Recently, a pair of researchers stumbled onto a fascinating proof of women in the medieval workforce. Anita Radini of the University of York was seeking to unlock the mysteries of diets via starch particles preserved in dental tartar, and Christina Warinner of the Max Planck Institute was after the DNA of ancient oral bacteria. But, as they both looked at the teeth embedded in the skull of a German nun dead for a thousand years, they saw something unexpected. Something… blue??
The blue was a pigment, suspended in the mystery sister’s dental plaque. After few calls to fellow experts and some further laboratory work, Radini and Warinner determined it to be ultramarine, a super-rare and expensive pigment made from the ground-up semi-precious stone lapis lazuli, and used in the illumination of religious manuscripts. It turns out that task of illumination was not just entrusted to the stereotypical monks — because of the evidence of ultramarine in her dental plaque, the former occupant of the mystery skull was determined to be a scribe. And, considering how pricy ultramarine was, she must have been good.
“[Fellow expert and historian Allison] Beach even came across a letter dated to the year 1168, in which a bookkeeper of a men’s monastery commissions sister ‘N’ to produce a deluxe manuscript using luxury materials such as parchment, leather, and silk. The monastery where sister ‘N’ lived is only 40 miles from Dalheim, where the teeth with lapis lazuli were found. Beach also identified a book using lapis lazuli that was written by a female scribe in Germany around AD 1200. The pigment would have traveled nearly 4,000 miles from Afghanistan to Europe via the Silk Road. All the evidence suggests that female scribes were indeed making books that used lapis lazuli pigment in the same area and around the same time this woman was alive.”
Before this proof was found, some folks were throwing up hilarious roadblocks to this medieval artisan getting her due, going so far as to postulate the lapis lazuli got in her teeth because she was tasked with cleaning up the monks’ workroom. As a woman in business, I can’t help but roll my eyes at this — plus ça change, am I right? But I also salute this ancestor who blazed her own, brilliant blue path through her industry. (And the science that brought her work to light!)
While learning all about the subculture of Soviet car fans back in May, I was reminded of my own personal favourite totalitarian bucket of bolts, the Trabant. I first encountered the Trabant (or, affectionately, the “Trabi”) on a trip to Germany, where I turned down an Ostalgie -soaked tour of the former East Berlin via the iconic — and I use the term loosely — “car.” (I now deeply regret this.) 
The Trabi was ubiquitous in East Germany; it was produced by VEB Sachsenring, with little to no variation, from 1957 to 1990. It was notoriously, Communistically, awful: it had no fuel gauge, no signal lights, and its two-stroke engine topped out at barely 100 KPH. But, like the folks who homebrew Lada and Volga mods, the Trabi has a surprising number of modern fans.
“Ronny Heim, 44, got his first Trabi in 1996 in exchange for a box of beer. ‘Trabis weren’t worth anything [after the Wall fell],’ he says. ‘[Because] everyone wanted a “Western car.”’ That same year he served in the Bundeswehr, or unified armed forces of Germany, and brought his Trabi with him to the country’s northwest. ‘Half the team wanted to take the Trabi for a round in the barracks,’ he says, ‘They’d never experienced anything like it before.’
[…] Another thing Trabi collectors can’t get enough of: the strong community that’s devoted to the cars. In May 2019, the International Trabant Meeting celebrated its 25th anniversary […] They swapped stories, sipped beers, and participated in Trabi-related events like seeing who can toss a Trabi engine the furthest. Today there are Trabi clubs throughout Germany, greater Europe, and even in the United States.”
Zaniness aside, there’s a lesson in here — about pursuing what you love, even if (or perhaps because) it’s otherwise “obsolete.” I admire certainty of taste: in business, as well as in the hobby world, conforming for the sake of it while denying the lessons of the past is no way to operate. The far-reaching fandom for a fondly remembered, albeit cruddy, car shows this in the real world!
Smartphones — the little computers in our pockets — are sapping our willpower. Or, they’re keeping us more connected than ever. Or, they’re hurting kids by distracting their parents. Or, all of the above. We can’t deny smartphones have changed everything. That’s why it’s so satisfying to see the unique, portable power of this technology harnessed for good.
Farmers in Colombia, Benin, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, India, and China, are testing a new app on their personal smartphones to cross-check possible pests or blights in banana crops. Our banana-du-jour is the Cavendish; because they’re seedless, Cavendishes are propagated by transplanting, making each individual banana a clone of the others. This lack of genetic diversity spelled doom for the previous popular banana, the Gros Michel when Panama disease came for it in the mid-20th century, and now the Cavendish threatens to go the way of the dodo as well.
Enter the Tumaini app. (The name means “hope” in Swahili.) The app aims to help farmers quickly identify the pest or disease present, raise the alarm in case of an epidemic, and upload individual chunks of data to a large database for big-picture monitoring. And it does all this through AI. From ScienceDaily:
“To build it, researchers uploaded 20,000 images that depicted various visible banana disease and pest symptoms. With this information, the app scans photos of parts of the fruit, bunch, or plant to determine the nature of the disease or pest. It then provides the steps necessary to address the specific disease. […]
Existing crop disease detection models focus primarily on leaf symptoms and can only accurately function when pictures contain detached leaves on a plain background. The novelty in this app is that it can detect symptoms on any part of the crop, and is trained to be capable of reading images of lower quality, inclusive of background noise, like other plants or leaves, to maximize accuracy.”
The future of the cultivated banana rests on this matrix of individual farmers looking out for themselves and each other, via the very tool humans everywhere use to do exactly that — the smartphone. The developers are looking forward to expanding the app to cover many different kinds of crops and pests. Good thing, too, as we move into an age of agricultural instability, we’re going to need all the help we can get.
Now, I love travelling, but I haaate flying — and it has almost everything to do with the seats. With the wealth gap getting away from us, I understand I will never be one of the chosen few worthy enough of those first-class pods. My wishes are humble: it’d be great to not have to duke it out with my neighbour over an armrest; and, just once, I’d love to be served my tomato juice in a real, live glass!
I can still only dream of the latter, but the FAA has just approved a potential solution for the former: a new seat design for short-haul flights, that also promises to speed boarding and give a bit more room for the unlucky middle-seater.
Called the S1, the new triple-seat configuration will be trialled on real-life planes starting in 2020. In the S1 setup, the middle seat is a few inches lower and further back than the aisle and window seats. This allows the person in the middle seat to use the backs of the armrests, while their neighbours’ elbows occupy the fronts. It also gives everyone involved more legroom, without reducing the plane’s capacity. The seemingly tiny redesign packs a big punch:
“‘We have discovered that what looks like a small stagger actually makes a huge difference. The trick is to actually sit in the seat. In fact, our main sales tool is to ship seats to airlines so they can sit in them,’ says Molon Labe founder Hank Scott. ‘I have watched this several times — airline executives see the seat, nod their head and then say they get it. Then we ask them to actually sit down, next to a big fella like our head sales guy Thomas [6-foot-6, 250 pounds]. Within a few seconds, they [really] get it — they stop being an airline executive and switch into passenger modes.’”
To me, the coolest part of it is the optional “side-slip” add-on, where the aisle seat slides over the sunken middle seat, giving boarding or exiting passengers a whole seat-width of extra room. (Is there anyone out there who wouldn’t appreciate not getting conked by someone’s duffel?!) On behalf of Economy-dwellers everywhere, I hope this trial goes well — and we all see this seating innovation on our next vacations!
After consulting my doctor, I’ve recently started upping the “good” fats to my diet. (I love half an avocado on toasted sourdough!) Nuts are great source of monounsaturated fats, so I’ve been 
indulging in a few nuggets of my favourite — macadamia nuts. Little did I know, that what I thought was simply a healthy snack, was actually a wonder of modern agriculture!
Hawai’i is the centre of macadamia nut production, growing a whopping 70% of all macadamias eaten on the planet. Back in May, researchers reverse-engineered the genome of a sample of Hawaiian trees and compared them with trees still grown in the macadamia’s natural habitat of Queensland, Australia. The Hawaiian trees had a very narrow set of genetic markers, which indicated that the majority of the world’s macadamia nuts are descended from a single tree or stand of trees in Queensland.
“‘A small collection of seeds were taken to Hawai’i at the end of the 19th century and historical records suggest that there was maybe six trees grown from that sample of nuts that were taken by Robert Jordan and planted in his brothers’ backyard in the suburbs of Honolulu in 1896,’ [horticulturist and study author Craig] Hardner told ABC News.”
From this small sample grew the entire Hawaiian macadamia population! But such focus comes with a price: Like many other food crops, macadamia nuts are propagated by grafting. The limited genetic diversity of the Hawaiian macadamias is a result of this process — effectively, the trees are all clones of the original Queensland “parent.” This also means that, like other monoculture crops, the majority of macadamia trees could be wiped out by a badly-timed blight or disease.
Thankfully, despite a small natural range, the Queensland macadamia trees exhibit a greater range of genetic diversity and should stand fast in the face of a blight if we humans don’t catch it in time. I take this as an object lesson in the limits of human interference in nature. And in responsible snacking!
A team of researchers from — where else? — the University of Glasgow has invented an “artificial tongue,” that can differentiate between different kinds of whisky, and could potentially be used to put a halt to the dangerous counterfeit alcohol trade.
Looking nothing like an actual tongue — thank god — the artificial tongue is made up of two different kinds of metal nano-sensors, that mimic human tastebuds.
“Using subatomic slices of gold and aluminum to test the tipples, the research team created tastebuds 500 times smaller than a human’s, which were then able to successfully identify differences between drinks with greater than 99% accuracy. The tongue even had enough taste to tell the difference between a Glenfiddich 12-year-old whisky and a bottle of the 18-year-old variety.
[Lead study author Alasdair] Clark added that while whisky was the primary tasting subject for the experiment, the technology could also be used for food safety screenings and quality controls.”
We at DFC are big fans of what we call “Scotch O’Clock,” that pre-dinner hour on Fridays where we indulge in a favourite peaty potent potable and plain salty potato chips. (Don’t knock it, the combo works!) So we’re not going to replace our tongues with artificial ones anytime soon. But this invention could do wonders for whisky (and whiskey), as well as the health of consumers everywhere. I’ll drink to that!
Researchers from the Technical University of Munich have united new technology with one of the oldest art forms, all to improve human wellbeing. They have developed an experimental dermal implant pigment that turns colour when it detects changes in metabolic substances. The pigment can be incorporated traditional tattoo ink — which means a permanent monitor of a long-term condition could someday be worn comfortably (and stylishly!) by a patient, and deliver readings in real-time.
The researchers identified and adapted three chemical sensors that change colour in response to body changes into tattoo inks that they injected into pigskin. The first sensor was a simple pH indicator that changed from yellow to blue as the test “body”’s pH rose. The second was a blood glucose detector that went from yellow to dark green. The third involved albumin (a protein in the blood which, when low, might point out kidney trouble), which also went from yellow to green as levels fell.
From MedicalXPress, via BoingBoing:
“The authors claim that such sensor tattoos could allow permanent monitoring of patients using a simple, low-cost technique. With the development of suitable colorimetric sensors, the technique could also extend to recording electrolyte and pathogen concentrations or the level of dehydration of a patient. Further studies will explore whether tattoo artwork can be applied in a diagnostic setting.”
Wouldn’t it be amazing to someday have a custom tat that can subtly tell you to adjust your insulin, or slug back some electrolytes? Technology is swiftly taking advice to “listen to your body” to a whole new level. Plus, it represents a return of sorts of the art of tattooing to one of its original purposes: healing!
We behind DFC are a military family, and will forever be thankful to service members everywhere for the sacrifices they make for our country. So, when tech news comes down the pipes with a particular application for military members and veterans, we twig to it immediately!
One such development is Vanderbilt University’s recent research into improving the stumble response in computerized prosthetic legs. (Even the most advanced prosthetic has difficulty recovering after a trip; as a result, people with above-the-knee amputations experience significantly more falls than their peers with two biological legs.)
First, the team is looking at how able-bodied folks compensate for unexpected trip hazards in their way. They do this by setting volunteers on a treadmill, blocking their vision, and then literally tripping them — 190 times. From Research News @Vanderbilt:
“Special goggles kept [volunteer Andrés Martínez] from looking down. Arrows on an eye-level screen kept him from walking off the sides. A harness attached to a ceiling beam kept him safe. Sure enough, when a computer program released the steel block, it glided onto the treadmill, and the Vanderbilt University PhD student struggled to stay on his feet. […]
‘Not only did our treadmill device have to trip them, it had to trip them at specific points in their gait,’ said Shane King, a PhD student and lead author on the paper. ‘People stumble differently depending on when their foot hits a barrier. The device also had to overcome their fear of falling, so they couldn’t see or feel when the block was coming.’
In addition to protecting test subjects, the harness included a scale. If a subject put 50 percent or more of their weight on it during a stumble, that counted as a fall.”
Take a look at the treacherous treadmill in action f.
It’s fascinating to see such a natural human action (that we often want to pretend never happened!) broken down and studied. A lot goes on in our brains and bodies when we trip on something — believe me, after I mangled my ankle and knee in seconds in a dog walking accident a few years ago, I know! It’s striking how much work needs to go into making a computer do what we already do so well, but the payoff for bionic users will be immense. I look forward to how this concept develops.
At first glance, there seem to be no two populations in today’s world more divergent than women religious and Millennials. But a new organization, dubbed “Nuns and Nones” (as in “none being Catholic”) is finding out that both groups can learn from each other, in one of the most time-tested ways — by living together in one community as roommates.
A six-month-long pilot project saw a group of young activists become roommates to a convent of Sisters of Mercy in the San Francisco Bay area. The “nones” felt called to public service, morality, and social justice, but were unsure of how to fully incorporate such devotion into their lifestyles. So they looked to the wisdom of the “radical, badass women” who are masters of the art.
“‘So many of the millennials would say, “I’m looking for rituals. I’m looking for rituals to work in my lesbian community or social justice or I need rituals for this other thing,’” Sister Carle said. One young woman wanted ritual so much that she started going to Mass every morning.”
And in turn, the sisters derived joy and growth from the new relationships the program fostered:
“Sister Janet Rozzano, 81, chose not to be involved with the young visitors at first, but they started using her kitchen.
‘I kind of got thrown into it,’ she said. ‘We just had so much in common to talk about.’
Sister Rozzano spends most of her time coaching her fellow sisters on their own journeys. Much of this now involves the challenges of living in an ageing body.
‘One of the challenges of ageing is not just to focus down on your aches and pains,’ she said. ‘And I feel like this called me back again to the bigger vision. And on a simple level, I overcame my fear of talking to younger people.’”
The experience of the Nuns and Nones is an object lesson, not just for participants (and there are non-cohabiting groups all over the USA), but for anyone in one group that needs to communicate with another. In short: everybody. I’m going to keep this fascinating community in mind as I navigate my business and personal relationships. Like many of us, I could certainly use a little generosity of spirit, contemplation, and “badassery” in my life.
In the Simpsons universe, everyone famously has only four fingers on each hand (the configuration is easier to animate). The sole exception is occasional guest star, God, who, as a deity, naturally has five fingers per hand. So, what does it mean when someone has six?
On The Simpsons, nothing: there is no character who boasts 12 total fingers. But in the real world, it means you could have some pretty special wiring in your brain. Researchers are looking at folks with polydactyly, whose extra fingers are fully-formed and usable, in an effort to upgrade the dexterity of those of us stuck with only ten digits.
The new study is groundbreaking, in that it looks at polydactyly as an advantage. (The condition is traditionally considered a birth defect, and extra digits, manipulatable or no, are frequently removed in infancy.) The University of Freiburg, Imperial College London, and the Université de Lausanne and L’Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne have joined forces to study how the human brain incorporates the experience of extra fingers.
Though the sample size is currently two (a 52-year-old woman and her 17-year-old son), it seems a good start: the participants tied shoelaces, played video games, and typed on a computer keyboard, then had their fMRI’s compared to non-polydactyl subjects or those with an extra finger.
“The researchers found that, like non-polydactyl fingers, the extra digits had their own dedicated tendons, muscles, and nerves, as well as extra corresponding brain regions in the motor cortex.
Polydactyl participants also performed better at many tasks than their non-polydactyl counterparts. For instance, they were able to perform some tasks, like tying shoelaces, with only one hand, where two are usually needed. […]
[Senior paper author] Professor [Etienne] Burdet said: ‘The polydactyl individual’s brains were well adapted to controlling extra workload, and even had dedicated areas for the extra fingers. It’s amazing that the brain has the capacity to do this seemingly without borrowing resources from elsewhere.’”
Uses for this knowledge could involve things like extra robot arms for a non-polydactyl surgeon, so they could perform procedures without assistance. But this remains a bit pie-in-the-sky: the team acknowledges that artificial limbs won’t have the same familiarity to the user that a flesh-and-blood appendage or finger does. Plus, it’s likely the brain maps of people born with an extra finger expanded to cover said fingers precisely because they were born with them: the brain of, say, a 45-year-old surgeon might lack the plasticity to control an artificial limb with enough dexterity for the job.
Nevertheless, this remains a fascinating concept to think about. If I had a future-tech extra robot limb, I’d use it to type fast enough to catch up with my brain. (Or maybe take both dogs for a walk, with a third hand carrying a travel mug of coffee!) Dear reader: what would you use your additional limb for?