Science

Scent from the past

One of our five senses has been woefully neglected until recently.

I grew up around dairy farms, and the smell of cattle can still fling me straight back to those days, dredging up memories I had no idea were still in there. If one whiff can do that for a single childhood, imagine what it could do for whole eras of history.

Thanks to paintings and sculpture, sheet music and oral tradition, even passed-down recipes, we can get a good idea of how the past looked, sounded, and even tasted. But what did mummies smell like? What was the aromatic experience of walking along the canals of Amsterdam in the 17th century?

In this story, Kaja Šeruga follows scientists who are racing to bottle the scents of old libraries, ancient Egyptian tombs and even historical “hell” itself, so future museum visitors can literally breathe in the past. I can read your mind, so I’ll just tell you now that no, it isn’t all horribly odiferous. The scents of the past were often surprisingly lovely.

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Health

‘Smart’ underwear using gas to track your gut health is not as dumb as it sounds

OK, so your smartwatch monitors your heart rate. What if we made smart underwear that… wait! Where are you going? Hear me out!

I gotta be honest, covering this story by Erik Barnes will be hard for me. My childish instinct is to stuff it to the gills with fart jokes and potty humor. I’m a dad. It’s my dooty. See? There I go.

But the tech on offer here is actually kind of brilliant.

Researchers at the University of Maryland created a small snap-on sensor that attaches to the back of your underwear and quietly measures hydrogen gas every time you pass wind. Butt why? (sorry) Because it may be one of the simplest ways yet to track what your gut bacteria are actually doing hour by hour.

And that matters more than you think.

The scientists were happy to toot (teehee) their own horns, reporting that the device detected dietary changes with 94.7% accuracy. It also revealed something about how often we actually pass gas each day… and let’s just say, most of us are underestimating.

What did we learn last week?

Last Friday was the 13th! SPooooOOooooky. Or… is it? What do GOOD readers think of this ominous day? Not much!

• That I have to get flowers! Tomorrow is Valentine's Day! (3.6%)

• That it's Friday. I made it to the weekend. (26.2%)

• Bad luck and bad omens! A day to be careful and aware. (16.7%)

• Oh no! My rent is 13 days late! (3.6%)

• Absolutely nothing. Spare me the nonsense. (50.0%)

Quotes

Environment

Can bamboo undo the mess we’ve made with plastics?

The list of things this new tech can do grows almost as quickly as the plant itself.

Scientists worldwide are racing to address the microplastics crisis. But as long as we are still hooked on cheap, durable plastic, we are basically trying to mop up water while the tap is still running.

Enter bamboo molecular plastic, or BM plastic*.

In this story by Mark Wales, we learn how researchers at Northeast Forestry University in China turned bamboo cellulose into a material that behaves a lot like traditional plastic. It bends without snapping. It is reportedly five times harder than common industrial plastics like ABS or PLA. It can survive boiling temperatures and even strong acids without cracking. Even better, it can be used in the same molds and machines we have today.

It isn’t cheaper than traditional plastic, though, so what’s the big deal? Well, when placed in soil, it fully breaks down in about 50 days. You can add a few zeros to that timeline for the plastic currently sitting in landfills, oceans, and probably your junk drawer.

If this scales, the future of plastic might look less like oil and more like a forest.

* - Oh, come on! I was hoping to wrap this issue up with a nice, polite story about recycling, and they call the tech BM?

In most countries, February 17, 1753, was followed, unremarkably, by February 18. Not so in Sweden.

When much of Europe adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1582, Sweden initially retained the old Julian calendar, then, in 1700, attempted to create a hybrid “Swedish calendar” to catch up by skipping future leap days. For 53 years, this mismatch simmered while trade and travel made the confusion ever more costly.

The slow, stutter-step plan backfired (they skipped the 1700s leap day, then forgot to keep skipping), and after 12 muddled years, they reverted to the Julian calendar with a notorious February 30, 1712. Finally, Sweden ripped off the proverbial Band-Aid: on that fateful February 17, 1753, the next day in Sweden was March 1.

There are no reliable records of what happened to birthdays that would have fallen on those missing 11 days.

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