Featured image: The late Professor Mainstone with his famous tar drip experiment, which has produced about a drop a decade since 1930. The idea: everything flows.
In this episode, we’re investigating the intersecting worlds of colloids, fluid properties, and food science with Tamás Prileszky, a University of Delaware graduate student in chemical engineering. What governs the diverse behavior of liquids as different as oil and mayonnaise? How can engineers tweak the concoctions they develop? Tamás will share his expertise in droplets, which float around in liquids and drastically affect their properties, and explain what tools and methods scientists use to develop new chemical technologies. Finally, we’ll connect all this with our diets: how do we engineer food, and why is it that we put so many additives in grocery store products?
In other news:
- CRISPR, the gene editing technology that’s taking biology by storm, recently made big gains against Huntingdon’s disease in mice.
- Eclipses (discussed on TVR2C recently) are still a huge opportunity for solar research, as shown by this group from Hawaii studying the temperature of coronal mass ejections.
- A widely-publicized Tesla crash can be blamed on the driver, not the self-driving car, say new findings by the company.
- Wild felines became cats and spread all around the ancient world, mostly through two big human-induced migrations. Or at least that’s what scientists can tell from new analyses of ancient cat DNA.
- Airborne germs survive for a long time after a sneeze or a cough, according to Australian scientists. So long, dreams of cleanliness.
The full playlist of the show is available on WPRB’s website or below.
These Vibes Are Too Cosmic 