The Minnesota WWII starvation experiment

As reported by the BBC:

During World War Two, conscientious objectors in the US and the UK were asked to volunteer for medical research. In one project in the US, young men were starved for six months to help experts decide how to treat victims of mass starvation in Europe...

The experiment started in November 1944 and for the first three months they
were fed to their optimum weight and monitored. Then their rations were cut dramatically. Food quickly became an obsession... The men ate meals twice a day. One might be cabbage, turnips and half a glass of milk. On another day, it might be rye bread and some beans... Like many hungry people in Europe, the men never had meat, and calories were set at 1,800 or less

The regime was tough - during the six months they were being starved, the men were expected to walk or run 22 miles (36 kilometres) every week, expending over 1,000 calories more than they consumed each day... 

There's quite a bit more at the link, and at the Wikipedia page, which includes this observation:

One of the crucial observations of the Minnesota Starvation Experiment discussed by a number of researchers in the nutritional sciences—including Ancel Keys—is that the physical effects of the induced semi-starvation during the study well approximates the conditions experienced by patients afflicted with a range of eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. As a result of the study it has been postulated that many of the profound social and psychological effects of these disorders may result from undernutrition, and recovery depends on physical re-nourishment as well as psychological treatment.

The difference between dogs and cats

YouTube link.

A dog demonstrates to the puppy how to walk down stairs, then encourages it to do so.  In the second clip a cat demonstrates the feline equivalent of this encouragement.

A hat tip to Miss C at Neatorama for the via and for a much-needed laugh this morning.

Human urine as garden and farm fertilizer

An interesting article at Modern Farmer reviews the current usage of human urine as fertilizer:

Jay Bailey, who owns and operates Fair Wind Farms with his wife Janet Bailey, volunteered a few hay fields for the initial stages of the project in 2012. He spread a urine solution from the Brattleboro volunteers over the crops from a horse-drawn applicator and, come harvest time, observed that urine-treated fields were twice as productive as unfertilized controls. The success earned Rich Earth a $10,000 SARE grant from the USDA to expand the trials at Fair Wind in 2013. This year, urine will go to three farms for collaborative trials...

A study conducted by the Stockholm Water Company in the late 1990s diverted urine from four housing projects to a grain farmer outside the city. The scientists concluded not only that urine could replace quick-acting mineral fertilizers, but also calculated that one Northern European adult pees enough plant nutrients to grow 50 to 100 percent of the food requirement for another person...

But even if there is minimal risk to personal or public health, Nace realizes that only a chosen few will ever be willing to collect their own urine with jugs and funnels. A much more realistic option is urine-diverting toilets, which again the Swedes, masters of pee, have reliably engineered... 

More discussion at the link, including the potential problem of pharmaceuticals excreted in urine.   And see my 2009 post on urine-diverting toilets.

Those who wish to try this in their own gardens should take note of the brown "burned" spots in lawns created by dog pee and then follow this adjustment noted in the Wikipedia article on the subject:

When diluted with water (at a 1:5 ratio for container-grown annual crops with fresh growing medium each season, or a 1:8 ratio for more general use), urine can be applied directly to soil as a fertilizer.

Modern Farmer article via The Dish.

Digital animation of classic art

YouTube link.

An interesting 10-minute video by Rino Stefano Tagliafierro.  The movie includes - and emphasizes - nudity and eroticism (occasionally enhanced by the animation effect) and some violence and gore.

List of the paintings and artists in order of appearance.

15th century cat: "I could pee on that!"

A Deventer scribe, writing around 1420, found his manuscript ruined by a urine stain left there by a cat the night before. He was forced to leave the rest of the page empty, drew a picture of a cat and cursed the creature with the following words:

“Hic non defectus est, sed cattus minxit desuper nocte quadam. Confundatur pessimus cattus qui minxit super librum istum in nocte Daventrie, et consimiliter omnes alii propter illum. Et cavendum valde ne permittantur libri aperti per noctem ubi cattie venire possunt.”

[Here is nothing missing, but a cat urinated on this during a certain night. Cursed be the pesty cat that urinated over this book during the night in Deventer and because of it many others [other cats] too. And beware well not to leave open books at night where cats can come.]

From Medieval Fragments, via Erik Kwakkel.

Fake calamari made from pig rectums?

Probably an urban legend.  But it sounded plausible when I listed to last week's podcast of episode 484 ("Dopplegangers") of This American Life (transcript here).

The story started in the classic way, with an email from a stranger. Calhoun heard it from a fan of This American Life who wrote in to say that she had heard it from a guy who worked in pork production. When Calhoun followed up, the farmer told him that he'd learned about faux mollusk from a guy he knows who manages a meat-processing plant. That manager, for his part, told Calhoun that he was 95 percent sure the claim was true, though he admitted that he'd never seen the fakes himself—he only knew of them from the people that he worked for at the plant. And while no one at the plant had ever seen a rectum packaged as a squid, employees there confirmed that they had heard the story, too.

There were no eyewitnesses at all, in fact, and all the other evidence was circumstantial: A recent activist report found signs of modest seafood fraud—one kind of fish mislabeled as another—and a taste test showed that switching rectums for calamari might indeed go undetected. Calhoun did not try to hide the weakness of his case: "Just to repeat one last time," he said at the close of his radio script, "I have no proof that anyone, anywhere, has ever tried to pass off pork bung as calamari in a restaurant … " 

If you want something to get upset about, turn your attention instead to real seafood fraud.

 Photo credit.

Questionable "improvement" of dog breeds

A post at Science of Dogs bemoans a century of dog breeding for its production of too many dogs with genetic defects.  Excerpts:

The dogs on the left are from  the 1915 book, ‘Breeds of All Nations‘ by W.E. Mason. The examples on the right are modern examples from multiple sources...

[top photo] It seems incredible that at one time the Bull Terrier was a handsome, athletic dog. Somewhere along its journey to a mutated skull and thick abdomen the bull terrier also picked up a number of other maladies like supernumerary teeth and compulsive tail-chasing.

A shorter face means a host of problems. The modern Boxer not only has a shorter face but the muzzle is slightly upturned. The boxer – like all brachycephalic dogs – has difficulty controlling its temperature in hot weather, the inability to shed heat places limits on physical performance. It also has one of the highest cancer rates.

The Dachshund used to have functional legs and necks that made sense for their size. Backs and necks have gotten longer, chest jutted forward and legs have shrunk to such proportions that there is barely any clearance between the chest and floor. The dachschund has the highest risk of any breed for intervertebral disc disease which can result in paralysis; they are also prone to achondroplastic related pathologies, PRA and problems with their legs...

Other examples at the source include the Basset Hound, the English bulldog, the German Shepherd, the Pug, and the St. Bernard.

Territorial claims in the Arctic

This is one of the Washington Post's "40 more maps that explain the world."  For now, I'll just leave it here for possible future reference.

"As the polar ice caps melt, it's creating something that the world hasn't seen in a long time: vast, unclaimed territory. That territory also happens to include oil and other natural resources, as well as valuable trade routes. Five countries are competing to claim the new land: Canada, Russia, Norway, Denmark and the United States."

The firebombing of Japan

This is one of the Washington Post's "40 more maps that explain the world."  For now, I'll just leave it here for possible future reference.

"This map shows each Japanese city that was bombed during World War II, an American city of equivalent size, and the percentage of the city estimated destroyed by the bombings. All Americans learn about the two atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on Japan at the end of the war, and we're starting to become more aware of the firebombing campaigns that wiped out much of Germany, including civilians. But we are nowhere near confronting the U.S. firebombing of Japan, which killed several times as many people as the atomic bombs and devastated Japan's wooden-constructed cities. By the time the war ended, 30 percent of the residents in Japan's largest 60 cities were homeless."

The empires of pre-colonial Africa

This is one of the Washington Post's "40 more maps that explain the world."  For now, I'll just leave it here for possible future reference.

"This map of indigenous African empires is not exhaustive. It spans two thousand years from 500 B.C. to 1500 A.D., so these empires were not concurrent; some existed centuries apart. But it shows that... sub-Saharan Africa was rich with vast and powerful empires long before the Europeans arrived... The Songhai Empire, at its peak in the 14th century, was a global center of culture and learning, based in the still-famous mosques of Timbuktu."

Hartshorn

"The word hart is an old alternative word for "stag" (from Old English heorot, "deer" – compare with modern Dutch hert and Swedish/Norwegian hjort, also "deer").

Specifically, the word "hart" was used of a red deer stag more than five years old. In medieval hunting terms, a stag in its first year was called a "calf" or "calfe", in its second a "brocket", in its third a "spayed", "spade", or "spayard", in its fourth a "staggerd" or "staggard", and in its fifth a "stag", or a "great stag". To be a "hart" was its fully mature state. A lord would want to hunt not just any deer, but a mature stag in good condition, partly for the extra meat and fat it would carry, but also for prestige. Hence a hart could be designated "a hart of grease", (a fat stag), "a hart of ten", (a stag with ten points on its antlers) or "a royal hart" (a stag which had been hunted by a royal personage). A stag which was old enough to be hunted was called a "warrantable" stag.

The hart was a "beast of venery" representing the most prestigious form of hunting, as distinct from lesser "beasts of the chase", and "beasts of warren", the last of which were considered virtually as being vermin. The membership of these different classes varies somewhat, according to which period, and which writer, is being considered, but the red deer is always in the first class, the fox hardly being regarded at all.

Harts' horns, are the horns of the male red deer. Various substances were made from the shavings of the animals' horns. The oil of hartshorn is a crude animal oil obtained from the destructive distillation of the deers' bones or horns.

The salt of hartshorn actually refers to two distinct substances, sal ammoniac (ammonium chloride), and ammonium carbonate, which have been obtained from oil of hartshorn by dry distillation. The spirit of hartshorn (or spirits of hartshorn) is an aqueous solution of ammonia...

Hartshorn jelly or a decoction of burnt hartshorn in water was used to treat diarrhea. Hartshorn was used to treat insect bites, sunstroke, stye, and snakebites.

Hartshorn salt (ammonium carbonate), also known simply as hartshorn, and baker's ammonia, was used as a leavening agent, in the baking of cookies and other edible treats. It was used mainly in the 17th and 18th centuries as a forerunner of baking powder.   ½ teaspoon of hartshorn can substitute for 1 teaspoon of baking powder. It is called for in old German and Scandinavian recipes and, though rarely used in modern times, may still be purchased as a baking ingredient."

Posted for the Hartshorns, and for people who know people named Hartshorn.

India is now officially polio-free

YouTube link.

"Dr. Mathew Varghese, an orthopedic surgeon, runs India's last polio ward at St. Stephen's Hospital in Delhi.  Five years ago, India accounted for nearly half of all new wild poliovirus cases in the country. As of 13 January 2014, the country will celebrate three years without a single case. It's one of the greatest public health accomplishments of all time, and a powerful reminder of just how important it is to continue the fight to eradicate polio worldwide."

From the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation website, where Mr. Gates offers this commentary:

"Five years ago, India was home to nearly half of the world’s new polio cases. At the time, if you asked any health expert, they would have said India would be the last place on earth to end polio. India’s population density and high birth rate (27 million new children are born each year), combined with poor sanitation, was like a petri dish for polio.

But the government of India, with help from the organizations that make up the Global Polio Eradication Initiative including Rotary International launched an all-out effort to stop the disease. The country deployed 2 million vaccinators to reach children who had never before been reached with polio vaccines or any other health services—children who live in flooded regions or hard-to-find rural towns, or are regularly in-transit with their families. One of the most powerful images I’ve seen during my visits to India is that of parents proudly holding vaccination cards showing that their children were protected from deadly diseases for the first time.

And now that these children have been found, health workers can supply them with much more than just polio drops. They can provide other critical health services like measles vaccines, clean water, and information about how to deliver their babies safely and care for them during their first weeks of life."

This graph from the WHO, via The Dish:

9/11 conspiracy theory explained and dismissed in 5 minutes

YouTube link.

"Able to lift more than 850 times their own weight"

The Hercules beetle.  Also pretty impressive as a larva:

Biofluorescence in fish

YouTube link.

"A team of researchers led by scientists from the American Museum of Natural History has released the first report of widespread biofluorescence in the tree of life of fishes, identifying more than 180 species that glow in a wide range of colors and patterns. The research shows that biofluorescence—a phenomenon by which organisms absorb light, transform it, and eject it as a different color—is common and variable among marine fish species, indicating its potential use in communication and mating. The report opens the door for the discovery of new fluorescent proteins that could be used in biomedical research."

This video is good for fullscreen viewing.   More details at the American Museum of Natural History. 

One item I found interesting was that the scientists developed a blue filter that subtracted the incident blue light so that only the secondary biofluroescence could be filmed, only to discover that the fish had already evolved the same filter in their own eyes.