolde fOT a box uf matches, and when a smoker pickEd up the box, the ashtray would make a coughing sound and wam IIxatnst smoking.

I!

20

How to Make a Torn~

~ Fag end In 1986, Danish inventor Kaj Jensen bf.:lieved that his selfextinguishing cigarette was II world-bealing idea. He: patented it in no fewer than 37 COWltries. Discarded smouldmng cigarettes are both unpleasant and dangerous, claimed Jensen. So his cigarette had a small ampoule: of water buried inside: it, just ahead of the filter tip. TIle ampoule: was made from polythmeand had a weakened thinner wall facing the bwning md of th", cigarette, As soon as the glow ft':aciled the ampoule, it melted, releasing the water and extinguishing the cigarctt"', The ampoule could be placed further down the dgarette, mnking it impossible to smoke the last pil11: of it ilnd therefore, it was hoped at the time, making smoking safer.

And imagine hDving to showl cool every time you wallted to

watch tV.

~; Coal-fired television set ma kes its

debut In 1¥. puwcJi!red lOO was burnt In an electrolytic L'ell to generate electncity. Unfortunately, the efficiency was dismally low, about 1 per cent. But in 1965 the idea was given a new twist by scientists at the WestinghOI&Se Research laboratories in Pittsburgh, who developed 3 television set working from a ruel ce:U which consumed powdered coal. The experiments were aimed at developing a Jarge-scaJe coal-burning fueJ system.

Mad i!'l'o'Mtions. mad ideas

Of COUtU, in tllese CArbon faolprint-conscious times, cool is Q bit of Q no-no. But is it Qny/r.;s QntiS(JCia/ than lenderising your T-bone by blowing it up?

:1; Beef a la dynamite A new way of tenderising meat devised in Inc year 2000 had just one snag -It involved a hefty explosion. Most people benderisc meat with a culinary hammer, bashIng II repeatedly 10 break down musel!;! fibres. Or yuu can add meal-tenderising powder, which rontainsilll enzyme that digests muscle fibre and connective tissue But how do you tenderise meat on an industria.l scale? Researchers at the US Agricultural Research Service in Beltsville. Maryland, thought they had an answer. They had been blasting meat with water at explosive pressures. And they found their process also IciUed food-poisoning bacteria. such as E. coli, in the meat 'We think it is probably rupturing the bacterial ccU walls: said lead scientist Morse Solomon The process worked by sending a shock wave through the meal to bust the tough, chewy fibres. To create the shock wave, researchers placed a slab of meal on top of a steel plate at the bottom of a water-filled plastic garbage can. Then they detonated an explosive - equivalent 10 about a quarter of a stick of dynamite - inside the can.. The water tranmtitrod the shock wave through the meat,. bUI the unfortunate garbage can was blown to smithereens. Solomon said the shock waves penetrated the entire cut of meat. so bugs deep inside it were killed. achieving a thousand-fold reduction in bacteria levels during tests. Theprocess worked best on small, garbage can-sized batches. A larger tank didn't work as well. and the meat had to be packaged In robust rontainers so It wasn't destroyed.

21

22

How to Mal:e a Tomado

Randy Huffman of the American Meat lnstitute in Arlington, Virginia, welcomed the idea but said: 'The real challenge will be getting this implemented in a real-world solution.'

T1le culm~uy thrend clmtirwes wIth n diet afsedlment.

i'!f; Edible mud In 1957. it was thought that mud dredged up from the bottom of Lake \r1ctoria. 20 metres down. might be hJrnoo into food for pigs and chickens. accordtng to the drrector of the East African Fisheries Research Organisation (EAFJ(O), Mr R. S. A. Beauchamp. After ShJdying the composition of the f3una and flora that are found in Lake Victoria, Beauchamp's colleagues discovered that there was not as much plankton as they had expected in the water, because of a shortage of suJphur. In lakes in temperate climates, millions of dead plankton. weeds and water animals fall to the bottom every year and when they decompose they return to the water the elements they took from It togrow. But the mud found otI the bed of Lake Victoria was very slow to decompose because of lack of oxygen. This meant thai at the bottom of the lake, locked up in layers of mud which ran to tens of metres deep, was the accumuJated richness of thousands of years' deposits. The water lying above was I infertile for lack of nutrients. EAFRO suggested that swamps could be filled up with the rich lake mud to make good land for market gardens. but Beauchamp 31so believed that, dried and powdered. the mud could become nutritious food for pigs and poultry becau....e it contained num~us valuable minerals and also considerable amounts of protein.

Mad inventions, mad ideas

The dried mud was, apparently, not unpleasant to eat Beauchamp moo it himself and offered il to both his friends and family in order to prove his point.

While Mr Bellllchamp displayed rxcdlen! scientific in sight, his social skills left a little to be desired. Alld ironically, at tIle SlIme tinU! as he was attempting to unearth dead mafler, 41/ fJlUOI.tor in Winnipeg was doing Iheopposite.

:11: Funerals without fuss Back in the '19505, a gentleman in Winnipeg devised a method of shrinking an aduJt human corpse to the size of a baby. He claimed that this would be an excellent way to dispose of dead bodies because it would be possible for the shrWlken corpses to be slid into underground tubes and buried without any of the fuss that goes with conventional buriaJ and without taking up too much spare His shrinking process depended on the application of high pressure to the corpse. This, he said, had the effect of squeezing all the f1uidsou l of thebody. The resultant mass of flesh could then be compressed to any desired shape inside a mould., similar to those used for moulding polythene. AJJ this was, of course, highly ingenious but it was uncertain why the inventor thought that his proposed form of burial was in any way better than the prevailing and very popular method of cremation. It might have been that he thought the new m~thod would appeill to those who were worried by the high cost oC buying plots in cemeteries and who did not wish their dead body to be incinerated. It may also have appealed to those whose beliefs suggested that at some point in the future they could expect to be physically reincarnated. Whatever the benefits, however, it

23

24

How to Make J Tornado

appeared that the inventor struggled to find a volunteer for his process,

It seems thut the prople ofWinniptg hAd a pc!CMlIt for wild ideas i" the 19508, Another inventor i" the city was also struggling to make heodwflY un'tll his imJlmlion. /I wnsisled of a KJgunliccake

of SOQp 15 fed long and J Jut wide. His Idea TIIOS that you wet YOUfS('lj "'ilh u'tll« bifo~ sitting all t/le suop alld slid"'g up Qlld down /0 WQsh yourst>lj. As mucl! fUll .!llicking a lolly l!wt Iwks likl' MndDlmn? Surely IIot?

~: How to mould an X-rated lolly In 11}92 a new wave of 'adult' ice lollies promiSt!d to liven up swnmerthanks to a new way of moulding detailed shapes, It was hoped that jet-stream extrusion mouJding couJd provide British 10Uy tickers with risque lines including lifelike images

of Madonna and other sex symbols. • Sean McKee, a researcher at the University of Strathclyde. said the technique could pave the way for companies to increase the size of the £150 million water ice 10Uy market by targeting adults. 'Just imagine Madonna o r Marilyn Monroe on a stick,' he said. 'We could get at least haU the adult population wanting to lick itt 10Uies.' SpMiards had already taken to licking Hot LIPS, a red loUy shaped like a large pair of lips. SinO! Snofrut, the first mass-market ice lolly, went on sale in 1922, Jolly companies had struggl~ to improve their moulding techniqucsand had only becn able to make blurred shapes. Production tines poured flavoured water into crude rubbtr moulds which were frozen and turned inside out to release the lolly.

Mad Invention\., mad idu~

Jet-stream extrusion moulding squirted a slush of almostfrozen water ice into a hard mould at high speed . How the lolly came out of the mould was a trade secret. But Birds Eye WalJ's, a division of Unileve" put the world's first extrusionmoulded lolly on sale in the UK in 1992 with Boomy, asorl of fruit kebab that was dispnct1y unsexy. McKee said one of the biggest production problems for extruded lollies was structural weaknesses caused by air bubbles trapped in the mould. 'If the character's nose is missing.. there will be no repeatsaJe,.' he said. Clarke Foods, which makes Lyons Maid lollies. was dubious about the valul! of the adult market. David Brown, a ma rketing director, thought thai lollipops were a lamUy product. 'Wha t sort of adult audience you would attract I'm 110t quite sure: he said. 'We would not want to do anything that was too risqu~.'

We seco"d that, after qUe5tioni"8 luhen the lolly likenesses of Piit a~ David Beckham wert goi'lg to be produced for tnose 111110 prtfrr licking malrs. Still, it seems lIovelt.Y Items have nO bOlmdarj~ . " Br~d

;): Mozart's bra The bicentenary of Mozart's death in 1991 was celebrated by Japanese electronic wizardry. A Ungerle fltD'lln Thkyo made a musical bra containing a microcircuit in the clasp and a small loudspeaker which fitted into the wearer's armpit. Hooking the bra up switched its audio system on, and it played a w-second blast of Mozart This was part of a miniature sou l't I lImi~u display, because the bra also featured tiny flashing lights that winked during the music.

25

26

How to Milk!! a Tomado

Presumably you wouldn't trying out thejollrnlJing.

lWllt

to be wearing tile bra when

~ Vital statistic In l()fh, two inventors in the lB, Jack Crossman of California and Leonard Rommer of Chiago, claimed to have perfected a scientific system for measuring the size of female breasts with great accuracy. They were so proud of their results that they patented them. It seems that, in the past, this vital statistic had usually been estimated by eye. The Oldy scientific approach had been to immerse the breast in a container of water and to measure the volume of liquid displaced. According to the inventors, this was inaccurate because breasts tend to float. The solution was a ci.rcuhr sheet of transparent flexible plastic with a single radial cut and a series of radial calibrations. The circular sheet was folded into a cone and placed over the breast. The cone was then tightened until there was all·round contact. The calibrations gave an instant readout of the breast's volume in millimelres. .'

hJ(~idntta/Iy, breasts leave unique patterns 0" surfaces ill much tile same WQy ns jingerprill/s. Eucn more surprisingly, it seems that jCilns do too.

~ In their jeans In 11)98, the FBI found an ingenious way to catch Cl"OQks -by looking at their jeans.

~cntists

from the bureau reported that every pairofblue has a uruque wear pattern. TIle FBI actually used this 'I ... r t(x:l.c' to pl3<.'e a suspect al the scene of a crime. Richard Vomer Brucgge, a forensic scientist at the FBI "'bol'lltory In Wasrungton OC. and his colleagues developed technique while helping to identify suspects who were ,w,ing hanks and setting off bombs in Spokane, Washingn.lnApnll9i}6,oneofthegang was caught on film. Hewas l'o1ring a mask. but part of his trousers was visible. Wht!n the photograph was enlarged, Vorder Bruegge utkt'd light and dark lines running across the seam of the M\" teans. His tc3m found that the pattern originated from Ijght Imperfections introducro when the trousers were •• d\.'. Workers sew the seams by pushing the fabric through ~. nlnchmc, and the irregularity of that motion ~ttetches and ~U/lcJll'S the fabric. The dyed layer of cotton I.fl the raised n"

~

liOr!lon is worn away, creating white bands. The palchC5 are more striking on jeans than other types of

'fOOsers because they are orten alLowed to become extremely wom. ' People just keep wearing them.' said ¥Order Brmgge. The FBI analysed the jeans of suspects in the Spokane ...~ One pair had a pattern ,vith OV@T two d02en feature; Ity! matched the jeans photographed by Vorder Bruegge's ,,'!'Un At the trial. the defence called in a used jeans exporter

I'n expert witness who claimed the patterns were common 1" tll~ ~·ans. He showed the court J.4 similar pairs. but in each ( il"" the FBI could distinguish them from the accused's. The u~.«t WIlS convicted. ill.

idtas, on thL !lfce of iI, senti to maa compldL St'tI5e. It's ./IIV tl'llLn tIlL praCliCtJUty of pulting Ihnrl into action rears its

~)ml'

. . ·"'11'' 1 'INd th"t you srI' II/I'M In a diffrrmt light

28

How to Make a Tornado

~

Round the bend Back in 1965, a circular runway fo r airports was beingconsidere
~ A tube train

that splits down the

middle Underground railways are the fastest way of transporting large numbers of passengers around cities and, in 1969, French engineers proposed a way of making the Metro even faster. The plan was for an undergr'OlUld train to run continuously, serviced by 'ferry' coaches from the stations to take passengers onand off. The 'AT 2ClOO' looked Uke an ordinary underground train split lengthwise down the middle. The left-hand section would be fitted with seats in the normal way, and would never stop at stations. The right-hand side would have no seating. lnstead It would act as a loading and unloading platfonn and stop at every station. ~ The two sections would travel together Uke a railway co.lch with a comdor. Between stations, doors joining the two sections would open for iii short period to let passengers move from one section to the other. Passengers wishing to get off at thl?'nextst.ltion wouJd move into the 'corridor' section. Those

Mild Inwntions, mad ideas

who had just got on would take their seats in the non-stop Sl."Clion. As the vehicle approached the station, the 'corridor' section would separate and halt for the unloading and loading of passengers. The other section would continue and link up with another 'corridor' section already loaded with passengers.

1'J-: Artificial tornado plan to generate electricity Most of u!> know thai tornadoes are unpredictable, unconl:tol~ lable and dangerous. But a Canadian engineer believed they (ould be the future of electricity generation. He wanted to make electricity from artificiJlI tornadoes. In :wo8, loWs Michaud, a retired petroleum engineer in Samia, Ontario, planned to use the waste heat from conven· tional power plants to create an 'abnospherk vortex engine' - a small, controlled tornado that wouJd drive turbines and generate eJectririty. 'I'm confident that we could control these things: he said. Michaud alio thought solar~powered torna· does generated using the sun's heat could work. His design was a circular wall 200 metres across. and 100 met:res high Without a roof. Alrcanying the waste heat would be blown in from vents on the sides, spinnmg around the walls into a vortex that becoml!S just Ukea real tornado. Once o;t:uted, the vortex wouJd draw in moIl.' hot air £rom vents in the wall, pulling it past turbines and generating electricity. Michaud calculated that a vortex engine of this size would create a tornado about SO mct:res in diameter and generate between 50 and 500 MW of electricity. He patented the idea in 1'n5 and has continued to work on it ever since

Is It such q crAZy itkn? ~f OP1ly Midullul hod btfriernUd Profrssor

29

30

How to Ma~ a Tornado

Dessens, he might have ~ rIcher, foster. He'd alsa /ume a carbon lootprint to rival Delroit'~. Hf'TUJf!rer. the idea 01 crfatillg poten-tially disastrous major weather phenomenQ was 50 /ikL tile script 01 a dodgy 19505 scifj B "uwie thDt we decided to name the book a/tf!.r tJlis next aJllcept.

;:;}: Cloud-making experiment rea ps a whirlwi nd In the early 1900s, a French scientist, 1- Oessens of the Observatoire du Puy de D6me, Clermont University, acd· dently digeovered a wily to make tornadoes arnfioally - and therefore a means of 5tudying the conditions under which they arose. On a plilteau In the south of France the observatory built an apparatus which was originally Intended for making artificial cumulus clouds. It was caUed the Meteotron and consisted of an array of 100 burners spaced over an area rather larger than a football field. Fuel was pumped into them and, together, they consumed about a ton of oil a minute, producing the very considerable power of SOme]OO,ooo kilowatts. In , operation the device produced a thick column of black smoke thot permitted observation!l of the resultin.g upward air currents. During one e1(periment there appeared.. besides the main mass of smoke, what seemed to be a black tube of whirling smoke. This tornado, about JO or ,,0 feet across and up to 700 feet high. seemed 10 fonn about SOt minutes after the burners had been lit and subsequently moved away from theapparaIUS at the speed of the pI'l'vailing wind, Later, the research team atiempled'io reproduce the tornado conditions with only half the bumers operating. but under very unstable atmospheriC condItions. After about a quarter of an hour's heating. they started a strong whirlwind

in the centre of the apparatus about 130 feet across, with a bright tube a yard in diameter at its centre. It was so powerfuJ that some of the bumers W~ extinguished.

This is rral mild boffin sluff ,,/ t/I~ mIld you IIlought aisl/!d ouJy In

mouies. Comp/l'ldy bollkers, 1"51 like till' Olle" thaI folloll's.

:J; Human cannonba lls The old circus trick of firing a person from a cannon w.'\S berng considered by the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 2006 as a way to get special forces, police officers and firefighters on to the roofs of tall buildings in a hurry. A ramp with Side rails would re placed on the ground near the larget building at an angle of about 80 degrees.. A (very brave) person would then sit in a chair, like a pilot's ejector seat. attached to the ramp. Compressed air from a cylinder underneath would be rapidly released to shoot the chair up the ramp's guide rails. At the top the chair would come to an instant halt.lea\ing the person to fly up and over the edge of the roof. to land (one hopes) safely on top of the building. Of murse, Ihe trick would be 10 get the tr.ljl.dOry ;usl nghl. But the DARPA patent suggested a computer could automatically devise the correct angle and speed of ascent. It also claimed that a 4-metre-taU launcher could put a man on the top of a s-storey building in less than 2 seconds. Most of us would probably prefer the stairs.

As a visitor to www."~wsunljst.com later said. 'Aim rtoffy is Importallt lIerr'. 0/ course DARPA t/Jrives an advtrsity of lht

32

How to MakeaTomiMto

kind thrown up on n platt by tht ideology of the Cold War. That's right - if it wasn't boffins. it was Dr 5trangeJove. Mutluzlly Assurtd [Hstructiotl provided plenty of opportunities for /'fIad research. as d~ the whole field of weaponry and espionage genenl//y,

% The shouting bomb Back in 1957, the Americans armed themselves with a shoutmg bomb which couJd address large crowds as it dropped 10 the gr'OWld on a parachute. According 10 its designers. militiuy lactics at- the time requ~ a means of communicating propagand a or instructions to groups of soldiers or civilians. The bomb was said to be about 9 feet long and could be dropped from 60.000 feet. As It feU, Itsprouted parachutes. At 4000 feet a tape recorder was a utomatically switched on and the bomb proceeded to deliver a )-minute lecture. Trials showed tNt the bomb could be heard over an area greater than half a square mile.

;f% US mil itary creates indestructible sandwich

..

First came the atom bomb, the stealth bomber and the airborne laser. Then in %002 came one of the US military's most fe8JSOme weapons: the indestnlctible sandwich. Capable of surviving airdrops, rough han dling and extreme climates, and just about anything except a Ct's jaws. the pocket sandwich was designed to stay 'fresh ' for up to three years at 26 OC (about the temperature of a warm summer 's day), or for six months at )8 °C (just over body temperature).

Mad invenuoos, mad ideas

ror years the US army had wanted to supplement its .lIIndard battlefield rations, called 'Meal, Ready~tt;Eat' (M ItE), with something that could be eaten on the move. Although MREs aJready contained ingredients that could be nl.lde into sandwiches, these had to be pasleurised and stored III ~parate pouches, and the soldiers needed 10 make the IO\Indwiches themselves. The water activities of the different sandwich compo111'1\15 need to complement each other: explained Michelle Io(Jchardson, project officer al the US Army Soldier Systems It'nla In Natick. Massachusetts. 'U the water activity of the IOlSl1 is too high you might get soggy bread.' ro tackle the problem, researchers at Natick used fillings as pepperoni and chicken, to which they added sub~ _I"'"lces called humectants, which stop water leaking out. The humectants not only prevented water from the fillings IIIOilking into the bread, but also linuted the amounl of moishlft" available for bacterial growth. ThE' sandwiches were then "".,100, without pasteurisation, in laminated plastic pouches !lUll also included sachets of oxygen-scavenging chemicals. A lack of oxygen heJped prevent the growth of yeast, mould lind bacteria. Soldiers who tried the pepperoni and barbecue-dticken pocket sandwiches found them 'acceptable'.

_"th

'The mother of all firework displays II! ,9'}8, Dave Caulkins hoped the millenniwn celebrati.ons wuuld go with a teal bang. if he got his way. Caulkins, a computer network manager based in Los AlIOS, California, devised a plan to use obsolete Inter-t ·nnlmental Ballistic Missiles (tCBMs) 10 launch artificial Jl\Cll'Ors. They wouJd create stunning pyrotechnic displays ur to 20 kilometres across, he said.

]]

34

How to Mak\! a Tornado

Caulkins outlined his plans to provide a spectacular swansong for missiles like the US Minuteman or Russian 55- 18 in the Journal of Pyroteclmics. It would make more sense to use these Cold War relics for entertairunent rather than brea.k them up for scrap, he argued. As the missiles returned to EaJ1:h.. they would release their cargo of thousands of artificial meteors, each weighing between 10and 100 grams. The meteors would burn up in the atmosphere, with diffe-rent colours depending on the chemicals with which they had been doped - sodium for yellow, strontium for red, and so on. Those in the £irst wave would create sonic booms. The noise would alert spectators to the display. ' It all happens pretty damn fast,' said Caulkins. However, he admitted that he hadn't worked out a solution to what was likely to be the most serious objection to his proposal: the rear that his pyrotechnic millennium party could be used as a cover for a real pre-(!lJlptive nuclear strike.

Some people rocn tried to ensure God renlly WQS 0/1 their side .'

~ And the voice sa id ... An apocryphal tale perhaps, but one of our reporters might haw heard the Voice of God. Apparently, researchers working with high-power laser weapons in 1999 created balls of plasma above the New Mexico desert whtch.. when pushed around by the laser beams, created pressure waves tha t sounded like voices. The US military allegedly named the project the Voice of God and set about developing its use as a psychological weapon of war. It seems that ther hoped to place the plasma balls in the sky high above the enemy and then speak to them - telling them, among other things, that their war was unjust or they should return home to slaughter

Mild InventIonS, mad !deas

their first-born. The military denied the experiments (as, of course, it would) and scientists were sceptical about whether .. uch a phenomenon was possible. So apocryphal it remains .• .

.' Cold War technology on a plate I lot, crunchy piua delivered to your door? More often than not, what tums up is a tepid slab of dough. topped with cold congealed cheese. But fo r those pizza-lovers who are too lazy tll budge from the sofa, there was a brief glimmer of hope in 11)94, thanks to high-tech military~ng. Claude Hayes, Il defence contractor in San Diego, converted a device built for the "Star Wars" Cold War defence programme mto a tray that kept PIZzaS plpUlg hot for more than an hour. The technology was originally used in the US go\'emment's Star Wars project as a lining for satellites that would defend them from laser attack. The material was a mesh of graphite fib res impregnated with a substance which, when h,t by a laser, reacted chemically, absorbing massive amounts of energy and protecting the craft from damage. 'lllings were going weU.' Hayes recalled. 'But then the Russians got friendly: As funding fizzled out. Hayes realised that the same principles that kept military hardware cool (()uld also keep pizza hor. The material he invented was used ,I .. a tray which absorbed hea t as the pizza cooked on it. It would then slowly release the heat when removed from the !lyen and could keep pizzas hot for more than an hour.

Tilt' US Stnr Wnrs project, which Ulns intended to des troy enemy

missiles from spgce "While still in flight, seems to have spaftmed more IImll its fair shar~ of offsprillg.

3S

;:@3 lcy asteroids could power reactors in space Wacky ideas are commonplace among space scientists, but in 1993 officials at the US Department of Energy came up with a !!Cherne to top them aU. Searching for new ways to justify the

department's moribund programme to develop a nuclear reactor for use in space, they proposed capturing nea rby asteroids and comets and towing them into Earth orbit. According to an internal memo from the energy department, nuclear.powered processing plants in space would extract water from the asteroids. The water could be used to sustain humans in space and as a propellant for nuclear rockets, it said.

'Electric energy beamed to Earth from space would provide nearly pure electricity without SlobaJ warming. aod rain. strip mining or the hazards of fission products anywhere near Earth, three dozen years in the future,' the memo argued. There are believed to be thousands of asteroids relatively close to Earth, with water ice making up a large chunk of each. Some asteroids may be dormant oomets, which would contain an even greater proportion of water.

'.

But had the idea gained ground, those running the prograoune might have had a tough time convincing the public that the project would not endanger humans on Earth. 'There would be the t\VUl bugaboos of nuclear power and comets,' said John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists. 'You would have to be able to convince people that the comet wouldn't come crashing into Kansas. Since the beginning of history, comets have been portents of disaster:

•

PrtSumably, by the lime we /Ire able IU pull /J).leruUlli mlu Enrlh orbit, we'll haw compute,., Ihal CllII do all the difficult calel/lations faT liS while reassuring us lluIl nOlhing can go wrong.

Mad lrwentlon$, mad !delis

HoumH!t', af thl' ",Oltumt, ~ are still working 0"

tlUmUOll5

inca,-

Ilat;ons of QrlificiJlI intelligl!1lu ".

:~.f: Forgive me computer, for I have sinned F~ling 3 stab of after-hours guilt? U so, Greg Gllrvt!y's Auto-matic Confession Machine designed in 199} might have been perted for you. Just unagme stt'pping up to the sleek. black booth with ib neon cross and winling Chri5t, kueling on the red velvet stool, pressing the 'amen' button, and electronically divesting yourself o f your sins Garvey, an artist at Concordia University in Montreal, who was brought up as a Catholic, programmed II computer 10 guide U5eB through ;\ fonnal confessIOn , strictly according to church doctrine, he claimed. AIter the customary 'Bless me Father, for 1 have sinned', the programme instructed the user to tap in the number of daysMnce last confession, the number C'l f venial versus mortal sins (selected from a list of the seven deadly sins and the ten commandments) and then further details of each sin. The confessor responded to the computer's questions by pressing buttons such as 'days' 'weeks', 'yes', 'no', 'venial' and 'mortal', Once the sinful tally was recorded, the machine calculated penance and delivered a print-out for the penitent un a handy, wallel-sized slip of paper. 'My purpose is not to make fun of II particular sacr.unettt Clf religion,' said Garvey. But while he adrn.Hted it was a somewhat tongue-in-cheek undertaking. he was quick to point out its- possible advantages over the realt!Ung. 1f we mass-produce these we can guarantee uniform application of the doctrine, we can automatically d.ownload the latest papal bull - and add any update necessary,' he said_ 'We can have paid-for-confession - take MasterCard, Visa, American Express. And, of course, there's the added confidentiality!

3,

38

How 10 MI. a Tornado

Garvey pointed out that his confessional was not the first marriage of high technology to religious rite. American televangelist Robert Tilton claimed to heal watchers who placed their hand on the television screen over his hand . And Jews had been faxing God for some time,.in the form of prayers that were received in Jerusalem and then slipped into the cracks of the Wailing Wall But, said Garvey, the automatic confessionaJ could not possibly replace a priest, because the software had not yet been ordained.

;fli Trial by laptop Imagine the scene: there's been a minor car aundl on a city street In Brazil, and the two drivers are arguing angrily over who's to blame and who should pay for the damage. Suddenly, a van screeches to a halt and out pop a judge, a court clerk and a very special laptop computer. Instant justice has arrived, cyber-style. Thi<; is no fantasy. In the year 2000, a laptop was invented which ran an artificial inleJligence program called the Electronic Judge, and its job was to help the human judge on the team swiftly and methodically dispense juStice according to wimess reports and forensic evidence at the scene of an incident. It could issue on-the-spot fines, order damages to be paid and even recommend. jail sentences. TIle software was tested by three judges in the state of Espidto Santo. It fonned part of a Kheme called Justice-onWheels, which was designed to speed up Brazil's overloaded legal system by dealing immediately with straightfotward cases. The idea was not to replace judges but 10 make them more efficient, said Pedro Valls Feu Rosa, a judge in the state's Supreme Court of Appeals. '

Mad Inventions, mad ideas

The E-Judge program presented the judge with multip1e-• hoict! questions, such as 'Did the driverstop at the red light?' or 'Had the driver been drinking alcohol above the acceptable limit of the law?' These are the sorts of questions that human judges are normally expected to answer, based on evidence lrom the scene, explained Feu Rosa, and they only need yes or no answers. 'If we are concerned with nothing more than pUn! logic, then why not give the task to a computer? Most people were happy to have the matter sorted out on the spot, he said. The program gave more than a mere judg· ment: it also printed out its reasoning. If the human JUdge disagreed with the decision it could simply be overruled, said h'lI Rosa. He admitted, howev(!r, that some people who had ht.-en judged by the pro~ram didn't realise that they'd been tl'ic::d by software.

Bu/, of course, w/JQ/evtT mind-bogglmg "'ventlOllS Qnd whQtever greQt (deas sd~ntis ts Qnd f'esetJrclrers /tIQy CO"I~ up wilh. th~ always haQt 10 ~ aWQn! of th~ hNlth Dtld SIJ/tty implications, Soml'linre!l, it Strms, scientists - QS well as the public - n~d to be l'rflledN from themselv#s.

: Read this first In U)¢, reader John Isles wrote to tell us about information _upplil!d with his Kenner Toy COOlpany's ' Batman Rctums' CClSlume. 'Caution,' it announced. 'Cape does not enable user !o fly.'

39

2 Mad research

There's nowt so queer as folk, runs the old Yorkshire saying Well. the autho r is a Yorkshireman who used to agree with this axiom. And then he discovered scientists. If Yorkshiremen are II breed apari. in the way that Queenslanders, Texans and Bavarians all boast their superiority (to the irritation of their compatriots), they' ll aU be sad to leam that they a.re easily displaced by S("ienhsts al the top of the smugness ledger. lndeed, you11 see from this chapter that scientists are the black sheep among the mfrequently spotted Leicester Longwools living an the OrganiC !'are breed farm'stop pasture

- very haughty, very headstrong (and sometimes wet and bedraggled). However much barbed wire you put around the fence, however decp the cattle grid, huwt'v~r Srture the padlock on the only gale. come springtime you'll find the whole flock has chewed its way thrOugh the hedgerow, trotted down to the bottom field and got giddy by drinking undiluted sheep dip. Working on the pnnciple that you have to try everything once, the researchers here are aU prepared to put their bodies on the line (more than mt!'taphorically In some cases) in order to prove somethin.g. Or to fail to prove something. which is much the same thing. This means you'll encounter Jorge Mira )Jhez and Jose Vifla, who've gone to the trouble of calculating the temperatu res of both heaven and hell; Konstantine Raudiw, who probably failed to contact th'e dead, although he might deny iii and Troy Hurtubise, who really did put his

IklUY on the line when he donned. a bear suit and went off to \.C.wort with grU.z.lies. Sadly. there are a few areas of 'research' reported by New SoU!IIUst over the years that we were unable to include. In an

"rtkle on the effects that alcohol can have on human behavtour we recounted. the s tory o f the Polish farmer Krystof i\zninski. who proved himself to be especially dim. Azninski hold been drinking with friends. after which it was suggested Ihcy 'strip naked and play some "men's games·... Initially th",y hit each llther over the head with fro7.en swc11 ' t , we apologise to Mr Azninski's family for reawakening their distres5, but we are sure they'll agree thai he dt.'servcs a mention in any scientific discussion of irrationality and is worth his place in the introduction to this chapter, if - sadJy - nol the chapter itse1f. Had M.r Aminski been a scientist coni.lucting research it would have earned him a spot in these annals. But it seems that not C!ven scientists would go to such lengths to prove alcohol gets you really, really drunk. So the Polish farmers merely warrant a footnote in our exploration IIf the outer reaches of scientific endeavour.

42

How to Milke I TOI'TIado

1111!u's eml!! ont: place to stllrt wllm it comes to qUlllity reseJIrCl, . We'fe' starti"g III tilt top, willI God and tile IIfttrlifr ...

~ Too damned hot In 1998, Biblical scholars breathed a sigh o f relief when two physicists and a bishop decided that the furnaces of heU are indeed hotter than heave:n. In 1{f72. science waded into the domain of theology with an anonymous article in Applied Optics stating that heaven must be hotter than hell. The paper noted that Revelati0fl 21:8 describes a lake in hell 'which bumeth with fire and brim· stone'. For there to be such a lake, hell's temperaturt> must be below the boiling point of sulphur, just under 7]8 kelvin a t atmosphffic pressure. Meanwhile, Isaiah )0:.26 describes the lighting in heaven, where 'the light of the Moon shall be as the light of the Sun, and the light o f the Sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days'. Using Stefan's law, which states that the temperahlre or an object in thermal equilibrium is related to the fourth root o f the amount of light it reCeives, the paper 's authors calculated heaven's llmlperature to be a iWeltering 79B kelvin. However, in a letter published in the magazine Physics TOday, Jorge Mira p~rez and Jose Vina, physicists at the Uni versity of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, said that the Applied Optics authors misinterpreted the Isaiah passage, wrongly multiplying 7 by 7 to make the illumination in heaven 49 times as bright as that experienced by us on Earth. After Bishop Eugenio Ramlro Pose of Madrid confirmed thai only a single factor of 7 was intended, P&CZ and Vli"Ia recalculated heaven's temperature as 504.5 kelvin - blister ingly hot, but probably cooler than hell. 'A lot of colleagues, 4

4

~ad rtsUlCh

joking with me, have said that they prefer to stay on Earth.' '.lId P~rez..

,; In the realm of intangibles Poking through scientific archives can be an enlightening pnx{'SS. In the early 20th century, Duncan MacDougall, an American physician, positioned a patient dying from tubercuJosis, bed and aU, on an enormous beam balance, and waited with scientific curiosity (or the end. After several hours, the patient died and 'the beam dropped widl an ,ludible stroke hitting the lower limiting bar and remaining there with no rebound. The loss was ascertained to be threefourths of an ounce. ' Therefore, it seems. iii departing soul weighs as much as a slice of bread.

Of courSt, tlrert"$ grt'at debate as to whether a drlty exists or iJthtTWi~, bllt as scientists wt' are iJPI firm groulld wife" we tncklt' more tangible isslltS like little grWI metr, As tills pr'ece whlcll appeared in New Scientist in 1991 shows, we t'Vell know what IIley'lllook likt'. A"d it WOII ' t be Vutcan.

,: How to design an alien Whil t are the rules of thumb that life forms anywhere in the g.1.laxy would have to fol1ow1 The famous geneticist Conrad Waddington believed. that any higher life form would have to look like ... Conrad Waddington. But most people see evolulion as a contingent process - in other wOlds, if evolution on Earth was run through again, land vertebrates - and that mcludes us - would be unlikely ~ reappear. And if they did

43

44

How to Make • Tornado

we'd look very differenl. Of course, this applies to other planets too. So, if we can', have humans on other planets, what can we have? There are patterns of general problems, and common solutions. thai apply to life anywhere in Ule universe. We know this because different species on Earth invent identical solutions separately. Birds, bats, insects and some fish aU fly. And plants and some bacteria photosynthesise. 1hese univer-. sal solutions will be found on pretty well all other planets with life - including intelligence So life will be formed of universal solutions - such as the elephant's huge legs 10 support great bulk in gravity - And local or parochial onessuch as Its trunlc, which developed from a need, on Earth, to pick up food from its feeding spots. Ils rood on another planet might not have required trunk-la-mouth d elivery The difficulty. therefore, is in recognising univE!JSill solutions - which aliens will possess - and parochiaJ ones - which they will nOI. Parochials normally happen only once - the trunk - universals more times - flying. Joints seem universal; the number of digits on a limb is not. Byes, yes, external ears, probably not. And the list is very diverse .. . our strange cxdteml,."I'It in sexuaJ guilt pleasure; is almost certainly parochial, so alien pornography seems unlikely. This means the standard ~ of fiction would nol hold up. SfgrTrek'sMrSpock, whose anthropomorphic appearance and evolutionary convergence is 50 clo6e to humans that he can interbreed with us when we cannot even breed with species on our own planet. is, sadly. iUogical. And we should dlsbelieve aU the flying saucer stories that have little green men, not because they are little and green. but because they are men. tittle green splots areso much more believable.

science

To bt. fair, IiItle green splots are serwus science. ComnllmiCQting with the QeJJd, IIO~rJ requires laking II step tawards ,~ cliff elf . e of crumbl;" rlltiom!fity ..•

Mad research

-Night of the living-impaired In 1998. the trade magazine Computer Technology ran an illuminating article by Michael Doherty about the technology of cflmmunicating with the dead. The pie((! was full of fascinating information about what the author called 'nccrophony'. Did you know, for example. that Thomas Edison a ttemptoo to construct a 'spirit communicator ' in the 192051 He d idn't get very fur but" undaunted, rontinuoo the work long after his death, communicating his p rogress through a medium called Sigrum Seurerman in t1}67·

Since Edison's pioneering efforts, methods of oommuni('(IIinn with what we are obliged to caU 'the living-impaired'

h/tyc come on apace. Tape recorders, in particular, proved to be: immensely useful in n"COrding otherwise inaudible spirit yoices. The late Konstantine Raudive, a leader in this field, compiled a collection of 72.000 tapes of spirit recordings whllc he was still with us. After his death, like Edison, he ~Ollbnued his work from 'the other side' and was himself I l.-', ..'Ordcd by his followers. MocHfied telephones also played a part in neaophony. ""vl!rai inventors came up with devices that enabled people II I phone deceased relatives and friends, Notable among UW'>C was the 'SpiriCOOl', which Doherty described as 'a ~ "mplex 29-megahertz communications system that establI ~ h(.-d "quality" two-way conversations for the first time'. linfo rtunately. a sUght hitch with the spuiCO!ll emerged after tile death of one of its inventors, William O 'Neil, who related Illrough the device thateAperiments on his side were infuriat· H\gly being conducted at 68 megahertz. '!lw next itep was ob\'ious, and back in 1998 people wert: .11n-.ldy working on it. It was hoped that we would beable to dllwnJoad software that wouJd enable us to communicate w llh the dead through OUt computers. If Doherty was to be

45

46

How to Mike I Tornado

believed, at the time olwriting several companies in the US were on the brink of reltasing such software. We foresaw probleti when this article was published, though. How many deadpcoplc were computer literate? And would computers on the other side have been IBMcompatible. or would Ihtiving impaIl'ed prefer Apple Maes?

Rlitiolllll or nol, ont of~' Scientist's urtf!u:st piqul.'d .. ,

cor~pondtnt<;

hDd his

:";}: Rolling out Hades We are disappointed that\'OU see 61to make tight (If our latest research on communicabrl between the living and the living impaired . At this very .oment we are rolling out Hades Explorer 4.0, heralding anmparaUeled increase in the volume of living-dead communialions. You will be communicating with us soon. one way or lne other. Thoma f.d1SOll

Ncaoplrony''''. H"'~ 117 /lInll#ty 199B)

I, '"m rtdJly all fl.ftul1fo! And if you fl.rt ." tgghtad in this rDllity unll yo., contiml.t !'tk on, after you've passed info thill grMt I.b II! tht sty? Wthbpt fD. BUI/irslld'sdtfd with corpof"l!t11 tgg'r/!Qds. Thert art, after aJl,p/,n,y of tlltm. In 2007 Ala Botst, aut/ror a/Elephants on Aaa.nd Other Bizarre Experiments, Wt!lIt in SLarch 0/ fitl'm for l\tw Scientist and stumbltd on some 0/ Ure craziest restQrcl, ttIt,.As M pomted out ut flu! 11mI', thtst rtSttJrcllers ~retI'l crall/a, nJlh~work was c~rrjf'd alit by hOIll:sI, hurd-working scientists ., were not prepared to accept

'''''"-5ellSt! aplanations of how j

/".,

you can', Ilclp thi"bng

the world luorks_ All th~ as you muJ. about

'rgg~ds '

,,/,~

Eyes wide open >,1\" J't.'Oplc can sleep through anything. Earthquaka, gunbrighl lights - nothing rouses them. But the5e are

11,1,' whCl art! already asleep. In lq6n. Ian Oswald of the IJHI \\"C'S lty of Edinburgh. UK. wondered. how much stimuJus _,"1rone could be exposed to while awake and sblJ drop off. ""Iluld II even be possible 10 fall asleep with your eyes open? (kwald first asked hL'1 volunteers to lie down on a couch. It ... " he taped Iheir eyes open. Oirectly in front of them, ,t"lUI 'in centimetres away, he placed a bankof flashing lights. Ni l m,llter how much Uley rolled thl.>ir eyes, they could not _void looking al the lights. Electrodes attached to their legs ,II-liVered a series of painful shocks. As a finishing touch. ,,",W.lld blasted ' very loud' music into their ears. rt1l'ee young men volunteered 10 he Oswald's guinea "jg." In his write-up, Oswald praised them for their fortitude. 1\.'1. ill! Ihe lights an~ noise and pain made no difference. L~~ Ihey were tired. an electroencephalograph showed all thrw men to be asleep within 12 minutes. Oswald worded his Jlmhngs cautiously: 'There was a considerable fall of cerebral ~h:.lt.mce, and a large decline in the presumptive ascending l..cititation from the brain-stem reticular formation to the ret,*,ral cortex.' The men themselves were more s lraightfof. "".-,,1 They said il felt like they had dozed off. Oswald speculated that the key lay in the monotonous IMhl1'\' of the stimuli. Faced with such monotony, he sug~ ,;, ... tt-d, the braU1S0e5 into a kind of trance. Tbal may explain \'o-hv It'S easy to do:teoff, even in the middJeof the day, while ~Vtl Me driving along an empty road. How much this wiU

48

How to Ma~ a Tornado

help when sleep eludes you while you're stuck on a red-eye flight is another question. Asking the baby in the row behind you to scream more rhythmically is unlikely to do the trick.

~ Slumber learning In the summer of 1942. Lawrence LeShan of The CoUege of William &: Mary in WiUiamsburg, Virginia, US, stood in the darkness of a cabin in an upstate New York camp where a row of young boys lay sleeping. He Intoned a smgle phrase, over and over. 'My fingernails taste terribly bitter. My fingel'nails taste lerribly bitte.r .. ' Anyone happening upon the scene might have thought LeShan had gone mad, but he had not. The profcssor was conducting a sleep-learning experiment All the boys had been diagnosed as chronic nail-biters, and LeShan wanted to find out if nocturnal exposure to a negative suggesfion could cure then;l.lnitially he used a pho-. nograph to faithfully repeat the phrase 300 times a night as the boys lay sleeping. One month into the experiment, a nurse discreetly checked their nails during a routine medical CX<'Imination . One boy seemed to have kicked the habit. LeShan remarked that skin of a healthy texture had replaced the 'coarse wrinkled skin of the habitual blter'. Then, five weeks into the investigation, disaster struck-. The phonograph broke. Faced with having to abandon the experiment, LeShan began standing in the darkness and delivering the suggestion himself. Surpris.ingly, direct delivery had greater effect. Within two weeks, seven more boys had healthy nails. LeShan speculated that this was because his voice was dearer than the phonograph. Another possibility would be that his nlidnight confessions thoroughly spooked the children. 'If I stop biting my nails,' they probably thought, 'the strange man will go away:

lly the end of the SUJ1\mC1'", LeShan found that 40 per cent ul 1Iw,.' boy'> had kicked the habit, and concluded that the .., r learning effect seemed to be ccal. Other resean:hen; """ JispUI\.>d this. In a 1956 experiment at SantB Monica

,.,liI'gt in California. Wtlliam Emmons and Charles Simon .i !tn electroencephalograpb to measure the brain activity ~bil."Cts, making sure they were fuUy asleep before playing

• InlSlge. Under these conditions, the sleep-learning effect IIIJIppeared..

he masked tickler , '9)). Oarence L.euba, a professor of psychology al Antioch llllegi' in Yi'UOW Springs. Ohio

ma~

his home thi!

St.'ttmg

a" Itn .1mbitlous experiment. He plarull_'d to find out whether ""~hter

is a leamctf response 10 being lic:kJt!d or an IMate

"To "chieve this goaL he determined never to allow his •• wbrom son to associate laughter with tickJing. This meant

!hdt on one- in particular his wife - was aUowed to laugh in Int' presence of the child while tickling orbcing tickJed. Ll"Uba

"I.IIInoo to observe whether his son eventually laughed when tkkk-d, or grew up dismissing wiggling fingers in his armpits *Ith a stony silence. "omehow Lcuba got his wife to promise to cooperate, and IiII'I cuba household became a tickle-free zone, except during ""'J'Nimcntal sessions in which leuba subjected R. L Male, as j" refcrred to hi5 son in his research notes, to laughter-free IkkJing. During these sessions, Leuba followed a strict procedure. Hftol he donned a }O<eI1timetre by 40<entimetre cardboard 1I\4!>k, while as a further precaution maintaining a 'smileless, .ber expression' behind jt. Thenhe tidJed tus son in a pre-

50

How to Milke iI Tornado

determined pattern - first light, then vigorous - in order of armpits, ribs, chin, neck, knees, then feet. Everything went well until 2) April 193), when Leuba recorded that his wife had made a confession. On one occasion, after her son's bath, she had 'bounced him up and down \vhile laughing and saying, ~ Bouncy, Bouncy".' It is not dear if this was enough to ruin the experiment. What is clear is that by month seven, R. L. Male was happily screaming with laughter when tickled. Undeterred, Leuba repeated the experiment after his daughter, E. L. Female, was born in February 1936. He obtained the same result. By the age of seven months, his daughter was Laughing when tickled. Leuba concluded that laughter must be an innate response to being tidded. However, one Sl!JlSeS a hesitation in his conclUSion, as if he felt that it all might have been different if only his wife had foUowed his rules more carefully. Leuba's tickle study does at least offf!f an object lesson to other researchers. In any experiment it is all but impossible to control all the variables, especially when one of the variables is your spouse.

::?}:The look of eugh Do emotions evoke characteristic facial expressions? Is there one expression everyone uses to convey shock. another for disgust, and so on? In 1924, Carney L.1ndis, a graduate student in psychology at the University of Minnesota, designed an experiment to find out. Landis brought subjects into his lab and drew linl'S on their faces with a burnt cork 50 that heoould more easily see the movement of their muscles. He then exposed them to a variety of stimuli designed to provoke a 5trong emotionaJ reaction. Forinstance, he made them smeU ammonia, listen to jazz, look at pornographic pictures and put their hand into a

Mad /eSearch

hu. ~ ~'111 ( frogs. As they reacted to each stimulus, he snapped " " lUI.'"

~If their faces.

nwclimax of the experiment arrived when Landis carried

• live white rat on a tray and asked them to decapitate it .. , p"ople initially resisted his request. They questioned hil'hcr he was serious. Landis assured them he was. The hll'CIS would then hesitantly pil;k the knife up and put it L down. Many of the men swore, Some of the women rlt'd to cry. Nevertheless, Landis urged them on. In the picn.'II 1...1ndis took, we see them hovering over the rat with wll IMlnted faces, knife In hand. They look like mlmlbers of If''l.! "' range cult preparing to offer a sacrifice 10 the Great I I\f the Experiment, 'I\vo- thirds of the subjects eventually did as they'd been .hl Landis noted that most of them perfomled the task IlIIltS lI y: 'The effort and attempt to hurry usually resulted in • rllmer awkward and prolonged job of decapitation.' EVl.'11 ~CI1 the subject refused, the rat did not gel a reprieve. I .. "dis simply picked up the knife and decapitated the rodent IUlIlwlf.

With hindsight, Landis's experiment presented a stun1I1nK display of the willingness of people to obey orders, no nl" tter how unpalatable. It anticipated the results ofStanJey Milgram's more famous obedience experiment at Yale Uni....."'i ly by almost 40 years. Landis, however, never realised th'" thc compliance of his subjects was more interesting than II",ir fadal expressions. He remained single-mindedly I~us.ed on his research topic. And no, he was never able to lind il Single, characteristic facial expression that people ~opt while decapitating a rat.

51

52

Haw to Make ~ Tom~do

1fTerror in the skies One day in the early 1960s, ten soldiers boarded a plane at Fort Hunter Liggett military base in California on what they thought was a routine training mission. The plane climbed into the clear blue sky, levelled out at around 5000 feet and cruised lor a lew minutes beiote s uddenly lurching to one side as a propeller failed. The pilot struggled with the controls and yeUed frantically into his headset. Finally, he made an announcement over the intercom: 'We have an emergency. An engine has stalled and the landing gear is not functioning I'm going to attempt to ditch in the ocean. Pleas(' prepare yourself.' In such a situation, it would have been natural/or the soldiers to feel fear or even terror. But there was no necd. Though they didn't know it., they were in 1\0 danger They were Wlwi lting subjects in a study designed by the United States Amly Leadership Human Research Unit near Monterey, California. Its purpose was to examine behavioural degradation under psychological stress - specifically, the stress of imminentdealh. Having created a fear-arousing situation, the researchers next introduced a task to measure the soldiers' performance under pressure. The task was something most people find diffIcult under nonnal circumstances: filling out insurance forms. A steward distributed the paperwor.k, explaining it as a bureaucratic neceSsity. If they were all going to die, the army wanted to make sure it was covered for the loss Obediently, the soldiers leaned forward in their seats, pencils in hand, and set to wcrk. They found the forms unexpectedly difficult todedphet and quite likely they attributed this to the distraction of approaching death. In fact, the forms had deliberately been written in a confusing manner, They were, as the resean:hers put [t, 'an example of deliberately bad human engineeri ng'. Eventually the last soldier

""P','h'd his form, and they aU steeled themselves for the AI tiM' point the pilot turned the plane around: 'Just nbi.)ut that emergency, fotks', and landed safely at the N,,! ,"u rprisingly, anticipating a crash landing did interwith the ability to accurately complete an insurance rhe soldiers in the plane made a significantly larger of mistakes than did a control group on the groWld IIIkd out the same paperwork. (JlJile \" hal the soldiers thought about their ordeaJ we , I<.now, but one of them did find a way to get even. When r1unc next took off carrying a new group of subjects to .thr researchers discovered their experiment had been One of the earlier group had blown their cover by II wa rning message on his airsick bag.

(1'(/8:> some of tJrese eggheads can be. Aussie engineers, ",,,,,,'1<1/,'. are Ii liltfe more pragmatic, opt;,zg out of plae;IlK Iir"''''/''''';'' any danger Qlld caUillg instead 011 feathered brel/,Oll'lr research is also an Illus/ratiOlI of lIow much aUitudes ••,1",,,/ suffering haflf.' cI/Q/lged ill little more tllQ/1 11 decade. , IIIIIU!JIy artifidaI dllek cadavers UKluld be used i/llne caring

Duck! Ifill ~ nnd other birds flying into the engines of low-flying ... " hU t are a hazard at many airports around the world. In lOW,.. Gil) Thrbille News reported that Australian engineers "'~II~ rt~arcll ing the problem. I hl' difficulty they faced was how to simulate a duck li VlllK In to an engine to study what damage is caused and lMlw It enn Ix> avoided. Their solution was not 10 simulate it al

54

How to Make a TOinado

all. Instead they developed a gun that fired ducks at speeds of up to 273 kilometres an hour into their lest engines. They claimed that the ducks were humanely dispatched prior to being shot a t the engines. We sho uld hope so.

The ducks did 1I0t die [n valli, as plIssengers 0 " US Alnuays Fliglll 1549, which ditclled Wit/I 'w loss of life ill tlrt Hudson Riuer [" lmmary 2009 after a bird strike, will 110 doubt testify. Rother more prosaic, but still TOitllin tile boundaries of egghead· ism cnmes the kiJld of rmarch that tells us Ilaw to /jw ollr mu"dtme txistmct. more easily. Vacuum cleaners, qllClJjng at bus stops ... scientists can refilly improve your 101.

~: Let it soothe as it sweeps asjt deans (n '995. Fred&ique Guyot. a PhD student at the acoustics laboratory of Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris. made ,t her goal to identify what made the sound of a vacuum cleaner either intolerably irritating or pleasantly soothing. Armed with this knowledge, she hoped that manuIacturers would be able to ensure that future models would make only the nicest of noises. To find out what people hated most about the noise of their machines. Guyot recorded the sounds of 23 vacuum cleanm; as they worked on a rug in an office. She played the recordings to 56 volunteers. who were instructed to imagine themselves pushing the vlletJum deaner around, and fo describe their feelings about each sound . Machines were grouped into categories that ranged from 'besf through 'classical' to 'appa lling'. Guyot said that. unsurprisingly, loud vacuum cleaners were less popular than quiet ant-'S. 'And ones that sound like a musica l nole - " hrnmnr" - are more unpleasant than those

~ 'Bear-proof'

suit to be put to the test

In December 2001, a Canadian man and a J-metre, sBs-kilogram Kodiak bear were set to face off, in an attempt to test a handmade. purportedJy bear-proof suit. The suit and Its maker, Troy Hurtubise of North 6.'ly, Ontario, won a 1<}98 Ig Nobel pri7.e - awarded ann ually fo r improbable research projects - and an entry in the lOOl GllinIIesS BooIrofWorld Records for the most expensive research suit ever ronst ructed. Fifteen years of tinkering and USStoo..ooo went 1nto the design, w hich incorpocated plastic, rubber,

chainmail, ga lvanised steel. titanium - and thousands of metres of duct tape. The suit proved itself to be virtually indestructible. It survived two strikes with a lJ6-kilogram tree trunk, 18 collisions with a )-Ionne truck at 50 kilometres an hour, and numerous strikes by arrows, bullets, axes and baseball bats. ' I've never had a bruise,' said Hurtubise. But the su.i l had never-corne up against the very thing it was meant to protect against - a grizzly bear. On 9 December 2001, in an undisclosed location in western Canada, aU that changed. In a 'controlled attack', the Kodiak, a larger, heavier subspecies of the grizzly, was to put ilto the tesl The bear, which appeilred on TV commercials and in movies, was to be instructed by its han dler to attack for ten seconds. Showbiz aside, Hurtubise stressed that it was a real bear. 'Real teeth, real claws, real poweJ:,' he said. He fully expected the ouiside of the suit to be ri.p ped to shreds. 'The suit's a toy to the bear: he said. ' He' ll make his way to the titani um.' Hurtubise was banking on tht': titanium layers around the chest, head and lower body to protect him. ' II there's a weakness: he. said, 'it would be the chainmail joints.' Hurtubise said he was I!)o.cited. but a tittle anxious 100. ' LitUe things like

Mad le!.eilfth

trucks and baseball bats and axes and thmgs- you don't feel 11\.11,' he said. 1llis is a bear.'

So? What lurpptlled?

j: Bea r-proof suit has surprise results rhe first live tests of Troy Hurtubise's grizzly-proof suit in ZOQt found that its best protective feature was its bizarre dppearance. Hurtubise donned the suit and squared up to a 145-kilogram female grizzly but the bear just found it too weird. When confronted by Hurtubise in the Ursus Mark VI ~ uit, the bear smelled a human, but saw an alien. There's no griuly that's going to come near you In that swt: the bear handler told him, after he spent ten minutes in a cage with the cowering a nimal . The grizzly test was supposed to be the first live encounter. In an earlier test. the suit had to go it alone, without Hurtubise inside, with a fearsome opponent - a 545-kilogram male Kodiak _The sui t was placed into the cage of the giant bear, to get him accustomed to it. Eventually, the bear began to sniff the rontrnplion.. and then proceeded to jump o n it. 'You could hear the metal suaining.' said Hurtubise. 'He started to investigate the thtng with claw and tooth.· Though it ripped off chunks of tubber, all was well until the hear began to shred the protective chainmaU and was called off by the handler. Hurtubise learned that you should never skimp on chainmail. '1 should have used shack chainmail: he lamented. 'Instead, ) sent away for butcher 's ehainmail from France! Without effective chainmail., the bear handler decided not to allow an attack with Hurtubise inside the Suil. But he did permit Hurtubise to take on the smaUer female grizzly,

57

Mad ll'5e,uch

JlIli! go "ffff!": she said. Least popular of aU were loud I I with high-pitched hums.

option is best ~h'" ,,~.

patience waiting for a bus and decided. to walk "'''·".?Nc>:t time, stick around - it's nearly always the best

In :lUo8, Scott Kominers,a mathematician at Harvard UniAnd his colleagues derived a formula for the optimal ~"" II", Y"u "h,mld wait for a tardy bus ateach stop en route giving up and walking on. 'Many mathematicians p'"••albly ponder this on their way to work, but never get to working it out,' he said. rhe team found that the solution was surprisingly simple options seemed reasonably attractive, the formula • ,.1 ..."dyou to choose the 'lazy' option: wait at the first stop, rill matter how frustrating. The formula did break down in lrone cases, when the time interval between buses was I. Inger than an hour, for example, and your destination only II "lIometre away. It you did choose to walk, you should make your decision lu,r'lI'C you start waiting, he said. You would still reach your ,h'"lIlnotion later tn.,n the bus you'd have caught, but it would I.. much less frustrating than wait;ng for a while and then w>ll~hing the bus shoot by. 'It certainly has changed the way I "A\'e],' Kominers said_

• '1\'1,,·,. "'''h

missing a brlS is Imrroyillg, aud waitirlgfar ever for one Ilull does u'! come is probably tIlell worse. But standinG illlille is tJ I mch compared to putting your body on the lilll~. That's a difI .,lOlIT"${!,

,,,""1 tlwwentireJII.

55

;{t- 'Bear-proof' suit to be put to the test In December 2001 , a Canadian man and a J~me tre. s8s-kilogram Kodiak bear were sct to face off. in an atl~p t to test a handmade, purportedly beal'-proof suit. The suit and its maker. Troy Hurtubise of North Bay, Ontario, won a 1998 Ig Nobel prize - awarded annually for improbable research projects - and an entry in the 2002 GI4iMness Book ufWurId Recurds for the most expensive research slllt ever constructed. Fifteen years of tinketing and US$l()(I,oClO went into the design, which incorporp.ted plastic, rubber.

chainmail, galvanised steel, titanium - and thousands of metres of duct tape. The suit proved itseLf to be virtually indestructible. It survived Iwostrikcs wI th a l )6-ltilograrn tree trunk, 18 collisions with a )-tOlme truck al 50 kilometres an hour, and numerous strikes by arrows, bullets, axes and baseball bats. 'I've nevl!r had a bruise: said Hurtubise. But the suit had never come up against the very thing it was meant to protect against - a grizzly hear. On 9 December 2001 , in an undisclosed location in westem Canada, all thai changed. In B 'controlled attack', the Kodiak,. a larger, heaviet- subspecies of the grizzly, was to put it to the lest. The bear, which appeared on TV commercials and in movies, was to be instructed by its handler to anack for ten seconds. Showbiz aside, Hurtubise stressed that it was a real bear. 'Real teeth, real claws, real power,' he said. He fully expeck.-d the outside of the suil to be ripped to shreds. 'The suit's a toy to the bear,' he said . ' He' lJ make his way 10 the

titanium: Hurtubise was banking on the titaitium layers around the chest" head and lower body to protect him. 'If there's a weak· ness,' he said, ' it would be the chairunrul joints: Hurtubise said he was excited, but a little anxious too. 'Little things like

Mad reseald1

lUlU baseball bats and axes and things -you don't feel !laid. Th~s is a bear:

h~

liar-proof su it has surprise resu lts tj~t IIvt:' tests of Thl)' Hurtubise's grizzly·proof suit in I found lhat its best protective feature was its bizarre 'l,rance. Hurtubise donned the suit and squared up to a , ·kllogram female grizzly but the bear just found it too I'd When confronted by Hurtubise in the Ursus Mark VI IIi. the bear smelled a human. but saw an alien. 'There's no :1Jy that's going to come near you in that suit,' the bear hu\iJlcrtold him, after he spent ten minutes ina cage with the (llwering animal. The grizzly test was supposed to be the first liveencoun...,. In <\11 earlier test. the suit had to go it alone, without Hurh.bbC inside, with a fearsome opponent - a 545-kilogram nlilk Kodiak. The suit was placed into the cage of the giant I.....nt. to get him accustomed to it. Eventually, the bear began I I) ~niff the contraption, and then proceeded to jump on it. hlu could hear the metal straining: said Hurtubise. 'He ' I\ttl'd to investigate the thing with claw and tooth.' Though it ripped off chunks of rubber. all was well until II If' l'I('ar began to shred the protective chainmail and was l.ltll,<1 off by the handler. H urtubise learned that you should ,,,ver skimp on chainmail. " should have used shark chain11\1\11,' he lamented. 'Instead, t sent away fo r bulcher's chain11\1111 from France! Without effective chairuJl1w, the bear handler oiedded not In Ililow an attack with Hurtubise inside the suit. Bu t he did I,,'rmil Hurtubise to take on the smaller fema le grizzly,

51

58

HOW to MaR: a Tomado

although no contact was allowed, It took the bear a while to approach but soon enough it was just six inches away. 'I could feel her breath coming through my visor: said Hurtubise. 1 was terrified.'

As far as lilt know Hurtubise )lever made it back into tile cage willI another grinly, He ri!pOrtedly sold tile bear sllit and invested the money ;n designing i"destructible sups for soldier! and a det,;u tlull allows hllmatls to set through solid objects (as well as going bankrljpt). Still, he's 1I0t tile Dilly rtsearchl!r who ever dO/wed all ar/illla' Sllit.

:1}: It ta kes one to know one Some days when Joel Be~r gal dressed for work he pUI on a pair of jeans. On other days, it was a mooS(! suit. That's right: a big, moulded styrofoam head covcl't'd in synthetic moose fur on top of a 10l\g moosey cape that reached down to his ankles. And if being the moose's front end soWlds humiliating, imagine having to impersonate a moose's backside, l1\at irksome task feU to ikrg(>t's long-suffering collaborator, Carol Cwmingham, 'We do it to get data. It's that simple,' he said preemptively. 'We have to get dose to unhabituated animals.' In 1999, Berger and Cunningham, biologists at the University of Nevada in Reno, wanted to know if animals behaved differently when their p~edators disappeared. Moose in Wyoming. for instance, were at the top of the food chain. Over the previous decades, all their predators had died out, mostly through human interference. But it was a different story in Alaska, where wolves and gri%zly bears still hunted the gentle beasts for supper.

Madl~rth

S
59

so

How to Ma~ , Tornado

were about to charge. 'We dropped the moose suit and ran: said Berger. 'We had to go back to get it.' But if the moose did go over and sniff at the snowball, Berger and Cunningham would be ready to time how long it would lake hcr to get back to foraging. They found that moose from regions where there were no predators took. tlignificantJy less time to rehl1n to their feeding and wen:' pff>tty uninterested, even when sn iffing the faeces of ancient

enemies.

WI! hope they kl!l!p If lip. Brll WI'!' reckon thol if lcel Berger hod bUll 0 child hl"d Ila~ bl!l'tI lold thaI it fl'1f'; all /leither funny, tlor clever - but we Ihink it is. However, ruc b,ow whot isn't: swearillg. Rude words are Iwitlter cltver nor funllY. But studymg tlte word! alld which people say thnn mig"t just be ...

=-# Expletive deleted SWf:'CIring 'recruits our expressive faculties to the fullest', wrote Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker in his book, Till'

Stuff of 'Thought. Yet despite being a showcase for creah.vity, swear word!> are tIlboo in virtually all SOCit'tiCb, even Ulough their subject matter - usually sel( or excretion - describes activities fundamental to human existence. So why are we such potty-mouths, and what gives certain words the power to shock? One theory is that cussing is the form.of language that romes dosestto a physical act of aggression. When you 5wea r at someone, you are forcing an unpleasant thought on them and. lacking earlids, they are helpless to repel this assault. 'lr, II substitute for physicaJ vioJence,' said Tl1I\othy Jay.
'Allnchmg these linguistic assaults - at least some of the time \1111 studies of people who lack this restraint are revealing Individuals with Tourette's syndrome have characterisbc tk""uch as blinks and throat<1earing,and between 10 and:a.o I"'r wnl also exhibit involuntary 5wearing. otherwise known \vproJali.l . Diana Van Lancker Sidris, a neurollllgutst and .pL'L'<.h pathologist at New York University, said that coprola~ 11,\ ran be regimied as a kind of vocal limbic tic. People with Iliurette's have damage to a part of the brain called the basal jpfn.,ha - dusters of neurons buned deep in the front half of 1\1.. brain th,l! are known to inhibit mappropnate behaviour. Ihl~ leads to uncontrollable sweanng. she said. As Pinker sees it. the basal ganglia are responsible for t.j)U;ing certain thoughts ilslaboo. When the 'don't-go-there' 1.41~~IIS no longer applied, as with Tourette's, taboo thoughts .111 rea'i..,·;crt themselves and the urge to cuss becomes overwht'lming. Th(!1e is even one recorded case of a man wjth Inllrethls who was deaf &om birth and expressed his copro,.,Ila through sign language. In 2000, doctors at London's N,1t/onaJ Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery reported Ihiu his swearing was randomly interspersed within his ,ll'\nlod speech, just as it is in other people with coprolaUa Wholt's more, rather than flipping the finger or making other ~.b'i\.--ene gestures that hearing people deploy, he used the rec-.I~nised signs for rude words. . Tourette's aside, many people fear that bad language is on IIII' mcrease. Most studies of the subject have found that men oWl'a r!nOre than women. But a survey conducted in wo8 by M.keThelwali atthe University of Wolverhrunpton in the UK ~ u~gC5led tMt, among young British users of the socia l nel· working website MySpace, strong sweat words were used by n'nl~ and females about ~ually- and a lot. 'Where once the !lilly swear words young people wrote might have been futIIwly scribbled on the walls of public tOilets, now they type 1111'1\1 casually on to a computer screen,' said ThelwaU. 'And Ilwrc, they never run out of space.'

62

How to Maitt a Tornado

By poring over o ur rich library of filth, researthers have been able to get a handle on just what makes a good swear word. II is not just its sound, said Tony McEnery, a Unguist at the University of Lancaster in the UK: after all, 'shot'. 'ship' and 'spit' arenotronsidered obscene, whereas 'shit' is. Besides, the German and French equivalents sound quite different and s till pack a very satisfactory p unch . It cannot just be about semantic content either, because the use of words denoting faeces or sexual matters in a medical context remains accepta~ ble. 'Something about the pairing of certain me~j~gs and sounds has a potent effect on people's emotions,' Pinker said. Swear words also go in and out of fashion in line with the taboos they breach. '''Damn'' was the undisputed king before "tuck" arrived on the scene,' said McEnery, ' but lost Its piquancy as the fear afbuming in hell faded.' 'Poxy', ' leprous', 'canker' and other disease-related words went the same way as hygiene improved. From the 19th ce1tury on, English speakers have mostly vented their frustra tion by reference lo two dirferent classes of taboo: the sexual and the scatologicaL Today ' fuck' reigns supreme, but there is still room for IMovation. So, what will be the next big thing in swearing? Most experts decline to predict any winners. 'Paedophile' seems to be an especiaUy offensive thing to call someone today, explaIned McEnery, and therefore a good candidate, but there is no evidence it is gaining ground as a swear word. 'Something is missing with that word./ he said. Pinker said the word 'cancer', while not yet obscene, is acquiring taboo characteristics - note how it is aiten referred to as 'The Big C . Jay road-tested a few contenders of his own. He once muttered 'Expletive!' on a golf course, and got some strange looks. You can't impose swear words on a language, he noted, they arise organicaUy. Just becaUSt' yOll personaUy dislike cheese, shouting 'stilton' out loudly is unlikely to catch on.

Bloody hell,jnllCJI tJmt!

The yuck factor

Wdromc to the world of yuck, or what the academic world gl'("l,.c;ology. Anybody who had anything to do with the (T(>i'ltion of this book insiste-d thai we include a chapter on the y\1('k factor. Which, as luck would have it, we had every Intention of doing hom the very beginning. How could we deny anybody the pleasure of reading about the smell quoIIt'nl (If farts? We're not going to suggest thai we came up wilh the SCltmce behind this chapler. But what we are delighted to discoYer is that grossology is a genuine scientific field practised by Its leading proponent and inventor. Sylvia Branzci, who Solve birth to the d iscipline in 1993 in order to get children more interested in biology and chemistry. But what exactly 'Iualifies a subjcct to fa ll into the groosology category? To be nonest, it seems to be everything that kids find funny. Farts are a very important component of the discipline. As is urlne. And faeces. Which reminds us of an old joke. Five-year-old Alice walked into the kitchen one morning ,l!> her biologist father was reading the newspaper. 'Where does poo come from?' she asked. Startled, he regarded her for il moment before replying. 'Well: he began. 'You know we've lust had breakfast?' 'Yes,' she replied. He went on: 'The food gOf:'S into our lummiesand our bodies take out all the good stuff and what\."\ et's left comes out of our bottoms when we go 10 the toilet. ,md that's poo: She was silent as she digested the enormity of what he'd divulged. ' And Ttgger?' rilll~

64

How 10 Make .. Tornado

Naturally, you don' t get far in the field of grossology without knowing a thing or two about underpants, vital if you are thinking of going into space. Let's face it, what on Earth - pun intended - d o yo u do with a pair of dirty V-fronts when you are J parsecs from the nea.l"eSt sola r system? You design a cocktail of bacteria to eat them, according to Russia' s Institute for Biological and Medical Problems. Yes, soiled undenvear is big in the world of yuck. One set of smalls that didn't make it into this chapter, however, were the damp leath~ pair found in the wreck of a Bronze-Age boat being excavated near Dover in England. They were of great importance archaeologically. being possibly the world's oldest surviving pair, but we struggled to justify their inclu· slon In thIs chapter because they weren't so much gross as a vital component of the vessel they were found in.. The researchers who discovered them said they had been used 10 p lug a leak in the boat's hull during a Channel crossing. We wonder which sweaty oarsman volunteered to hand his over w hen the boat started listing?

Since its inventioll, grossology lias splintered into diffrrerll br"ndles, most of which, duw/l tile years, New Scientist I,os covued in dept/, . First up, bodily excretions. We're "ot SlIrt our leQd story comes as much of a sllrprise, bu t science exists 10 cOllfirm the expected as much as it does to disCDul!'r th~ u'le~pf!Cted,

;W It's a gas Australian men far! more than Australian women. and their farts smell mOn!:. These were the findings of one of the largest ever studies or flatus emissions (what the wider world knows as fa rting), carried out in 1993 by R. A. Stanton, a nutrition

The yudc factor

um .. ultant from Sydney, and T. D. Bolin of the Prince of Wales Ilv.. plta l in Randwick, New South Wales. Each of the 60 men and 60 women who took part in the IIlud)' was given a small pocket ' Flalomem' to record lhc lIumberof daily emissions. The participants also gave a rub· I"cliv(t estimate of the aroma of the emission, rating It on a ~ 'point scale from 'odourless' 10 'severe' in order to arrive at oiIl ';noma quotient' for the day's farts. A dietary diary was ~ crt to reveal the flatus potential of different foods . AI the end of the 5-month study period, men reported an .. v~rilge 12.7 farts per day With a mean aroma quotient 01 o.U. Women reported a lower 7.1 farts per day, with a more dis• f(!(>I.uoma quotient of 0.5.... 'Ille study revealed a high correlation of emissions with ,Iktlation bt!tween farts Mill beer remained unproven.

WI' worry Ihat Ihis Sllrvey mily suffer from the kind %bJcctioity be/ails similar surveys studying sex lives. Ml'1I tend II! IHlU~t Qnd wofflen tc"d to bt mort! circumspect regarding their "'"fuo.l experiences (twd/or aromll quotient) our 0/ res~t for o(lf"ifll '"orms' Non~thl'lw, we lire {'~rtllill th~rl' i~ n {,omml'rcjnl "/Jportunity for flatometers, b«ause there's obviously a tllriuillg 'I'~rnrd, community out 'lim studyitlJ: /arts ... IOflluN' thlll

Raising a stink Ilere's a piece of trivia with which to impress your drinking pals. The average adult in the Western world farts roughly 10 HIT'It."lo d day, releaSing enough gas to mfIate a party balloon. More than 99 pe"f cent of these entissions are made up of five l)I,iourless gases. What exoctlycauses their foul smell has long

6S

66

How to Mate a TorTIado

been a matter of debate But in lOOl, one man believed he had the answer. Michael Levitt, a gastroenterologist at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in MinneapoUs, had been studying flatus for over JO years and solved numerous m)'l>teries that might otherwise have troubled the OaMent reader. WeU known in gastroenterological circles for his painStaking research and undying enlhusiasm, Levitt had written more lhan 100 papers on this subject and is acknowledged as a world authonty. Amdes about hun and his work have appeared in everything from Tilt Sydney Morning Ht'rJlld to T1~

DAily Ttl~aph. Many scientists would welcome this exposure, but for Levitt it was disastrous. Readers would write angry letters to lus employers complaining that his research was a waste of money, It became so bad that he eventually refused to talk to thp press for (Pill" of jPnpardi.~;ng his career. Just what went wrong? Part of the problem was the mirth-provoking {\8tureof the topic itself, The temptation to tum out stories brimming with puns and farl jokes was often too great for joumaUsts to resist, and the tone of the story inevitably colours Levitt's image in the mind or Ihe readers. The Sydney Momillg Herald, for example, began its story about Levitt with the euphemistic headline 'Tail wind'. Tht Washingloll Post started cheekily with 'Waiting to inhale' but dampened further enthu..,iasm with the sub-heading 'Mainstream and alternative practitioners agree that diet is central to controUing flatulence'. And online magazine Salon.wm plumped for ' Dr Fart speaks'. Levitt's work attracted the media b«ause it is serious research on a snigger--inducing topic. For instance, he was the first to COI'nDly identify the gases that make farts smell. Pre-ViOU5ly. researchers had suspected that the guilty parties were roul-smclling compounds such as indole and skatole, created by the breakdown of amino acids in the gut. But nobody had ever bothered to check.

bvaluating a smell is a diffruh task. so Levitt turned to tlk' nOSo("S of two people with a rather unusual abi!Jty. 80th "lUld Idenhiy dilkrmt sulphur-ronl'auting gases purely by .l1wll fhcse lucky mdlViduals were asked to evaluate the ,til''' of 16 healthy men and women who, the previous ~Yt'l'llRg. had eaten 100 grams of pinto beans to ensure ample ~A'I production. Levitt said the results pointed 10 hydrogen .ulphide as the culprit in smeUy faris, accompanied to a lesser r~lcnt by other sulphur.-based g-a.se. But indole and skatol~ Wf'f{ nowhere to be s.'"tIelt. Levitt even tested an artificia.1 detox system - a cammer,~lIv available devia claimed to be able to reduce the odour NI fMls. The Toot Trapper was a loam cushion covered on Of\(' Itld(' with actlva.ted chMroal - charcool with an Increased ""nal.'\.' area - which absorbed ct!Ttain ~ Since no stand'''1I t.;·t:hnique existed to carry out such tests. l...evitl develt'P'-'vitt's work was far from pointless - it has saved lives. f lyJrogen and methane, two of the main ga.sc:s thul furol in lilt' ~ul, .... re combustible. In the 19Bos, they cauS«i a number .,' "Ilal cxplosioru dUling otherwise routine operations on the ~Ill ~mchow the purgatives used lociean the gut enhanced Hll' pr(JCiuction of hydrogen or methane and a chance spark .Iurlng the operation triggered an explOSion. Levitt and 1'11I1\rs hav(> since developed purgatives based on polyethyl~I'I... fo;lycol, which clean the bowel with minimal gas produclIe'In Colonic detonations are now rare. Il.'Vlti also studied a l8-year-01d man who meticulously 11'{'lIrdcd every passage of gas he produced over a J-year I\,'rktd Farling about 34 times a day, he let Ollt over 8li tres of k"", f.'qual to the gas in several pa.rty balloons. Through Levitt,

68

How to Make a Tomado

heo achieved the dubious rame or being the only thoroughly studied man with excessive flatus on record. JoumaUsts certainly seemed to l.ikeo Levitt, and stories about him were littered w ith the good-humoured quotes he would give. Explaining to TIle Washington Post that gut bacteria absorb gas as weU as produce it, he said: ' Lf we passed all the gas that we mad e, e\'('rybody would be farting a million times a day.'

ThaI's enough a/xmt forts. Time to move on to some rtkarrh tllat's a bil more solid.

;.w-: Engage dark matter! 'I'm tryi ng as hard as I can, Caplain,' exclaims Scotty, the strain etching lines in his forehead. ' ) can't give you any more!' But unlike Star TrtX's £nlerprise, it was once hoped that spacecraft might use a less savoury energy supply than Scotty's beloved d ilithium crystals: human waste. In 1999, NASA enlisted the aid of Advanced. Fuel Research of Connecticut in a $600,000 pro;ect to tum astronaut waste - either faeces or some plastics - into a power source (or spaceships using pyrolysis: the breaking down of waste by heating it in the absence of oxygen. . Normally, when organic molerules such as those found in faeces or in p lasbc are burned, they combine with oxygen in the air, producing carbon dioxide and water. But in pyrolysis, there is no oxygen to combine with. so the molecules break their bonds and rearrange themselves into smaller molecules. According to AFR scientist Mike Serio, '"Things start breaking down at about 350 '>C, and what you start making includes a lot of liquid§.. At 600 "<:or65O "C, you break down the liquids into gases. It does give you flexibility:

The yucldaaor

'H'U could bum these liquids or gases to reieaseenergy, or 111m Ul('m into plastics or other organic materials. Pyrolysis ("Hllh.l produce heavier molecules such as benzene or toluene, .. lid (ould be a source- of raw materials to make plastics or lUbber. It could also create- ammonia for fertiliser"

'You can use human waste as well as other waste, like crap plastic bags: said Jim Markham, AFR's chief executive

.,Iflcer. And you wouldn't have- to worry about variations in tht' ronsistency and content of the waste material- the pyro~ unit would be able to handJe them aU. 'It's tailored to ""rn.:dictablf' mixtures: he said. ' Ideally, you' d dial in the .t.
/(fBt(lrcl, into Ihf' wwfllllless of hlll1/lm (liasif' prodrlcfs might br ~llIllIlf"Y III'W, but turds thnnstlws have breI! wi tlt rls for a /0118 11m,·. lollS mOllgh 10 b«oml' plIrt of the fossil record, Appart'IIlly, thl' flldrst terres INDI/aecl'S discouered weN' found by "searchers II' 11,1' Univnsity of Wples in Cardiff. British academM leads the 11~lrltl Ollef flgain. Btliawd 10 ~ from the earliest lalld-dwelling 'Irrbil'Orcs, tht turds art 412 mIllion years old. There's probably 11M IQO mue" you ron learn from tllem ollce they've tumed into rod... brd tire same carmol ~ said about wllale foecl'S.

Sniffing out whale poo I hope we get a poop today: said Rosalind Rolland, a conserth~ New England Aquarium pouring her morning tca. 1ust one: ' Maybe two.' said her coUeague Scott Kraus. 'If you follow l'rI .mething long enough, it'll poop.' Their colleague Fargo, having dedicated over half his life II' the s ubject, was even more enthusiastic. in zoo6, Fargo was y"Donist at

6~

70

How 00 Make a TomadO

one of an elite corps of whale-scat sniffer dogs, and perhaps the most important member of the resea.rch team. WhaJes may be the biggest creatures on the planet, but they also swim fast and dive deep, so are notoriously di£fLcuJt to study. Fortunately, you can te.1I a lot about an animal by studying what it leaves behind. In faeces, researchers can find clues ilbout an .mimal'& distribution,. abundance, sex and reproductive status, stres5 le,-e1s, health and vita'lity. Spotting scat samples, which hang just below the sea's surface before they break apart, is far more difficult than finding the animals th .... mselves, and that's where dogs like Fargo come in. With years of training and more than 200 million olfaclory n>eepION - compared with humans' ~re ;: million - dogs can ramp up the number of samples. Upwind o f a few whales, Fargo dropped his snout. 'He's got scent' sau;:! RolI.a.nd. Fargo paced back and forth aCfOljs the Uuwuut then stopped moving. He had lost the scent. 'It might have been a big (art,' Rolland conceded, Rolland figured that faecal sampling would help her narrow down why right whales had stopped reproducing in the North Atlantic in the late 1990S. She thought faecal samples could be used 10 test reproductive hormones, as had been done in primates and other animals. n,ey began with just humans searching for whale poo, but w hen dogs were introduced samples increased fourfold. On average, d~ collected about a scat an hour - a rate RoUand referred to as 'poops per unit effort'. Whale faeces are surprisingly modest; the size'or a small brick and a reddish brown When the team finally located one, research assistant Cindy Browning scooped it up with a fine-meshed plankton net. RoUand and Browning carefully stored lhe sample in palm-sized plastic jars. Once it was brought on board, the sme.U was overwhelming. 1f you spill it On your clothes,' Rolland warned, 'you want to throw th~ clothes away:

In roo6, the sampJt>S were proving invaluable_ Rolland lid hL'" colleagues showed that paralytic shellfish potsoning. W.N! by eating shellfish contaminated with toxic algae, _y h.we contnDuted to the: right whale'5 failure to recover Ifjm (cnturies of hunting. Perhaps even more troubling was h~ presence of domok acid in right whales. This 10Xl n has ~"Oll neurologicaJ effects, induding seizures and coma, and hhl been responsible for the death of hundreds of sea lions in hOI !)acjfic Protozoan parasites could also have caused probs These had been associated with diarrhoeal disease in \(j mammals, and it was thought that the blame ought have In with humans. Right whales spend much of their lives I, ~ 10 big citics. 10ey might have been piclting up theM> ·.-r3s.ltes from human or domestic animal waste dumped in ~ ocean. I formone studies, by contrast, brought some good news. ~)' luuklngal ll'velsofprogestogens and oeslrogL'TlS, researchwere able to estimate the reproductive status of females, .nl\ rn.my were doing wcll. Tht> study had also been expanded III Mudy killer whaJes, whose faeces, for the: record, are a 'Iflo11ly greenish brown. They are also less buoyant than right ~I.ltl~ scat and difficult to spot from a boat Ooce bade in New ~"~Iand, Rolland reflected on the work still to be done to 1'IVI(>Ct ll'le whaJ~ 'I thought I'd be intoo;ompthingf'I..... ~: till' !WIld, 'Sut I've jusl gotten deeper inlo it.'

w,,~ so

much poa Qbout, you'd be JotgitJe7! for thinkmg then' b
11",1;'.1 ~.'II

:-W Fa ki ng it In I~, Richard Yeo and Debra Welchel of the KimberleyClark Corporation in Dallas, Texas, invented a recipe to simulate somethtng you rrught have thought was fairly abundant in America: human faeces. Their mix consisted of pclyvinyls, starches, natural gums and gelatins, all water-soluble, plus msoluble fibres and resins. Add water to this and you would get a synthetic turd 'as close to the real thing as possible', Yeo told the New York Times. This is impressive, but by now a question may well have occurred to you: why would we need it? The answer was that Kimberley-Clark makes nappies and adult incontinence pads and these products must be rigorously tested. 'But the technicians have some objecbon to handling the real thing.' Yeo said, add ing that actual faeces are 'a (ann of biologically hazanious material', In addition, the firm's labsmig.ht havefOWld they needed, say, 10 kilograms of faeces 319 o'cloc!c.on a Monday morning, to begin tests on a new range of nappies. The real thing. Yeo complained. can be 'a bit difficult toobtain.even from infants'. Any scientific endeavour typically starts with a review of the existing literature. 'We had fundam£!ntal studies of real faeces,' Yeo said, 'so we knew what was needed.' Prevjous attempts to make do with peanut butter Of pumpkin pie mix had failed - their liquids and solids separated too rapidly. The material mimicked. faecal behavioUJ" faf more accura tely, in.ill but one respect it had no odour.

Of COIUSf./ake pro is only half th~ story. Some people are making fake IIrill" too. Ju st what Is it about ruans MId phouey humull IIJQ5I,.?

The )'\Ie.\: factor

Just add water 1/1 .l)86 in Austin, Texas, entrepreneur Jeff Nightbyrd mar~"I{'d instant urine for the growing number of employees hl!lng asked by their bosses to undergo tests to see if they w('re using drugs, Like instant coffee,. the urine came in powder form, and W,lS reconstituted by adding hot distilled water. It could be 1\.Jcred by mail at a cost ofh9.95 for 2-gram vials, providing ,·tlough urine for two samples. Nightbyrd never said how he IUrlll'd urine into powder, but it must have been a very smelly hu:/me5S.

1/td from faking ii, to reusing it, 'Wasle 1101, wanl ,Jo/' is a held in high regard by illierstel/ar travellers, 111 :;pAce, 110 ,)IIt' ca ll hen' you pee ... ~Hlxil/J

. Purified urine to be astronauts' drinking water hi ~008, as NASA prepared to double the number of aSt~ living aboard the International Space Station, nothing W,IS eKpeCted to do more for crew bonding than a machine b"ing launched aboard the space shuttle Endeavour: a waterft'l'yding device designed to process the crew's urine for '.!mmunai consumption. 'We d id blind taste tes~ of the water,' said NASA's Bob B"gdigian, the system's lead engineer. 'Nobody had any ~ trollg objections. Other than a faint taste of iodine, it is just ns refreshing as any other kind of water. I've got some in my tridge,' he added. 'It tastes fine to me: H,HltS

13

74

How to Make a To,"~

Delivery of the $250 million wastewater recycling gear was among the primary goals of NASA's 124th shuttle mission, which launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in November :waS. In addition to the water recycler, the shuttle E.ndtflOOllr a lso carried a second loilet 'With six people, you really do nero to have a two-bathroom house. Irs a lot more convertient and a 101 more efficient: said Endeavour astronaut Sandra MagnUs. Reusing water will become essential once NASA retires its space shuttles, which produce water as a by-product of their electrical systems. Rather than dumping the water overboard, NASA has been transferring illo, the space station. But the shuttle's days are numbered . NASA is preparmg to end the progranune in 2010, after which Russian Soyuz spacecraft will be the only way to ferry crew to the space station. 'We can't be delivenng water a1l the time (or six crew,' said space stabon fhght director Ron Spencer. 'Recycling is a must. ' NASA expected to process about 6 gaUons (2) litres) of water per day with the new device. The goaJ was to recover about 92 per cent of the water from the crew's urine and moisture in the air. 1he wastewater was processed using an extensive series of purification techniques, including distilL'ltion -which is somewhat tricky in microgravity - filtration, oxidation. and ionisation. The rmal step was the addition of iodine to control microbial growth. Thedevicewas int(!Jldcd to processa full day's worth oJ wastewater in less than 24 'hours. 'Today's drinking water was yesterday's waste,' Bagdigian said.

TIll) first recycled as/ronaut/jr;,.e CQme on stream in IIle International Sl'ac~ Station ill May 2009. Apparently it tastes 'great'. Bill wllj/~ urine can seemi"sTy lit IISfll agoi" lind "8";" , it 1Ippt"1If'S thld tllrty ImdertlNDr 15 not for slwring.

The yuck factor

Less waste, more space ('ric o f space travel's most pressing but least-known probk ll~ is what to do with dirty underwear One solution, IIlh" lllpted by Russum soenbsts in 1998, was to design a cocktail of bacteria to digest astrona uts' cotton and paper underpants, They had hoped that the resulting methane gas could t.w used to power spacecraft. [lie disposal unit would be able to process plashc. cellu'(~. and otht'r organIc waste aboard a spacecraft. CosmoIlauts Identified waste as one of Ihe most aClite problems they {;l(T Each astronaut produttS an aver~ of ::.5 kilograms of IIncompressed waste a day. To kl.'Cp waste to a minimum. they nre forced to wear underwear for up to a week. a nd dis~'ard&.l undergarments are burned up in the Earth's atmospht're In waste modules that roll twice a yCi1r. The researchers aimoo to complete their microbial disposal unit by 2017 to coincide with Russia's planned launch a crewed interplanetary mission to Mars.

.1'

" > "illln- lIull, or tN cosmonJIUts f1tlY II roit to Altx Fowl". Ij 'hey d.d, they might itt able to wenr their ,m/lU, mdtfin ittly '"

No more laundry Most of us try to wash bacteria out of our clothes. Not so Alex Fowler, who wanted severa1 thousand bugs to set up home Inside every slhgle fibre or a fabric, living. breeding and l'ating up the dirt. Welcome to the world of self-cleaning dllthes Eventually, the gannents in your wardrobe maybe able to .. upport a variety orbactcria engineered to eat odour-causing

75

76

How to Make a Tornado

chemicals and human sweat. Other bacteria might secrete waterproof and protective coatings to extend the life of doth~ ing and produce antiseptic for bandages. Ironically, textile makers have spent millions developing fibres blended with, say, silver ions or chlorine to kill off the bugs in fabric. But encouraging bacteria to grow on fibres turned out to bE' harder than Fowler had expected. 'I thought they would wick into the fibre. by capillary action, but it didn't tum out like that,' he said. Brute force was required. In 2001, Fowler and his team hom the University of Massachusetts at Dart~ mouth developed a vactl.um pump that cou]d connect to the end of hollow fibres from the milkweed plant. Although no longer used to make clothes, the plant is still used to make ropt'. The pump sucked a few drops of agar jelly containing Escherichia coli into the fibre. The bacteria easily formed a thJ:j"ing colony and began to breed. After 50IIle initial tests, Fowler had no problem firing several hundred bacterin into the fibre. 'They're. tough little guys: he said. Fowler used a hannless strain of E. coli genetically engineered to produce a fluorescent protein from a jellyfish to mak(' the bacterium glow as it grew, allowing researchers to monitor Its progress. The group weren't sure how long the baderia could survive in the fibres. They suspecled they might become dormant after several weeks when their food supply ran out, but Fowler hoped to reactivate them by soaking the milkweed fibres in additional nutrienls. So if your shirt was impregnated with a strain of E.. coli designed 10 feed on human sweat and the proteins that cause body odours, you'd only have to wear it to jolt the bugs into action. For some other strains, you might have to douse it with additional nutrients occasionally, 'You could end up haVing to fee,.>d your shirl instead of wash it: said Fowler.

All this orbital recyclillg of uritle a1rd bacJerial u1IdenlH!ar

The I'U'Hactor

destruction raises 11 queslimr fllorlgll. til zero gravity. jusl/low do you emit rill tire waste?

~:t: Wind in the 100 From the out&,ide. the 1972 spaCt! shuttle loilet looked much like the uncomfortable apparatus fou nd in the jet airl iners of the era. Inside, however, liquid and solid wastes were directed mto separate pipes by high-velocity air streams that compen:.ate
Very clever, bllt tlot ns IIIgcn,olls as Cornu E",/l Lagstrom's multipurpose device •••

';i: Hot seat cleans up Most of the best inventions kill at least two birds with one stone. COran Emil Lagstriim's 1972 invention both disposed of lavatory waste where there was no proper sewage system and provided central heating. The contraption consisted of a combustion chamber with an oil or gas burner to bum solid waste and evaporate liquid waste, all situated under the toilet pan and surrounded by a water jacket. The jacket was connected to a large column-like tank which fed a central heating system. lnside the tank, and he-ated. by it, was a second, completely Sl'parate water-heating system which provided hot

71

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How to

Ma~e a Tomado

chemicals and human sweat. Other bacteria might secrete wa terproof and protective coatings to extend the lile of clothing and produce antiseptic for bandages. lronically, textile makers have spent milllans developing fibres blended with, say, silver ions or clliorine to kill off the bugs in fabric. But encouraging baderia to grow o n fibres turned out to be harder than Fowler had expected. ' I thought they would wick into the fibre by capillary IlCtion, but it didn't turn out like that,' he said. Brute rorce was required. In 2001, Fowler and his team from the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth developed a vacUlUn pump that could connect to the end of hollow fibres from the milkweed plant. Although no longer used to make clothes, the plant is still used to make

tope. The pump sucked a few drops o f agar jelly containing Escherichia coli into the fibre. The bacteria easily formed a thri"ing colony and began to breed. After some initial tests, Fowler had no problem firing several hundred bacteria into the fibre. They're tough little guys,' he said. Fowler used a hilI1Illess strain of E.. coil genetically engineered to produce a flu orescent protein from a jellyfiSh to make the bacterium glow as it grew, allowing researchers to monitor its Pt"Ob>re5s. The group weren't sure how long the bacteria could survive in the fib res. They suspecled Uu'y might become dormant after several weeks when their rood supply ran out, but Fowler hoped to reactivate them by soaking the milkweed fibres in additional nutrients. So if your shirt was impregnated with a .strain of E.. coli designed to feed on human sweat and the proteins that cause body odours. you'd only have to wear it 10 joll the bugs into action. For some other strains, you might have to douse it with additional nutrients occasionally. ' You could end up having to feed your shirt instead of wash it,' said Fowler.

All !ltis orbital recyclillg

0

urine alld bacterial underwear

The)'Un fattor

destructioll raises Q questiOlI thougl!. yOIl

fll

zero gravity, just how do

emit till tlleuraste?

:1: Wind in the 100 From the oul!\idc, the 1972 space shuttle toilet looked much ltke the uncomfortable apparatus found in the jet airliners of the era. Inside, however, liquid and solid wastes were directed mto separate pIpes by h.tgh-\'elocity air streams that compensated for the lack of gravity on board the shuttle. The waste was held in two tanks - solids being vacuum-dried., sterilised and drodorised, ready 10 be pumped out when the shuttle returned to Ea rth. Depositing them in orbit would have obscured rearward vision and possibly interfered. with external equipment.

Very clever, bitt

1101

as ingeniolls as Coralf Emil lAgstrom 's

IIIlIltipurpose droi~ •••

'1,1: Hot seat cleans up Most of the best inventions kill at least two birds with one stone. COran Emil Lagstrom's 1972 invention both disposed of lavatory waste where there was no proper sewage system and provided. central heating. The contraption cons.isled of a combustion chamber with an oil or gas burner to bum solid wdste and evaporate liquid waste, al1 situated. under the toilet poln and sW'l"ounded. by a water jilcket. TIle jacket was connected. toa large column-like tank which fed a central heating system. Inside the tank, and heated by it, was a second, completely separate water-he-ating system which provided hot

17

18

tklwroMlkuTornado

water for washing. The \\later was supplied from the mains or a water store. The hot exhaust fumes from the burning waste were passed from the combustion chamber to a chimney.

Lovely. But ctlougll aoout toilets. Time to move on to s,lo/, bod breath lind mouldy food. In 2002, New Scientist rill! th~s artIcle about the mysteries behind the runny nose.

:it: Season's sniffles SCHNJFFFRRPCHRRT ... Ah, thai's bettu. Uh 00, unbecoming drip is rapidly re-forming on end of nose. Hunt frantically through pockets for bedraggled scraps of paper hanky. No fOY .. . oh weB, only one thing for it. TIme to deploy the sleeve.

Admit it, you've been there. You are fabuJously dressed to impress, ready to mingle, frolic, see and be seen. After a 2o-minute walk in the freezing cold, you arrive triumphant Then., as your body warms up and you begin an inteUigent conversation ....,;.th your boss, your nose begins to drip like a leaky faucet, The phenomenon has earned an entry in medical textbooks as 'cold-induced rhinitis'. But don't be fooled by the fancy name. The truJh is that no one knows very much about it, although scientists have pointed the.finger at the a utonomtc nervous system. which directs lnvohmtary actions such as breathing. Nerves belo nging to the autonomic nervous system, some of which connect to the nasal glands, use II neurotransmitter known as acetylcholine. Fortunately, there is a quick fix. Ipratropium bromide is an inhibitor of acetylcholine. TWo squi rts of the solution in each nostril 45 minutes before ski.ing. snowballing or eating spicy food and lhe problem is taken care of.

The yuck factor

Most people go through life unaware how easy it is to fix the probU!m. According to William Silvers, an allergIst from. Vail, Colorado, whose fascination wIth runny noses won him recognition as The Skier's Nose Doctor', people don't do much about their sudden bouts of sniffling because they ilI1! simply not seen as a medical issue. In fact, Silvers c.launed, when faced with the grim realisation that their nose has begun to leaK, the majority of folks ta.ke the matter into their own hands - quite literaJly. 'That's why they make cycling gloves with absorbent terry doth on the outside: he said You thoughllhey were designed to mop sweat? 'Well, I ~ them for my nose: he replied, unabashed . Silvers has been researching cold-induced rurmy noses Since the 19Bos, usmg the slopes of several Colorado skl resorbi as his field lab. And his findings on people's nose habits make intriguing reading. Women tend to be better prepared and often carry tissues, fOf" example. Men prefer their sleev'-'5, or in certain situahons (especially in the great outdoors) may even resort to what he refers to as ' the farmer 's blow': block one nostril and blow, then repeat for the other side. 'They blow it out and keep on going,' said Silvers. Children just ignore it. Wiping may be their parents' favoured option, but a good old snort to recycle that lovely snot is good enough for the Iuds. 'It doesn't bother them as much,' he said, Silver's fa!C:ination with the runny nose doesn't end there. He could even teU you how common the phenomenon is based on quantifying the usage of tissues by placing boxes of them nearski ults.Thecolder it is on the slopes, he found , !he faster the tissues diSappear. A few teams around the world have carried out studies of cold-induced rlUniti5 in animals as well as humans. But the most fiendish snot-inducing experiments have involved people. At Johns Hopkins Univt'TSity School of Medicine in Baltimore, for example, volunteers were ASked to inhale cold dry air for 45 minutes so thai scientist5 could measure their nasal e:ntissions in search of any hint of why the phenomenon

19

80

HO\'I to Mike a Tomado

is different from, say, an aUergic reaction. There have even been studies in which just one nostril was blasted with chilly air. Surprisingly, both nostrils wereequaUy prolific producers of mucus in this situation. Of course, plenty of people have their own pet theories as to what causes the problem. The ancient Greeks thought that a runny nose was a sign that the brain was turning into mush. One day, science may reveal just why copious amounts of watery goo end up on our sleeves when we least expect it. Until then, only the nose knows,

And iflhry can collect wlra/I! pail, why 1101 whale 5nol loo?

~; Thar she blows What is the stranges.t thing you could do with a remote-controlled toy helicopter? Strapping on a few Petri dishes and flying it through whale soot must be high on the list. That is how Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse, a veterinarian and conser· vaUon biologist with the Zoological Society of London. has spent much of her time over the past few years. In :woB, Acevedo-Whitehouse nlade it possible to study the viruses, fungi and bacteria that hitch a ride in whale lungs EO(" the first time. Researchers can fairly easily take blood ·samples from other marine mammals, such as seals and sea lions. but a whale's sheer bulk means that such a sampling would be fatal. 'Scientists have always found it difficult to study diseases in whales because of their size,' explained AcevedoWhitehouse. But after witnessing the sheer power of whale 'blows' in the Gulf of California.. she rea]jsed that this would be the best way of sampling the insides of a lh'e whale in the <xcan.

She first tried tying herself to a research boat and leaning (We.rboard to catch 3 bit of whale snot in Petri dishes. 1t worked,' she said, 'but it wasn' t very safe.' Her technique became more sophisticated. For species like grey and sperm whales that did not mind being dosetoa boat, the researchers attached their Petri dishes to a long pole and held them out over the blows. With the shyer blue whale, they had to resort to miniature helicopters. The Petri dishes were attached beneath the metrelong choppers, whld! were remotely flown through whale snot_ 'The whales definitely notice the helicopter,' said Acevedo--Whltehouse, 'they tunl on their lIides to look at it But they don't seem bothered and we don't even touch them.'

Farflm~tcly; the resrard'ers are nul bemg forced to 5tl4dy the odour of wllnle blows. /jilt if tJJ~ dId, they mlgltl bt able to dl!ll!Tmillt what sex they were. Halitosis lIaS hiddell secrets.

-: Bad breath points to sex People can correctly guess the sex of fe llow humans simply by smelling their breath, according to a study carried out in 1982 at the University of Pennsylvania in the US. In their experiments, 19 female and 14 male college students acted as od~ur donors; they were asked to refrain from cleaning their teeth or eating garlic or heavily spiced foods during the five days of tl\e study. The odour judges consisted of five male and five female students. Odour donors and judges were separated by a sc.reen in a large, well-ventilated room. Each donor exhaled a given amount of breath into a glass tube passing through thescreen. On the opposite side. the judges inhaled the breath of a donor and ranked it on a seven-poinl scale according to its inlensity

82

How to Make a Tornado

and pleasantness or Othe-rwlse_ In addition, each judge was asked to guess the sex of the dono r. Both male and female judges correctly guessed the sex of the donors in 95 per ('ent of tests. Female judges were better at identifying males and male judges slightly be«er at identifyillg females. On average. male odours were more intense and less pleasant than female odours. Circumstantial evi· dence points to honnonal differences.

11': Real slow food TIle next time you mourn a forgotten mOJ1o(!I that's slipped past its usc-by date, remember that things (ould always be worse. Take the case o f Fidelia Bates of Tecumseh, Michigan. Nter baking a fruit cake for lbanksgi ving in November I &n, the unfortunate Mrs Bates promptly expired. This presented a rather delicate question at the family farmhouse: who would be the first to eat a piece of the dead woman's cake? As it turned out, nobody would. Mrs Bates's family has resisted temptation for over ]}o years, and counting. 11's hard. it's crystallised. irs fossilised: said her 86-year-old great-grandson Morgan Ford. 'Nobody wanted to eat it after she passed away, and so now 1 have it.' Kept under a glass lid and stored high up in a cupboard for 75 years, the cake has stayed there ever sin('e, save (or the occasionaJ appearance on TV or at Morgan's grandchildren's school s.how-jlI1d-teJl The fruit cake has attracted a few daredevu gourmands over the years. 'My uncle was the first to try a tiny piece off it, about 25 years ago,' said Pord. 'And t did tift the lid off when it tumed 100 and for a moment we could smell rum.' Such wiZt:llt:\.lleCtoveN have loog been a staple of locollJ newspapt:r reports. in 1951. Mrs E. Burt Phillips of West Hanover, Massachusetts. returned a 56-year-old can of dams to the manufacturer ('still edible', the press duly reported). A

The y\lck factol

year later a 7O-year-okl crock of buller ('still white and sweet') was retrieved from an abandoned well in Illinois. In 1968. Sylvia Rapson of Cowley, UK, fou nd a loaf of bread baked in 1&]6, stiU edible, tightly wrapped in table linen in an attic: trunk ('I'm keeping it for sentimental reasons,' she informed The Tittles), and when a house in Crimsby was razed to the ground in 1970. the ruins miraculously yielded up a 1928 packet of breakfast <:'ereal- a fi nd that was declared, inevitably. 'still edible'. More unusual is an original owner of ancienl grub who's actually willing 10 eat it. In 1969, one George l.."lmbert turned up at the New Mexicostate fair wearing his uniform from the 1898 Spanish-American war. Inside his ml'SS kit he found a piece of hard tack and to the crowd's awe he bit a piece off and ale it. 'Tastes just like it did then.' the grizzled veteran announced. 'Wasn't any good then and it isn't now: Oscar Pike, a food scientlslat Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. would probably not have been surprised ' Food quality is always declining,' he said. Just how quickl)" it declines, though, remained anecdotal until Pike and colleagues put out a call to local households: bring us your tired.. your stale, your undusted maSSt$ of tins and sacks. In short. empty those basement pantries. Having conducted taste and odour tests on everything from 3O'year-old dried Dlilk to oatmeal, Pike announced his results in 2006: the mtmeal wasn't a ll that good, but 110t aU that bad eitileL It helped thai the fats in quick-<,ookingootsdo not readily oxidise lnlo hexanal, the unpleasanl-smel1ing fatty arid that serves as an off-pulling indicator or rancidity. When Pike was asked wh ich old food he would ealJtimseli he said '30-year-old wheat. Baked into wholewheat bread it has practically the same sensory quality as bread made from freshly grown wheat: Grains are known for Iheir longevity. Every decade ul\('overs more US civil defence caches of vitamin-fortified survival crackers, a legacy of the Cold War. Though they nre

83

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How to Make it Tornado

veritable museum pieces now, in the 19705 local governments struggled to decide what to do with their vast stores of stilled ible crackers. Most cities eventually tossed them out. But in March :wo6 another 352,000 crackers turned up in a forgotten vault below the Brooklyn Bridge. A New York bridge inspector, sampling one, charitably d escribed it as having 'a unique flavour '. Vintage food discoveries may also become widely known thanks to the web. In 1997 Tony Rogers, a former employee at a WISCOnsin-based chemical company. cleaned out his office de6k to discover it Dotly Madison apple pie he had pun:hased at a gas station 8 years earlier. 1 did pick up a piece of the pie. ond I ACtually ate §om£' of it. It was somewhat caramelised and chewy. But ... it was the same taste.' In recent years Rogers has also occasionally sampled ready meals of scal· loped potatoes and h.-u n he bought in 191)4: 'They still look, smell and tasteexacUy as they did,' he said. ') honesUy think that if my pie was put back on a shelf in a gas station. someone would purchase it, consume it and not ask any questions.' IE they did eat it, though, wouldn't they get sick? Rogers didn't, and in the case of dried foods the answer generally seems to be no. 'When stored at room temperature in an oxygen-free atmosphere, then!: is no reason to believe dried food would not be safe: said Pike. 'Microbiologically, lowmoisture food that is safe when packaged is still safe after storage.' Who could disagree? Plenty of people seemed to l\ave lived to leU the tale.

It 's time to move outside the hllmJIn body. They've been around for a long time. 11u~ oidesi /ltad-iollse egg to be discovered was found attached 10 a lo,ooo~ytor-Dld IUlman hllir III an archlltfJlogical sile in north~ast Brazil, and we 4ft still d&Jtioping new Wflys /0 bump them off.

The rode. factol

.'.+: Spot the louse Ashampoo developed in the US in the year:woo provided an innovative weapon to help parents battle infestations of lice in their children's heads. The product caused lice eggs, or nits, to g low under ultravIOlet light, making iht.'m much easier to spot and renuwe by hand. Sydney Spiesel, a paediatrics professor at Yale University School of Medicine, formulated the shampoo after he was forced to manually remove pesticide-resistant lice and their eggs from a child's head. 'The child had thide, blonde hau. It took me an hour to go through this kid's head,' he said. Every year about 14 million childrvn get head lice in the US alone. For years, shnmpoos containing permethrin were usro to keep the bugs at bay. But studies - and experience in schools and day nursenes - showed thai lice had become resistant to this and other common pesticides. ThIS left parents literally nit-picking. USlOg special fine-toothed combs bought at pharmacies. But the tiny eggs, at less than a millimetre across, are hard to see - and they stick tenaciously to the hair. If even a few eggs are missed, the child can quickly become re-infested. Knowing that lice eggs contain chitin - the polysaccharide from which the exoskeletons of arthropods are made -Spiesel took a commercial organic dye he knew would bind to chitin and added it to an over-thfX'Qunter shampoo. The dy~ was 'delightfully cheap and delightfully non-toxic', he said ThE' dye bound to the chitin in the eggs, but not to the hair or scalp. When Spiesel shone a 'black' (UV) light on the t'ggs hi" saw a 'brilliant glow' which made them easy to remove.

Crossology- prell.1f IDusy, t!hl

85

4 Death, doctors and the human body Irs time to visit the doctor, and we hope you are paying atten--tion. Many people don't, It seems, whIch leadl> to problems.

Health research from the US reveals an unexpected medical nsk factor: living too close to the doctor. The Mayo Clinic in

Minnesota was worried that after an appointment many patients either forget what their doctor told them or ignored the doctor's advice anyway. To find out, researchers monitored 556 people on visits to

their GP, noted what the doctor told each patient, then followed the patient home and asked what they had heard. The

patients 'did not mention 68 per cent of the health problems diagnosed: the study found, 'including 54 per cent of the most important problems', The study suggested that 'denial' and 'sclL-ctive Listening' were the main techniques used by the plltit'nts to i&,on' mPdkal advirt". But the surv ... y concluded

that 'patients who travelled a considerable distance for their care were most likely to remember and fo llow what their doctor had discussed with them'. U you don' t pay attention to the offering of extraordinary medical research contained In this chapter you'll miSS out on Robert E. Cornish" the doctor who rockons he can reverse death. the researrhen who made their subject swallow a balloon full of cold water as a means of cooling the human body, and what it feels like to die (once you've fOW1d out you1J need to book an appointment with Dr Cornish). If you keep reading you'll also learn about two of thls book's heroes, Stubbins Ffirth and Barry Marshan. Stubbins

Death. doctoR and the human body

drank infected vomit and Barry is a Nobel prizewinner who swallowed something else. Death also features to a worrying degree in this chapter. We have stories about execution.. and what it's like to drown Of bleed to death. OK we've changed our minds; pay no attention at all to this chaplef an~ feel a whole lot better about yourseU - no visit to the doctor m]uired.

It's always bun a mllllu of dtbalr whrihtr you should rtad the last page of II book first. just to rhuk llul, it's worth your w!rilt botheri'lg with tlU' earli" bits. Under lIorma/ circumstlmccs we'd declilll~. but we're not talking about books here, we're ta/killg about life. A"d we've decided /fwl, 111 th,s case, tile end is Q very good place to start, So, to sel the scene, let's establish just what lift, or irs absmct, is e::ou:.tly

~ When is a person dead? In 1962, R. S. Schwa. a neurologist at Harvard University, stated that death in humans is certain if an electroencephalogram (a measure of electrical activity in the brain) showed continuous flat lines without any rhythm for an hour or more, even if the heart was beating. The electroencephalogram would also show a resistance of over 50,000 uhms and ;uu1d not register a discharge even if a loud noise was made next to the patient. In additlon spontaneous respiration should have ceased for an hour.

Tllere are more sophisticated mealls of determining deoth these days, but we like the idea I1lal yOI/'" dtad if you haVl1l'1 u,eat/mf for an hOl4r and Q loud '1D1st docs,,'t wake you up. AlJd wilen death finally happens - as it will to eaclt Q/ld every one of us

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How to Make a Tornado

- what docs it actl/ally feel like? Do we really blow? I" 2007, New Scientist decided IQ find out mort'.

1t How does it feel to die? Is it distressing to experience consciousness slipping away or something people can accept with equanimity? Are there any surprises in store as our existence draws to a close? These are questions that have plagued philosophers and scientists for centuries, and chances are you've pondered them too

occasional ly. None of us can know the answers for S~ until OUI own time comes, but the few individuals who have had their brush with death interrupted by a last-minute reprieve can offer some intriguing insights. Advances in medical science, too, have led to a better understanding of what goes on as the body gives up the ghost. Death comes in many guises, butane way or another it is usually a lack of oxygen to the brain that delivers the coup de grace. Whether as a result of a heart attack, drowning or suffocation, for example, people ultimately cUe because their neurons are deprived of oxygen, leading to cessation of electrical activity in the brain - the modem defmilion of biological death. If the flow of freshly oxygena ted blood to the brain is s topped, through whatever mechanism, people tend to have about ten seconds before losing consciousness. They may take many more minutes to die, though. with the exact mode of death affecting the subtleties of the final experience. Read on for a brief guide to a few of the many and varied ways death can suddenly stri ke.

O9lh, doctors and the human body

Drowning Suffocating tQ death in water is neither pretty nor painless, though it can be surprisingly swift. Just how fast people drown depends on several factors, induding swimming ability and water temperature. In the UK, whf'rf> the Wthirds of victims are good SWImmers, suggesting that people can gel into difficulties within seconds, said Mike lipton, a physiologist and expert in marine survival at the University of Portsmouth in the UK. fypically, when a victim real.i.scs thai they cannot keep their head above water they tend to panic, leading to the classic 'surface struggle'. They gasp for air
89

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How to Make aTomado

chair of Advanced Trauma Life Support for the American College of Surgeons. People can bleed to death in seconds if the aorta, the major blood vessel leading from the heart, is completely severed, for example, after a severe fall or car accident Death could ~ up much more slowly if a smallfi'r vein or artery is nicked - even taking hours. Such victims,would experience several stages of haemorrhagic shock. The average adult has 5 Hires of blood. Losses of around 750 millilitres generally cause few symptoms. Anyone: losing 1..5 Iitres feels weak, thirsty and anxious, and would be breathing fast. By :1 litres, people experience diu.mess, confusion and then eventual uncorOOousncss. 'Survivors of haemonh.agic shock describe: many different experiences, ranging from fear to relative calm.' Kortbeek said. ' In large part this would depend on what and how extensive the associated injuries were. A single penetrating wound to the femoral artery in the leg might be: less painful than multiple fractures sustained in a motor vehicle crash.' Fire

Long the fate of witches and heretics, buming to death is torture. Hot smoke and flames singe eyebrows and hair and bum the throot and airv,lays, ma'king it hard. to breathe. Burns inflict immediate and intense pain through stimulation of the nociceptors - the pain nerves in the skin. To make matters worse, bums also tri~ a rapid inflammatory response, which boosts scnsitivity to pain in the injured tissues and SUI"-

rowuling areas. As bum intensities progress, some feeling is lost but not much, according to David Herndon. a burns-care specialist at University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. 'Thirddegree bums do not hurt as much as second-degree wOWlds, 35 super:6cial nerves are destroyed. But the difference is semantic; large bums are horrifically painful in any instance:

De~lh.

doc.torS ~nd the human body

Some victims of severe bums report not feeling their injuries while they are still in danger or inlent on saving others. Once the adrenalin and shock wear off, however, the pain quickly sets in. Pain management remains one of the most ch(l\lenging medical problems in the care of bums victims. Most people who die in fires do not in facl d ie from burns. Tht' mO!';i r"nmmon cau!'.P of dp.aU\ is inhaling toxic gases carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and even hydrogen cyanide - together with the suffocating lack of oxygen. One study of fire deaths in Norway from 19')6 foWld that almost 75 per cent of the 2B6 people autopsied had died from carbon monoxide poisoning. Depending On the size of the fire and how dose you are to It, concenl.rations of carbon monoxide could start to cause headache and drowsiness in minutes, eventually leading to unconsciousness. According to the US National Fire Protection Association, 40 per cent of the victims of fatal home fire!! are knocked Qut by fumes before they can even wake up. Fall from ~ heigh t A high fall is Ct':rtainly among the speediest way! to die: terminal velocity (no pun intended) is about 200 kilometres per hour, achieved from a height of about 145 metres or more. A study of deadly falls in Hamburg. Germany, found tha i 7' per rent of victims died in the first few seconds or minutes after

landing. The exact cause of death vanes, depending on the landing surface and the person's posture. People are especially unlikely to arrive at the hospital alive if they land on their head - more common for shorter (under 10 mt!tres) and higher (over 25 metres) falls. A 19B1 analysis o f 100 suicidal jumps from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Fr3ncisco- height: 75 metn>s, velocity on impact with the water: 126 kilometres per hour - found nuUll;!fU1J,!;i caust's uf illstan t-cIllt'uu::. ut'i1 lh mcludmg massive lung bruising, collapsed lungs, exploded

91

92

How to M"\:e,, T~

hearts or dam"ge to major blood vessels and. lungs through broken nbs, Survivors of great falls often report the sensation of time slowing down. The natural reaction is tostruggle to maintain a f~·fir..t landing.. re.uJtillg in £ractUJ'eS to Ule leg bones, lower spinal column and life-threatening broken pelvises. The impact travelling up through tM body can also burst the aorta and heart chambel:S. Yet this is probably still the safest way to land, despite the force being concentrated in a smaU area: the feet and legs form a 'crumple ume' which provides some protl'<."tu.:m tu th~ major internal organs. Some experienced climbers or skydivers who have survi\'ed a fall report feeling focused , aJert and driven to ensure they land in the best way possible: relaxed, legs bent and, where possible, ready to roll. Certainly cvery liUle helps, bu t thc top tip fO'r faUcI'S must be to aim for a soft landing. A paper from 1942 reporll,.'\i a woman falling 28 metres from her apartment building into freshly tilled soiL She walked. away with just a fractured rib and broken wrist. Explosive decompression Death due to exposure to vacuum is a staple 01 science fiction plots, whether the unfortunate gets thrown from an airlock or ruptures their spacesuit. In real life there has been just one fatal space depressurisation accident. This occurred on the Russian SoYUZ-11 mission in 1971, when a seal leaked upon te-enny into the Earth's atmosphere; upon landing all three flight crew werdound dead from asphyxiation. When the external air pressure suddenly drops, the air in the lungs expands, tearing the fragile gas exchange tissues. This is espeoally damaging if the victim neglects to exhale prior to decompression or tries to hold their breath. Oxygen begins to escape from the blood and lungs. Up to 40 seconds after the pressure drops, bodies begm to swell as the water in tissues vaporises. though the tight seal of skin prevents them from 'bursting'. The heart rate rises initiaUy, then plummets.

Death, docton and the lIuman body

Bubbles of water vapour form in the blood and travel through Ule circulatory system. obstructing blood flow. After about a minute. blood effectively stops circulating. Human survivors of rapid decompression accidents include pilots whose planes lost pressure, or in one case a NASA t...><::hnidan who accidentally depressurised his flight suH inside a vacuwn chamber. They often report an iruhal pain, like being hit in the chest, and may remember feeling air escape from their lungs and the inability to inhale. Tune to loss of consciousness was generally less than 15 seconds. Surprisingly, in view of these apparently lTaumatic effects, animals that have been repressur ised within 90 seconds ha\'e generally sun'lved with no lasting damnge.

Obviously somt' oflhl! o~ mllst Iw hmrsoy, lI"tll it }rappt!ns to us Wf'won ' , know -nnd Wt!'rt ill no nlsh tofilld out. Some IInJor'unQt~, holl1l!'Vtr, do filld out lwJo~ tlleir time mould otherwise IN! up, tl/ollks to the humon proctice of uecutlon. And other unJortllnDtt'S haut. bun, ~II , unforlunatt' mough to Shldy them , In 198J, ant' bra"OC! New Scientist correspondent did just tlml.

'i: An unnatural way to die In 11}8), the British parliament voted decisively agaiNt llie relntroduction of the death penalty. But what were they voting against? What happens during an ex(.'Cution] Why does the person die? Is death instantaneous? Which is the most humane method? If the death penaJty had been reintroduced in the UK, hanging would probably have been the method. The blindfolded prisoner stands on a trapdoor with a rope around his ur her neck. The door is opened suddenly and the weight of the prisoner's falling body causes traction and tearing of the

93

rl'rvll " I m""" 10'". IIkHI IInJ bl... M..I \ t"'''t'I.. I II., UI'I''-'I u' rvlLal V('rtl'hrdl' .1f1' dislocated, u.nd U\e loplnal cord IS &'parated from the brain: this is the lesion whKh causeft death. The volume 01 blood in the skull and face qukkly increases, bul soon lalls again. The respiratory and heart rates slow until they stop and death supervenes. Initial1y during hanging the prisoner attempts to move, presumably reacting mainly to the pain oJ neck traction and dislocation. Later there is a series oC reAex movements, as a result of spinal rcllext.'S originating at the site of severance of the brnin from the spinal cord, but these are not'evidence that he or she can still feel. lianging. however, dQeS not immediately arrest respiration and heartbeat. 1lley both start to slow immediately, but whereas breathing stops in seconds, the heart may beat for minutes Blood 1055 pla)"1!1 uttJe part m death due to hanging. It is Impossible to know for how long the condemned person feels pail'l, but in addition to cervical pain, the prisoner prooobly has an acute headache from the occlusion of veins and engorgement of cerebral blOOll vt!Sl;els; Ulis l\.~uJts from the rope closing off the \'eins of the neck before occluding the carotid and vertebral arteries. In experiments during the Serond World War on human volunteers, the pressure at the lower end of the neck was raised to 600 millimetres 01 mercury and consciousness was lost in 6 to 7 seconds. This wouJd have been sufficient time to feel pain. Shooting is probably the second most widely used execution technique. Death is virtually instantaneous if the person is shot at close quarters through the skull; the bullet penetrates the medulla, which contains the vital rcspiratOl)' and cardiac centres, among others. But condemned prisoners are usually shot by {iring squads aiming at the heart from 80me me1res away and it is dtfficuh to shoot a person dead with a single or few shots, except at very dOl!le range. 1he reason lor this is that the cause or death in tht."Secases is normally blood loss through rupture

,,' Ih,' 1U' .. n ", '" I!!I X" hl n'~ .1 ~"'''' I ' L II I 11 '.11111)1, .11 IIII' hll l~~" A I I~ loven III upt'r;} nr W t'!l h~"I!o lm l W b

Ih" t di.·.l th in th~ rho UI1UI t.1nC~ t.1j..eJ, . ....eral miliuM, qUite ~ uSh fol" the ... Idlm tel sinK a pow('riul aria or alm051 describe the location III butted. treasure lIunets, of course, cause a gre3t deal of damage in tissues.. Illgh.velocity missilrs. such as rifle bullets, have a tfemert.!t OlUOl; 3mount of l>nt:rgy. which is part1y released as heat .... ilhin the tiS6Ues. This causes evaporation of tissues and W;l ter, fomung a canot-tihapcd spoKe several hWldted bmes UK' volume of the original buJld. When the buOd hils passed lluuugh, this cavity collapses and lUCks In dead tissue and contaminated air. The guillotine was named alter Ihe French deputy whO proposed its use 10 1;089 and Introduced as a ,wlft and painless device to extend 10 aU citizen!! the advantages of a tech· nlque used only on noblemen in France. It was constdered more humane because the blade was sharper and execution WAS more rapid than was nOTfllally aC'COmplJshed with an axe. Death OCUlI'S llue to !ieJMraUon of U\t' brain and spinal cord, after transection of the surrounding tis6ues. This must cause acute and J)()s!Jlbly severe pain. Consciousness is probably lost within '2 to} seconds, due to it rapid (all of intracranial perfusion of blood. Some macabre histoncal reports from post·revolutionary France cited movemmts of the eyes and mouth for 15 to )0 seconds after the blade struck. although these may have been post·mortem twitches and reflexe!l. , Garrotting was used in the Iberian peninsula until the lCJ70S. It is it form of strangulation by a metal collar with a clamp. lho8e who use it believe that the resultant dislocation of the neck is rapid and dt..'ftth is Instantaneo~ Unfortunately. although the clamp is tightened quiclc1y, the d~ree of compression of the neck suffiol>nt to dislocate it takes some seconds to achieve. The neck tissues are tough and the application of thecontr.lption is highly dis
96

How to Mab!
compressing the soft tissues, the clamp occludes the trachea . 11lerefore it kills by asphyxia, cerebral ischaemia and neck dislocation. Dying is painful, deeply distressing and may take several minutes. Electrocution was first approved by the state of New York in '1.888, and several hundred people .. year were executed in the US for rape and armed robbery, as well as murder, until the end of the lC}60s. The prisoner is fastened to a chair by his chest, groin. arms and legs to prevent violent movements and to keep the electrodes in place . These are moistened copper terminals attached to one calf and a band round the head. Jolts 014 to 8 am peres at levels between 500 and 2000 volts are applied for half a minute at a time, and 11 doctor inspects the condemned to decide if death has occurred or another jolt should be adm.ini!tered. In 1.982. John Louis Evans was shocked for half a mmute. Th.is broke the leg electrode, which was reattached. A second attempt failed to kill him and smoke was seen coming out of his mouth and left leg. He was given a third dose. II took ten minutes before the attending physician certified him as being

dead. The. effects of accidental eJectrocution are bums, respiratory paralysis and cardiac arrest. l1\e electric chair was introduced because it was believed. II causes instant and painless death. Close observation has shown this is clearly not the case. There is no reason whatsoever to believe that the. condemned person docs not suffer severe and prolonged pain. The prisoner is SO firmly fastened to the chair that he cannot move. The large amount o f energy in the shock paralyses the muscles, presumably leading to the belief that the failure to move meant the prisoner was not suffering pain. However, a prisoner bring electrocuted is paralysed and asphyxiated, but almo6t certainly fully conscious and sentient WJth a Iffhng of being burnt to death w hile conscious of the inability to

[)tath, doctors and the human bod~

breathe. It must feel very similar to the medieval triaJ by ordeal of being dropped into burning oil. Two further techniques have been introduced in the US, examples of which are given below. The first is intravenous injection. In December 1982, Charlie Brooks of Texas had his vein cannulated by il physician. Then.. from outside the execution chamber and unseen by the prisoner. a mixture was injected; this consisted of the rapidly acting anaesthetic Pentothal-(:urart' to paralyse the muscles, and potassium chloride to stop the heart. The condemned man would have gone off to sleep in to to 15 seconds, ne\-er to wake again. 1l\t~ prisoner would have suffered no more pain than a patient being given Pentothal before an operation. However, the physician gave an overdose and the condemned man died under anaesthetic from central respiratory depression. Other states have chosen gassing In September 11)8). Jimmy Lee Gray was strapped to a ch3ir in an airtight room. Sodium cyanide crystals were dropped mto II bath of sulphuric add below his chair by depressing a lever from outside. This c:reated hydrogen cyanide gas and the condemned man inhaled it, A sllfficient concentration to ronstitute a lethal dose would take several seconds to accumulate, depeu:ling on how hard he bied to avoid inhaling. It would cause. acute difficulty in breathing, ilSphyxia and, possibly. pain in the stomach. The prisoner wouJd be severely distressed and in pain during the whole procedure. The resuJting hypoxia would cause tum to have spasl)lS as in an epileptic fit, visible if he were not bound firmly. The prisoner would have cUed of inhibition of respiratory enzymes. TIns article does not discuss the morality of capital punishment. A physician has no more expertise in general moral and ethical questions than does anyone else. These are simply the physiological facts of execution. They are inescapable if gruesome.. but, If considered. may weU help us to makl! approp riate moral decisions.

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How to Maire a Tomado

Nasty stuff indeed - and nlOugh to make us determined prohibi. tionists on a subject that is still being debated today. To be /lonest thollgh, giV£71 th~ choice, we'd go for rhe guillotine. Got to be better than an old axe, for sure. Apparently it took tm oxemon thru attempts to ~ th~ head of Mary Queen of Scots in IS87. He had to finish the job with a knife. Decades earlier in IHl, M4rgartt Pole, tlu: COU fltess of Salisbury, was being ex~ujed at the Tower of Londou. Slle 'U.¥/s dragged to the block but refused to layiler head down. Tile illexperienc:ed oxeman made Qgflsh III her shoulder rather than her neck. According to some reports , she INpt from tilt: block alld was chased by the eXteutioller, who strllck 11 times before sht died Lovt.ly. But altl/ough we now know wllat iI's like to die, what TtQUy does happen aftcnvords7

2{}; What happens after you die? Many have tried to harness the rational horsepower of science to answer this most noaty question. Some were physicians,

some physicists, some psychologists. Two were Nobel prize. winners. One was a sheep rancher. They have tackled it in labs, in hospital operating rooms, in bams behind their hQUS(!S. Of them, only one landed an irrefutable proof - not a suggeo;tive nugget or an inexplicable anomaly, but the sort of answer you coWd plant your flag into and say, 'Victory! Now I know for ('I~r~in.' 1llP man's name was Thomas Lynn Bradlord. Though his background was in electrical engineering, Bradford', afterlik experiment involved gas, not electricity. On 6 February 1911, Bradford sealed the doors and windows of his rented room in Detroit, Michigan, blew out the pilot on his heater, and turned on the gas. Finding out is easy. Reporting back is the challenge. For this Bradford needed an accomplice. Some weeks back, he had placed a newspaper advertisement seeking a fellow

Oe~lh,

doctors and the hum~n body

spiritualist to help him witlh. his quest. One Ruth Doran responded, The two wet and agreed, as the New York Times put it, 'that there was but one way to solve the mystery - two minds properly attuned, one of which must shed its earthly manUe'. The protocol was sloppy at best, for regardless of whether or not our mantle-shucking engineer came through on the telepathic wireless, Mrs Doran. for the sake of Spll:itualism or publicity, could simply have told the reporters that he did. But she did not lie. The Times ran 8 follow-up under the headline 'Dead Spirituali!:tSilent'. A better-pedigreed variation of the Bradford experiment was undertaken by the phYSicist Oliver Lod~, once the pnncipal of the University of Binmingharn. Prior to his dE'ath in 1940, he devised the Oliver Lodge Posthumous Test. The goal, again, was to prove the existence of life after death. Lodge composed a secret message and sealed it in a packet (the Oliver Lodge Posthumous P'acket) SO that when,. after his dea Ul, he told mediums (four of them, recruited by the Oliver Lodge Posthumous Test Committee) what the message was. their stories could be checked. The packet itself was seak~ inside seven envelopes, each envelope containing a clue the mediums could employ to jog the deceased physicist's memory should he forget his own secret. wtead; the dues merely irritated the mediums. The contenLo; of Envelope 3, for example, I'Nd: ' Ifl ghre a numM of 5 digits it may be correct, but I may say som~g about 2 80 1, and that will mean I ann on the scent. It is not the real number .. , but it has some connection with it. In fact it is a factor of it: Eventually the mediuDls walked oH the set and the Posthumous Packet was tvm open, leaving the committee with nothing for their efforts but a slip of paper bearing an obscure musical fragment and a gnawing suspicion lhat Sir Oliver had been a few envelopes short of a stationery set. Of course, even had the mediw:ns succeeded, one could n~er have been certain whether they mJght simply have - vis

99

100 HOIW to Make I Tomildo

some discreet Oliver Lodge Posth umous Envelope Steaming -peeked,

~ deRd-reseurcher approach is clearly not t~ way to go. A more promising fack mig/It ~ to focus Ort those who htwt not qUite died, but merely managed a ~mf'Qk previe1O- ill IIII' lorm afa neardeJllIl experience.

;>]}; Out-of-body experiences (and weighing the soul) II someone could prove that a neaMiea th experience is, in verifiable fact, a round-trip visit to some other dimension and not a mirl!1~ of the dying mind, that would SUIl!Iy ~ 5CITlething to hang one's hopes on. But how does the person who claims to have glimpsed the beyond go about proving it? There seems to be no afteclife gift shop, no snow globes ful l of angel dandruff. Best to focus on one of those near-death trips that take the traveller only as far as the ceiling,. enabling a reconnaissance-type view of one's corporeal h ull down below. U one could at I~ast prove that one had seen the details of UM! NOm !rom up thl!re- and not remembered or hallu cinated or some comb ination of the two - then tha t would at least establish the possibtlity of the seeming impQSSibility of a consciousness exiSbng independent of its biological moorings. And that is why a laptop computer was duct-taped to the highest monitor in a cardiology operating room at the University of VtrgUUa in Charlottesville. The computer had been p rogrammed to show, for the d uration o f each operation, one 01 1.2 images, chosen at random and unknown to anyone, including the researchers. Th@ laptopwould bE!flatopenwith the screen faring the ceiling, such tha t th@onJyway a surgery

Dea!h. docwrs and the human body

patient might view the image would be as a disembodied consciousness. As patients came outof anaesthesia, psychologist Bruce Greyson interviewed them about what they remembered of their time in the operating room. So far there have been no surprises. Other, that is, than the surprising cooperation of a team of cardiac surgeons. Heart surgeons who believe that a consciousness can ocr:asionally perce.iVl' things in an extrasensory manner, independent of a brain and eyeballs, are less rare than you might tltink. But even then. how wouJd we know that the near-death experience isn't a hallmark tlf d ying, not Jeclth - d stopover, nota final destinatioo? How do we know thatseve.ral minutes later t11t" bright light doesn't dim and the euphoria fade and you're just fIat-out non-existent? 'We don't ~'l\ow, ' concedes Greyson. 'It's possible it's like going 10 the Paris airport and thinking you've seen France.' Another way to approach the afterlife would be to consider the vehicle: the soul (or consciousness, if you like). if the 5001 were something you could weigh, like a pancreas or a wart, then proving that it abandons the corpse at death would be a Simple maiter'of placing il dying person on a scale and watching to see if the needle went down at the moment he died (while also accounting for the minute amount of weight lost via moisture in exhalations and sweat). This is exactly what a Massachusetts physlcian named Duncan MacDougall did, beginning in 19(>1, using a trickedout industrial silk scale (see page 43) HJs post at a tuberculosis sanatorium provided MacDougall with ;J steady source of study subjects.. He weighed six m('(l as they rued" and there was, he said in a series of articles in Americnu Medicine, always a down-tick of the needle. However, only one of his trials went off without a significant hitch. Twice the authorities barged into the room and tried to stop the proceedings. Oafish accomplices jostled the5C1lle. Subjects died as the scale was being zeroed. And so MacDougall'sdaimed proof- thai

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102 HowtoMa!eaTomado

the soul exists, and that it w~gh9 a.bout 20 grams - is really no more than anecdote.

;:,@3 Sheep souls and thermodynamics Some 90 years later, a sheep rancher in Bend, Oregon, tried to replicate MacDougall's work. When II local hospital rebuffed his solicitation for terminal patients, Lewis Hollander Jr turned to his flock. Interestingly, he found thai sheep momentarily gam a smaU amount of weight at the moment they die, suggesting that the answer to the question 'What happens when we die?' might in fact be: 'Our souls go into sheep: Of rowse, it's a streich to think that the w~ght of a soul would register on a scale built for the likes of Iiveslock or bolts of cloth. But what if you were to get your hands on II scale calibrated not in ounces or grams, but in picograms trillionths of a gram? U you conslder consciousness to be information energy, as some do, then it would have a (very, very, very teeny tiny) mass. And jf you were to build a closed system,. such that no known sources of energy could leave or enter undetected, and you rigged it u p to your picogram scale, and put a dying organism ins.ide this system, then you could, in theory. do the MacDougall. In 2006, Duke University professor Gerry Nahum was very keen to undertake a consciousness-weighing project of his own (using not sheep nor men but leeches). Though he taught gynaecology and obstetrics. Nahum had a background in thermodynamiCS and information theory and had even worked outa 25-page proposal of exactly how to do it, ifonly someone would fund him the $1.00.000 he estimated it would 006t.

If consciousness is energy, then you probably don't need proof that it survives death, because proof already exists: the First Law of Thermodynamics - energy is neither created nor

Death, doctors and the human body 10)

destroyed. Though it's hard to take much comfort bom this.. Who wants to spend eternity as a blip, a gnat's fart, of disordered energy, with no brain at their disposal to help them remember or imagine or solve the Sunday crossword? What wouJd it be like? Would there even be a be? Nahum used the analogy of the computer. perhaps you'd be the operating system, stripped of its programs and interfaces. Heaven as the back of the closet where the brokm-down Dcl1s and Compaqsgo. If we are to eventually have our answer, our proof, it will nodoubt come to us courtesy of quantum theory. or whatever takes its p lace. Few of us will understand it well enough to take much comfort, however, if indeed comfort is what it offers. Try to enjoy life without worrying about the 'after' bit, and keep in mind that one day altogether too soon. bad luck or genetics will hand you the answer. In the meantime,. be nice to sheep.

Cripes. Who blows what's goirlg on? Pi!,lIilps UJ('d be octter off visiting Dr Can/ish.

I: Reversing death RnhPrt F.. Cornish, a researcher at the Berkeley campus of the University of California during the '9)05, believed he had found a way to restore life to the dead - at least in cases where major organ damage was not involved. His technique involved seesawing corpses up and down to circulate the blood while injecting a mixture of adrenalin and anticoagulants: He tested his method on a series of fox terriers, all of whom he named Lazarus after the biblical character brought bad: to life by Jesus.

104 How to Make a Tol'nOido

First Cornish asphyxiared the dogs a nd left them dead for ten minutes. Then he attempted to revive them. His finot two bials failed, but numbers thn.'!e and four were a success. With a whine and a feeble bark, the dogs stirred back to li/e. Though blind and severely brain damaged, they lived on for months as pets in his home. reportedly inspiring terror in

oU\el' dogs. Comish's research provoked. sud). controversy that the University of California eventually o rdered him off Ule campus. He continued his work in a tin shad:. attached to his house, despite complaints from neighbours that mystery fumes from his experiments wen> causing the paint on their homes to peel. Many years later, III 1947. Conush announced he was ready to experiment on a human being. He now had a new tool ill his arsenal: a home-made heart 1ung machine built out of iI vacuum cleaJlt:f blower, radiator tubing. an iron wheel. roUers and 60.000 shoelace eyes. Thomas McMonigle, a pris· oner awaiting execution on death row, volunteered to be his guinea pig, and Cornish ;lSked the stale of Cali/omia for per· mission to proceed with his experiment. After some deliberation, the state hlmed h im down. Apparently officials were worried that, should McMonigle come back to life, they might ha ve to free him. Disheartened. Cornish retreated to his home, where he eked out a living selling a toothpaste of his own invention. 4

Wt' fiud iI most surprising t.hn.t he could,(t find anyone oilIer thall a dtQth·row prisonu 10 be a va/untter. That aside, we're 1I0t sure why Cornish didn" attempt the proce:;s on lIimSf!1j if hi! was so culam - perhaps hr didn't luwr tilt con/idenct' of the braue rtSelll'Chers wilD follow ...

ue..m. OOCtors ano me.num..n oooy

: Hard to swallow J\s a junior doctor at the Royal Perth Hospital,. Western Australia, Barry Marshall was so sure the medkal establishment was wrong about the cause of stomach ulcers that he swallowed the bacteria he believed were to blame. It still took years to convince everyone - but it was to win him it share in a Nobel prize, alongside Robin Warren. New Scientist interIfiewed him in 2006. What made you decide to swallow the bacteria? It was so frustrating to see ulcer patients having surger/. or l'ven dying, when I knew a simple antibiotic t:reatment could (j)( the problem. Back in 1984, conventional medical wisdom was that ulcers were caused by stress, bad d iet, smoking.. alcohol and susceptible genes - and that no bacteria could survive in the stomach. Working with pathologist Robin Warren, I found a bacterium caUed Helicobacter pylori in all duodenal ulcer patients and in 71 per cent of those with gastric ulcers. We tried. to infect animals to prove this bacterium was the culprit but that failed, so we had to find a human volunteer. Why did it have to be you? I was the only person informed enough 10 consent, 50 I decided to be my own guinea pig. J didn't seek approval from the hospital's ethics committee because I didn't want to risk being turned down, and I didn't even tell my wife until I had swallowed the baderia . By then I had successfully treated several patients suffering from H. pylori infections using antibiotics. so it seemed that 1 had a cure. WhJ:t happened ;after you swallowed the bacteria? I was fine for three days, then began to feel nauseous, and soon began vomiting. My wife told me I had 'putrid breath'.

IV::'

106 How to Make a TOfnado

After"len days, a biopsy confirmed the bacteria had infected my stomach, and the stomach wall was inflamed with gastritis, which can eventually lead to ulcers. My experiment overturned 100 years of knowledge about uiceJ'S. We published our results in The uwut. Was it hard to convince the world that such a 'miracle CUJ'e' existed? Yes. When The Lancet finally used the word 'cure' in ]1)89 we thought that everybody must believe us now, but it was another 8 long years before most people in western countries W(!J'e aware that H . pylori caused ulcers. In the meantime, millions of people had taken unnecessary drugs or had sUigery, at a cost of billions of dollars. Did you find that infuriating? At the time , thought it was somewha t immoral. because doctors who were sceptical about H. pylori were making decisions that permanently affected the Jives of their patients. It was very easy for them to stick with the old treatments. I was annoyed about the level of opposjtion to our theory, and that people were not testing it, but now I realise that it takes time for an idea to gain acceptance.

And Bllrry MllrshllH wasn't the only one preptlred to swallow something hnrrid.

$ The vomit-drinking doctor How far would you go to prove your point? Stubbins Ffirth, a doctor-in-training living in Philadelphia during the early 19th century, went further than most. Way further.

ueam, QOttor1 ana tne numan oooy lUI

Having observed that yeUow fever ran riot during the summer, hut disappean?d OYer the- winter, Ffirth hypothesised it was not a contagious disease. He reckoned it was caused by an excess of stimulants such as heat, food and noise. To prove his hunch, Hirth set out to demonstrate that no matter how much he exposed himself to yellow fever, he wouldn't catch it. He started by making a small incision in his ann and pouring ' &esh black vomit' obtained from a yellow·fever patient inlo the cut He didn't get sick. But he didn't stop there. His experiments grew progressively bolder. He made deeper incisions in his arms 1010 which he poured black vomit. He dribbled the stuff in his eyes. He filled a room with heated 'regurgitation vaJ'Qurs' - a vomi t sauna - and remained there for Iwo hours, breathing in the air. He experienced a 'greatpain in my head, some nausea, and perspired very freely', bUI was OthC!JWLSe OK. Next pfirtJ\ began ingesting the vomit. He fashioned some of the black matter into pills and swallowed them down. He nuxed half an ounce of fresh vomit with water and drank it. 'The taste was vcry slightly acid,' he wrote. 'II is probable that if I had not, previous to the two last experiments, accustomed myself to tasting and smelling it, that emesis would have been the consequence' Fmally, he gathered his courage and quaffed pure, undiluted black vomit fresh from a patient's mouth. Still he didn't get sick. Ffirth rounded out his experiment by liberally smearing hlmself with other yelloW-fCVe-f tainied fluid s: blood. saliva. perspiration and urine. Healthy as ever, he declared his hypothesIS proven III his 1804 thesis. He was wrong. Ye.UOw fever, as we nuw knuw, is very contagious, but it requires direct transmission into the bloodstream, usually by a mosquito, to cause infection. Considering the strenuous efforts Ffirth took to infect himsdf, it mUl>t be L'onsiuenrl SOlJll:!thlng or a miracle J\l' remained alive. The bright spot for him was that, alter all he

108 How to Make ~ Tornado

put himself through, the UniVersity of Pennsylvania did award him the degree of Doctor of Medicine. What his patients made of him unfortunately remains unrecorded..

II's n dichl, bId Sl!/IIr peoplt' really are prqJared to put their bodiCl 011 tlu! Ii"t'.

~ This

won't hurt a bit

Two surgeons had finished work for the day. But instead of going home, they began to prepano for one more operation - a little out-of-hours experiment intended, to advance the art of anaesthesja. August Bier was a rising star at the Roya1 Surgical Cliruc in Kiel, north Germany. HJs young assistant, August Hildebrandt, had agreed to help him. What happened next was not so much heroic as comic. Just one little mistake and courageous selflessness turned to black comedy. It made Bier 's name. But the events of thai evening wouJd be forever etched on Hildebrandt's memory, not to mention several other parts of his body. In the lB90s, general anaesthesia was decidedly d cdgy. Olioroform sent patients gently to sleep - but there was no room for mistakes. A few drops too many and the patient would be dead befon! the surgeon picked up the sca1pel. Ether wasn't quite so dangerous, but it was slow to act - surgeons sometimes started to operate before their patients had gone under. The survivors suffered unpleasant ~ide eHectsfrom violent headaches and vomiting to ether pneumonia. Bier reasoned it should be possible to banish sensation from most of the body without knocking the patient out com· pletely by injecting a small dose of cocaine into the cerebrospina1 fluid that bathes the spinal corel. He tried his technique on ha1f a dozen patients. They lost sensation from the lower

Death, doctors and the human body 109

part of their bodies long enough for him to carve out chunks of diseased bone from their ankles, knees and shins - and even the thigh and pelvis. 'On the other hand, so many romplaints had arisen in association with this method that they equalled the complaints usually occurring after general anaesthesia: he wrote. 'To arrive at a valid opinion, 1decided to conduct an experiment on my own body.' The procedun! was simple enough. Hildebrandt had to mdke a lumbar pWlCture by plunging a large needle through tht! membranes that protected Bier's spinal cord into the Ouid·filled space bf:...neath l1'\t>rI tw had to fit it syringe on tlw needle and inject a solution of cocaine. But preparations for the experiment had been less than meticulous. Hildebrandt made the lumbar puncture. Then.. with his finger over the hub of the needle to prevent fluid from leaking out, he took up the syringe of oocai.ne -only to find. it was the wrong lit. As he fumbled with the needles, Bier's cetebrosp~ nal fluid began to squirt out. Horrified, Hildebrandt stoppffi .1nd plugged the wound. This was when the pair should have called it a day. Instead. Hildebrandt offered to take Bier's

place. At 7.)8 pm, after checking the needles morecatefully. Bier began. The cocaine worked fast. •After 7 minutes: Needle prlcXs in the thigh were {elt as prc-s.'>urt!; ticklmg of the soles of the feet was hardly felt.' Bier jabbed HildebTandt in th(' thigh with a needle. Nothing. He tried harder, stabbing th~ thigh with the surgical e
110

HowtoMauaTomado

Hildebrandt's shin bone and then, when that (ailed to h;I\'e any effect, gave his testicles a sharp tug, In a final bU.J"5t of enthusiasm, Bier stabbed the thigh right to thcbone, squashed hard on a testicle and, for good measure, rained blows on Hildebrandt's shin with his knuckles. After 4) minutes. the effect of tM roaine began to wear off. The two surgeons, one missing a significant amount of

cerebrospinal fluid, the other battered, burnt and suffering from serious stab wounds, went out for dinner. 'We drank wine and smoked several agars,' wrote Bier. The next moming. Bier woke fueling bright mel breez),. By the afternoon he had turned pale, his pulse was weak and he kit dizzy whenever he stood up. 'AU these symptoms disappeared as soon as Ila), down horl7.ontally, but they returned when I arose. In the late afternoon. thcrl':fore, I had to go to bed: He stayed there lor the neKI9 days. When he finaUy gOI up again he felt quite well. 'I was perfectly able to tolerate the strain of a week's hunting in the mountains,' he wrote. Hildebrandt didn't escape so lightly. The first night he was violently iU. He had a splitting headache and was sick. But someone had to tend to the cUnic's patients and, with Bier in bed. the job fell to him. Each morning for the next week, Hildebrandt dragged himself to work. Each afternoon, he staggered home and collapsed into bed. 'Dr Hildebrandt's legs were painful and bruises appeared in several plares,' wrote Bier, rather understating the case. When Bier wrote his ground-breaking paper dnc:ribing the experiment, he gave a blow-by-blow account or what Hildebrandt had endured. As far as Bier was concerned, the experiment was a huge success. He had shown thai a tiny dose of cocaine could deaden sensation for long enough to perform a major operation. Spinal anaesthesia was far safer than general anaesthesia, and within two years surgeons amund the world were wing it. Bier put the headaches down to the loss of cerebrospinal Awd, and he was right - this was finally proved in the 19)05.

Hildebrandt, though. had gone right off Bier and became one of his most vehement critics. When a row blew up over who had really been first to invent spinal anaesthesia, HildebrAndt championed Bier 's rival, an American neurologist called Jame!! Coming. Hildebrandt never said why. Perhaps he wasshoc:ked by the zeal with which Bier had battered him. Maybe he was mUled because in the end Bier was recogrused as a pi()n~ring surgoon,. while he was forever known as the man whose boss had rugged his testicles.

Som(' rtSCarcllers, of ('o urse, prefer to pIll other peoplt'~ bodies OIl tilt' lill £' ••.

~:); The

fall guy

Mark Crabinerspent the best parto! 15 years tripping people up. II wasn'l thai he was a prankster. He'd simply been trying 10 soiv@a problem that aU of us face from time 10 time: how 10 avoid falling wh.en you trip. II has been known for decades that older people fall more than younger ones, and falls are responsible for the majority of tnjuries to people over the age of 65. But 10 understand why, Grnbiner reasoned, why not study those people who usually manage 10 avoid it: the youth? In 1.986 Grabiner decided to study young. healthy people's responses to being tnpped. Bul fU'St, he had a problem. U volunteers knew they were going to be tripped - and they had to 80 they could give their permission - how could he surprise them? Grahiner. at the University or Illinois at Oticago, worked out a way to do it.

Foc his experiments, he strapped the volunteers into a hanu.'SS attached 10 a sliding track mounted in the ceiling. This caught them just before they hit the floor. 'They hove to

112

How to Make I Tomado

be able to throw themselves as hard as they can at the ground - and miss,' he said. Once the hapless subjects got used to their new outfits, the researchers wamed them they were going to be tripped. But they didn't say when or how. 'We have 10 be pretty devious,' he said. An assistant uncoiled a rope, laid it across the lab and instructed thevolunteers to walkover it normally. Thevictims approached the rope cautiously, but relaxed once they had passed it, thinking they were safe. 'And then we trip them.' Grabiner said. An aluminium box popped out of the Ooor, ca tchmg the unsuspecting victim's foot as they 5W\mg it forward. This work produced pU7..z.ling results. When people trip, the upper body pitches forward. BecauSE' older people have weaker muscll!S, they are less stable when they walk. So Grabin~r expected 10 find that weak: people would pitch further forward than st:rong~ JX.'Ople But this was not what his results showed. Weak or strong, people always tilted to about the same angle when they were tripped. He also found it- as difficult to get strong young people to fall down as their weaker cohorts. Unlike the younger participants, most of the elderly vol· unteers were easily Ooored. But there was 3 complication. 1l\e study Iound there were two categories of older falle r; the slow and the fast. The first group knew they were weak, and tended 10 shuffle along slowly. In this way they gave themselves extra time to react after they tripped - though not enough. it turned out, to prevent a fall More unexpected were the fast fallers. These were elderly people with strong back muscles and mure confidence. They waJked as quickly as young people, but wert' far easier to bring down. Why should th is be? The answer eventuaJly came from MUjam Pijnappels at the Free University, Amsterdam. in the Netherlands_ And there seemed to be more to II than brute strength. Pijnappels improved on Grahiner's set·up by hiding not one but 21

DeiJth, doctors and the human body

pop-up obstacles in the floor, making it easier to trip people up by surprising them more. She also measured the distance and height thai her vicnms moved when they were tripped. Prom this. she Found that people used the leg that had not been tripped to win them some extra time to recover. When one leg was tripped, they immediately pushed off with the other leg, as if hopping. but also bending their knee. This pushed them 40 per cent higher into the air than in a normal step. and gave them 6) pet" cent more time in the air before Uu.>y landed again. Accordin~ to lumes Ashton-Miller at the University of Michigan. these gtudies pointed to one cruciaJ factor: the importance of mU.5C.Ie power, particularly in the calf. By power he meant not merely the force a muscle can exert, but also how fast it can produce that Force. Even allowing for differences in reaction time. aU muscles in elderly people take twice as long as to reach their maximum force as young peopic's mu~es do, which prevents them using their supporting leg in the same way And t1us observation could be put to practical use. 1lle good news is th.'\1 4t any age muscle is trainable: AshtonMiller said. FOl'"older people in good heaJth$ the potential fast faller5, exercises like danang and skipping am lncrease m~ power. Staying active should make It easier ro push off on that supporting leg to l"t:'COVer from II trip. However, there was another important risk factor. In the labs, people who weren't paying attention feU more of len than people who were. You mal' have the agility of a spring lamb, but it won't help you if you are too drunk or too engrossed in your mobile phone to read before you faU on your faa!.

Trippmg perrpl~ up, 1Ii1WttJer, sums quit~ tanr~ wIlen you consider what they tw'~ up to in the rQ60s

11 3

114

Hew ro Make a TOfnMIO

;$ Effects of hallucinogenic drugs in blind people How do drugs such as LSD and rnescaline produce their unusual psychedelic effects and visual hallucinations? These consist of brightly coloured lights, geometric dcsigns and impainnent of colour values and space perception.. In 1961, Dr Adrian M. OstfeJd of the University of illinois showed that hallucinogenic drugs produce abnormal changes in the retina, affKting the functions of the rod-cell Light receptors of the retina, probably by interfering with their oxygen supply. He then gave LSD to 18 blind people who had not been blind from birth. A number reported 'seeing' white lights and coloured flashes, simUar to those described by sighted patients who had the visual area in the occipital part of their brain stimulall.>d elt!ctrkally wtder local ana~th~ia . But when people who had been blind since birth were given 1..50 they did not experience these visual hallucinations, p resumably because they had no appreciation of light o r colour. They did, however, experience auditory, olfactory and tactile hallucinations. One made the comment that afler taking l.SD the Braille print he was reading seemed to jump off the page w hen he touched il.

We tDcmdtr iftht voluntttTS U/trrllSUiJ 10 sign Q Wll~? It sums difficull to imllgjnt It simi/llr experimPtlt getting thl' gCHlhl!ad todllY And pity the poor volunteer hnving to SWill/OW this

:t}; Keeping cool In 1957, an experimPllI ~ulring a raMPnt 10 ~w;lll(lw a balloon which was subsequently inflated in his stomach with

Otath, doctors and tile human body

cold waler was carried out by experts who were studying ways of cooling the body sufficiently to allow operations within a dry heart. By lowering the body temperature, the oxygen needs of the: tissues were reduced, and the veins leading to the heart could then be safely clamped for a ~ort time, cutting off circulation. The balloon of cold water worked by cooUng a large volume of blood vessels in the abdomen. Recovery could be aided by circulating warm water through the balloon. Pabents could not be cooled below 28 ac and the period of circulatory arrest could nol exceed 10 minult':S, which left abouI8 minutes fo r running repairs inside the heart.

At Il maximu.m af 8 mil/u.tes {Vi can anly presllltu~ loot quitt! often mit! swal/aw dotl, nat II tTcoven) make_Now on 10 "/Rltl'rs ofgreal medical inlporl. Tick/illS for iru;tallt,'e ".

j: It takes two TIckling is a serious busmcss. In the early 1970'S. psychologists from both Oxford and Sheffield tried to find out just why tickling oneself isn't funny. In a paper published in the journal Nature, they suggested that it wasn't quite as simple as one might have expected. Charles Oanvin WAS intrigued by the ineffectiveness. of theself-administererl tickle, but his interest was mainly in the biological value of ticklishness and laughter. The au~ of the Nntlm paper (L. W~skrantz and C. Darlington of Oxford, and J-Elliott otSheffield), on the other hand, set out to analyse

whM mechanisms are actually involved. To do this they lined up JO intrepid volunteers brave enough to be stimulated by a He;)th Robinson-type bclde: apparatus..

115

Three types of tickJe were administered: the first by an experimenter, the tickled subject remaining passive; the next was self-administered. by the subject who moved the handle of the tickle apparatus; the third was done by an experImenter, but with the tickled subject's hand on the handle. The idea of this last method was to see if there was any effect on the ticklishness when the subject went through the motion of tickling but was not actually in command. Sure I..'nough., the efficacy of tickling was greatest when done by someone else, least when self-administered, and Intermediate when the subject participated in arm movements. Clearly, this participation helped eliminate ticklishness, but not completely. Weiskrantz and his colleagues thought there might be two factors at play m self-tickling. One was a sorl of negative fuedback from the afm movements doing the tickling (Of going through the motions, as in the experiment). 1be other was the 'c:onunand signal' generated when the subject deddl,>d to tickle himself.

~ Spectacularly smart It was a once-prevalent myth tha i if you wore spectacles when you were 8 years o ld, you were going to develop phenomenal brainpower. No substantiation of the notion was ever forthcoming, yet an experiment in 1971 by Michael Argyle and R McHenry of the Institute of Experimental Psychology, Oxford, confirmed the fact thai many people still felt :.pectacle wearers were more intelligent than noo.-wearers The two researchers made videotapes of perfonners both wearing and nol wearing glasses. They presented them to the audience either as a static 15-5eCond picture or as a video clip in which performers talked on a basic, non-intellectual topic - how they were going tospend their holidays- for 5 minutes. Judges rated thespectade wearers 12 points higher in IQthan

Death. doc.ton and the hum,n body

the non-wearers, the question relating to 10 being buried in a mass of other camouflaging ones. nlis to 'difference', however, onJy existed when the viewers looked at wearers in static photographs. Once the 'spectacles' opened their mouths the magica1 effects disappeared. No real IQ differences existed

Alld then guY'

tll~rt!'s th~

doctor wllo looks at the

jnt~t;'lC5

of bad

. He's got guts Francesco Aragona of the University of Messina in Sicily dissecbns the \'ictims of shoot~uts between mafiosos. In 1989, he said he could help police teU the difference between culprits and innocent bystanders just by lOOking at internal organs. In the gangsters, these were ulcerated, enlarged and otherwise showing signs of extreme stress. Aragona's Roman p~ecessors predicted the future by looking at the organs of slaughtered animals. Were they on to something? 6penl JO ~an;

Of course, in the end, atl medicnl scittlce jllst boils dOllJn to a singlt, ulti"Jate qUl'St; the starell for tile perfect lumgouer curt!. But !lInt could,, ', be left to fa"cy-dall profrssors. In 1999 New Scientist got experimelltal itself alld 5n1t its OWn tttlm of volunteers into actiOl1.

117

118 How 10 Mat... Tomado

~ Desperate

remedies

AU but the saintliest of us have had them. Hangovers approaching nt'ar-death experiences. Raging thirst, thump"" ins headache, wobbly limbs and nausea. Worse, there's no magic bullet to make us instantly well Thousands of years after the first 'morning after the night before', we can send people to the Moon and create computenJ o f mind-numbing power. yet we are still far away from a science-based, expenmentally \"l.'rified h.:mgOVC1' CUl't. Why? The simple answer is thalln the eyes of most governments, doctors and industries, a hangover cure would trigger a catastrophic upsurge in alcohol abuse, tempting mild drinkers to overinduJge. Hanguven; are, aft!:"c all, nature '~ way uf ltily ing 'dun' t do tillS tu youl"5f'U' So don't expect to find the nlilglCbullet nesUing anywhere in the scientific literature. The research hasn' t been done nor is it ever likely to be done. But there is plenty of research on what a1cohol does to the body. Armed with this knowledge, many alcohol researchers have speculated about the best hangover remedies. In the interests of easing global pain, New Scientist decided to test some af the top tips to emerge from this research. A panel 01 it dazen or so intrepid volunteers agreed to averindulge an faW" successive weekends, trying a different '1!Un!" each time. The maming after, they recorded how lausy they felt by scoring a range of symptoms. Because dehydration is the most weU-documented coosequence of drin!cing, whichever cancoction they tried, the volunteers drank a pint or so of water before going to bed. And the truth of the matter? Overall, nothing worked 100 per cent of the time. highlighting just how complex hangover.; all'. ' Hangavers are muJtifactorial, said Thoma5 Gilg. an alcohol researcher at the University of Munich's depart·

Death, doctors and the human body

ment of forensic chemistry. 'U you smoke, or haven', had enough sleep, that can affect the hangoveI;, too: So, we will have to keep waiting for tha t elusive magic bullet. Most sore heads will have to be soothed with the Ira~ ditional remedies our researchers tried - plenty of water before beet something sugary, plus cysteine-rich foods sud, as eggs, which help mop up any damaging chemicals. To take the edge off headaches, pop an aspirin or ibuprofen before bed. But avoid paracetamol, known in the US as aoetomi· nophen, which acrording to the US Food and Drug Adminis,.tration amplifies alcohol's damaging effect on the liver. The more adventurous could probably do worse than consider a combination of all the cures our volunteers tested - water, sports drinks, cysteine and, for real emergencies, a vodka-based pick-me-up. 'It's a bit of folk medicine, b\lt it would probably do you no hann,' said Waltenbaugh. But the best cure, of course, is not to drink at all O)e('rs!

111

5 Blunders - big and small

'To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a nUsfortwlei to lose both looks like carelessness: So observed Lad y BrackneU in Oscar Wilde's The ImportQnce of Being Eontesf.lt's certain that neither the fictional Mr Worthing not the equally fictional Lady BrackneU had ever met Stephen Myers, who worked w ith the Large Electron Positron Collider in Geneva. But presumably he'd empathise with the plight of Mr WOTthing. After aU it wasn't just one, but two careJessly lost empty bottles of beer that caused his collider to, er, faiJ to collide after its very expensive upgrade. Oh. it's easy to mock, of course. Which is probably why we are devoting a whole chapter to the art. But if you let sci-

entists do exactly what they want, sometimes things are going to go awry. And it's not just discarded beer bottles left inside expensive scientific equipment that cause problems. Not knowing the difference between imperial and m~ric units can have serious consequences ror your spacecraft and a liking for the taste of lead seemingly does not help you quit smoking. WhUe we're on the subject of mockery, it is instructive to recall that the art has a long history in the field of science. Back in the IB90s, before the nature of electricity was truly understood, an aspiring student was sitting an oral exam at Oxford University. He was asked if he knew what electricity was. ' I' m sure I've learnt what it is: s tuttered the nervous candidate. 'but now I've forgotten.' 'How very unfortunate; replied the unimpressed examiner. 'Only two people have

81unders - big and small

Imown what electricity is. the Author of the Universe and yourself. And now one of them has forgotten .' Clearly the examiner was being a little unfair on his minion, which is perhaps what we'll be acc:used of doing with this trawl through the pitfalls of any number of keen but ultimately

unfortunate scientific endeavours. However. a charge of 'being a little unfair' cannot be levelled at us when we consider the case of Pierre Pumpille, who provides one of the stories that fail to make II into this chaplet. In a feature on the excesses that men wiU go to in order to prove their machismo, Ntrtll SciCli/1St told the story 01 the headstrong Frenchman who had shunted a stationary car a distance of 2 feet by headbutting it. 'Women thought I was a god: he explained from his hospItal bed . We disagree, and despite using his head in a way that scientists usually do not in order to prove his point. he fails to make Ule grade_ For while stupid, his researeh cannot be declared a 'blwlder ·. !-Ie actually meant to headbutt the car. We have also avoided mention of Pumpille's fellow countryman Michael Fournier in this chapter. Monsieur Fournier has for many years been ath!mpting to beat the record for the highest freefall parachute jump...His latest mishap ocrurred in .2008 when the balloon that was set to carry him to the world altitude record departed without hIm. That might, in most people's books, constitute a strong case for inclusion in this chapter. but we are not so presumptuous. We are going to wait until the next edition before we pass judgement, by which time we are ce.. tain Michael will have achieved his lofty aim.

ScientIsts sometimes st'cm so clever thot It'S ptrhaps mOrt! than. just sdladt!1lfreude 1I1at makes liS UHlnt to see them fllken dawn" peg or two. Fortu'IIHdy, there urr plmty rJf cxllmplrs rJj their faU Ilresaround to make liS /tel /lfiU/e /wIler about ollrseiw-s. Illterestingly, rocket science. tlull cliched /7rancll of alll/lat is iibeT-brailIY.

121

t J1

How to Maku Tornado

seems to suJfrr more tlwn its fiJir s'lofe of CQIDmili~.

1EThe trouble with rockets Rocket science has a deserved reputation for being tough, SO it should be no surprise that things can gel a little bumpy when it comes to designing and testing a launcher. Just ask Elon Musk, the millionaire founder of PayPal and rocket company SpaceX. His fll'S! rocket, Falcon r, was scheduled to lift off £rom the Pacific atoll Kwa~lein in November 2005. at which point the problems began. First. unplanned engine tests used up more hquid oxygen (LOX) fuel than expected, then the LOX generator broke down. A shipment of fuel was ordered from Hawaii, but the tanker sprang a leak and arnved onJy onefifth full . There was just enough to launch, but a valve was left open during the final preparations, allowing mort' fuel to waste away, so the launch had to be cancelJed. A fresh shipment of LOX arrived a month later but disaster struck again. High winds hit the atoll, and to be on the safe side, engineers decided to drain the fuel from the rocket. A faulty pressure valve caused a vacuum to fonn inside the main fuel tank, sucking in its soft sides like a crushed beer

can. After three months of repairs, by March 2006 Falron 1 was ready to go. Seconds after launch., howeYV, the main engine sprang a fuclleak. leaving a trail of flame in the rockers wake as it spiralled off course and crashed v.'ithin sight of the disappointed engmeers. An investigation pinpointed the cause: a corroded fuel-line nut was to blame. A yo:ar lal~. with tl~ rocke t rebuilt rrom :,4,.'T(ItUl, FQ/w" 1finally took off without a hitch. It managed 5 minutes of smooth flight Out a bump as the first and second stagesseparated confused a control system, causing it to enter an

uncontrolled roll, which triggered II premature shutdown 01 the serond-stage boosters. Falcon J d id reach space, but nM with the velocity needed to secure orbit. Its next outing was schedu1ed for January 2008, w hen II was to carry the cremated remains of 125 people, indu cOf1I actor James Doohan - Star TI-tk's Scotty.

Unfortumddy, U.~1f Scotty filially bltUtnJ offon 1: Augu5Il!JQIf. Falcon 1 failnJ aga"" brinfl"S his asJw- don'" alo"g with Ih!l.·. ofl07 olh~ c~tnl pmpf~ U"dl!l~"~d (or pohnpllmmtrrrtd), IIII! rockf!lurs mlelld to kap on try;IIK' AI If!tl~t tll"Y Ire nlll alonl! ...

f: School kid blunder brought down Mars probe In 1999, NASA lost its 5L25 million Mars Oimate Orbiter spacecraft as a result of a mistake that would shame. htslyear physics student - failing to convert imperial urut& to metric. The problem arose: from a culture clash betweeb spacecraft engineers and navigation specialists, said Mary Hardin. a spokeswoman for NASA's Jet Propulsion laboratory in PasaderLl. 'Propulsion people talk in pound-seconds of thrust and navigators talk in newton-seronds,' she scud. ThE> sp urious data came from the aalt's attitude-control system, a dehlgn which had worked fine on the Mars G~ SurveyoL But there was one crucial difference in the sys~ on the orbiter. There Wall 3 different propulsion supplJer fo r the Mars C limate Orbiter, and its data package was in imperial units,' said NoeI l-tinnt'rs, vice-president for flightsystt'mJ at Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Denver, Colorado, No one adapted this d ata-p rocl$sing software for the second p robe, so JPL's navigation software thought the numbers it

124 How to Mal',to a Tornado

received were newton-seconds rather than pound-seconds. The attitude thrusters only made small corrections, but the error was enough to leave the probe 100 kilometres too dose to Man; when it tried 10 [':Iller orbit.

Jt '5 /lot ju.~t space

xkllti~t&,

oj r:ou~, who scno:w up biS

lilll~.

The air force, Ihe navy, they're al/ al il ...

:1: Back to the future In 2IXr/. 12 F-2.2 Raplors.. the US Air Force's new stea lth 6ghters, Jell Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii, bound for Okinawa, Japan, on the high-tech planes' first overseas outing. Things went smoothly until they reached the 1.8oth meridian- otherwise known as the International Date Line. Some of the pilots suddenly found themselves without any navigation aids. With nothing to tell them their compass head ing or even whether they were level or not, it was as if the pilots h.1d been instantaneously transported from the cockpit of the world's most advanced aircraft into that of one dating from the First World War. Fortunately, the skies were dear, so the squadron did an about-face and was able to follow its in-flight refuelling tankers back to Hickam. The error was diagnosed as a problem with a 'partial line of code' that had pitched the planes' computers into an infinite loop of trying and failing 10 caJculale their position while dealing with an unexpected dare. A fix was issued. and ) weeks later the planes made their trip to Japan without a hitch. 'Rcliance on electronics has changed the flight-test process: said Donald Shepperd, once head of the US Air National Guard. 1t used to be tails fulling off, now it's typos that ground a fightu.'

BlundelS - bIg and ~all 12S

;:l:The torpedo is not fo r turni ng In 199), a torpedo owned by the lnstitute of Antan.'tic and Southern Ocean Studies at the University of Tasmania disappeared after heading in the wrong direction under the ice off Antarctica . The torpedo was a research tool taken to Antarctic waters on board the Aurora AIlStfalis, the research vessel of the Australian Antarctic Division. The ship returned to Hobart without the torpedo and the AS)5,OOO worth of computet equipment it carried. On its maiden voyage, the torpedo failed to return as it was programmed to. The obsolete weapon was bought from the Royal Australian Navy for A$150 and fitted with sonar equipment. The aim was to bounce signals off the bottom of the ice pack to measure its depth. It was programmed to do a V-turn under the ice before being retrieved. In open water, the device performed perfectly, but under the ice it failed the test. 'There was one bright spot,' said Garth Paltridge, director of the institute. 'Part of the exercise was to test the logistics of operating in such a hostile environment. In that sense it worked perfectly.' After being lowered into the water and before its motor started, the waves turned the torpedo about 90 degrees from its course. Its guidance system never brought it back on track. Also, it was so cold, about -20 DC, that the ship's tracking system stopped working.

Ye t, whitt it's cltQr other organisations fllso make mistakts , NASA CDII ofte111w seell lu rking in tile backgnmllli.

126 HeM to Make a Tornado

1f: Memory scramble They say ballooning is th~ least stressful way to fly. lnd,ced, a balloon seemed the perfect platform &om which the $10 mjllion BLAST telescope, lunded by NASA, the Canadian Space Agency and the UK's Particle Physics and Astronomy Research CouncLl, could take faNnfrared snaps of star formations . For 1.2 days running up to 2 January 2007, the telescope collected valuable data as it floated 40 kilometres above Antarctica. As it descended, the gondola released the: huge balloon and deployed its landing chutes as planned. But the electronics that should have released the pl!lrach u ~ on touchdoWll failed. Antarctic winds infl .. led them like giMt spinnakers. turning the cargo into a Wind-powered sled. 'It was moving as fast as I could run,' recnlled project leader Mark Devlin, who was following the fate of the 1.800-kilograrn telescope and Its support computers from his hom{' in the US. 'It was absolutely sickening.' The support plane couJd only watch as the gondola bounced across the ice, strewing pieces of equipment as it went.lt finally came to rest 24 hows later. when it wedged in a crevasse 200 kilometres from its landing site. Devlin was emailed a picture of the scene, which he scrutinised for any sign of the hard drives which bore the only ropy of the mission's data. 'NASA paints everything white: he said, so his search Was initially in vain. Fortunately. a pilot tracking the furrow gouged by the gondola spotted the package. The damCiged drive. eventuaUy yielded their irT'eplaceable data, but the telescop(! was a write-off. Devlin then planned 10 fund-raise for a sImilar mission, with tougher electronics and onc other change: 'I'm thinking fluorescent orange,' he musc:d_

ajllllde~

- big 0I1Id small

, l Robot's return In 199), NASA robotic experts suffered a setback when an experimental robot broke down during a highly publicised demonstration in an Antarctic volcano. Following that. experts planned 10 try again, with an improved version of the robot and in a different volcano. [f all went according to plan, Dante [J was to explore the crater of Mount Spurr, a volcano in Alaska. The eight-legged robot was studded with video cameras, a laser range finder and seru!Ors that would guide its motion. Dante 0 also had an improved c.oDununic.ations tether linkmg it to its human overlord:.. 10e tether on the arigina1 Dante broke during its test at Mount &ebus in Antarctica in January 199). The project was intended 10 test and demonstrate technologies that could be used III remotely controlled space probes. Dante n was to descend about 600 feet into the volcano's crater and record temperatures and the make-up of gases there.

So, wlillt /ulpptnt%l on itsstcond expeditioll?

;'d: Dante rescued from crater hell NASA'S accident-prone robot Dante II was hoisted out of an Alas!.::.,1l volcano in ~99
117

128 How to Make, Tomado

mud. It fell on its side and, like a giant beetle, was unable to

move. In the first rescue attempt, a helicopter tried to lift Dante out of the crater by the fibre-optic cable linking the robot to its controllers. ThecabJe snapped, and Dante fell further into the volcano. Further helicopter rescue missions were hampered by fog. EV'entually, two workers climbed down into the crater and attached a harness to the robot's body so that Dante could be winched out by helicopter.

TI,j'1gs didn't get m/lell better, dId they? Dalllf' was behaving like the embarrassing drllnk uncle lit Ihe fimlily party. And scielltists ,!;/l Olil fll/l Ult/l tltat alcohol and seriOIiS research sometimes don 't II1 ;X.

~

Particle beams hit the bottle Physicists starting up Europe's most powerful particle acrel· erator in 1<}96 hoped to detect fundamental particles not seen since the beginning of the universe. But when the Large EIec-tron Positron (LE P) collider at the CERN particle physics Laboratory in Geneva resumed operation after a £210 million upgrade, nothing happened. The faull , it emerged, was due 10 two empty bottles of Lager. LEP sits in a 27·kilometre circular tunnel. In the 19&5, physicists used the accelerator to pmve the existence of the W and Z particles, whi.ch carry the weak nuclear force. With the enCTgY of LEP's particle beams nearly doubled to 162 gigaelectronvolts, the _ccelerator had a chance of uncovering the Higgs boson, which was thought to endow other particles with mass. When LEP2. as the upgraded machine was known, was switched on.. beams of electrons and positrons were supposed

to travel in opposite directkms round the giant circuit, but neither beam made it. CERN's investigators homed in on the section of the ring causing the trouble. When they dismantled ii, they found that the high-vacuum tube through which the beams travel had been blocked by two beer bollle;. No damage bad been done to LEP2. Bul the incident had a 5cicntific cost. 'We lost five valuable da)'5 of physics: said Stephen Myers, who was in charge of LEP2.

" A matter of perspective It's reassuring to know that an engineering screw-up doesn't Jllways get you into trouble. It can sometimes even dig you (lu t of it, as astronomers found out at the Canada-FranceIlawait Telescope (CfHl) on Mauna Kea.. Hawaii. In early 2(0), researdters began observing the skies using thl' telescopE', equipped with a new digital camera - the biggest in the world at the time. The CFHT was fitted with four precision lenses so the camera could capture crisp images of vasl areas of sky. The results were disappointing. The images were sharp in the centre, but far more blurred than expected at the sides. A laborious investigation (ollowed, with engineers dismantling the optics and reassembling them daily, but finding no answer. Then one day, an engineer mistakenly replaced one of the four lenses back.-to-front. The images improved spectacularly, 'The oext observations were just "Wow!",' said Christian VeilJet, the observatQry's director. 'The image quality was just what it should have been.' No one understood why the back-Io-front lens worked SO well, or why it didn't work when it was oriented as planned. 'Th.iIIt has been frustrating. but it would bea waste of resources

130 How to Mab! ~ Tomado

to investigate, so we decided to just forget about it: said Veillet. 'Now the science that is coming out is exquisite.'

To ~ fair, it's eJlSy to criticise. How many grttIt idtQS haw you 1u1d today? Thty too nlay have ~Ided up in II aatu U~ Donte, or an Antarctic creooSst' like BLAST. So thank your lucky stars that 110 one has taken yours seriously. Somebody obtll'ously thought it reasonable to take these rrst'Qrc:IIer5 fro'" t h~ University of OklllhOllla seriously, rmd look whallrapp~ned. Whoeuer thougllt it UHZS a good idea WIlS just plain, uIlllcceplably stupid,

~ Elephants on acid What happens if you give an elephant LSD? Researchers solved this mystery in August 1962, when Warren Thomas, director of Lincoln Park Zoo in Oklahoma City, fired a cartridge-syringe containing 297 milligrams of LSD into the rump of Thsko the e1ephant. With Thomas were two colleagues from the University of Oklahoma School of Medicine, Louis Jolyon West and Olester M. Pierce. The dose was about 3000 times what a human would typically take. Thomas, West and P;erce figured that if they were going to give an elephant LSD they'd better not give it too little. They later explained that the experiment was d esigned to find out if lSD would induce musth in an elephant - musth being a kind of temporary madness male elephants sometimes experience dunng which they become highly aggressive a,nd secrete a sticky fluid from their temporal glands. One may also suspect a small element of ghoulish curiosity was involved. Whatever the reason for the experiment, it almost jmm~ diately wmt awry. Tusko reacted as if he had bt!en shot by a gun. He trumpeted around his pen for a few minutes and

Blunders - big and ~all

then keeled over. Horrified, the researchers tried to revive him with a variety of antipsychotic;, but about an hour later he was dead. In an article published four months after the event in Seu!rIct, the three scientists sheepishly concluded: ' It appean; that the elephant is highly sensitive to the effects of LSD: The experiment instantly made heacUines. Faced with a public relations disaster, the scientists protested their irtnocence. They had not anticipated the elephant would die, they Insisted In their f'x(X'nenl'e, I sn wa~ a powerful hallucin~ sen but rarely fatal. West and Pil!l'Ce helpfully noted that they themselves had previously taken the drug. Thomas tried to find a silveT lining. They had learned that LSD can be lethal to elephants. So perhaps, he mused. the drug could be used to destroy herds in countries where they are a problem. For some reason, his suggestion h.u never found any takers.

We ea" only Iwpt that the Oklahoma rtsearchns copptd all the opprobrium they were due, but for some. people - despite their oum stupidity - you haw: to jeri a lillIe sympathy. 1h folIuwing story is, we freely admit, not /I !/lle of /I researcher being giurn frtt rein. But it don iIIU$trate a blunder i/1 the use of technology that loe luuJ!t /11/ surely come across ou~IlJ!tS. How many times hmJ!t you hit 'RqJly All' to an ertUll1 /lnd then thought 'Juwaaaaaargh'?

:J: Naming and shaming In 1993, the NatWest Bank admitted that it kept pe~ information about its customers - such as poUtical affiliation - on computer. But Computer WNkly revealed that a final.cia! institution. sadly unnamed. went one better and moved Into the realm ol personal abuse.

\31

132 How to Make a Tornado

The institution decided to mailshot 2000 of its richest customers, inviting them to buy extra services. One of its IT workers wrote a computer program to search through its databases and select the customers automaticaUy. He tested the program with an imaginary customer called Rich Bastard. Unfortunately, an error resulted in all 2000 letters being addressed 'Dear Rich Bastard'. The luckless programmer was subsequently sacked.

:t}:Target practice A good c;tnry d_rvps 11 good 1Iiring. Back in the 1990S, tvvo members of the Lothian and Borders traffic police were having a pleasant time Qut on the Scottish moors, trapping speeding motorists with a radar gtm. Suddenly their equip· ment went crazy, registering a speed of man? than )00 miles per hour. It then locked up completely. Seconds later, the startled cops understood why, as a lowflying Harrier tel screamed over their head s. Upset that their radar gun had been broken, the policemen p ut in a complaint to the Royal Air Force - only to discover that the damage could easily have befon so much worse. The RAP informed them that the Harrier 's target-seeker had locked on to what it had ifl ti>rpi1>h;>d as enpmy radar. This immediately triggered an automatic air-to-surf.lce missile attack. Fortunately for the two policemen, the Harrier was operating unarmed.

The policenllm didll't blunder, neiOler did lIle figltler pilot. But a softwilre droe/ol,er III/IS/ flOW be WIpiNg II brow. Tlrfy might WIlli' to compar,. IIotes tmll! the designer of Ille. Swt:dis/r flally's mrlywamillg

system.

Blunder> • big and ~Il

,1: Furry submarines embarrass Swedish navy When IS a sub not a sub? The answer, as an embarrassed Swedish navy had to admit in 1996, is when it's a mink or an otter. What the navy thought was the sinister sound of Soviet propellers was, in fact, the furious paddling of little legs. A scientific commission set up by the government .1nd chall"ed by the former djrector of the SwedISh Engmcenng Science Academy, Hans Forsberg. concluded that most o f the invading !lubmarines ~ported by the navy were mythical Of more than 6000 reports of 'alien underwater activity' between -19fjl and 1994. the commission found firm evidence for only sur. incidents. In every oth~ case the eVidence, often based on sightings by the public, was unreliable. The navy claimed that one underwater noise. similar to the sound of frying eggs, was caused by bubbles from submruines. It was more likely to have been caused by the natural movement of water, said the commission.

On 40 occasions between 1992 and 1994, a defence network of microphones attached to buoys detected the sound of bubbles caused by a rotational movement in the water. The navy estimated the speed at up to laO revolutions per minute, and assumed it must be submarine propeUers. But Ule navy was wrong.. said the commission. According to its secretary, lngvar Akesson, tests with swimming mink or otters showed that they could produce the same readings as propellers. 11 is very pw:zling, but they do,' he said. The navy accepted that in some cases it might have confused the two sounds.

And it's slill Ihl: dl:/enu r)flhl: mlm to which TUl:' flirt! for all.even

mu" tllughnble 1,.,ldnet of inotnlor stupidity.

03

134

How to Milke a TOfnado

~: 'Secret' terrorist trap gets worldwide

pUbl icity In 199J, two companies jointly developed a security system

for airports designed to trap terrorists and drug smugglers. To be effective the system. whlch detected traces of bombmaking chemicals on passenger boarding cards, relied on complete secrecy - but to protect their commercia] interests the deve10pers made the mistake of filing a European patent application. thereby ensuring that full details were available in libraries all around the world for everyone. including terrorists and drug smugglers. to read Paul Wtlkinson. director of the Research Institute for the Study of Conflict and Terrorism at 5t Andrew's UniVersIty. confirmed that publishing the idea in a patent application gave the game away. The more sophIsticated organisations read all the scientific literature.' he said. They study the technology and work out ways of evading it. Now it will only pick up mad bombers with home-made devices and amateur newcomers,' he feared.

All o!whid, leads to tJ jilltJl practical example ofdirect experimentation , There CtJlI be nO research more tnlstUJOrthy tltall tltat wMch has been carried 0111 by the subjects themselves. Although not a scientisl. tllis lay researdter TUill be tlw"kcri by a"ybody attempt;tlg to quit smoki"g/or provtllg to thtnt what they mig'" /lOll( sllsptctai in I'le /il"!ti pIllet.

~ Better lead than dead If you are thinking of giving up smoking, you are recommended not to chew electrical cables to ease your withdrawal

Blunders ~ big and small

pangs. This, according to the Alls/ralion Medical jounlal, is wha t one Antipodean building site worker did. He got through almost a metre of cable a day for ten years, and found it extremely soothing. with a 'sweet and pleasant taste'. In 1996, the man was admitted to hospital with stomach pains. Unfortulllltcly, the cables he was gnawing contained lead to make them more flexib le. And doctors found that the lead levels in the man's blood were three times the safety limit. Thanks to prompt treatment, his blood level returned to normal. But he failed to qUi t smoking.

135

6 Love, sex and all that stuff

Ah yt5 ... sex. Irs probably faiT to say that scientists are rarely trendsetters. So if sex wasn't invented until the 1900s.science

didn't truly embrace this groundswell of fashion until a couple of decades later, as our pick of the bunch below seems to indicate. But once scientists got their teeth into it, just as with any discipline, there was going to be no lying back and thinking of Einstein. It's possible that scientists were desperate to prove that they were as normal (or at least as open-minded) as the next person. a process that perhaps reached. its apotheosis when, in the mid-1990S, an American science radio show thought it prudent to release the annual beefcake calendar Studmllffins ofSdenu. Science has been apologising ever since. But in the noughties we are all a little more grown up than we were. Or at least we hope weare. Nonetheless, some of the items we discovered when researching this book raised eyebrows (if very little else), All of which meant thai deciding what to put into this chapter and what to leave out left the editor in a similar dilemma to the one he faced when, on selecting the 6rst seven letters in a game of Scrabble he drew out, at incredible odds and in straight order: S-C·R-O-T-U-M. 1he word would alJnost certainly win the match on the fu$t play of the game but could you - dare you - impose the word on your 8o-year--old grandmother? Such mental torment loomed over this chapter. Nw Scientist has certai.nly covered some esoteric sex-based discoveries over the years, but should we really inflict the Hungarian

lOYt. sex.rwl illl th.t stuff 137

musical condom on an Wlsuspecting readership? Or the science of Baywotch? Find oul which one made it and wtuch was consigned to the dustbin of lack below .. _ 011. and dOfl't reMi thi~ if yOIl'''' undpr the Ilgf'of consenL And if you have no idea what that is, ask your mum and dad.. not a scientist ..

We Rdmtl we art II bit boring, but

~

think ux should bt mjoy-

nbie. So TUf' thought it was good news Jar womeN ar('lund till! world

wlll:n New Scientisl Qnnounct!d an untxpecttd discovl:rY.

¢: Push my button In the Woody AUen com('dy Slecptr, it maclUne cal led an orgas matron delivers an orgasm al the push of a button without the hassle of sex. In :zoen. tife imitated arl when scientists in the US patented an implant that achieved the same effed: for women whose lives were blighted by an inability to achieve orgasms naturaJJy. Orgasmic dysfunction is not W\COmmon among women, said Julia Cole. a psychosexual therapist and COf\6u1tant with Relate, the relationship counselling service. And a numberof issues can cause It, said Jim Pfaus, who studles the neurobiology 01 sexual behaviour at Concordia University in MontmtL 'Some women confuse what's called sympathetic arousal, hke increased heart rate, clammy hands, nUVe5 and so 00., with fear: he explained. 1nat makes them want to get out of the situation.' Psychotherapy is a common treatment for the condition, although if anxiety is a (actor, patients may also be prescribed Valium. ' But Valium can actuaJly delay orgasm,' saJd Pfaus. Stuart Meloy. a surgeon at Piedmont Anesthesia and Pain Consultants in Wmston·Salem, North Carolina, got the idea

h~.I11 I'I)!.""III I tfllt, jUlIlljo; Ill'''' "", WIU tL' I't.ottUtlllm" •• I\)ulme

pilm-relief operation on a woman's "pme. 'We Implant dectrodes into the spme and use eJectricaJ pulses to modify the pain signals passing along the nerves,' he said. The patient remains conscious during the operation to help the surgeon find the best position for the electrodes. Meloy's breakthrough came one day when he failed to hit the right spot. 'I was placing the electrodes and suddenly the WOOlan started exclaiming emphatically,' he said. ') asked ht'1 what was up and she said, "You're going to have to teach my husband to do that".' Mcloy said the s timulating wires could connect toa signal generator smaller than a packet of cigarettes implanted under the skm of one of the patient's buttocks. 'Then you'd have a hand-held remote control to trigger it: he said. ' Bul ii's as invasive as a pacemaker, so Ihis is only lor extreme cases.' Meloy believed the device could help couples overcome problems caused by orgasmic dysfunction. 'H you've gol a couple who've been together for a while and it's just not happening any more, maybe they' ll get thro ugh it a bit easier with uu",' he said . He was quick to add that the device would be programmed to limit its use. 'But whether it's once a day, four times a week - who am I to say?' But would women subject themselves to such invasive surgery? 'U young women of 15 or so are having painful operations to enlarge their breasts when they don' t have to, arc you kidding? Of course it'll be said Pfoms.

U5eCi:

Surprisingly, Jim PfoIl5 wo wrong ...

Wanted: people to test orgasmatron 'Ihw: nl trials of til£' 'orgasmatron' began in the US in ZOO). wllh the approval o( the Food and Drug Adminislration. I he device was tnc focus of massive media " ltefl,ian h, ,,*XII, after New Scientist broke the news of its exislcnC<' ~fIll I, ~J 01£' term orgasmlltron to describe it. But despite all II\\.' III\'cr.lge. few people volunteered for the trial. ' I t!lOtl.:hl rlt'ople would be beating m y d oor do\'VJ\ to become PIU'I 01Ill,. tfW],' said Meloy. 'But so far J am struggling 10 find prop!t! ' That did not surprise some experts, who thoug ht I'In Ilnpl.\nt was too radical a trea tment for sexual problems. ' Why would you d oll invaslvely if you can do it with a vibratllr?' asked Marra Sipski of the University of Miami, who ,,\udied sexual function in women with spinal cord injuries. By 200) only one woman had completed the first stage of till' trial, and just one other had been signed up. Meloy hoped to find eight more to complete the first stage of the stud y, in which wires connected to a battery pack were inserted through the skin and into the woman's spinal cord. The pm('t!dure is no riskier than an epidural, Meloy said. But epidur ,lis can cause complications such as backache in up to a fifth (If women. In the second stage, a seU-contained device resembling a pacemaker would be implanted beneath the skin, and !twitched on and o ff with a remote control. Meloy expected a fu ll implant to cost around $ 1},DOO. He implanted w ires in a woman who responded to his call for volunteers in the local media. 'When the device was ~witched on, the patient reported being almost instantly ilroused. She d escribed it as "really excellent foreplay": said Meloy. The woman. who had not had an orgasm for four years, wore the device ror nine days and had sex with her husband on seven occasions. Meloy said she had an orgasm every time. 'She even told me she had the first multiple orgasm of her life using the device.' he said. I

4

140 HowlOMaRITomado

But Sipski thought that as long as the required ne.rves the body were inlact, using a vibrator shou ld work just well. 'My rcsearcl1 shows that orgasm is a purely refl response. Even the sensation associated with orgasm does n require the brain. Women with complete injuries to the sp' can r.till experience orgasm:

Hope/ully, 'he/o/fowing discovaits will prolJC to be mort popular

or at Il!ast marl! I!lIsily IlCCI!5~d,

;y)~ Ecstasy

over G spot therapy

It has evaded 10ve1"5 for centuries, but in wo8 the elusive and semi-mythical G spot was captured on ultrasound for the first time.

Emmanue1e Jannini at the University of L'Aquila in Italy discovered clear anatomical differences between women who claimed to have vagina1 orgasms - triggered by stimulation of the front vaginal waU without any simultaneous slimulation of the clitoris-and those that didn't, Apparently, the key is that women who orgasm during penetrative sex have a thicker area of tissue in the region between the vagina and urethra, meaning a simple scan could separate Qu i the lucky 'havcs' from the 'have-nots', Evl..'n better, Jannini found evidence that women who have this thicker tissue can be ·taught' to have vaginal orgasms. UltrasoWld scans on )0 women uncovered C spots in just eight of them and when these women were asked if they had vaginal orgasms during sex, only five of them said yes. However, when the remaining three were shown their C spots on the scan and given advice on how tostimulatc it, two of them subsequently 'discovered' the joy of vaginal orgasms. 'This demonstrated, although in a small sample, the use of

,,,,,,,1 "iI,;,,",undl in tE!.iching the vaginal orgasm; Ja.nniru • none of the have-nots had vaginal orga5O\S either .liter the scans, so they would just have to make do Ih ~ (lId-fashioned clitoral kind. I.,n'''' won' on to investigate whether hirsute women are IJl
listens in to love in the lab penetration is best from behind or from the sid e,

"'.'''n'~ a unique study c:J the act of human copuJation. The , conducted by scientists at the

I:,':;';:;:~:

Un.iv~ity

Hosp ita1 in

Denmark. in 1991. showed that those sexual which achieve maximum penetration by the male result in the most climactic orgasm for the. female and the 1.. ~l lha nce of fertilisation.. n,e findings suggested that several traditional western .. -\lId l positions were unfulfilling to women and the least IIl.dy to result ll1 pregnancy. 'It's all basically a question of the ""_l~"'· of the ..>red penis in relation to the wormn'§ vagina and j.II,..-r loC.... Ual organs: explaint>d l.asse Hessel, the leader of the ,,·....:ilrch team. The deeper- the penetration, the more proI!lund the resultant orgasm and hence the greater the chance 1"l1i1culated sperm fertilising an egg. t t ~ 1 and his tC.lm based thdr conclusions on cxtensive ,~'",-, rvations of Danish couples making love 11\ the laboratory,

II

142 How to M,~e, TOinacio

using uJtTasound machines nonnally used to monitor the development of the foetus in pregnancy. The scans revealed the exact pOSition and movement of the penis during intercourse. H£'Ssel and his colleagues S(:ored positions on several obJective mleria, such as depth of penetration and how long it took each couple to reach orgasm, and on subjective criteria such as each partner's rating of the intensity of their orgasms. The positions ranged from the most popuJar 'missionary' position to the less popuJar sideways or reac-entry positions. 'The rear and sideways positions scored best in virtuaJly aU cases: Hessel concluded. These positions. which enabled the curve of the erect penis to match that of the female anatomy. also maximised the chance of the woman experiencing multiplt> orgasms.

But not evm;body was hJlppy.

~ Ferti Ie orgasms Sir, I was very interested to read the article entitled 1.11trasound listens to love in the lab' and wouJd lo\'e to know more details of these experiments. The resuJts appeared to fly in the face of reseatcll such as the Hite Report on women's experience of sex. Over the past decade or so it has become recognised that women have a right to express their requirements as fa r as lovemaking isconcerned. and that this does not usually entail just being banged into from behind with maximum penetration. It has been well established that orgasms of mammoth proportions can be produced from cUtoral stimulation. without any need for penetration by a penis at aU. Was there any clitoral stimulation during the experiments you quote? If

loYe, !>e){
not, how long did it take before these women reached orgasm, as I should think it would be longer than most men could manage. If a women has a lready reached orgasm once then maybe I can believe what the report says. but in that case there has been a crucial omission in your account. If there's no such omission then please, tell us how it's done. EliZllbc-th Booth"ul/I (J8/flIIIJlZry I99J)

If yOlI agree, and feel strongly thaI Ihe Copenhagen ustorr:hers are misguided, there are- IhRnkflilly - still more ttNZy5 10 achirot orgasm. Trouble is, this one mvolves bring watched too ...

t- Hot news In 1980. psychologists Usa Berry and Paul Abramson at the University of California at Los Angeles hoped they had discovered a new aid for people with sexuaJ problems, Using II thermography machine of the type used to look for the hal spots (or changes in infrared radiation) caused by tumours, they were able to help cure patients who claimed they were wu.ble to achieve orgasm. Patients were encouraged to masturbate in front of a TV camera, and the flow of blood and energy to the erogenous zones showed up as changes It\ colour on a screen in front of them. The fad that they could !lee that they were turning themselves on helped them to obtain confidence in their ability to stimulate themselves successfully. and orgasm was often achieved during the first or second session -sometim(!S the patients claimed for the fust time ever in their lives.

143

144 How to Make /I Tornado

Stlll,.as Ul£' art incrt.asingly lenrlling, it takes all sorts ...

;if. Safe sex A 1980 issue 01 the Bntish Malictt1 Journal earned an intriguing report from two surgeons, one from Univeruty College Hospital London and one from 51 Thomas', also in London. They wrote on 'Penile injuries from vacuumcleaneJS' -a titleguaranleed to stop any content:s-skimmer in his or her tracks. The two doctors were obviously mCll of the world; they introduced their account of woeful damage suffered by the male organ when inserted into a vacuum cleaner nozzle with the prefatory remark that the practice was undertaken 'probably in search of sexual satisfaction'_ Neil Citron and Peter Wade reported fouccasesof damage after attempted copulation with a machine. But far mOn? interesting than the details of the damage is the fact thai none 01 the men WIlS exactly honest about his proclivities ...

;{1$ Spanking 'brings couples together' Spanking is stressful at first. but It could bring consenting couples closer together. That's the implication of two studies conducted in 2009 of hormonal changes associated with sadomasochistic (S&M) activities including spanking. bondage and flogging. Brad Sagarin at Nonhem illinois UniveJSity in DeKalb and colleagues measured levels of the stress hormone cortisol in 1) men and women at an S&M party in Arizona, before, during and after participating in activities. During S&M scenes, cortisol rose significantly in those receiving stimulation, but dropped back to noanal within 40 minutes il the

\.DYe. 50 and aU that stuff 145

scene went welt There was no change in those inflicting the i:lctivity. At an S&M event in Colorado, testosterone Wi:lS measured in 45 men and women. II increased significantly in receiving women only. Donatella Marazziti of the University of Pisa, Italy, said the boost may help women cope with the a~ sive nature of S&M activities. or that it couJd be another sign of stress. In both studies, couples who said the party went weU also reported increases in relationship closeness. It's important to note that levels of both hormones dropped. bad down in couples who enjoyed the experience, Marazziti said. 'When $Cxual intercourse is consensual it is not stressful - even if it is extn.-rne scx..' Richi:lrd Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield, UK, added that almost any shared activity is likely to promote intcrpersooal closeness 'It doem'l N\-"e 10 t'E' tying up your partner or placing clamps on their nipples, it could be some-thing as Simple as cooking a meal together or even doing the housework as a duo,' he said. Nick Neave, a psychologist at the University of Northumbria, UK, said the results were interesting. but future s tudies should control for whether participants experienced o rgasm, which is associated with reduced stress and an Increase in hormones associated with partner-bonding and affection.

But wt are a lilt!t old1tlS/Iiontd tmd, gjvell th~ choice between" flogging Ilnd a wooiPlg. wt'd opt for IIII! latta. [,1 2006, New Scientist took a look ,I tile ~t Ul1lyS to woo.

146

How to Make a Tornado

i{f. Six ways to woo your lover Let your body do the talking We aU hunt for the perfect chat-up Line, but in reality, our bodies give away a great deal before we open our mouths. It is estimated that when you meet a stranger, their impression of you is based 55 per cent on yo ur appearance and body language,)8 per cent on your style of speaking and a mere 7 per emt on what you actu ally S
stranger when physiologically aroused increases the chance of having romantic feelings towards them ... It's aU because --···...rum between anxiety, arousal and attracarried. out by psychologists the 1970S, men who mel a e found the encounter sexier who rnet her on a low, stable rka wonders too. Photos of ere more attractive to people -coasit'r compared with those And couples were more lovedfiUed thriller than a calmer film .

love, sex a.nd ilt! that swff

Why? No one is sure, but the adrenaline rush from the danger mIght be misattributed to the thrill of attraction. But beware: while someone attractive becomes more so in a tense setting. the unattractive appear even less appealing. Shut' a joke An experience that makes you laugh creates feelings of closeness between strangers. Adassic example comes from experiments carried out by psychologists Arthur Arcn and Barbara Fraley, in which strangers cooperated on playful flctivities such as learning dance steps. but with one partner wearing a blindfold and the other holding a drinking straw in their mouth to distort speech. Sounds stupid, but love and laughler really did go together. We suggest that the blindloJd/ drinking straw appro.lm is best confined to the laboratory.

Get the sound track right Psymologists at North AdamsStateCollege in Massachusetts have proved what Shakespeare suggested - that music is thefood of love. Well, rock music, at least. Women evaluating photos of men rated them more attractive while listening to soft-rock music, compared with avant-gar.de jazz or no musk at all. Gaze into their eyes

Any flirt knows that making eye contact is an emotionally loaded act. Now psychologists have shown just how powerful it can be. When pairs of strangers we.~ asked to gaze into each other's eyes, it was perhaps no t surprising that their feelings of closeness and attraction rocketed compared with. say, gazing at each other's hands. More surprising was that a couple in one such experiment ended up g·elting married. Neuroscientists have shed some light on what's going on: meeting another person's gaze lights up brain regions associ· ated with rewards. The bottom line 15 that eyt! contact can work wonders, but make sure you get your technique right:

147

146

HowtoMakeaTamadQ

~ Six

ways to woo your lover

lei your body do the talking We all hunt for the pcrll'Ct chal-up linc, but in reality, our bodies give away a great deal before we open our mouths. It is estimated that when you meet a stranger, their impression of you is based 55 per cent on your appearance and body language, J8 per cent on your style of spealting and a mere 7 percent on what you actually say. So what can we leam from the c'(perts? lhere an? a number of actions that signal 1 like you' to another person. Adopting an open posture (no folded arms) and mirroring another's posture help create a feeling 01 affinjty. Most people are not conscious of being mirrored, but evaluate those who do It more favourably. And it is worth adopting stances thai enhance your masculinity or feminin· ity, such as placing hands in pockets with elbows out 10 enlarge the chest. You could also indulge in a 'gestural dance', synchronising your gestures and body movements with those of the objectoE your desire, such as talOng a sip of your drinks at the same time.

Experience fear together A dramatic setting carl kick-starl your love life. Meeting a stranger when physiologically aroused increases the chance of having romantic: feelings towards them ... It's all because o f a strong connection between anxiety, arousal and attrae-tion. In the 'shaky bridge study' c:a.rried out by psychol08ists ArthurAron and Don Dutton in thP 1970S, men who met a woman on a high, rickety bridge found the encounter sexier and more romantic: than those who mct her on a low, stable onc. A visit to the funfair works wonders too. Photos of members of the opposite sex were more attractive to people who had rust got off a roller-coaster compared. with those who wcre waiting to get on. And couples were more lovedup after watching a suspense-fWed thriller than a calmer film .

low. sex tlnd all that swff

Why? No one is sure, but the adrenaline rush fTom the danger

might be misattributed to the thrill of attraction. But beware: while someone attractive becomes more so in a t~nse setting. the unattractive appear even less appealing. Share.J joke An experience that makes you laugh creates feelings of closeness between strangers. AcJas:.ic example comes from experiments carried out by psychologists Arthur Aron and Barbara Fraley, in which strangers cooperated on playful activities such as learning dance steps, but with one partner wearing a blindfold dnd the other holding a drinking straw in their mouth to distort s J*E!Ch. Sounds stupid, but love and laughter really did go together. We suggest that the blindfold! drinking straw approach is best confined to the laboratory. Get the soundtr.Jck right Psychologists at North Adams State College in Massachusetts have proved what Shakespeare suggested - that music is the food of love. Well, rock music, at leasl Women evaluating photos of men rated them more attractive while listening to soft-rock music, compared with avant-garde jazz or no music alall Gue into their eyes Any furt knows that making eye contact is an emotionally lo-aded act. Now psyt:hologi5ts hav-e shown just how powerfullt can be. When pairs of strangers were asked to gaze into each vther 's eye:,;, It wa", pedtaps not surprising that their feelings of closeness and attraction rocketed compared with, say, gating al each other's hands. More surprising was that a couple tn one Stich experiment ended op getting married. Neuroscientists have shed some light on what's going on: m;,,*,n8 anothpr ("f'r-;on' ... ga1,f' lights up bram reginn!! associated with rewards. The bottom line is that eye contact can work wonders, hut make sure you get your technique right:

147

146 How [0 Make, Tomado

;¢ Six ways to woo your lover Let your body do the talking We all hunt for the perfect chat·up line, but in reality, our bodies give away a great deal before we open our mouths. It is estimated that when you meet a stranger, their impression of you is based SS per cent on your appearance and body language, }8 per cent on your style of speaking and a mere 7 per cent on what you actually say. So what can we learn from thl' experts? 1ne:re nre a number of adions that sIgnal 'I lIke you' to another person. Adopting an open posture (no folded arms) and mirroring another 's posture help create a (eelingof affinity. Most people are not conscio us of being mirrored, but evaluate those who do it more favourably. And it is worth adopting stances that enhance your m3!ICUlinity or feminin· ity, such as placing hands in pockets with elbows out to cn1arge the chest. You could also indulge ina 'gestural dance', synchronising your gestures and body movements with those of the object of your desire~ such as taking a sip of your drinks at the same time. Experience fear together A dramatic setting can kick-start your love life. Meeting a stranger when physiologically aroused increases the chance of having romantic feelings towards them " . It's a ll because of a strong connection between anxiety. arousa.I and attnetion. In the 'shaky bridge study' carried out by psychologists Arthur Aron and Don Dutton in the uJ706. men who met a woman on a high, rickety bridge found the encounter sexier and mOle romantic than those who met her on II low, stable one. A visit to the funfair works wonders too. Photos of members of the opposite sex were more attractive to people who had just got 6£1 a roUer-coaster compared. with those who were waiting to get on. And couples were more loved· up after watching II suspense-filJed thriller than a calmer film .

Love, sell and at! thaI stuff 147

Why? No one is sure, but the adrenaline rush from thedanger might be misattributed 10 the thrill or attraction. But beware.

while someone attractive becomes more so In a tense setting. unattractive appear even less appealing.

lilt"

Share a joke An experience that makes you laugh create; fee-lings of closeni'SS between strangers. Aclassic example comes from ('J(peri· ments carried out by psychologists Arthur Amn and Barbara haley, in which strangers cooperated on playful activities , uch as leaming dance steps, but WIth one partner wearmg a blindfold and the other holding a drinking straw in their mouth to distort speech. Sounds stupid, but love and laugh· ter really did go together. We suggest that the blindfold / drinking straw approach is besl confined 10 the laboratory. Get the soundtrack righl Psychologists at North Adams State College in MaSSilchusetts have proved what Shakespeare suggested - that music is thl! food of love. Well, rock music, at least. Women evaluating photos of men rated them more a ltr<1ctive while listening to !>Oft·rock. music, compared with avant--garoe)au or no musk at a U. Gau into their eyes Any furl knows that making eye contact is an emotionally loaded act. Now psychologists have shown just how power· fW lt can be, When pairs of strangers were asked to gaze into each other's eyt.'5, it was perhaps not surprising that their feelings of closeness and attraction rocketed. compared with, say, gazing at each other's hands. More surprising was that a couple in one such experimC'nt ended up getti ng ma rried . Nt'Uroscientists have shed some Light on what's going on: mPetmgannther persnn·!I; ga7£ ligl1lfi up braIn regions associated with rewards. The bottom line is that eye contact can work wonders, but make sure you gel your technique !igM:

148 How to Make a Tornado

if your gaze isn't reciprocated, you risk corning acr'056 as a stalker. Use love potions? Can you short-cut all the hard work of relatlonshlp-building by artificial means? People have been trying 10 crack !his one

for thousands of years. AnasaJ spray containing the hormone oxytocin can make people trust you - an important part of any relationship - though there's no evidence yet to suggest it can make someone fall in love. And while we wouldn't suggest you try this at home, studies on prairie voles show that injecting the hormone vasoPl1!SSin into the brain makes maJes bond strongly to females. llJegal drugs such as cex:aine or amphetamines can simulate the euphoria of falling in love by raising levels o f the neurotransmitter dopamine, but dopamine levels can also be increased legally by eXercising. Another neurot.ransmitter, phenylethylamine (PEA), is tagged the 'love molecule' because it induces feelings of excitement and apprehension. PEA is found in chocolate and it, too, is linked to the feeJ-good effects of exercise. Overall. a swift jog could be more conducive to love than anything you might find in a bottle.

I..ove potions or not, it seems that drugs elln carry both pros and cons whtrJ it comes to coprlllltion.

'*

Please, bore me In 1995. the internet was abuzz with news of a startling side effect of the antidepressant clomipramine. The effect was first described in a paper in the OmadwlI lounI,,1 oj PsyclliRtry which stated that four patients taking the drug had spontaneous orgasms every time they yawnl.od.

Low. sexand all thatswff 149

One of the patients, a woman, had been depressed for thrt'e months. 1he drug cured her problem, but s he asked if !Ike could be allowed to continue using it since she enjoyed the side effect so much. She had even found she could experi\'nce an orgasm by deliberate yawning. Another patient, a male, was also highly satisfied both with the drug's clinical dft.'Ctiveness and its side effect. He asked to continue taking the drug, solving the 'awkward and embarrassing' problem of repeated spontam.'Ous climaxes by wearing a condom all day. Apparently some 5 per cent of users of clomipramine reported the side effect.. which had also been observed in users of Prozac, although for the majority the ability to orgasm was inhibited by these drugs. One writer suggested that the effect, if it became widespread, could have had inter1!SHng social consequences. People who experienced it would presumably seek out the most boring person they could flOd at parties ...

: Dopey sperm In the year 2000, Herbert Schue! of the State University or New York at Buffak> claimed that cannabis may slow down sperm. lhis couJd explain reports of low fertility among men who smoked a lot of marijuana. Schuel's team treated sperm In a test tube with a synthetic anandamlde - a chemlcaJ very similar to the active ingredient of cannabis. Low levels sent sperm swimming into overdrive but higher levels slowed their motion to a lazy cr.lwl. The chemical also Inhibited the ability of the sperm to bind to the egg and penetrate it. ' It reaUystops them cold,' Schue! said. Natural anandamides are present in semen, and ore .)lso 5e<'l"etro by the oviduct ana egg follicles.

:it. Frozen stiff A frozen penis was the key to discovering the male impotence drug Viagra, according to three patent applications filed by Pfizer of Sandwich in Kent.lnjune 1990, Andrew Bell, David Brown and Nicholas Terrett described a range of pyrazolcr pyrimidinones that relieved angina and high blood pressure by inhibiting an enzyme called phosphodiesterase. Three years later. Terrett and Peter Ellis tested the drug on a detached frozen human penis. They found it inhibited a similar enzyme in tht' corpus cavemosurn tissue. When this tissue becomes engorged with blood it produces an erection. In a June 1997 patent, Peter Dunn and Albert Wood d.lscovered a better way 01 making the drug which was to become Vtagra.

~ Fart molecule could be next Viagra The .stink of flatulence and rotten eggs could provide a surprising lift for men. Hydrogen sulphide (H.S) causes l'f'eClions in rats and may one day provide an alternative to Viagra for men. The penis is packed with spongy tissue that produces an erection when it fiUs w ith blood. Nitric oxide (NO) helps relax the walls of arteries that supply the penis, allowing extra blood to flow in. Viagra works by blocking an enzyme that destroys NO. In 2009, HaS had been shown to relax the walls of major blood vessels too. Giuseppe Cirino at the University of Naples Federico II in Italy and his coUeagues found enzymes that product' H.S in human penile tissue. lnjccting this tissue with H.S dilatoo the blood vessels, while injecting it into the penises ot Ih'e rats produced eTl!Clions.

love, sex and aU that swff

i)f course, it 's tlot size thaI mailers, or so we are lold.

": The lengths some men will go to In 1995, it was discovered that penises were generally smaller thiln popularly ac;sumed. By injecting 60 men with a drugtlut produces erections, and then measuring the size of their organs with a tape measure, Jack McAninch and Hunt~r Wessells of the Univel"Slty of California. San Francisco. condudcd that an avemge erect penis is 12.8 centimetres long. (That's just over 5 inches for those who can' t lhinkabout their anatomy in metric units). Wessells and McAninch conducted their size survey after several wthappy patients came to them with compliC<ions resulting from penile augmentation operations. The researchers hoped that by revealing the 'norm' tor penis size, they would help doctors to decide if a patient really needed such a procedure. Only a few surgeons in the US performed penislengthening operations. often advertising aggressively in the sports pages of newspapers and charging up to $6000 for their services. But thl! results were less than perfect, said McAninch. The operation could result in uneven swelling. bleeding, loss of sensation and infections leading to skin loss and deformity. These could lead, in turn. to psychological problems, including the mability to achieve any erection at a\1 The researchers intended to firm up their data by measur· ing more penises.

There' s nD slAch tiring as the ideal size or shape or body,

wt:

SItsp«f. But dnnkmg om help Improve most tlrillgs. Beauty is In tlU! eye - or tlr£ beer glass - of the btholder.

151

~ 'Beer goggles' are real - it's official The next time you hear someone blaming 'bee.- goggles' for theirbchaviour, you may have to believe them. People really do appear more attractive when our perceptions arc changed by drinking alcohnL There have 1x-en few previOUS attempts to investigate Ute idea that people seem to find others more attractive when drunk. In 2(0), psychologists at the University of Glasgow, UK, published iI study in which they asked heterosexual students in campus bars and cafes whether they had been dnnking. and then got them to rate photos of people for attractiveness. While the results supported the beer goggles theory, another explanation is thai regular drinkers tend to have personality traits that mean they find people more i1 ttrilctiVC, whether or not th£>y are under the influence of alcohol at the ti.Jne. To resolve the issue, a learn of researchers led by Marcus Munaf6 at the University of Bristol in the UK conducted iI controlled experiment_ They randomly assigned 84 heterosexual students to consume either a non-alcoholic lime· flavoured drink or an alcoholiC' beverage with a similar flavour. The exact amount of alcohol varied according to the individuaJ but was designed to have an effect equiva1ent to someone weighing 70 kilograms drinking 250 .tn.iIWitres of wine -enough to makesame shldents tipsy. After "'1:5 minutes, the students were shown pictures of people their own age, from both sexes. Both men and women who had consumed alcohol rated the faces as being more attractive than did the controls, and the effect was not limited to the opposite sex - volunteers who had drunk alcohol also fated people from theiJ' own sex as more a ttractive. This contrasted with the Glaswegian team's results, where there wason1yan effect when n'en werE! looking at pictures at women, and vice versa, One

1(lyfI.

I,ft.

t,~, ~I I

III", \II1N

, ~J.L1/l"lkln.lldlll MUl\.'lft\ I~ UWI ,drohul-bnoSIOO pt.-'T'Ceptions I" .II'M ""''f1t'SS tend 10 bt.-come focust.'
Ilullr you'vl! Jiltl'd your beer goggles yet no prospectivt' par/lit" f""It1('S ;nlp I';ITW,

don', stili/ell on tltefootball .

•Shagged out 'Jere is a sobering message for footbaUers launching them· !oelv('5 into a new soccer season: an overactive sex life couJd give you a ca~threa l eni ng injury. A study conducted in suggested that players were especially prone to arthritic knee injuries triggered by sexually transmitted badcria. The study, by Paul Oyudo, analysed the cases o f ten sportsmen with persistent knee injuries. Of thl:' ten, six were loolballers and five of these played in the En glish Premier l.eague. John King, a consultant orthopacdic surgeon at the Lunden lndependent Hospital and president of the British Sports Doctors Association, who released Oyudo's study. hoped to make footbalJers aware of the risk to their careers POSI.>d by frequent unprotected. sex.

1m

"I I

154 HowtofMuaTotnadc

While most footbaUers' injuries were sustained on the field of play, the cases studied by Oyudo involved sexually acquired reactive arthritis, or SARA. It is triggered by the same bacteria that cause non-specific urethritis, an inflammation of the urethra . In eight of the ten cases reviewed by Oyudo, the sportsmen clearly had non-specific urethritis. 1lucc had cloudy discharges in their urine and two tested positive (or ChlD.mydiD trtlCllomalis, a bacterium implicated as a cause of SARA. Whether the sportsmen revealed the full o:tent of their sexual activities to their doctors was unclear, but 5 of them admiued having had more than 11 sexual partners in their lifetime. Only about one in foUT British men in their mid· twenties reported. having had this many partners. The level of promiscuity among these sportsmen calls for concern.,' Oyudo wrote. 'Pootballers appear to be the greatest cw· pnts.' A spokesman for the Football Association said at the time that young players were routinely given 'general sex education', including advice on avoiding sexually transmitted diseases.

Presumaltly this is not a problem for Jootbalfas in HUligary who, thanks 10 this demel!, will surely be keell to praeti~ safe sex.

~ Odeto joy Hungary made a special contribution to music in 1997 with the Serenading Condom, which used technology very similar to the kind that makes birthday and Christmas cards playa tinny tune when they are opened. A microswitch in the condom connected a small battery to a preprogrammed

t.ove. sex and all that stuff ISS

sound synthesiser and a tiny loudspeaker. When the condom was unfurled it played a tune. Hungarian lovers could choose between two condoms, each with its ovm serenade. One played the traditional Hungarian tune You Sweet Little Duntbbdl. The other sang the '"lernJdumnle, also known asArise Ye Workus .

:The little shock that's too much for a sperm in 1990, a contraceptive which worked by eiectTocuting spenn was developed m the US. it had already been successfully tested in baboons. The device, similar to a tiny heart pacemaker, consisted of a lithium/iodirle battery - which was half a centimetre long and as thick as a cotton bud - and two electrodes. The plastic cylindrical battery was placed in the cervix and is anchored by two plastic lugs. The 2.S.VOIt battery generated a conslantclectrical cu,rrent of 50 microamps. This was conducted across the cervix by mucus or seminal fluid, irnmobilising sperm in three to four minutes, according to researchers a t the Women's Medical Pavilion in New York who developed the device. They believed the current would prevent the sperm passing through the cervix and fertilising the ovum: their in vitro studies showed that 1.00 per cent of sperm were stopped in their tracks by this level of rurrent, and studles in baboons seemed to back up the findings. The batteries were a modified form of a pacemaker. However, while a pacemaker lasts for up to ten years, the contraceptive baHeries would run oul after a year. Steven Kaali, medical director of the Women's Medical Pavilion, said human trials lasting years would ~ necessary before the device could be used 'Everyone believes in their own invention - I think this is Ule best thing ever to happen

to women. butlhe proof WIll com.e £rom the R&D stages,' Silid Ka ..lli. He believed that the device would have few side effects; then! had been no reports of problems sum as bums or chemical changes in people who wore pacemakers. An electrical current might also kill bacteru and fungi, and he hoped thai contraceptives incorporating the battery eQuid cui down the risk of sexually transmitted diseases.

S/,oek therapy during Sf'X was probably "rof'r likely 10 be /I winner. As listless as spraying !/Our genitals w,th cola. prrhaps7

~ 'Coca-Cola douches' scoop Ig Nobel

prize Tests of whether drinks sum as Coke and Pepsi could be used as spermicides were among the many offbeat ideas celebrated at the :wo8 Ig Nobel awards. The tongue-in-cheek awards, presented al Ha rvard University. are organised by the humorous scientific journal the Amwls of ImprobQb/e Rtsenrd. and awarded for research amievt'1Jlents ' that make pt!Ople laugh - then think', Deborah Anderson of Harvard Medical School's bjrth· control laboratory look her first step towards the Ig Nobel chemistry prize in the 1980s when she asked medical student Shan~e Umpierre what type of contraception had been used
lDw,"ot'JI

nd.all that sluff

.. ,Id Ul(' method came with its own "shake and shoot applica-

the classic Coke bott1e: Til SCoe if Coke really worked, Anderson, Umpierre and 1"{'If' colleague, gynaecologist Joe Hill, mixed four different t),lt\.oq of Coke with sperm in test tubes. A minute later, all ~r<'rm were dead in the Diet Coke, but 41 per cent were still _Imming In the JU!;I-introduced New Coke. But that's not goocl enough, Anderson warned. Sperm 'can make it into the ft'rvlca l cana l, out of reach of any douching solution, in ...."conds' - faster than anyone could shake and apply a bottle ~II Olet Coke. The thrt'e retican:htli> shared the chemistry' pnze With Lhunng-Yc Hong of the Taipci Medical University in Taiwan And his colleagues, whose sunilar experiment found both Coca-Co la and its arch-rival PepSi-Cola useless as sFK'rmicidcs. 1\)(" -

Bul. even with cola as protechO'I, YOII still need to be very ctJrr'!1I1 you ,1100$(' to kiss.

WilD ".

Read my lips In 1993, the journal Nlltlire suggested that the phrase 'kiss and teU' might take on a new meaning when it reported thai after humans have done the kissing, bacteria and fungi do the telling. The article alleged that each of us has a different 'lip fauna', as individual as our fingerprints. When people kiss, there is a veritable battle of the bacteria as the two microscopic populations come Into contact. Close family members who touch frequently share many of the same skin bacteria, buta stranger has a totaUy different

fau.na.

157

158 How 10 Make i Tornado

The 'locals' eventually come out on top, as they are better suited to their environment. So, by comparing the ratios of 'foreign' and 'native' microbes remaining. scientists could not on1y teU who had been kissing whom but also when they ki»ed. The techniques were devISed for forensic work in legal Cil.9CS involving bodily contact. But with the number of highprofile personages implicated in extramarital indiscretions, how long might it be before forensic scientists are called in to read their lips?

Scie"tists, we nott wIth :;Oint pnde, 11ft prqmrrd to ask tile queslions olhrrs only dart Ihink about, or indud do 1101 ewn cOllsidu at all. OtherU';st, I,ow UiQu/d IIJt krlow that, imlead 0/ stunting your growtll, t/lis almost Ulliwr5D1 practice might Qctunlly be

good/or you ...

~ Masturbating

may protect against prostate ca ncer

It will make you go blind. It will make your palms grow hairy. Such myths about masturbation are largely a thing of the past. But research conduc~ in 2(0) had even better news for young men; frequent self-pleasuring could protl.'d: against the most common l.ind of cancer. A team in Australia led by Graham Giles of The Cancer Council Victoria in Melbourne asked 1.0 ']9 men with prostate cancer to fi ll in a questionnaire detailing their sexual habits, and compared their responses with those of 1.259 healthy men of the same age. The teilIT\ concluded that the more men ejaculated between the ages of 20 and ,)0, the less likely they were to develop prostate cancer. The protective effect was greatest while men were in their twenties: those who had ejaculated

LoVe. sex and all that swff 159

more than five times per week in their twenties, for instance, were one-third less likely to develop aggressive prostate cancer later in life. The results contradicted those of previous studies, which !>uggested that having had many sexual partners, or a high trt!quency of sexual activity, increased the risk of prostate cancer by up to 40 percent. The leey difference was that these earlier studies defined sexual activity as sexual intercourse, whereas the more recent study focused on the number of C'f aculations, whether or not intercourse was involved . The leam speru.iated that infections-caused by intermUl'S(' may increase the risk of prostate cancer. 'Had We been able to remove ejaculations associated with sexual intercourse, there should have been an even stronger prote(:tive effect of other I.iaculations,' they suggested. 'Men ha.ve trulny wOIYs of using thcir prostate which do not involve women or other men,' Giles added. But why should ejaculating more often cut the risk of prostate cancer? The team speculated that ejaculation prevents carcinogens building up in the gland. The prostate. together with the seminal vesicles, secretes the bulk of the Ouid in semen, which is rich in substances such as potassium, zinc, fructose and citric acid . Generating the fluid involves concentrating these components from the bloodstream up to Iioo-fold - and this could be where the trouble starts. Studies III dogs showed that carcinogens such as J-methylcholanlhrene, found in ciga'rette smoke, are a lso concentrated in prostate fluid . 1t's a prostatic stagnation hypothesis,' said CUes. The more you flush the ducts out,. the less there is to hang around and damage the cells that line them.' .All these mechanisms are totally specuJative: cautioned breast cancer expert Loren Lipworth of the International Epidemiology Institute in Rockville. Maryland. But if the findings were ever confirmed, nlture health advice from doctors might no longer be restricted to diet and exercise. 'Masturbation is part of people's sexua l repertoire,'

160 How to Mal<e aTorn&!!o

said Anthony Smith, deputy director or the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society at La Trobe University in Me1boume. 'If these findings hold up, then it's perfectly reasonable that men should be encouraged to masturbate,' he said.

We lat~ discovered lhat MX gmually may Ilelp prevnlt prostale canc~.

~ Frequent ejaculation may protect

against cancer Frequent sexual intercourse and masturbation could prota"t men against a common form of cancer, suggested a 2004 study or the issue. The US study, which foUowed nearly JOPOO men over eight years, showed that those w ho ejaculated most frequently were significantly 1($8 like1y to gct prostate cancer. The results backed. the fmdings of the Australian study dted above which asserted tha t masturbation was good fO'l" men. In the US srudy, the group with the highest lifetime averageofejaculation - 21 times per month-were a third less likely to develop the cancer than the reference group, who ejaculated four to seven times a month. MJchaeJ Leitzmann, at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, and coUeagues set out to test a long-twld theory that suggested the opposite - that a higher ejaculation rate raises the risk of prostate cancer. The good news is it is not related to an increased risk.' he said. In fact, it 'may be associated with a lower risk'. 11 goes a long way to confirm the findings from our recent case-control study,' said Graham Giles, who led the Australian stud y; He praised the study's large size-including about

lDw!, sex and all that swff 16'

1500 cases of prostate cancer. Furthermore, it was the first study to begin by foUowing thousands of healthy men. This ruJed out some of the biases which might be introduced by asking men diagnosed with prostate cancer to recall their sexual behaviour retrospectively. At the start of the litudy, the men filled in iii history of their ejacula tion frequency and then filled in further questionnaires every two years, Men of different ages varied in how often they ejaculated, 50 the learn used a lifetime average for comparisons. Compared with the n!:ference group who ejaculated four to seven limes oil month, 'each increase of thret> ejaculations per week was associated with a 15 per cenl decrease in the risk of prostate cancer', said Leitzmann. 'More than twelve ejaculations per month would start conferring the benefit - on average every second day or so: h~ said. However, whilst the findings were statistically 51gnificant, LcitzmilIUl remained cautious. 'I don't believe at this point ow research would warrant suggt"Sting men should alter their sexual behaviour in order to modify theU: risk: A furth~r caveat was that the benefit of ejaculation was less clear in relation to the most dangerous, metastasising fonn of prostate C2JlreI". compared with the organ-confined or slow-growing types. Giles noted that neither study examined ejaculation during the teenage years- which may be a crucial factor. But he said: 'Although much more research remains to be done. the take-home message is that ejaculation is not harmful.. and very probably protective of prostatic health - and it feels goodl'

Sadly, research re/f!fJsed ;11 2009 see/lis to IlaVt' shO".Dn that tire added protection only QCCllrs ilfrequent ejaculatiDn tllkes place i1l thDsi! aged 40 or over. whIch rllther cmrJu!;e$ the is~ue. Inded, us fOQS once II/ought, it is possible t/Ult prostllte cancer may be more common ill men who lire sexually QctifJt at a young Age. Theff!

162 How 10 Make a TOfnado

WQS alu'4Ys bound 10 be a dowlIsid~ wasn't there? Clearly, more feseRrch lIuds to be dOllt to ascf'Ttaill tile trut pictl.re. All we can do is presmt the tvideflct! and leaw it in readers'lIllllds .. , Alld tllen's something elst: you should thillk twice about doillS too.

;&; Oral sex linked to mouth cancer Oral sex can lead to oral tumours. That was the conclusion of researchers who, in 2004 , proved what had long beer1 SllS-" pccted - that the huma.n papilloma virus can cause oral cancers. The risk. thankfully, is tiny. On1y around 1 in 10,000 people develop oral tumours each year, and most cases are probably caused by two other popular recreational pursuits: smoking and drinking. The researchers were not recommend ~ ing
t

and women in tennsofhow likely the virus was to beprese.nt

the cancers. The researchers thought both cunnilingus and fellatio could infect people's mouths. Patients with mouth cancer were also three times as likely to Mve antibodies against HPVas the healthy controls. For cancers of the back of the mouth, the link was even stronger. Cancer specialist Newell Johnson of King's College London agreed. 'We have kilo ........ for some time that there is a smali but significant group of people with oral cancerwho:se disease carmot be blamed on decades of 5JJ1Oking and drinking. because they're too young.' he- said. 'In this group there must be another ractor, and I-LPV and oral sex seems 10 be one likely explanation. This study provides the strongest evidence yet that this is the case.' Genital HPV infections are common. At anyone time, around a third of 25-year-old women in the US are infected. It is thought that only .10 per ren t ofinfa.1.ions involve callcercausing strains, and that 95 per cent of women w ill get rid of the infection within a year But even this does not explain why so few deve lop cancer. In

A"d if YOIl tJlQuShl you'd had enough bad news, It turns Old 01/11 thi' old adage lIoout Ih!' bad guys and thf'ir girls reAlly is tmf'.

Bad guys really do get the most girls Nice guys already knew it, and in 2008 tv.·o studies confirmed it: bad boys get the most girls. The finding may help explain why a nasty suite of antisocial personality traits known as the 'dark triad ' persists in the. human population, despite their potenllally grave rulturaJ costs.

The traits are the seU-obsession of narcissism; the impulsive, thrill-seeking and callous behaviour of psychopaths;

and the dl'Ct?llful and exploitative nature of Machiavellianism. At their extreme, these tTa.its would be highly detrimental for life in traditional human societies. People with these personalities risk being shunned by others and shut out o f relationships, leaving them without a mate, hungry and vulnerable to predators. But being just slightly evil could have an upside; a prolific sex life, according to Peter Jonason al New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. 'We have BOrne evidence that the three hails are really the same thing and may represent a successful evolutionary strategy.' Jonason and his colleagues subjected 200 college students to personality tests-designed to rank them foreach of the dark triad traits. They also asked about their attitudes to 5elCuai relationships and about their sex hves, including how many !"'rtnel'S they'd had and whether they were seeking brief affalrs. High 'dark triad' scorers are more likely tn try tn poach othl!l' people's partners for a brief affair. The study found that those who scored higher on the dark triad personality traits tended to have more !",rmers and a greater desire for short·tenn relationships. But the correlation only held in

ma.les. Jilmes Bond epitomises this set of traits, Jonason said. ' He's clearly disagreeable, very extroverted and likes trying new things - killing people, new women.' Just as Bond seduces woman alter woman. people with dark triad traits may be more successful with a quantity.-style or shotgun approach to reproduction, even if they don't stick around for parenting. The strategy seems to have worked. We still have these traits: Jonason said. This observation seemed to hold across cultures. But questions remained as to its effectiveness. They still have to explain why it hasn't spread to everyone,' sa id Matthew Kelll!l' of the University of Colorado in Bou.lder. 'There must be some cost of the traits.' One possibility, both Keller and Jonason suggested, is that the strategy is most sue-

'·~ .. I\l1 ,otl~,",

~Ij' ,

when ..tar"- IrI.sd ~" hllt-"" il~ rA!,\! OtMrwlM'. would b«'unte mono wMy MId gu.arded.

Ii/lally,

,HlltlW'lf

'ak~

comfort in

tilt! fn ct

that biurrt sexlltdity is

/lOf

10 humQlls.

Fema le beetles have a thirst for sex Bu ymS a lady • drink to win her favour is a trick no! confined 10 men. Some beetle ft'males will ma~ ..imply to quench their Ihinlt

The bean weevil Qll/osobnlc/IIIS mQclllntus feeds on dry pulses. Wilh III diet Ilke this, the male's ejaculate is III valuable water source for fenlolcs. In 2JXY7, Martin Edvardsson at UppsaJa Uruversity, Sweden.. tested the idea that females tap 11110 this by keeping them on dry beans with or without access 10 water. Females living on beans alone accepted more matings, presumably to secure the water in the seminal fluid. Edvardsson said that the energy used to produce the ejaculale, which makes up III whopping 10 per cent 01 a male's weight, is weU spenl Once impregnated, females lose interest in sex - probably to avoid further injury from the male's .spiny penis. They are more likely to mate again if they are tJlirsty. 'This is a massive investment for the maJe,' Erlvardsson said. ' It buys them time before the females remale and their sperm have locompcte with that of other m~es. · Females With accesb 10 water lived on average for a day and a half longer than those without water. Since average life5pan is only around nine days. this makes quite a difference to the total number of eggs they can lay.

166 HowtoMakuTornado

~ Turkey turn-ons While researching Ihe sexual behaviour of turkeys in thr 1900s. Martin Schein and Edgar HaJe of Pennsylvania Stal... Unlver.>ity discovered thai male members of thai Specie. truly iU't' nol fussy. When placed in a room with a lifelikt' model of a female turkey, the birds mated with it as eagerly as they would the real thing. Intrigued by this observation, Schein and Hale embarked on a series of experiments todetennine the minimwn stimul~ it takes to excite a male turkey. involved removing parts from the turkey model one by one until the male bird eventually lost interest. TaD, feet and wings-Schein and Hale remov«J them all, but still the clueless bird waddled up to the model, ~ out an amorous gobble, and tried to do his thing. Finally,only a head on a stick remained. The male turkey was still keen. In fact, it preferred a head on a stick to a l'eadless body. The researchers speculated that the males' head fixation stemmed from the mechanics of turkey mating. When a male turkey mounts a female, he is so much larger than her that he covers her completely, except for her head. Therefore, they suggested, it is her head that serves as his focus of erotic attention. Schein and Hale then went on to investigate how minimal they could make the head before it failed to excite the turkey. lhey discovered that a freshly severed head on a stick worked best. Next in order of preference was a dried-out male head, followed by a two-year-old 'discolored. withered, and hard' female head. Last place went 10 a plain balsa wood head, but even that elicited a sexual response. They published their results in 1965 in a book called SaRlla 8tJvztJior. Before we humans snigger at the sexual predilections of turkeys, we should remember that our species stands al the sumO'l,/.I of the bestial pyramid of the perverse. Humans will attempl 10 mate with almost anything. A case in point is

nus

lAWe, sex and .1I11Ia1 stuff 167

Tllllmas Granger, the teenage boy who in 1~ became one of Ilw firs! people 10 be executed in puritan New England. His

I'nme? He had sex with a turkey.

Double the fun Male lizards and snakes have to make a choice when they male; which penis shouJd they use? They have two, One is (onnccted. to their righl testis, and one to their left. In lCJ90, IWO biologists &om the US found thai some lizards alternate their penises when each is depleted. of sperm. In this way, they maxi~ their chance of fe rtilising a female. Richard 'rorkaz and Joseph Slowinski of Miami University studied the lit.ard Ano/u CIllUiintnSis. They found that the penis a lizard used depended on which they had used last time they mated, and how long ago they had last used it. Torkaz and Slowinski believed that such behaviour could be explained by 'sperm competition'. Zoologists have real· tsed. that competition for a female's favour does not simply involve fights among males or displays o f bright plwnage; it DIO continue inside the female's reproductive tract as sperms compete to be first to the egg. In response to such sperm competition, males of some species d eveloped sperm that formed into a hard plug, blocking the way for the sperm of any other males. In other species. males produced a lot of sperm, so that theSe oumumbered and swamped the opposition. However, keeping up a high level of sperm production can be a problem. If successive copuJations foUowed on too quickly from one another, this could resul t in the nwnber of sperm in the ejaculate dropping sharply. By alternating their penises, lizards of A. CDrolinOlSis may overcome this problem. Torkaz and Slowinski found lhat males alternated the use of their right and left pmises only if one copuJation {allowed less than 24 hours after another. If

168

HowtoMake~Toffl~do

the interval between copulations was longer, then they used the same penis. The biologists carried out an experiment in which they prevented penisaitemation. Theydid this by taping over one half of a male's cloacal vent, through which the penis protrudes when aroused. This stopped the animal from using the prois on thai side. The biologists found that males which were forced to reuse the same penis within 24 hours transferred fewer sperm in the later copulations. However, the researchers found no such drop in the numbers of speml when sucCt!ssive copulations were as long as 72 hours apart. In this siruation, they said, the sperm duct had time to be restocked with sperm. According to Torkaz and Slowinski. their research demonstrated that the lizards adjusted their behaviour in response to sperm competition, using thei r penises alternately to ensure that maximum sperm transfer was kepi up, even if the gap between copulations was short.

:'!¥ Big attraction Few birds have penises, but the Argentine lake duck Oxyura vittntn is one sizeable exception. Its corkscrew-shaped member was thought to be about 20 centimetres long - haJj the duck's body length. But in 2001, Kevin Md:racken of the University of Alaska found one aroused specimen whose penis was hanging out of the body sac where il usually resided. It measured a whopping 42.5 centimetres. This is the first record of the penis "hanging out" in its natural form: said McCracken. He suggested thai this highly promiscuous bird displayed its penis to attract females, which oUght explain why evolution has favoured length.

Atld, after ap%glsillg for goillg to such lengtlls, we move Oil the next, more gfrltul, c/rapter.

10

7 Animals and their ilk

Ilf we could tal k to the animals, leam their languages, maybe lake an animal d egree .. .' Dr Doolittle, in the eponymous hit musical, mused what it would be like if we could speak to those WIth whIch humans share the planet. Sadly, weare nol mlll"h fu rther down the road tn deciphering the language of lntelligenl dolphins or chimps, let alone actually figuring oul If d ogs bark in order to converse or simply to irritate the neighbours. In fact, some may feel that science has had a patchy relatIonship with the animal kingdom, but Nao Scientist has long campaigned for an end to the sight of mammals with cosmet· ics rubbed in their eyes and smoking beagles. Ind eed, oCten it's the proverbial Mother Nature rather than humans who can be the wickedest of mistresses. What personality disorder ted her to decree thai herrings should oommunicEl le via Earls? More intriguingly, what on earth led researcher Ben Wilson and his colleagues to uncover this fact? And why did Mother Nature decide that male rats should SUlg an ultrasonic song shortly after ejaculating? Just so biologists Ronald Barfield and Lynette Geyer could discover it and find their way into this chapter? From classicaJ-mus i~loving carp to urban myths about toppling penguins, little has escaped the notice of scientists down the years, although sadly we had to leave out the story of the Kenyan MP who suggested allowing hyenas into the nation's hospitals to consume the unclaimed bodies of deceased humans. He thought il would save money on

170 How to Make a TomCido

storage and burials (and who could argue with such logic1). Unfortunately (for us, not the relatives of the cadavers), he doesn't qualify for this chapter because a) his suggestion was inexplicably rejected and b) he was a politician, not a scientist, which really disqualifies him from any knowledge of what's good for any of us, let alone an appearance in this book. And we admit it, this chapter IS just as much about animals p ushing the boundaries of what is believable or acceptable as it is about scientists. But we all share a common ancestor, so what the heck? French poet Jean Marcenac almost wrote 'The more I learn about humans. the more I like animals'. We'd only agree up to a point, especially w'hen faced with a farting herring .. .

W"'j/~ most of the uF'"immls em animals 11Ial folloll) are based on paSSWt rESeOrch, we are sllrpriSl!d bId pleased fa il/cillde this report thllt shows spjd~ are quite chilled when it comes to Jttavy drug consumption. Elephants on LSD was a pnrticularly /1Jlsty idea (see pilge J 30)' but, it seems, spiders are rather more groovy.

1}: Spiders on speed get weaving Spiders on marijuana are so laid back that they weave just so much of their webs and then ... weU( it just doesn't seem to IJ14l.lter anymore. On the soporific drug chloral hyd.rate, they drop off before they even get started. A spider's skill at spinning its web is so obviously afferted. by the ups and downs of different drugs that in 1995 scientists at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama thought spiders could replace other animals in testing the toxicity of chemicals. Different drugs had varying effects on the average arachnid addict. On benzed rine. a well-known upper, house

At'IIlMlsa~the.'i1k

"pltiers spun their webs with great gusto, but apparently IVl thout much planning, leaving large holes. On caffeine they ",-'('med unable to do more than string a few threads together ,ll random. The more toxic the chemical, the more deformed the web. NASA researchers had hoped that with help from it computer pmgr.lm they w(1l1 ld hP lIblp tnquantify this effect to prod uce ,1n accurate test for toxicity.

H'lt, ~ Hlg terribly riglll-(Jll, Wi' call't Willy :oily we arc hliPPY w,tI, dOSing spiders or ally on{ml1l with dnlgs already tried Qnd /4"llrJ ;'1 IIIUllQu s Fa,.. belter, wr feel. t() givt them ~methjng ~ CUll preswlIl' ill adrxmce they might t!njoy.

: Animal pleasure In '995. primate pornography was the entertainment on offer lor bored gorillas at Longleat House near Warminster, UK. Samba and Nico romped over a quarter of it hectare of private Island during the day and enjoyed all the comforts of home al night.

Their house was equipped with satellite TV, to which they were glued throughout the long winter evenings. Longleal'$

pn:>SS officer Claire Keener told Nw Scientist thai Samba and Nico preferred jungle movies and became especl.llly excited when gorillas appeared on the screen. At the consenting age 01 }o years old, both were allowed to watch blue movies Of pnmates mating in the wild. in the hope that they would be aroused into mating. Not a bad life: firstech leaves, and a visit Irom a personal vet once a week. Lights out at bedtune

171

172

HowIOM"ke"Tornado

ensured a comfortable night's sleep but dllSpite the movies, there was no monkeying around.

Success, sadly, was IIot forlhcommg, whicll is bQd new6 for flU thog zoological institutions tllllt hove troublt' gelting tht likt'S of pandas and polar bears to matt. Still, panda porn ond its ilk gitH'. us an t'XcuSt' 10 report ally ImloMlt of rcst'arch IIIto till.' sexllul beltaviour of animals.

~ Exhibitionist spiny anteater reveals

bizarre penis In 2DO']. the bizarre sex Ufe of the spiny anteater was exposed when it was discovered that the male ejaculates using only one haJi of its penis. These fincJjngs about the creature's sex life may seem salacious but they could help shed light on an evolutionary mystery. It seems that the way the mammaJ ejaculates is similar to the way reptiles do - by shutting down one side of its penis before secreting semen from the other side. Reptiles have a pair of male members mlled hemipenes for sex. and they use only one of the two during eadl act of copulation (see page

'67)· The spiny anteater (Tachyglossus lICufaztus), also known as the short-beaked echidna.. is a primitive mammal found in Australia and New Guinea. Like the platypus, it is a monotreme, laying eggs instead of bearing live young. Monotremes have many features in common with reptiles, and the hope is that by studying them, scientists may find dues as to how mammals evolved. The spiny anteater, however, is notoriously difficult to observe in the wild and shows hH1e enthusiasm for breedmg in capbVlty, so, pnor to 20tYJ, nobody had managed to observe them ejaculate.

AI\!ll«IliaOllml!lr+l~

Fortunately. Steve Johnston of the University of Queensland in Galton, Australia, and his colleagues inherited a m<\le spiny anteater that was not so shy. The creature had been 'retired' from a zoo because it produced an erection when being handled at public viewing sessions, bemusing its vh;itors. By filming this animal, the researchers were able to describe the unique spiny anteater erection and ejaculation behaviour for the first time. The spiny anteater 's four-headed phaUus had been puzzling scientists. 'When we tried to collect semen by eledrically stimulated ejaculation before, not only did we oot get a single drop, but the whole penis swelJed up to a four-headed monster thai wouldn't fit the female reproductive tract, which has only two brandles,' said Johnston. 'Now we know that duri..ng a nor.tJ\ill erection, two he;Jris g('t shut down and the other two fit.' The heads used are swapped each time the mammal has sex. The evolutionary significance of one-sided ejaculation was unknown, but may playa role in sperm competition where sperm from many males may compete to fertilise an egg. Indeed, in the spiny anteater, up to 11 males may form a queue behind one female to copu1ate with her. lhe researchers also observed that hundreds of sperm team up to form bundJes thai swim much faster than individual speno in the spiny anteater's semen - .mother possible ad"ptation for sperm competition. 'We can now study echidna sperm much better, which should offer fascinating insights into the evolution of mammals: said Russell Jones from the University of Newcastle in New South Wales, who first dissected spE'rm bundles from dead echidna in the lCj80s.

I/:J

17.4

How!O M;,ke. Tornado

'f): Why a big horn gives beetles a tiny organ Ra pid metamorphosis may explain why beetle species are numerous enough to overwhelm almost any other creature on Earth. The superfast evolution of the male dung beetle's penis to wildly differing sizes in the same species could mean that new species appear within a few years rather than over millennia. In 2008, Annin Mocze:k from lndiana University, BloomIngton, and colleagues studied four popuJations of one species of homed beetles in Eastern and Western Australia.. Italy and the US. The most striking difference was between beetles in Western Australia, which had small horns and big genitals. and those in the US, which had the complete opposite. Th~ variation in genita l size between these two pupulations was as pronounced as that between ten other species in countries across Asia, Ewope. and South America. Organs developing within the pupa must compete for a limited supply of nutrients. So if one organ grows bigger, another is stunted. Thus, males with large horns tend to have smaller genitals, and vice versa. Strong male bt.'etles use their horns to fight for females, but weaker males prefer to sneak off to mate while competitors are fighting. Which strategy works best depends on the size of the population. In those with more females, fighting is most successful, and big-homed beetlL'S win most mates. But when there are nol enough females, fi ghting isoften fruitless. 50 evolution favours beetles with smaller horns but cunning lactiCS.

Because bL-etles with genitals of differenl sizes cannot mate, Moczek thought the four populations might soon split into di5t:iru:t species. ' It's unprecedented that 50 years would be long enough to generate variation nonnally only found in

Animals and th~ifitlc 115

species which have been separated for millions of years: he said.

Of course, /fIalmg practIces vary greatly between species, but {I ·s saft to aSSlwlt the mednka jish in I/us fol/rnvmg artIcle from "994 wenm 't expecting to breed In zero grnrJlty.

t: Astronauts aim to catch fish in the act Voyeurism will reach new heights this week as astronauts aboard the space shuttle Corumbia video the mating behaviour of two pairs of Japanese medaka fish. If the fish succeed in mating in orbit. and produce eggs and offspring. scientists will have a unique chance 10 study the role gravity plays in the development of the embryo. Successful mating could also pave the way for further experiments aimed at providing astronauts on long missions with a renewable source of 11m. The experiment is one of about 80 set up by an intemational team of scientists to fly in a mkrosravity labora"tory aboard. Columbin. In the absence of gravity. many spedt:s of fish lose their l1aJance and swim in loops rather than straight liru>s. 1hls makes mating unlikely, says Victor Schneider, one of the NASA scientists overseeing the programme. Japan's national space agency, NASDA, took a number of specie; up in aircraft flying a parabolic course that reproduces weightless conditions for a few .seconds. The small, orange-coloured medakas cUd best in the rught tests, hence their spacef1Jght The species also has other advantages. Medakas' eggs 'take only eight days to hatch, so the astronauts shouJd see results before the end of the 14-day mission. In addition, fish, I~ggs and offs pring are aU transparent, so the astronauts will be able to record the development of the body and internal organs on film. After behaving strangely at first, the fish -recovered, bul mating was a tentative affair.

176

How to Make a Tomado

NOlle of us is surprised that animals (:Iljoy sex, of cour's(!. Wlra t is more perturbing is that, /ike humat/s, they miglzt have hallg-ups about if.

~ The eat's whiskers Many inventors claim that their latest idea is 'the dog"s 001locks'. But in 11}96, en Corporation of Buckner, Missouri could claim that theirs really was. The company had developed a line in polypropylene canine testicles. Artificial testicles, according to Chemical and Engineering Nws, were selling like hot ca kes in the US and Canada. Trade-named Neuticles, they were installed in the dog's scrotum in a two-minute procedure immediately foll()wing removal of the qriginal articles. The idea was to be able to neuter dogs without causing psychological trauma. Gregg Miller, CTI's president, suggested that Neutides would encourage owners to have their dogs seen to; 'With these, the dog looks the same. He feels the same. He doesn' t even know he's been neutered: Although Miller admitted tha t some people thougiht the product was silly, he claimed that Neuticles were 'big m:ws in the veterinary industry', He had even produced 'I love Neutides' bumper stickers for the proud owners of dogs with ersatz balls. Veterinarians, however, were sceptical of the idea that Neuticles could do much for a dog's self-esteem.

Alld so are we. Evell SO, cOlild this Sliffolk pllnch stollio1/ have benefited from a pair? Probably not. Still, we are impres:;ed by this example of schoo/sciellce ill actioll.

Af1ulI~Js and

!hell Hit

:.;; Soft solution Childhood memories of a school science experiment helped a vet to save 3 palllmt's professional C31'('('f ;""992 111e nnfortunate victim of an accident at work was a SuHoUc punch stallion, kicked in the genitals by a mare he was supposro to service. A painfuJ swelling developed on the slallion's penis. The next day, vet Philip Ryder-Davis was called in. 'Despite all manner of treatment, the oedematous swelling got worse and worse over the next three days,' he :.aid. With disaster looming, a long-forgotten science Lesson came to mind, he explained. Ryder-Davis remembered an experiment to demonstrate osmosis. The shell was removed from a raw egg, and the egg with its innru" membrane still intact was put in a strong solution of sugar. Osmotic pressure fon:ed Ule water £rom the egg, as it attempted to dilute the sugar solution and produce equilibrium on boUl sides of the membrane, and theegg gradually began to shrink. Ryder-Davis suspended a canister of syrup from beJts afOlUld the animal's abdomen and placed the damaged organ inside. Within 24 hours the swelling had disappeared, he reported, and the stallion recovered.. A specialist in the biology of membranes confirmed that the treatment was feasible . 'Putting a swoUen organ in a highly concentrated solution of salt or sugar would certainly puu the waler oul. It raises the question of what happens to the penises of swimmers in the Dead Sea,' he added.

AJli"wls tend /0 awid tile Dood Sea - fhe I,i"t is ill file /lame. Bllt, tllen agaj", you.'d also exptct animals to avoid [allirlE ,'uto mssels from wlJicll riley cantlot escape. Bllt tlley do,,'t, lOMcll/eads us lIictly 011 to a very !?CClllltric blfJf"IItioll.

In

178 How to Mal:! a Tornado

~ Spidey's escape It is an old adage of the patents profession that the Qddest ideas are the easiest to patent, simply because nobody has ever tried before. Although the examiners searched a wide range of previous patents, they were not able to come up with anything that anticipated the application filed by Edward Doughney of Bedfordshire, UK, in 1994. Spiders are often trapped inside a bath because they cannot climb up the slippery curved slope. So the bather either has to flush them away down the plughole or give them a helping hand. A more humane answer, Doughney suggested, was a spider ladder. A strip of flexible plastic had a suction pad on one end which anchored it to the top of the bath. The strip had a rough surface, ~ an athletic spider couJd climb to safety unaided.

0/ course, there's 1l1lJho/e raft o/inventions d~jgned to improve life lot of the animal kingdom. We've a/rC'ady ellcolmtl'red Ntutr'cf~

and spidtr /lIdders, nOll/liaw abC/ul these:

~; Wonder baas English Nature decided that old methods were the best when in 1995 the rural heritage authority wanted to dear a thorny patch of ground to encourage the growth of sea-wort, a

favourite food of the endangered reddish buff moth's larvae. So a herd of milking goats was brought in to do the job on the lsle of Wight.

Everything went fine, with the goats munching happily an the scrub, clearing It so that full sunlight could reach the underlying sea-wort. But a problem emerged: the goats'

Animals and then ilk

udders and teats started getting badly scratched by low-lying thistles and thorns. 'It was spoiling the goats' milking potential, so we had to do something,' said David Sheppard of the English Nature Species Recovery Programme. The solution was a bag made of tough nylon which sUpped under the udder and strappt.>d round the go.1t'S back. English Nature claimed a world first - unless somebody else had already invented the thorn-proof bra.

:>J! Bleeping Miss Daisy In 199}. according to New InlmtiltWflJdist. cowherds in Japan were in short supply, so researchers tried developing pagers to a ttach to cows' cellars. They rouId th~ be 'hleeped' at milking time. The cews responded to musical notes, and were apparently particularly attracted by piano melodies. Only MO weeks were needed to train the cattle to come home when paged. For farmers who were unwilling to invest in this technology, there was a much cheaper method - simply playing the appropriate piano tunes over loudspeakers at milking time. And to keep on playing until the cows came home.

Cows lik~ mllsic. So, il sent/s, do carp:

~ An ear for baroque In :zoo8, Ava Chase of the Rowland institute at Harvard in Cambridge, Mass.lch,!JSt!tts, showed that carp could teU the difference between baroque music and John Lee Hooker, depressing a button with their snouts to indicate which was which.. Carp donotcven use sound tocom01unicate, but they are renowned for their sensitive hearing. Similarly,

119

180 How to Make iI Tornado

Java sparrows could not only disHnguish between Bach and Schoenberg but could also, according 10 the findings of Shigeru Watanabe at Keio University in Tokyo, Japan, apply whal they had learned about the differences between classical music and the more modem sluH 10 discriminate between the beautiful melodies of Antonio Vivaldi and the more atonal strains of Elliott Carter. Watanabe's sparrows also appeared to engage with the music, showing clear preferences for the prettiez:; more harmonious excerpts and choosing to listen 10 these rather than sit in silt'.nce.

..• a"d lIens li/.z something rise. I

~ Hen night A 1958 report from Germany threw an unexpected sidelight on the behaviour of hens. The agricultural research institute at Wiirzburg had been studying what, if any, were the harmful effects of wines produced from hybrid grapes. Gennany. like France and Switzerland, was plagued with a sizeable output of wine of extremely low quality and dubious potability. In the experiments hens, spiders and goldfis h were all used, and the hens in particular consumed astounding quantities of wine. They were divided into three groups, the controls being given water only and the others pure wine and hybrid wine respectively. Each hen was given half a pint of liquid a day. [ncredibly. 16 hens got through 600 pints of red wine in four months. seemingly in radiant health. These 16 did not, however. include any of the hens that drank hybrid wine these died early in the stud y. The fate of the spiders and goldfish was not disclosed.

We' hopt' this experimellt would be deemed illegal today. Imd Wt Ilopt tile I,em died Iwppy. Obsl!rvillg animal bell/wiour. of course. is "ollling nnu. But sqnlt researchers noUa the strangest/hitlgs. lenviflg YOllluo"duing how all earth they Clllnt! 10 be /ooIdngJor

that!

:'l: Not tonight Wh ile making a 'standard observation of sexual bcltavioUI' in 1972, Ronald Barfield and Lynette Geyer noticed that the male of the species under study sang an ultrasonic song after his ejaculation. Following up Ihis chance observation.. the Rutgers University biologists found thai this post~aculatory ultrasonic chant - which appeared to correlate with the indivldu· aI's contented stertorous breathing - was rommon to all the males they studied. The duration of the song. and the behaviour or the female partners during its performance, suggested that it functioned as a desist-contact - or 'leave me atOIle' signal, while the male recovered for another bout of sexplay. The species involved in the experiments was the rat, whose sexual behaviour, according to the authors, had bet.."fl 'exhaustively studied'. A series of mount bouts led to intromission and subsequent ejaculation, followed by a refractory period during which the male recuperntcd. The female hopped, darted about and wiggled her ears during copulation. but in the male's refractory period - when he usually either stretched out for a doze on the floor or groomed quietly - she refrained from such provocative behaviour Barfield and Geyer showed that for at least three-quarters of the interval between copulatory bouts the male emitted a series of calls at 22 kilohertz, apparently arising from the long exhalations of its languid breathing. Since the length of this calling period coincided neatly with the time during which the male was quire incapable of perfonning again, and since

182

How to Mate a lomado

the behaviour of the female changed during this period too, the researchers suggested that the call conveyed a positive 'I'm out of action' type of message to the female. Their conclusion was reinforred by the [act thai a :u-kilo-hertz call was also characteristic of mall!S that have been roundly defeated in a fight, and in females who were attempting to resist the mount!! of overly attenthe maJes. Perhaps, Barfield and Geyer suggested, the call generally reflected a state of social withdrawal; that '.u kilohertz. isa basic '"'carrier frequency" for signals denoting <;tates of contact 'YOidanu" It would be jnte~lm!l; to know what would happen if , r:ll colony was played continuous recordings of these anlbocial signals. Could one devisl' an ultrasonic ral contTac.:pti\'e?

Wt"!' I/ot ~Uf~ Wi' lN1II1 III find nul Non .111' we ,joUI\' hult .nlnw,' 0/'1.' Illfi!>/! puts. bllt solUl!lx.ldy gat "ul /lIeu ond did tht' N.'S6l,d, .

t~tl'd

;',t: Fish farting may not just be hot air In 200), biologists linked a mystmous underwater famng .;ound to bubbles coming out of a herTing's anus. No fish had been known before to emit sound from its anus or to be capable of producing such a high-pitched noise. 'n sounds just like a high-pitched raspbe:rry,'&aid Ben Wll...on of the University of British Columbta in Vancouver, Canada. Wilson and his roUeagues could not be ~~ why herrmg made this sound, but initial re!"oearch suggested that it might "plain the puzzle of how shoals keep together after dark. 'Surprising and inrereshng' was how aquatic acou<;tic Specialist Dennis Higgs, of the Univer.;ity of Windc;or in Ontario, described thE'dlsco\'E'ry. It was the fll'5t c:asc of 3 fish potcnhaUy wing high frequency for communication he

believoo Arthur Popper, an aquatic bio-..1Couslic spedalbt at the University of Maryland, was also mtrigued. 'I'd not h;'!\\! thought of it but fish do very slTange and diverse Ihing~" hI.' ~aid

rlSh are known to caU out 10 polential males with low 'grunts and buzzes', pmduO'd by wobbling 1I t'ailoon ...,1 JU call{'\! the swim bladder located in the abdomen. The swim bladd\!r jnnat~ and deflates to adjust the fic,h'& buoyancy The l-,oIOSi~b mitiaJly assumed that the swim bl"dder Wil~ abo rrodu ... ing the hlgh-pitcht'd '>OunJ thl!y hdJ dd ...·d...d But then th~"}' noheM Uut a stream "f bubl'ok"$ npdkd from the ibh's anu~ «('rre~p(mdt'd ,,"xdCtly with tru: timing of Iht' noio,('. So a more likelv cause was air e:-capm~ fnom the ~Wlm bladJer through the anus. It WM at thi~ point that the team nam~ the nOl.."4:': Flbl Rept'titive Tid.: (FRn· But Wil"-On pomtltd ('lui that, unli"" a hum,m f.ul, the :;ound.... were probably nut C.lUS(-d b) dlge:.live gases becau:.e the number of sound" did ncol changl.' whm the fish were fed The researchers also tested wh~ther the Ii~ were farHng from fear, perhaps II) !.Ound an t'S re-corded more FRT~pe1' fish. Secondly, the herring were only noisy after dark. tndJcating that the sounds might aJlow the fish to :ocate one another when they could not be seen Thirdly. thl.' biologist
184 How to Malce , Toml/:!,'

Mod~r" "dmology and anImals

ofttll don', mix. T/Jt Jlrlul" Ihllt /o/lmvs CQuld <;0 tasi/" lIave bet" Imt and, wllit, a,"u_~in8, 1/}fJllld hatlt' bttn irrita/inltior Ihe birds. So we are 8'1111 IoJ pul it let rn;t ftg~nd

:~: No pushover H's officiaL penguiru. don't faU uvt'r biu.:kw.lrdl> whl·n ollr(Taft fly overhedd. British pilots tame back from the IfJo.-Q2 falkl.lnds Wac with !;1t>r1l"l> of pengums toppling tJver. Concerned thill increa!'in~ air traffic mIlti'll endilJl~~~r wildliw. a I('am led bv Ridlard Stone of the British Antarctic Survey spent five weeks in.2001 watching a thousand king pmguin5-on Soulh Grorgia Afwr numerou"lwcrnights tty two Royal Nav)' Lym heii<"op-ler", 'Not one king penguin feU ov~r.· Slone told Reuters.

WI' ~11~pl'cl /hf {ol/oU'IIIg IS all InAm legend 100, bllt if it /S,d, ,t's a classir. amalgam of st/ldtnl lomf()()ltry IHld :>p«taclilar tecell/ric rt'~I'lIrdl

:,: Landing strip And here is another possibly apocryphal story sent to us bv a friend who gal it from a friend who .• etc. It ('('Interns a student at the Massachusetts lnStirull' of Technology who went to the Harvard footba ll ground l'v~ry day for an entire summer wearing a brad. and white stnpt?d shIrt. HI' WQuid walk up and down the pitch fo r 10 to 15 minutl."S thn.-.wing bird..eed all around him, blow a whistle and then walk off Ihl!' field. AI the end of the summer, till' Harvard football le.un played il5 firsl home IJ\o1tch to a packed crowd. Whl'fl the rt>feta. walkt'd on in hil> black and whit.. strip dnd blew his

Arllma!~

and their Ilk

whistle, hundreds of birds descended on the field and the game had to be delayed for half an hour while they were removed. The student, so the story goes, wrote his thesis on this,

and graduated

tf st't'm~

YOIl ~""Q1I

tf'l"!I Qrt' n'I''!

teach animal~ a grf!llt dl'al Widdmg l«hllv/fIK!I till' fi~ht 1l';rlwl~t crimi'

11t'lpiJ1,~ ill

Gerbils crack down In 1982, drug smugglers at Canadian prisoru. and airports encountered a nl'W foret" in th(' cMnraign to pmtect pubUr moral.. - a tc.am of highly tramed g<'rbils. The ~nsibvt" nt1~ 01 tht!Se furry dct£'Cuves won £In,ooo worth of govemmt'nl inve:.tmenl 10 help rrad: down the nation's criminaI.-.. A numbt'-r of problems inherent in gathering OJ worlJorce of conventional dope-sniffers (dogs, for example) led the Canaruans to make the breakthrough for rodent liberation Dogs obey only one handler (or two at most); they eat a Jot; and they need a fair amount of space and care. Add to that thE' discomfort they bring by ... niUing around the ankles of hara...sed tr'l\"('Il~·rs in airports and there seemed to be a good C<; crouchE"d in theu cago!s Lx-tund .. counter and caught the smeUs of traveUers as they walked pasl a fan. Although the customs gerbils faced retirement sooner than a dog would havl' done, otficwb were rnthw'iU'ltit about thl:i.t chcapt"r upkeep and their modest approadl to lndustri..ll relahons

185

186

How to Mala!

a Tornado

:r.j.: Wasps - sniffer dogs with wings? In XJ06, afler three to-~ccond tTilining ::-e!;~ions., Glen Rllins' crack team of sniffers W.lS ready for anything. They (ould be (o-opted inlothe hunt fora corpst'o They rrught join thcSC.1rch tor il sta.<.h 01 Semlex or a con."'ignm~nt of drugs. Or they C(mld h.lve the mort' lediou ... job of che..:king luggage dt the airport. Wh.1tever the as. ... ignment. their role was the same: 10 pIck up a scent no human nC)!;(' could d('lect and plnpomt its source. Tht.'S4:' !"('('fUlts to the fi~t dgilinsl crime were smaller, cheaper and mote vel"'§attle than.l 'inilfer dog. and more 5ensith'e than an ~Icctronl~ 'no-:;(" They w~re wasp!>. IhS('C15 h.n:e e .... qui.. ild)' '>Cl1.'.ilivc olfddOfY ::.y!>tt'lIb. "Dleuantenna(' are covered with mIcroscopic sensors that can dctl'Cl the falnte~t odour. Some are also remarkably qUick le.lmet::,. 50 II was hardly surpnsmg that they arou"Cd the tnlt:"re!>t of the miLiary and 'l('("urily M'rVic("i, police and l"U~loms, all badly in need of ullra-senslbve. flexIble and port'lble odour detectors, Insects obviously have the right stuff, but could they use it to ~niff out smelb they would l1ever encounter in nature - a runt of e>..lliosive$, say, or a whiff of cocaine? And if so, would it be possible to make a practical device that h.lm~ their skiJi.';? Enter Wasp Hound, a hand-held odour detector with a t~am of little black wasps as its sensor. Developed by Rains, a biological enginPel" al HIP Un1veNity (If Georgia, his colleague Sam Utley and Joe Lewis. an entomolo~t the US Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Rest:"arch Service in TIfton, Georgia, the device was onJy • pruto'YP"', but the learn had high hopes for it Did this mean the days of the sniff!.'r dog were numbered? Probably not 'Wedon', S('t> insectsasa replacement for dogs.' said Rains. 'But the~· do have lots of advantages They ('(1St pennies to ralbt!, Thl.'Y don't na>d ~~'Oal handlmg. and

.I'

AOlmalsand the,r il~

they an.' so quick 10 train you can have them on call, ready to learn a new smell whenever you need it.'

~'Cause

Mno;/ oj IU dml " rMIIy Ilk, lI>a~fX and ctms/der J1'l!m best QllfJI
mID

!lllr hoI/OIUS.

YL"I

'- Germany bans 'rejuvenating' sheep cell injections In 1997. Germans were no longer perrruited 10 have tissut' from ~heep foetuses injected into their buttocks. Several thou~and peopl£' in Germany unden\'ent this process every yeM, l)('li£'ving that th~ foetal cells had rejuvenating properties. But in the late 1990S, heallh officials in Bonn said that they had dL"Cided 10 ban the practice, pointing to severe munune reactions ill some patients. A M.inistry of Health report said thai up to 5 per cent of pallents had reactions to the injectioru. and m five documented cases patients had died lutta Buscha, a doctor in the Bavarian town of Roltach· E~em who practised the therapy. said '1 don', understand this enmity, this persecution. The people who sit in judgment on U!i- never even came for a visit'

Alld.fllllllly 10 Z(II', ZoI!. too. cOlild /Jt> ~IJld to bt' II bIt of IJ Pllin In tht' bum. Alld hI', il 111/5 to be flottd, is Itot rrally an t"xnmplt" oj m'ld rtSt'arch. Bu/ Z(I(' did become vall poplilar IIII/ong New Scientist's rf!lldt7ship whm his jn/ngllillg plighlfjrst IJppenr('d m 'he II/oga=illl', And wt' "CM" 'us story drsl'nl('S 1I1101/4'r airing

181

188 How to totake a Tomado

1: Humming dog "ou would always know when Zoe the West llighland terrier was around. Zoe had two problems in life. One was that, lI~"itt.' HIi.' ndlllt.', Zoe W,ll> lII.de. TIll:! uthcr WiC> th"t d pt!ffiU,t· ent hUDlDUJ\8 noi.«e emanated from hu. head - a hwrurung noISe that was audible to Zoe's owners and any other humans who happen to be around. In 1996. Ius mystified owners took Zoe to d vet, ian !'\.tillar of Belfast. After various tests and a course of treatment with antibIotIC." In case an Inh..-'chon was re--ponslble, Millar p* fessed tumself mystified as weU. He wrote to TIlt' Vt'Il''l"frwry Rtc"rd asking if anyone could sht.>d light on th., pmbl..m. A couple of weeks later, Patrick Burl(· of thc University of Edinburgh's Royal School of Veterinary Studil'S wrote bad. The problem, he sugg~h:...,j, wa~ d phenunlclll..ln known cb 'otoacoustic emission'. In this condition. the normal hearing pathways in the l'ar~ are somehow ~vcn;ed, so that the cochlear efferent nervt' fibres 5timwate outer hair cclls to \'ibrate and make d nolSe. Other parts of the ear, such as the tympanic membrane, can then amplify the sound, unb.l you end up like Zoe, humming wherever you go.

The world looked different back then WIlI'n novelist l. P. H,lrlley wrote 'The past lS a foreign • !.untry. they do things differently there', it's almo!>! certam til" dIdn't have the field of :.cienhfic endeavour In nnnd. But hoy, did It look different back then .. We believed there was n"thlng we wuuldn't ~ able tu do in the ruhll'\' P£">ticides .... ould fix everything, As would nudear POW('T. And then there wen' atomic bombs. Lots of atomic bomus. When WilHam Gladstone, then Chancellor of the- ["cheq u\'r was invited to a demonstration of Michael Faraday's \"Iuipml'nl for generating the new scientific wonder of elcc-trlL"ity in the second haU of the 19th century, he watched care-11I11y, stood silent for a moment and then asked Faraday: 'Tt's \'t'fY mteresting, but whal practical worth has it?' 'One day, .It,· replied Faraday, 'you may lax it'. Paraday, being the clever sort he was - and realising that, .1', Beni"min Franklin'~ off"quoted saying goes, 'Nothing can 1)(' said to be certain, except death and taxes' - correctly preJicled th~ future, His fellow researchers who appear in this \ h<1ptd' were less prescient We now know how deadly pesticides can be. We now I-OUW that a nuclear reaLtor in a bucket might [\Ot be so clever .Ifier alL And as for the paperless office which has bem pr~ Jlcled many tintesover - next century anyone? We can gu.1r,"llee that whatever seems a perfectly reasonable prophecy I'lilay will Mly tum out to be the subject of this chapter 's ,\L><;ecndenl m 50 years' time. NFW Samti!it has reported on so "'allV firsts down the years, all which seem to offer the

190 How 10 Ma~e, Tomado

possibility olll golden future, yet most of which end up being more li~e bib€' lead. Remember that fOfe\'ery Kyoto protocol there's a George W Bush. Back when New Scientist was launched, science and ted\. nology were seen as unalloyed lorces for good, As we've poinll'd uul. thi5 optimbm applied e;pecialiy to nucleaf power: SOOI'\ we would fly in atomic aircraft, wear nuclearpowered walciles and clean clothes by spraying them with radiation_ Three-Mile bland and Chemobyl pul U"i straight on that one, to!>C in hum.ms. AU of whICh have dtmtcd the pubhc'senthu"iiasm for science's prophecies of jam tomorrow_ Of COUJ'Sol:, what foUows reflects the sensibilities of New Sci· ",list and the limitt'd predictive power.)of its joum.llists down the decades alo much as it does the naivety of the ~cientists it reported ..n, But. of rourw. we are aU product"! of our times. BUlperhaps more than anything this dl.apter is a warning to all thO'.iC who want to Jjve beyond the here and now. Forget it. jUlol keep oWng in your tax return and pUI a sum asidE each month for funeraJ costs and death duty. That way, as Ben Franklin wisely predicted, you won't ~nd lip looking silly ..

Somptlmes, the world lookt'd so diffurnt fh,d New Scientist WQS ftYqumtly Q highly sCqJliCilI bMst. AmMg mtHty filings Ii'! smd couldn'l or wouldn'/ hapfH'" lib! c%ur tt/el.'isioll. c.mmnuhllg by aircraft rmJ th.-lt Jolmnni paptrless OffiCi' ("'ui Wf' (In' flill right 1m fhal onl') rvas this 1957 editorial 011 space trat'l'l

l~

IIIOIId looted different bad! thton

How soon to the Moon? Though the launching of the first small ~atcltite - SPliIIlilc 1 moo Earth orbit is a nC\..'\."-Sarv fir-,t step lowards intl'rplanctary travel, it i.s but it small :.tep towards th,"" solution of a much greater problem, one that bnstll!'!> with UU\uml'rable difficulties and complexities. Though within a few yearb> we may s...>e the launching of a small vehicle that will either Impact the Moon or will clrck' it and fi>turn to Earth, it i!;o Yery llkely that generatiolb will pass before man ever lands on th(> Moon and that. should he succa>d m dmng ~, th('fi> w"uld be little hope of his fl'tuming to Earth and telling us of his t!lI.pt.'nenu·!> 8t:yolld the Muun, almost ("Mainly. hE> i, n"\,('1 hkdv to g(l.

Th'C'/tIC y<'lm lulcr ~1J(lIIldIl',

hunf<m~ hrlf/ wall...:d VII 11Il'

/H>Dt (lurs,'/t't'" up 0100,1/ emr dreadful

Mool/. ShU. we

POU'f'~

ill prtdir-

IIUIl TIIIII greul rod.t'l ~u"nllsl {HId /unm·rcml,/n.lilT "fllu' Tllird

Rt'ich ~Vmllrt'r t'Pn

Braun

1l1Q~ al~

u·jdt (If tlk' mark. allhougll tit

kasl ht'UN1:> ol./t.,.-optlnliS/ie, uuli/i.· New Scientist

!; Space

exploration in 1984

"1f\("t> pa~~od from fantasltc a<.-iti{'V(,ment to routine occurrenc.... A<;tronaub will be <;hulUing bad. and forth on regular s..::heduJl~ from the Earth to a smalJ permanent base of operations on the Moon. A pa.rt 01 the dcbvlty 00 the lunar <;urface may well be the IIp...·mbon 01 an astronomical observatorv, taking advantage of the favour",ble ~>t>"T\'abflJ1 (nndlhl1n,> thC'!"e Pnvat(' indu .. t,,· Will han! I!ntered Earth--orbltal opcrauons on a large scalI:'.

lunar landings will have- long

19 1

I Ill' ~'''I .. tl'flI.t' ,.1,1 hll~' .'r~h·r (If "ll'llIl ~',Ir ... II III pn.t1.,bly

hav .... t>cCfI pn.W('fI, ,md Ihl' "'~1Uhr,ln~t' o{ (hI" "~"I"undl chilflg~

o( the Marti.lfl canaL<; {.."I.lbll"hl'd

WI' UYrr. hmlJt'Wr. t .. ffibly, CJl1t;mistlCal/y widr of flu- mark allf.Jllf the USi'S for lIucl..ar power alld its offil,riu8. the atom bomb. Aurl tTt'n the II(1tor;01l5 atomic acrid!!nt III Wi1/d~lllt' didn', pili II~ 011.

:t:A hazard to health? The a(cid{'J11 at Windscale has awused qu~!>ti{lnS about till' 5<1(ety of atomic power stations. We b£>li('ve atomic industry to bt> no morl' danserous than conv(ontional. RmJioactivity IS easily detected, "'Orne dwmical haLilrdS are not (24 (lr1,V\rr

H"!>l'

;~: Atom bombs to release oil 7 American atomic physicists are giving much thought to peaceful U5ef> for nucll'aT bomb~. Of the scveral suggestioll!l th~t have been publicly mentioned, those concerned with the release of underground oil deposits are most common. One such scheme h.u; just been announced by the United Statts Bureau of Mines. Although precise details of this and similar plans have not been disclosed, l'nough is known of U'\e physilal effects lIE underground nudear explosions to permit reasonable fnrecasts of what will happl'n whefl .l bomb is dt'tonatcd in various types of oil dt'po!>lt

IImtkl'l~ I

IIII'I/

b,le/.; wllcn. Atom bombs U'Crt' 0"1"/"" /,'0/ II' Iml't ~'rat ~[ldrtal belll:/;I., Yau cOl/ii/ellen dig the /'lwa1/l1'1 CillliJ/ !/rlill thrill C"uIJ,)', I/Ol/? .lIJIt /

IImtk

'-II W.ly

Nuclear digging on trial i'roject Gasbuggy, the world's first commercially sponsol\.'CJ nuclear explosion. is scheduled to take place on 14 November 1¢7 on a lonely plateau in northern New Mexico. Gasbuggy (~the most advanc.?d test vet in the US Atomic Energy Comrnission's Plowshare programme, which aims to find peaceful USE'S fat nuclear explosions. Its objecl is to determine how l'ffectively nUdl::3r explosions can release natural gas from IIl)rmcilly impermeable rock. Geologists estimab:! thai successIlli ust' of the ternniLju" could Jouble the u~blt: ga." l'e!K>rvo!S ul the United States. 10 the test, a 26-kiIoton nuclear e"PloSive will be deloIlated 4240 feet below the surface, IU!;I under a layer of gasbearing rock }OO fet't thick. The blast is expected to create 3 'chimney' of broken rock. greatly increasing the flow of natural gas through a well to the surface The most troublesome problem is radioactivity - nol from the venting of the e>.-piosion, but from the isotopes that will be c~ated in the undergrOllOd chimney. When the explosive goes off. it will produce a bubble tOo fet'l in diilml'let. As the cavity cools., its ceiling will cr>llapse to create the cltimney Most of the radioisotopes produced by the blasl will disappear quickly, but three will remain - iooine-131, krYPtoO-tl5 ilnJ tritium. The iodine will decay to a ~ta.ble form wjlhjn months and the krypton may be trapped in the molt~ rock that flows to the bottom 01 the chimney, but the bitiwn will linger on. Two tests similar to Ga!>buggy are scheduled for next year 10 formations different from those in New Mexico. The AEC

194 How IJJ Mal
IS even movLllg ahead, rat~r ginK('riy. wIth the contmver.aa1 programme of nuclear excavahon. lWo tests are designed. to gather data on the pOSSible nuclear excavahon of a new Pa.nama Canal. Since they would release radioactivity on the ~urfacc, tN.> tE"'ls were p!*tpont>d to avoid upsetting US· Soviet talks on a trealy 10 prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. There are also propo:.als for using nuclear explosions to relca"fO oil from impermeabl(' formations and for nuclear exploilahon of ~hale oil dE'p
Till!

Gashllggy bomb was t"t~/llIl/Ilt.1f dcf(mnled 011 10 Dect>mber

11167. II did stimulat~ grf!6tl!r gas fl0iJ.', bill (wartaillly rClllaillt'J ootr tht SIUoj llu improVf'IlWII. PubliT opfWsiiion grt'lv - nobody u'Vllld lolly gas that might ~ contmtllnaft"d witll radm,/(tiv/ty. JOr rXQmplt" alld in futlt' 19i5. aft" 35 n/u:/i:.1r ddOllatiou:;, /lIt" Plvu~llur.. prvgrommr it'11~ «,oulld up. HOll) mllv~ w( wcrr. Wr t'I.'C" tkollgll' u'(l~lr radioo.::fwi.' pro.iu,'~ 6(l1mJrrI uSt-ful.

(0': Atom ash keeps cloth clean One of the substanet....., prt'St"'nl in the radioactive a..-m from atomic power statiOl\5, ~trontium-90, is now being used by manufacturers of woven and knitted fabrics 10 overcome fog marking~. During the winter. duty lines llf'(' likely 10 appear on the fabriC evt'ry time a machine is 5"topped lor lunch breaks, or at the end oftheday·~run. The dirt gathers because

The world looked different bad. theq 195

the doth becomes charged with static electricity and altract~ particles of dirt from the atmosphere. Various methods have been used to prevent the fabric becoming charged with electricity. The most widely known is to use an .loll· static dre~g (based possibly on a diamin(' f
BQck

tlU.!1I

we didn't sum to worry at all about IlOw

dUlIgmr/$

slrantilill/"90 Ifu~ltllx. We wrrr: eJ:>e'tl happy to wear it.

: Nuclear battery for electric watches An AmerkaJl company is now offering a nuclt-aJ" battery for sale. It i5 simil:"Ir to one developed J. few years ago in thp Us. making use of beta rays from a radioactive source to bombard a semi-conductor, which produces a steDdy but small electri\" ,,:urrent. The new nuclear battery, made by Walter Kidde Laboralllnes in conjunction with th(' Elgin National Watch Com pan}. uses promethium·147. a by-product of nuclear fission. as its

196

HowIOMate'T~

source of beta rays. An earlier battery developed by the Bell T(>](>phone Company used a ~tronhum-90 SOUrcE' and developt.>d sufficient power to mn numaNre ell'ctroruc equipment The Walter Kidde b.llteTY j!-; desl~ned for use in electronic wdtch~ and \."1;'rtaUl ell:'\.·1rorllc applications.

:~: Nuclear reactor in a bucket A nude-ar rca..:tor ~1l\d1l enough Il\ lit in a hou.sd on surface area.. It !l\dy be po.s.'iibl.e to use them to provide the power to nM·igate a vehicle into a st.1tion.ny orbit and even to transmit television <;ignals with enough power for them to ll€' received directly by a viewer on Earth. Further den10pment is expected to lake from four to ,i.); years dOd a test inStaUation is to be bwlt 31 thl:' nuclear centre at Ji.i1ich

..~. Atomic aircraft EnthU5Ii1!'m for the nud~;H-rl.lWered bombt>r pmject in the Unitl'd <:;lill.... bl(J''v!> alternately 1"1\-" dnd (lId. Mr RECross, ch.llrm,\n of Lockheed Aircraft. ('one 01 the tv.'o camp.trues with contrd("b to develop the auirames (Ihe other being Convair), ha5 said recently that Ii the American government were to f,';ve the 'go-ahead :<>ignal', Lockheed ruuJd ha\'E' an aircraft ready to make its first flight in the mid-u~. The type of aircraft the company has m mind would ,,"we 1m. shll'lded crew cabin In the nose. the re-dCfor in the taLI as far from the crew as possible, a small tankage of con\'enhonaJ turbint: fuel for tal..e-off .md landing SO thai the reactor was only at full power in the air and never near the ground, and thin straight wings free from the encumbrances at fuel tanks. en81nes or Ulldercarnagegear. lho? US AIr Furce want5 atootic bombers of this kind for the same reason that the navy wanted iltOnuC submarines: they couJd range the wllrld without refuelling But the air force fact'S one- great teclmical difficulty that did not trouble the navy - weight. Even when the weight of reactor shielding is cut to the minimum by concentrating on a mdiation-proof cabin for the crew rather than trying to block all escape of radiation from the reactor, it still remain:. the biggest barrier to getting an atomic aircraft off the ground_ And in spite of the unIinuted range that only a nuclear plant can give. some scientists believe it is nol a development that should be undertaken at tNs stage_ MrCleveiand, who is III charge 01 Lockheed's atomic desig.n, hds himself §"uggl'Sted there are serious health problems ronnect('d with the mainten.UlC't' of atomic aircraft bt"Cause of the radiation leakage Other experts have pointed to the hazard that would follow the crac;h of .10 atomic aircraft, whose n:>actor would almost lnt'vHabl .... be craclr.ed tlFIt!.I1. mllloJn~ re~ue all but impo!>Sibl~

198 How 10 Make" T:)maG()

and, if there were a fire, spreading fission products down· wind from the wreckage, III

FortlHlflldy, /lIt I'rojrcl

'm~r

(r

lulV J957)

tlX'k off Bul whal "/,,,,0

lra;ns?

:-:'l:Tra ms to go nuclear Plans are being prepared by the Gemlan railways for an atomic icxomoti\'t;! powtc'red by a ga!>-(:ouled tt!.lctUT u;,mg enriched uranium. The plans envisa~e a locomotive 35 metres ton~ and .3 metres wide, wluch will weigh approximCondary safety devices. A further weight saving is also possible if the deSigners elect to use mechanical-hydraulic transmission instead of the heavier electrical type. The reactor will be a Babcock and Wilco)! design that is )05 millim~tres long. Instruments will be Installed U1 the locomotive to detect dnd measure radioactive t!manatlon from the power plant. TIle crew will be provided with special clothing, and the driving compartment wiJI be insulated against radiation, noise and heat. The running costs of the locomotive are e.'(pected to be low£'r than the cost ot operatmg a steam locomollve in Western Gennany but somewhat higher than an electric one.

No information is yet available about when construction will begin nor when th.. new design is likdy to come mto passenger service.

Still, lW

t'Vf'II

if WI! did halli' f<,ars aVOId raJiahem -

did not - it

!t'a~

hoped t/1i!Y couid b!' ea~rd by

wllieh It

~t:IIIS

funllnK us IlIhr

&rtman

- Bat blasting When the Argonne National Labt.."atory - on.." of tht> four malor research establli;.hmenlS of the US Atomic Energy Com · mlS::'lon - i1nnounci!d hve Wolf!; ago thai ball> h.ld ;.ur... ivt.>d 1\U~(' d~" of radiation there was cOllSldffable e"cilement For, it was reasonN, if th ..'soutcl.'oftht.>bal's abnonnally high resistance to radiillLon rouJd be established, II might point the way to inCl1!'il!'iifl1o\ the rt'l!r.istancc t)f otht'f mammals, I1lcluding humon; 11Il/llrrUJry 195il

It hmlt~d out I/ull only lIiMmatmg bot!; ~lfrtljVt'd high radillliol!

Olle/' thn( il'ok~ up. it waSII't so l'Ut/y. Bllt our rmbridll'd opll/111.>111 thai could InaU ruJiation-rotilllllllwnl
"It'

200 Haw tD Milm. Tornado

;~: Radiation - a losing game? It is apparent that the atomic dice are loaded. The percentages an.> against us and we ought not t(l play un~ we must' This \Vas the sharply worded wamtng on the lead page of the Amencan Journal SUOIce thi!; week.. It was a comment on a research report submitted by Dr E. B. Lewis of the California Institute of Te..:hnology in Pasadena. What the youn~ biolo~i.st had announcoo was wmething that saentists had been trYing to di!.cowr ,;ince the htst atom bomb e:o;ploded In 1945. Then.> I.!. a direct linear relationship between the amount of radiation received by a pc150n .lnd the OC:CUITt'nCl: uf leukdt!l1Ii~, 01 f,llilJ di~a~ 01 the white blood ~11s_ Lewis demonstrated that if the gml"raJ population were to ingC!'t the ;unount of strontium-9Q which the radLatlOn ctfects panel Clf the Nahonal Academy of Scien~6 last June pronounced to be a safe maximum do~, ~mewhere between 150 and J'ooo more people would we of leukaemia ('Bch year in the United States alonc 'Thanks to Lewis: wrote the editOflJ,J, ' it 15 now possible to calculate within narrow Limits how many dt'atru; from leukaemia will result 10 any population from faU-()ul or other source of radiation. We art' approaching the point at which it will b<> possible to make the phrase "ca1culatOO risk" for rarnation mean something a good deal more precise than "best

guess" , (J6MIlY 19S71

CUi' tile sOlmd of W/1J/s crumb/iI'S around lite ulamie m;('t1rr.h community. 81/1 wr Wt!r.:n'/ a/wlly5 bdlind lite gart/I'. There " fro' inlloMtialls we trumpeted with widc-I-ycd ama2l'menl

Wt"

which IL'f 11010 rocountcr dUy·jll Jay-out How SOO'I tI,e mirolc/es o/I/ester/lay becomi' lhi' comnwllpl4ct:i (If today_ Well. Ihn; '>t'emed OCUli/ric ba.:k then .. .

TIle world looUd difteref11 baa then

'" Jumping the lights

'.Of;

Dt?-rationing (If jX"trO: has l>rought back the traffic Jam 10 ()ur cities dnd towns_ AU the motor manufacturers are producing to the Urnl! of theu ca;)acity and, even if as m.my as half !h~1f cars are destined for export, the remainder will be moo.' thiln <'uffident before long to cause complete ronge~ti(ln in ~e places. Already In the la~t thirty vears automatic traffic sipklb have rt'volutiortised traffic controL FIrst lru.taUed in lL'fds (where they are still referred to as 'I robots'), thty wew orit;i" nally designed to work on a fixed time cycle - ~o Ions alluwl.J 10 one trdttic stream
Sorry, we can't take your call ... 1ne telephone in the doctor's ll>urgery, a taxi service, or e\"l'n the grocery will always bE' answered -even when no one is in - now that the ansaphone has {"('('ewoo Post Offict.' ~lf\1,.. t:il1n and become.;; generally available In Brilain. The machine, roughly the size of a portabk gramophone, \Va:; Jevc!op..."'
2(

202 How to Make a rOfllado

:r.): Video, video Remarkable though the 'instant' processes for black-andwhile and colour photography appear today, they are by no means the last word in techniques for the amateur. Simultaneous rerordmg of sight and ::;ound on tape is lust one of the com.ing methods we expect to see.

Back iN 1967 Nc\o\ Scientist had a ral/r£'c outdatf'A allitudr to xender coles.

-1: Shopping in disguise The all-puJ1>05e credit card usable in ~tores, hotels and so on has been a feature of the American scene for some time and grows in popularity in Britain. In the United States, however, they intend to go one better. The customer ai, say, a Supermarket will have to pop the cn.>dit card into an clectronic devic~ which will signal a computer centre' to check on his or her bank account. Not so far out, you think? Well it gels belter. The computer will also give the sak-'Sgirl a visual description of the holder of the card· colour of hair and eyes, height and weight, and so on. If the dl'SCription taJlies, the customer gets the goods_ Howt'ver. J foresee problems. Most ..,hopping is still done bv women - so how will the computer know that this season Madam il> sporting a blonde wig or a blue rinse, or wearing <;ky~craper heels, or we.ight-disgui!>ing faJ"ies, or has changed. th~

Lulow· uf hel eyt:s with Lunldd ien">t!'!>?

The world looktd dlffert'nt back IhM 20]

In the tube The Idea of 'test-tube babies' is no longer something to be WOV(11. into the plot of a science hction novel. Serious-mmded -.cientists a~ not ~:,"Iy thinking about cultivating human embryos on th(' I.lboratory bench - tht:'y art' developmg the techniques which will make thiS i'I practical pOSSibility, In the current issue of Th.. umcrl Dr R G. Edwards, now at the Physiolop;ical Laboratory in the Umversity of Cambridge, Jl'SCribes work done there and at Joh1\!> Hopkiru HOSpital, B.lltlOlOre, U~. Dr f:.dwarcb tw. taken ew lrom O\-dn~, or parts of ova,(I('S, obtained from 16 women who for one reaKm ,,, anothl'r had t\J l1aH~ th('1;(' Clrg"ns n'movt"d 111 NfIfIt'7?llfrr rQ(5)

And, Just a~ in/until/gly, the baU/f'Cl of !ll'<jt~ry~ar arl! slill belllg jorlghl 0111 today Hnt wt offer a CYnlcu/ tau 0/1 wlwt u'a5 /lIth" lim€' - and argunNy still is - the mnst ~m"fr[lt am! of <;dt'lItzjk rrsearcl!

,\: Bad breeding The Vatican's official press spokesman yesterday denounced as 'immoral acts and absolutely illicit" experiments m Britam in fertilising human l'ggs Olltside the body Doef, the current turmoil over test-hlbe babies, which has spilled across so many acres of new~print, and occupied so many broadcasting hou~, mean that the public has al last ~gun to tal..c c;d~ct> seriously? Almost certainly not. What h.as happened is that rditors have I't'alised that apparent 'breakthrough:. ' in medICIne t1('l1d lening and viewmg masses which at least cqWlls

204 How to Mak~ a Tornado

that exerted by tales of sex murders, and other titillating aberrations of human behaviour. (~O

Frbrull'!l '969)

81.1 t'IIOII.r;:lr coun:i1 about our successful f'i;;ioIlS of the flr!tlrt'. W,m! about fl'/lerr we got it all TKry wrong?

Telephone, radio, and television systems are capable of conveying information al J EM greater rate than men and womt!'n can cope with it This is shown by some !'\"Cent measurements involving an appucalion 01 'infonnation theory' to human beings. 1nfonnation' in tlllS rechrucaJ sense mcludes aU the entertainment and small change of ordinary conversation IJJ Mly 1957)

;~: No chance What is the future for colour tele\'ISlon? This is one of the questions which must perplex the Pilkington CommiHee on Broadcasting, and which - for that matter - must keep Mr Bevins, the Postmaster-General, tossing uneasily in rus sleep, For as the days get shorter and as those persons known as 'viewers' begin to recognise that the content of their patch of fluorescent flicker is much the same as it was II year ago, the clamour for colour television must inevitably mcrrase, Already ,!,(lrne papers have called Mr Bevins 'colour-blind' It will besurprising ifhe is not much DlO~ colourfuUy described WOn' the winter is over, The cry will be for a nationwide brwdca.5ling service supplying a coloured television pillul~ ttl virtuaUy every house in the country.

The wolld looked different bac~ then 205

Thi<; should be aUowed to echo unheeded in the ether. For it seems that nobody has so far been able to demonstrate that a colour television o;ervice wilt benefit anybody but Ule television maintenance men. h6

lVe Well: sWf s('eplit:tli eig/Jt years lair,. ">oufd 'I/IV(' mtl.if' of HD TVs.

Not~lbc!r

J0;61 j

Hf'llt'r!tI kn01i'S' wlltll U't

:The last word on colour televIsion Even after they've surmounted thc paramounl' problem at raising ~nough money to pay (or the latest status symboL owners of colour televiSIOn sets are gomg 10 be m for a fev..· heddache'> living with them, If you haven't got i\ disused photographic dMkroom on your premises, then you'll have ICl put YOUl front room into a state of penumbra fit for a fraudu~ lent ~ance or World War III if you want I{'I n.lVe colours commg up good. The set must be degaussed and aligned carefully In the Earth's magnetic field. Stray magnetic fields can play havoc with your tinted picture, and so large, ferrous objects such as comforting radiators and kfllghts-in-armour with fin?-lrons in their bellies must be removed from the sacred vicinity, and .:Ill electric clocks, vacuum cleaners and po..:kct magnets declared per.,;ona non grata. And when ttl!.' whole monster has been profeSSionally set up, it's going to be at least twice 8:' difficult ior tnt! tWiddling owner to tune d~ was the black-and-white steam model.

So, weirdly !lcrpticlll tlbollt colollr TV.'l, bllt wildly optiltlbUt' about Qlly nllmber of oth~ mod-COIlS. We still couldn't get It rigid

206 How to Ma~ a Tot'IVdo

:J Masterchef In the household of 1m there will be iI prepared food unit. Frozen food packages will be Sl0red in cla"Sified ranks below (our oven:.. in the morning you will set the time you want to eat, the meal contaimng up to four food items At the correct time the unit will transfE"r the four food packages from freezer to oven. They will be ready simultaneously at your chosen mealtime

;~. Tumble fryer After 20 years (If research. Paul GM'...... ('If G1tlU~"t'stE"r r1.lim.1 to have mllde a kitchen appliance that cook.'l. washC!> up and even washes clothes. On the outside it looks like a chest freezer, but im.ide is a healing chamber and a ~volving drum Supplies of cooking oil, waler and detergent arc held in tanh You put the food in the drum, and as it turns. vanes dr3w in hot air from the heating chamber to cook il. Ouring cooking. food can be hE'ld stationary or tumbled 111 the drum. For frying, oil is injected as a mist For boiling. a water heater produces steam. When the meal is over. you put the dishes back in the same drum and switch the device to pump in water and detergent. A similar cycle is used to wash dothes. Groves says he expect!; the machine to cost about £800. (16AugUSI1095 J

WI' eXIl«t it /Q l'IWis". Bllt the" ilJ(' lUould, becaust Wt' blOW wllllt Ilnppell"d Out.~;d(' till' homt'o WI' t/tough' U't'd l1t t$I.'IICiI.'IIIS 'he /IUS, and heading jor the offiu Ilt high sperd

The wo!ld looked dlfftorenl

ba(~

then

I. What? No delays? Any calculation of the future traffic requirements in 'commuter country' such as those parts of England south of the Thames must take into account the part which may be played by vertical take-off aircraft. Air Chief M.ushal Sir Ralph Cochrane has now cakuJaloo the volume of traffic likely to be travelling at peak hours in relation to nmnmg c("!mmuters'
regIon of [ngl<1nd w,lI have ovt!rloaded the capacIty 01

the railway at rush hour. His proposal is for vertical tak~off aircraft to meet the increased de.mand using modern guidance systems that can kt'Cp an aircraft on track with an error measure I1l yards'. Aircraft to London would depart when the London tf'nmnal was cleM and within ~4 minutes they would unload 110 paSSt.'ngf'rs at an allotted pad, then refuel and be turned around within 7 minutes - 60,000 passengers could be handled in an hour. Terminals would b.:> no bigger th.Ul an acre and }60 aircraft would be requimi. Instead of sitting on the stopping train the daily commute would be at 10 miles per minute by the end of the .loth century, a legitimale set oi expectation.
llill/ase daY!l we /(I1f;W hort! to fix tIll" world's problems '.

207

208 How to Milke a Tornado

;-:-t: Locust plagues ended The world may have seen the last of the ancient scowge of the locust. nus claim is being made by experts at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation in Ro·me. They beb..vl' that lIltemational satellites that photograph the sur/act' of the Earth mean that any sudden infestation of locusts can be nipped in the bud using modem peslkidl;.'S. Satellites can even spot conditions where thl' desert Itlcu~ts are likely to breed rapidly and move into cropgrowmg areas, where a smgle swarm can consU.Tl"\e 80,000 tonnes of com a day - enough to feed 400,000 people for a whole year

.. /lml

if we duln't k,lOU' how to fix carthbOlllld horror!', 1Ul" COIlld

.I/way;; move SQmfW/I~rt' d~c 50m~U'hl'Te the was~

was: goillg

to

bt: grfflll~r.

:J: Little green plants William M. Sinton of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory Ulinks it 'extremely probable' that vegetation of some form IS prest'n! on Mars. He describes in the A~ItT7fjhyslcal /Dumal how he studied Ule infrared light re-flected from Mars when it made its clOSt' approach to the Farth la~1 year He found il signiticant dip in the spectnun - a weakening in the renection al a wavel~gth of 3-46 thousandlru; of a millimetre. Thi~ i~ just what one wouJd expect if large {llolecuJes containing carbon and hydrogen al"\" pl"\"sent. Large organic moll'CIJ.J1'S do not ne<'cssarily imply life. It sct!'ms unJikely, however, that organic molecules would

Temilin on the MarhJIl &urfaCI: without ~ing cowred by dust from stann:. or bemg decomposed by the action llf th(> !iOlar u1trilviol .. t, unl~ tllI.'Y p()OfT\(' form of ptant lik

bt-,,"

VII denr. Buf Its ,,1/ 50 rn::.-y wllt'll /t'e" knll/v ,s" t 1/1 Tilt 'lIll{'~'fy vI Ihe p!l~I'J/lI_1{ lw~ lib: 1U~1{'f!ly /v.1!l.Y "'(Il"~' II'," uu Q buneil of ekver c1og~ With 11I"ti~lgII'- Et't!n so. yOIl lUllUld hot,t' thrlllght th,lt. l'ock ;1' JQ57 '>t'O/"~ rmuld hat>(' kW.lT/'" it tI~hlJ'l II ,~ll(}d id("{J 10 scoff Q mushroom yO/I'd folll/d lip 11 MtJ;ICilll mOIIII' tll;II, nltllouxh [(J("rt glad $(JmeWy did. Rogl'r 1-Ir;1II I~ Q I"rll/ ,JJb.:Jl1ll£roJ,

Divine mushrooms

Th(' French Academy of Sdc-nee Wi15 told last week by Professor Rogt'r Heim. On"eCtor of the Paris Nalura.1 Hi!';tory Mu.seum, of the el.traordm.uy t'lfects of iI Mexican mushroom called "teonanacatl' He found the fungus on" mOWltainsidE" in ~uthem Mex.ico. The s~es known as 'divine musluooms' \"Vas discov~red

by M.r Cotdon Wasson, an Amerh:an amateur myculo-

gist, whu has read 01 vlsion-produc:ing fungi U1 old Spanish documents He dt!\'oted ten years to Iryu\t, 10 ["ha~ them When eventually he ~ucc£'edl'rl in finding tlwm .md 000!inned their strang'" viSion-producing ptupcrrib, he called in Professor Heim, one of the world's Jeadmg mycoluglsts. t(l inv(""tigatC' and idf'ntify tl1e fungus In Proll_'5<;Or Henn's own words this i'J whal tldppt>ned ft hl'TI he al€' a spoonful of tho; fungus. 'Only", few seccmds

210 How to M,,~ iI TornoWo

after I had swallowed my portion,' h£> told the Academy, ' I became subject to the optic.11 and physical .mom3.lies. Tlw colours of lh£> room In whIch I was became brighter. I had double vISion. I suddenly fclt in an extremely mirthful mood_ During more than two haUl'!>.1 sort of fantasy in blue unfolded

beron' m}' ey~' Back in Paris, Prote!'sor Hl'im twice repeated the- C'\perirnl'Rt with the s.arne t5ult~_ The vl<;tonS, he e'(pi.1ined. were caU.!.I,:-d bya drug in the fungu!o, probablyCl{ theopLilte variety. He thtnks th.11 an ('\VcrdtlW of 'd,vme mushroom..' would ~dw* nlcll~dl

Jo:rarlg'!JJ'u:nt.

., tfllll' r!!t'tpllmt wasn t deranged a/N'(I[I.II. A7Ilt ollr OIl''' IWltlit" "}""('eJ IlIr,.ugh II! '959. It ~..,.ms Wi' Ii be.'" Concern,.d Ilrout till' tffecl$ of TV, especially Oil our yOlmgrr gf'ncrali(JII FI)r (mr(', wt came oul II! faoollr vf /Ilt' gvggl..boJ.

;'*: TV is our friend Four year.; .1S0, when tl'lcvisJon WqS sllll a myth to most people and an inlriijuing 11O\'('lIy 10 a few million SBC viewers, It was qUite widely feared as being likely to breed a crop of social ill ... Pantots wet\: particularly both~ about the impact of television on their children. Today we can frel reassured somewhat. At th£> suggc-stion of the B8C'~ Audience Research Dep artment, the Nuffield Foundation 'dooded 10 investigate whether by use of !;("ief'tifk method~ II was possible to eUci! some objective furn thai would confinn or deny prevailing impressions', and the results of this eliciting opt'ration have now been published in a vast report at two guineas. It seems that the innuenc(' of tdevis.ion is considerably less dramatic than was fCMro, that mo:;.t children absorb it without ~train, except thOSt! who are

of low intelligence or who are already ilfflicted WitJ, ernO· tional problems or with disturbed families

Tod,,.y', parents 1/1111 no dOIIU' be delighted to blOw tlmt It 's UK /0 It'/ their kids lIJalch TV - nil they nerd to do is haf't 'IInr lQ leslrd or their dli/d I'sy.:hoIogi~Q/ly rmaIySt"li first_ So, finally, on 10 our trealmt'llt ofu.'Onll'II ill do!fadt's past _Wr'w Q/ready toudu:d tlll pDlt'rnnllslic Qllitlldr~ I.'lIrlltr m tillS clraptrr, and nt''W n'~ tmrc to amI,' clrtll!. TIll' 1.(1Orlll rtillf." was a dtjfrmll piau all tll~ yeors /lSII aud New Scientist WilS 11$ Ilideoltil_1f ~l'xi~t us lilelf L<)lIIe e'{'<'11 U'hclllo't' wet!: try"',"; d(~paat.:/y 1('1 b.: r;"III-.'"

: The under~mployed sex So far as grey matter is Ctlncemed, both males and females stiltl oul with equal chance.. When the edUCiltiOn.,llists apply their lQ lests. no distmct difference between the sexes emerges. A look at any clASS in a mixltd grammar school makes this obvious. All have passed their II·plus. and are therefore supposed to be in the upper intellig~nce braclr.et Half the class will be male; half female. Wert" it overloaded with males, there might be some justification for indw.try 10 operate a system of male sup~macy. An individual WIth Applied Systems and Personnltllold me 'girls sometimes make better programmers than boys because they have more patience and are mOR! meticulous An intelligent girt who has the patience to do ~mbroidery has lust the right mentality to do the job'

A.rtd b4d; In thost days, you relilly could print ad$ lik/! tilt DUb tI,jJlfrrl/aiJ! IN/hQul "t'lIIg Iluultd off fo, gl'rJlJl'r-I1/1lilllil'

III

How to Mal:e iI Tornado

therlipy. TheSl' art' so (wl-therl' thaI tllt·y·ttt falltn ot>er the edge of fhm flat Earth nalignm~lIf

;~: Careers in marine geology There are vacandcs for thn."C geoloSi.!o~ (one senior and two juni(lf) with a 'ledlment('llogical bent, and an affinity for ttle ~d. Elt.J>'.'1"iI,'(lct: in yiling. liourfing. skin diving or :>eafaring IS "., ~d\":mt~gt' but not a n.."'(~il); but ad.aptability and .u~rt n~ are I..~nlial There will be a pre-iilb house for the lioeOior man if married. For the Junior posts single men are preferred. but married men an.> not debarred providing the wives can adapt them!M.'lvl'!> tu ru~1:'d st!mi-Glmping condition::;. The pionet'ring ~ririt i'i all important in the ..... ife as in thl' husband_ l\n inrerc:.t in nature gcnl'raJly IS a great asset to either, It is hoped to lllterview husband and wife together_ (oApriI19b4)

;~: Chemists are required Graduate chemists with good honours degrees are required by this Group of Companies for both organic and inorganic p"-"itions, in the London and Midland areas. Commencing salaries attractive and progressive ~on-conmbutory pmsion scheme, assi:.tance given with house purchase. A female

would be cOf\!iidered_

WOllder

if ~JIt"d bi' aNe til rUII Q PIlI'f'rir:S cifiCl'7 All )1<'$. till' olJilt. We Ilrt' sure we Ilrcdictfd il mort' Ihlln once, Wi

PiJprrles~

jllst

CIlII',

senu

10 locQ'~ t/,~

Ilard-copy "',dcllct' •

old /lwgnzim's lIlId m~mos Ii/ing 0" thr drsk

'lIId~r

lilt' pjl~ of

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