We like to think of science as a very sober activity. Scientists take the world seriously, and they're really quite stiff and upright folks. They don't have anything at all in common with the Three Stooges.We like to think of science as a very sober activity. Scientists take the world seriously, and they're really quite stiff and upright folks. They don't have anything at all in common with the Three Stooges.
Wanta bet?
Nuclear physicists named the most basic of subatomic particles the quark and called its qualities charm, strangeness, color, and flavor. They named the unit of measure for the cross-sectional area of an atom the "barn," as in "you couldn't hit the broad side of a ...." Fruit fly geneticists came upon a mutant with a distorted male generative organ and named it "Tricky Dick."
Each year the Annals of Improbable Research sponsors the Ig Nobel Awards, "a good-natured spoof of science and the Nobel Prizes," honoring "people whose achievements 'cannot or should not be reproduced.'" On October 9, 1997, in a ceremony "held before a paper-airplane-throwing sellout crowd of 1200 in Harvard University's Sanders Theatre," the awards were handed out by genuine Nobel Laureates Dudley Herschbach, William
Lipscomb, Richard Roberts, and Robert Wilson to (among others):
And now we have the penis patrol. According to the December 1997 issue of Conservation Biology (Malik, et al., "Pinniped Penises in Trade: A Molecular-Genetic Investigation"), Canadian scientists have been doing DNA tests on dried and powdered seal penises sold in Toronto shops. The aim is to make sure that the products in question do not come from protected species such as Australian fur seals and sea lions. What they found is that the seal penises actually come from cattle, water buffalo, dogs, and other protected species. They may not even be penises! Indeed, says Edgard O. Espinoza, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service chief forensic scientist, in nine years of analyzing supposed seal penises he found only three that lived up to their billing. The Canadian scientists scored a bit better, finding that twelve of twenty-one samples were really from seals of various kinds.
Perhaps you're wondering why anyone would want to sell seal penises in the first place, much less check to make sure they're really from seals. The answer is quite simple: Money. The ancient belief that animal genitalia could serve as aphrodisiacs has faded but remains strong in Japan, Korea, and China. Reportedly, in 1994 a Canadian company delivered 50,000 seal carcasses to China, selling a set of genitalia for over $100 (the rest of the carcass was dickered down to a mere $20). In March 1997, the conservation group Crusade for Life charged that Peruvian fisherman who were planning to kill sea lions that destroyed their nets were really planning to sell the genitalia to Korea.
Combining this with the obvious truth that a shrivelled scrap of dried meat--or a powder, or a bottle of "three-penis wine" (containing material from dogs, deer, and seals)--may or may not be what the seller claims, it becomes easy to justify a bit of DNA testing. It is very easy for crooked penis-purveyors to slip in ringers.
"Truth in advertising" laws might call for some testing, but I suspect the truth cops wouldn't want to touch this one. Wildlife protection authorities seem more willing to come to grips with the issue. Even honest sellers, who really are selling what they say they are, may succumb to the temptation to use material from protected or endangered species.
At this point the bemused reader may be wondering: Does this stuff work? The answer is that there is nothing in the chemistry of seal (and other animal) penises that should give them any potency over impotence. Yet people keep buying the preparations, and they never seem to complain that an aphrodisiac prepared from, say, dog ears failed to work. If the label calls it an aphrodisiac, it works.
That sounds like the placebo effect (for a definition, click here) to me, which is not to knock placebos. They do work, though the "active ingredient" lies much, much less in the product than in the customer's mind. The customer's expectations, the confidence instilled by a doctor's white coat and other symbols of healing, sheer faith in a medical procedure or pill, can be enough to make a treatment work, both for physical ills (Walter A. Brown, "The Placebo Effect," Scientific American, January 1998, p. 90) and for mental ones (one report says the placebo effect may account for half the effect of antidepressant medications).
Some researchers are saying that if you're depressed, putting a magnet in your cap may help. It's not that simple, but it doesn't seem to be the placebo effect in action, either. Researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and National Institute on Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) have reported that using an electromagnetic coil to induce an electrical current in the brain's left prefrontal cortex produced "marked mood improvement" in two of six medication-resistant depressed patients. "One of the two responders, a middle-aged woman, reported feeling well for the first time in three years." Since Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation induces an electrical current in the brain, it resembles electroconvulsive therapy, which is known to be effective against depression (though medications are in most cases the preferred treatment). The difference is apparently that "unlike electricity, which gets diffused by the skull, high intensity magnetic pulses pass readily through bone, making possible more focused targeting of particular brain structures."
Recalling the fuss a few years ago about electromagnetic fields and cancer, and the case of the woman whose brain tumor was supposedly caused by holding a cellular phone beside her head for much of every day, one is tempted to speculate: Have these researchers thought of just telling their patients to get a cell phone and talk a lot? (I know, the ear lies over the temporal lobe, not the frontal lobe, but we should never let reality get in the way of a joke.)
The National Highway Safety Administration recently announced that by distracting drivers cellular telephones may increase the risk of highway accidents. That seems obvious enough, but if we dare to extend it a bit, here's the new excuse for driving into that Mercedes in front of you: "But Officer! I was just treating my depression!"
"So why were you depressed? Find out your seal penis was phony?"
Do that often enough, and they'll want to put you on ice for awhile. Fortunately, refrigerators may soon be much more environmentally benign. Until now, the basic refrigeration mechanism has involved compressing a fluid such as Freon, which we have found destroys stratospheric ozone when it escapes into the air and thus threatens an epidemic of skin cancer, among other things.
The new mechanism just makes loud noises. Called thermoacoustic refrigeration, an early version was flown on the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1991. The current version is being developed by Professor Tom Hofler and his students at the Naval Postgraduate School. Hofler said in an August 1997 press release: "Our heat-driven thermoacoustic refrigerator is basically a hollow tube closed on both ends, filled with pressurized helium gas, and with tightly wound coils of plastic film or vitreous carbon, called 'stacks', in the middle. We use an inert gas like helium because, the lighter the gas, the more power you get. The device consists of two heat engines in one unit -- a 'driver' engine and a 'cooler' engine.
"When the temperature difference between the two ends of the driver stack is great enough, a standing high amplitude sound wave is generated inside the resonator cavity, just like in an organ pipe. The oscillating sound wave creates pressure fluctuations that cause temperature changes in the gas -- the higher the pressure, the higher the temperature. As it passes through the 'cooler' stack, the interaction between the sound wave and the film or carbon in the stack then causes heat to be pumped from the colder to warmer end and out of the system, which is what a refrigerator is. By tapping into cold areas with a heat exchanger, the cooler temperature can be transferred to a separate refrigeration unit."
The 1991 version used a loudspeaker to generate the loud sounds that make the device work. So do the versions being developed by James Braun and his colleagues at Purdue University (for description and pictures, click here) and by workers at MacroSonix Corporation in Richmond, VA. The latter device uses sounds of about 200 decibels in intensity; says the writeup in Science (December 19, 1997, p. 2060), "If you stand next to a sound of 165 decibels, it will ignite your hair." (Two hundred decibels is some 3000 times as loud as 165 decibels.)
To the Navy, the new technology offers the potential for meeting a ship's refrigeration and air conditioning needs (which consume about one megawatt of electrical power) with the waste heat given off by the ship's gas turbines (5-40 megawatts). This alone would help make the Navy fleet more environmentally friendly. So would the ensuing freedom from dependence on chlorofluorocarbons or other hazardous gases.
The same technology will also, of course, be useful at home. After all, a refrigerator is a refrigerator, no matter where you get the cold from. What's important is whether you can keep your seal penises fresh.
But--you know that little light in the fridge? The one that's always on when you open the door? The one you're pretty sure turns off when you close the door? I hope they hook the switch to the new mechanism so that "standing high amplitude sound wave" gets turned off when you open the door. Who needs a fridge that makes you bleed from the ears?
To be fair, the loud sound is confined to the interior of the fridge's compressor; from the outside all you'll hear is a hum, just as now. That strikes me as actually a shame, for it would be so neat--so cool!--to modulate the loudspeaker output with your favorite music. Indeed, a church could use hymns in the fridge that stores the communion wine and wafers and thus truly raise a joyful noise unto the Lord. By the same token, a bar could cool its beer with drinking songs. And a sperm bank could run its freezers with love songs.
Science may get weird, especially in the hands of a Dave Barry wannabe like me, but other portions of our culture can get even weirder. For instance, a fair number of evangelical Christians are expecting the turn of the millennium to bring the Second Coming and the Rapture, when God lifts the saved bodily into heaven for an eternity of bliss and the rest of us get to act out the nastier parts of Revelations. We can expect at least some of these people to perch in treetops, on rooftops, and atop hills and mountains to be sure they aren't missed, just as they did the last time the millennium turned. They'll probably wear white "rapture robes," too, to symbolize their purity and holiness. The trouble is, New Year's Eve can be pretty chilly, even with global warming. With all those joyful hymns and hosannahs, it might even get a bit chillier.
On the other hand, thermoacoustic refrigeration devices vent heat (so do current refrigerators). Would it be possible to use the technology to convert those joyful noises into hot air to keep the pilgrims comfy on their perches? Alas, surely not, for even rapture fans don't sing loud enough.
Hokay, as Our Editor here might say. Let's get real. To keep those pilgrims comfy we'll have to go with well established, standard technology. I am therefore seeking a subcontractor who can make up a large batch of electrically heated rapture robes, just the thing to keep one warm New Year's Eve 2000 (or 2001--take your pick) when perched on high awaiting pickup. In case of disappointment, you can wear it when ice fishing the next morning. Plugs into your car's cigarette lighter (if you haven't signed the car over to the preacher). Doubles as electric blanket. Reversible, white on the outside, plaid on the inside.
Want one?
Dr. Thomas A. Easton is Professor of Life Sciences at Thomas College in Waterville, Maine. He has been the Analog book columnist for almost 20 years. His latest novel, Unto the Last Generation, is available only on-line, from Mind's Eye Fiction. is Silicon Karma (White Wolf, 1997). His latest nonfiction books are Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Science, Technology, and Society (Dushkin, 1995, 2nd ed., 1997, 3rd ed., 1998) and Periodic Stars: An Overview of Recent Science Fiction (Borgo Books, 1997).
Previous columns in this series are available here.