SciTechDaily: Why Plant-Based Eggs Are Finally Getting the Spotlight
The team also asked participants to rate how plant-based eggs would compare to traditional ones. Unsurprisingly, expected taste and appearance still favor the classic egg.
A plant-based egg, is not an egg. Not even a little bit. A traditional egg comes from a chicken. If the cook is using ostrich or turtle eggs to make my omelet, he is obliged to make that clear.
When I took Sparky out this morning at 8 am, there were little spider webs all over the place. They are probably always there, but the dew made them easy to spot.
This post is about fluoridated water and dental health. Sparky doesn’t have much to do with it, but I will get to him at the end.
RFK, Jr. Protects The Nation’s Precious Bodily Fluids
Chemistry can seem like magic, so know the cost. In engineering terms, “everything is a trade off.” This substack article addresses RFK’s interest in fluoride.
The battle over fluoride has been raging for longer than I have been alive, dating as far back as the 1930s. While the scientific basis for opposing fluoridization may have changed, the arguments to a large degree remain unchanged.
The silver fox domestication experiment
In 1959, a Russian geneticist in Siberia was interested in the domestication of wolves into dogs. To study the effects of domestication, he decided to use the silver fox. The experiment is still running after 65 years, and now they have domesticated silver foxes that have some physical characteristics of dogs.
Can names shape facial appearance?
“He looks like a Bob.”
There seems to be so truth to people looking like their name, but the experimental results are only a bit above random chance.
NIH closes experimentation labs accused of brutally killing thousands of beagles for 40+ years
Sparky has too much ninja blood to be an official beagle, but these reports are heartbreaking. All of the lab beagles shown in the photos have Sparky’s stoic good nature, so you know that they are all good dogs.
Drug to Extend Dogs’ Lives May Be Approved by FDA
The drug aims to extend the lifespan of senior dogs and maintain their quality of life as they age, building on the company’s previous RXE acceptance for a longevity drug specifically targeting the short lifespan of large breed dogs.
I don’t get how this works. I assume that dogs and people have similar physiologies, and two years living with Sparky hasn’t changed my mind. I have a developed prefrontal cortex and Sparky can poop whenever he wants, otherwise, our bodies work pretty much the same way.
Dogs’ speech recognition: New study shows they listen beyond tone
A new study conducted by animal behavior and mammalian cognition experts at the Universities of Lincoln and Sussex, and Jean Monnet University, reveals that dogs may be far better at understanding human speech than previously understood.
This research took place in England, so we probably didn’t pay for it. So, that’s something.
A mixed group of dogs from a variety of breeds were recruited for the exercise and were each exposed to a stream of speech which contained both relevant commands and irrelevant information, all spoken in a flat tone. Surprisingly, the dogs consistently responded to the commands, demonstrating their ability to extract meaningful verbal content from what was spoken.
Sparky is not impressed.
Your Dog May Be Wilder Than You Think
This article is about the sleeping patterns of dogs compared to wolves. I am a Sparcheologist and not a dog scientist, but this research doesn’t match my experience. The author does get some things right.
CNN: The North Pole is moving.
The needle on a compass rotates to line up with the magnetic poles of the Earth. Those poles move, and faster than you’d think. In the past few decades, the poles have been moving about 30 miles per year. On the scale of the entire Earth, that may not seem like much, but closer to the poles, it can be critical.
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