Distinguished frogs
It turns out, say Chatmongkon Suwannapoom and Maslin Osathanunkul, that a good way to distinguish one kind of fanged frog from another is to do melting analysis.
Their report, āā, explains how they achieved the ārapid and accurate identification of six species of Limnonectes of the L. kuhlii ³¦“Ē³¾±č±ō±š³ęā.
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The thing they melted was a specific region of RNA from the ribosomes of each frog. Plotting the temperatures at which the frogsā ribosomesā RNA does or does not melt creates a separate, easily distinguishable curve for each kind of frog.
Eyeballing, the technologically simpler technique used by frog scientists back when frog scientists were called ānaturalistsā, has its limits. Melting exceeds some of those limits.
Cats on cannabis
The full effects of cannabis ā like, come to think of it, the full effects of anything ā on humans still hold some mysteries.
So it is with cannabis and cats. Chloe Lyons and her colleagues at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, have made some progress about the cats.
Writing in , they describe what happened when they gave 12 cats two oral doses of a cannabis herbal extract (the acronym for which is CHE). Some cats received a dosage more than double what the others got.
Reader Stefan Lalonde points out a study highlight: a photo of a lavishly drooling cat. A second cat also drooled. The report states: āthese two cats clearly hypersalivatedā.
The scientists express surprise about the cats: āSalivation shortly after dosing was observed in two cats in the high dose group; these animals had substantially lower cannabinoid concentrations than other cats in this group.ā
The team speculates about the mechanism that caused the drooling. āCats are notorious for āspitting upā oral medications which they conceal in their oral cavity, and it could not be confirmed that all cats swallowed the entire CHE dose,ā the researchers write. āAny oil-based CHE retained in the oral cavity may have prompted the cat to salivate, and subsequently been expelled from the mouth.ā
This unexpected twist in the who-drools data hints that the relationship between hunger and cannabis consumption in cats may be complex.
Or that these two particular cats were eccentric, one way or another.
A sticky issue
At sea, there is spice. Feedback still delights in how oceanographers decided that some ocean water can be called āspicyā and other ocean water āmintyā (8 October 2022). Hereās further delight: in the air, there is āstickinessā.
Reader Earle Spamer brings news of the latter. āHereās a paper that brandishes a ānewā variable in climate studies: stickiness,ā he writes. āAn awful lot of mathematics to explain what my grandmother knew just by sitting on the front porch.ā
The paper is āā by Catherine Ivanovich at Columbia University and her colleagues, published in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences.
āWe derive a novel thermodynamic state variable named āstickinessā,ā they write. This is āanalogous to the oceanographic variable āspiceā (which quantifies the relative contributions of temperature and salinity to a given water density)ā. Stickiness āquantifies the relative contributions of temperature and specific humidityā to the more traditional way of measuring temperature.
Word by common word, scientific specialties adapt familiar, sticky old ideas and names to help expose and explore the easy-to-overlook complexities of the universe.
Ketchup cardio claim
Feedbackās recent insights on ketchup (16 March) set at least one readerās heart racing.
David Watson writes: āYears ago, before the advent of disposable adhesive electrodes, I was having an electrocardiogram [ECG]. The electrodes then were little rubber cups suckered onto your skin using a conductive gel. I remarked to the cardiologist that the gel was probably ridiculously expensive. He said it was, and a group had researched cheaper alternatives. They found one with the right combination of surface tension, viscosity and conductivity. Unfortunately, it was low on patient acceptability ā ketchup, of course.ā
Documentation of that doctorās claim (which may have been just a jest) seems scarce. Feedback has so far found only a pooh-poohing, in a 1981 study by Andrew P. B. Lee, āā, published in International Anesthesiology Clinics.
Lee wrote: āMost electrode jellies sold are no more effective than K-Y jelly or tomato ketchup at lowering the skin-electrode impedance.ā
If you find convincing evidence in favour of ketchupās use as a conductive gel for electrocardiograms, please send it over.
Marc Abrahams created the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony andĀ co-foundedĀ the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Earlier, he worked on unusual ways to use computers. His website isĀ
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