Current Facts 12

Diet Fat

Drinking diet soda may actually raise your risk of becoming fat. This counterintuitive finding comes courtesy of a recent study from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, where researchers compared regular and diet cola consumption with weight changes in 1,200 Texans over an eight year period. They discovered that people who drank at least one diet cola every day had a 55 percent chance of becoming overweight anyway, a 22 percent lead over regular soda drinkers. Switching to diet from regular isn't enough to keep the fat off without other diet modifications, says study author Sharon Fowler, MPH, and it's certainly not license to wolf down more than you would otherwise.

Men's Health, September 2005, pp. 56

Synthetic Wonderful Insect Rubber

Fleas use it to perform leaps that would make Olympic high jumpers green with envy. Bees use it to flap their wings without tiring. Now Australian scientists have achieved a world first by copying resilin, the "rubber" insects employ to accomplish such athletic feats. Future versions of the material could be used to make resilient spare parts, including spinal discs and artificial arteries.

Chris Elvin, from CSIRO Livestock Industries in Brisbane, spent four years reproducing nature's "near perfect rubber". "Fleas have a pad of it in their legs. They squeeze and compress it, storing energy in it." When they want to jump "they release all that energy in a millisecond". If humans had such pads they could leap 100-storey buildings.

Dr Elvin predicted the substance would lead to everything from artificial arteries to spinal parts that would not wear out despite being flexed 100 million times. "That's how many times you move your back in 50 or 60 years," he said. It could also be used in micro electronics. "We even imagine putting it in running shoes." However, Dr Elvin, whose work has been published in Nature, said making artificial human parts was at least a decade away.

Segments taken from Sydney Morning Herald and Slashdot

ePaper
The Guardian reports that cheap, paper-thin TV screens that can be used in newspapers and magazines have been unveiled by German electronics giant Siemens. The firm says the low production costs could see the magazine shelves in newsagents come alive with moving images vying for the customers' attention as they move along the aisle. The Siemens spokesman said that one square metre of the material costs around £30, and scientists working on the screens said they should be available by 2007.
Taken from Slashdot

Pop Fruit

A Texas neurobiologist discovered that a pear he left in a cooler with some dry ice had infused with carbon dioxide as the frozen gas sublimated, producing an effervescent produce. The doctor is Galen Kaufman, now the co-owner of the Fizzy Fruit Company, which plans to introduce carbonated apples, grapes, strawberries and pineapple to US schools this fall. A sachet in the can contains nontoxic chemicals that produce carbon dioxide when hit with a few drops of water. Seal it up, and the rising pressure forces the gas into the fruit. The batch of grapes we tested hissed like pop rocks when we opened the clear plastic can. Some even split into release bubbles from juicy fissures. The grapes tasted like normal, just laced with soda water....jazzed up vegetables are next.
Taken from Wired, October 2005,pp. 32.

Black Boxes for Cars
No fewer than 65 percent of 2004 model year passenger vehicles have Event Data Recorders. Better known as black boxes, EDRs store information about the vehicle and driver inputs only when there's a crash. Otherwise, they rewrite over themselves every five seconds or so. The boxes are getting so popular that this fall the US Department of Transportation is standardizing what data gets collected (like speed and whether the brakes were activated). But generally only cops and insurers have the data retrieval equipment.
Taken from Wired, October 2005,pp. 32.

Missing Waterfalls

For decades, there have been rumors of a waterfall located somewhere in the Whiskeytown National Recreation Area in California. But somehow, no one was ever able to find it amid the 43,000 acres. Finally, using computer-generated, global-imaging system maps, wildlife biologist Russ Weatherbee recently spotted the elusive body of water. Now park personnel are building a path to the nearly 400-foot waterfall, to be completed next summer. "Sure I was surprised," said Dick McDermott, who has lived in the park for 70 years. "I've been all around that place and I never seen 'em."
The Week, August 26, 2005, Vol. 5, Iss. 222, pp. 4