God鈥檚 recent works
What has God done lately? Professionally, much of God鈥檚 work these days aims to help humans fly more safely, more efficiently and more profitably. As head of the Institute for Aircraft Cabin Systems at Hamburg University of Technology in Germany, is a respected presence in the field of aeronautics.
God鈥檚 recent paper 鈥� prepared in collaboration with colleagues 鈥� was presented a few months ago at the 33rd Congress of the International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences in Stockholm, Sweden.
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Like much of God鈥檚 work, it gives careful attention to . MRO is the acronym for maintenance, repair and operations, the purpose of which is 鈥渕aintaining a facility and the equipment inside it to ensure that everything is in working order and running smoothly鈥�.
God鈥檚 paper gives a masterclass in threading many needles simultaneously. It lists them. To set themselves apart from competitors, airlines cook up 鈥渘ew digital services for passengers, such as controlling seat functions or ordering drinks via their smartphone鈥�. They do this while wrestling with 鈥渞equirements for safety, security, reliability and user-friendliness鈥�.
Together, God and his team give hope and evidence, in this one paper, that all those needles can, and maybe will, dance with all those threads.
God, ungreedy, has a firm track record of collaboration, especially on matters of safety and propriety. He shares the credit with colleague Hartmut Hintze for a called . Here, Hintze and God invented a system to prevent evildoers, incompetents and anyone else from entering an aircraft cabin unless they have proper, reliable authorisation.
Satan, Buddha and Fate
But what of Satan? What of Buddha? What of Fate?
On the public record, Satan has been unproductive recently. But in the 1980s, Jozef Satan applied his expertise at handling high heat. The result was documented by the government of Czechoslovakia in a patent called . The heat is key to both efficiency and saving costs.
Satan鈥檚 innovation offered efficiency to the peoples of Earth as they contemplated a dirty problem: disposing of hazardous waste. 鈥淭he advantage of the liquid waste organic substances liquidation method,鈥� explains the patent document (presented here via Google Translate), 鈥渋s the complete disposal of organic waste by incineration at high temperatures and the reliable capture of harmful emissions of sulphur oxides.鈥�
Like God, Satan is also on record as being a collaborationist. He shares the inventor credit on his patent with nine colleagues.
And Buddha? Rushidev Buddha of California, with 16 colleagues, has filed a for something called a 鈥渟timulation apparatus鈥�. The application itself presents more than 200 pages of written stimulation to any receptive reader. It describes an implantable medical device that promises 鈥渢o deliver stimulation energy to the patient鈥�.
Then there is Fate. Timothy Fate and two colleagues entered the picture a decade ago. They filed a patent application that describes their , using the no-one-fully-understands-it-yet power of neural networks. Then, alas 鈥� Fate鈥檚 fate 鈥� they abandoned the application.
Brown sauce adventures
When you chew a gob of delicious food, your mouth hosts a circus of mechanical and chemical activities. Dengyong Liu and colleagues at Bohai University in Jinzhou, China, have been teasing out what happens, moment to moment, to the bits and bobs and boluses of food and saliva as a person chows down on the Chinese dish stewed pork with brown sauce. From time to time, they publish a new research study, keeping a fact-hungry world apprised of their findings.
Their latest report, , appears in the journal Food Science and Human Wellness. Ten women and 10 men each chewed a chop. The paper tells of a simple regimen: 鈥淲hen the panelists were ready to swallow, they raised their hands, indicating that the oral processing was over鈥� Oral processing was divided into five stages based on the chewing time, i.e., 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% and 100% of total chewing time. After completing a certain stage of oral processing, the subjects spit the pellets and saliva into a disposable plastic container and filtered them with four layers of sterile medical gauze.鈥�
The scientists analysed the samples, seeing a dramatic change at about the 60 per cent stage. The combined effects of the saliva, the fat, the tongue and the teeth transformed the food into a fairly uniform emulsion, rather than a rough-and-tumble mixture. The researchers鈥� subtle glee at this discovery is evident to the careful reader, who may be tempted to seek out an earlier paper they cite, called .
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