Scribbles on the margins of science.
Zoo News
Colossal effort
Zoologists at the Museum of New Zealand in Wellington have embarked on perhaps their biggest and most delicate feat of engineering so far. They have started the lengthy process of thawing out the most complete specimen of colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni). The 10-metre, half-tonne creature was caught and frozen last year.
On the record
“Gravity's not really my friend right now.”
Peggy Whitson, an astronaut on the Soyuz capsule that came near disaster last week, reflects on the unpleasantness of pulling 8.2 G during the craft's botched re-entry.
“You would have thought I claimed the pyramids were carved by lasers.”
Materials engineer Michel Barsoum wonders why so much hostility has greeted his theory that the Egyptian pyramids were 'cast' like concrete, not built from stone blocks dragged from quarries.
Scorecard
GOING UP Artificial meat
Animal-welfare group PETA has offered a US$1-million bounty to the first scientist who can produce marketable lab-grown meat, thereby saving real animals from the abattoir.
GOING DOWN Snacks
Confectioners might be worried by a British study of appetite, which suggests that dieters who think hard about their last meal are less tempted by the prospect of eating biscuits.
Sources: BBC, PETA, New Scientist, Associated Press, boston.com
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Sidelines. Nature 453, 12 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/453012a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/453012a