Full of beans
On a gut level, what happens after a person becomes full of beans?
Flatulence is what happens. But attempts at mitigation, explain Iowa State University researchers Donna Winham, Ashley Doina and Abigail Glick, can bring medical risk. They presented a paper at a recent conference in Denver, Colorado, called 鈥� supplements raise blood glucose after bean-based meals鈥�. The particular supplement they tested, alpha-galactosidase, 鈥渞educes gas production by breaking complex carbohydrates into smaller, less fermentable, components [but it] can significantly increase glycemic response even in healthy adults鈥�. Fewer farts, but at the expense of higher blood sugar levels.
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The notion that bean-eating induces flatus underwent testing decades ago. F. R. Steggerda鈥檚 noticeable 1968 paper 鈥溾�� reported: 鈥淭o establish the theory that when one ingests bean products he experiences flatulence, a number of experiments were performed in which the effects of a non-gas-producing basal diet were compared with those of a diet containing a high concentration of beans.鈥�
Steggerda added a memorable two sentences to the world鈥檚 scientific literature: 鈥淭he average gas volume collected per hour for the non-gas-producing diet was 15 cc, but when the diet was 57% pork and beans, the gas volume increased to 176 cc / hour鈥� It was also observed that the gas-producing ability of Boston baked beans was not appreciably different from that of the pork and beans.鈥�
A year later, Alan Greenwald, Thomas Allen and Richard Bancroft at the United States Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine published a study indicating the heights to which bean-to-flatus production can rise. Their paper 鈥溾�� may long be remembered for its own literary contribution, in a terse section that discusses 鈥渢he increase in body volume after ingestion of 0.6 kg of commercially available canned baked beans鈥�. The paper says: 鈥淭he subject in this study agreed to retain abdominal gas for as long as possible thereafter.鈥�
Read More: Farting: The questions you鈥檙e too embarrassed to ask
Survival of whistling
鈥淲histling,鈥� a study called 鈥溾�� reminds us, 鈥渉as the function of expressing personal emotions and lifting the mood鈥�. Yet, explain authors Su Wang and Qingqing Xiao, the practice barely survived a Long, Dark Age of Whistling.
They present stark facts: 鈥淔rom the Song dynasty (960鈥�1279 AD) to the Jin dynasty (1115鈥�1234 AD), due to the constraints of feudal Neo Confucianism鈥� at that time, only very few people liked whistling, and it basically disappeared. Although the development of whistling in the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties was difficult to compare with the Wei and Jin dynasties, it also had its own development characteristics.鈥�
The study makes clear how extraordinary were the Wei and Jin periods: 鈥淒uring the period of the Wei and Jin dynasties, the great scholar Ruan Ji actively learned from the Taoist master Xiao Gong, enabling him to transition from a god to a human, thus adding an artistic masterpiece to the life of scholars.鈥�
Fruit, now like flies
Even before scientists discovered that a chemical called DNA transmits genetic information from generation to generation of all known living things, much of our understanding of inheritance came from fruit flies. Fruit got less attention. Now, things are catching up for fruit. Especially melons.
Flies had the advantage, for geneticists, of reproducing more quickly than most plants do. Data about fruit fly reproduction accumulates faster and more copiously than reproduction data about rice or roses. Or melons.
Hari Kesh at CCS Haryana Agricultural University in India and Prashant Kaushik at the Technical University of Valencia in Spain describe the metaphorical fruits of this catching-up in their study 鈥溾��. As they say, 鈥渟ignificant information on melon genomics, and melon metabolomics, is advantageous for dissecting the inheritance of quintessential traits鈥�.
Kaushik is, in a way, a fine example 鈥� a human fruit fly, if you will 鈥� of high-rate productivity. During the first three months of 2024 he published, as author or co-author, . In a meaningless-but-mentionable comparison 鈥� Kaushik鈥檚 literary production rate versus the biological production rates of melons and fruit flies 鈥� he ranks intermediate between the plants and the insects.
Mourning dead slogans
A very few slogans stand as fading testimony to the good intent of the people who ran a particular organisation. Two of the most outstanding are IBM鈥檚
Those have both been retired. Presumably, each retirement marked the discovery of a nobler ideal. Something more profitable for humanity, or a portion thereof.
Feedback would enjoy learning about other inspirationally commendable organisation slogans that were supplanted. If you know of one, don鈥檛 be evil and keep it to yourself. Instead, please send it (with documentation) to feedback@newscientist.com.
Marc Abrahams created the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony and聽co-founded聽the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Earlier, he worked on unusual ways to use computers. His website is聽.
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