Just another Saturday that needs to be filled….

Local–St. Patrick Day parades all weekend….traffic will be horrendous.

Finally some rain and cooler temps after 2 months of near early Summer weather.

Personal–nothing to report

The beginning of the Big Dance to decide who will compete for the national title in B/ball….not really my cup of tea but there is one thing that fascinates me…..all those squeaky sounds…..

As he watched the Boston Celtics play at TD Garden, one noise kept catching Adel Djellouli’s ear. “This squeaking sound when players are sliding on the floor is omnipresent,” he said. Returning home from the game, Djellouli wondered how that sound was produced—and as a materials scientist at Harvard, he had a way to find out. Djellouli and colleagues slid a sneaker against a smooth glass plate over and over, recording the squeaks with a mic and filming with a high-speed camera to see what was happening under the shoe. In a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, they described what they found.

• Science behind the squeak: As the shoe works hard to keep its grip, tiny sections of the sole change shape as they momentarily lose, then regain, contact with the floor thousands of times per second—at a frequency that matches the pitch of the loud squeak we hear, per the AP. “That squeaking is basically your shoe rippling, or creating wrinkles that travel super fast,” Djellouli said. “They repeat at a high frequency, and this is why you get that squeaky noise.”
• Sole situation: The grip patterns on the soles may also play a role. When researchers slid blocks of flat, featureless rubber against the glass, they saw a series of chaotic, disorganized ripples but didn’t hear squeaks. The ridgelike designs on the bottom of your shoes may organize the bursts to produce a clear, high-pitched sound.
• Deep dive into friction: Other researchers have studied these kinds of bursts before, but this sneaker study examines friction happening at much faster speeds. And for the first time, it links the speedy pulses with the squeaking sound they produce. “Friction is one of the oldest and most intricate problems in physics,” wrote physicist Bart Weber in an editorial accompanying the research. Yet, despite its practical importance, he wrote, “it is difficult to predict and control.”
• Other applications: Understanding friction better could help scientists better understand how the Earth’s tectonic plates slide and grind during earthquakes, for example, or save energy by reducing friction and wear. It could also help eliminate moments off the court when squeaky shoes can be a little awkward or embarrassing, such as in a quiet office hallway.
• Quiet future shoes? Some of the insights from the study could help to design squeak-free shoes in the future, perhaps even designing our shoes to squeak in a pitch so high we can’t even hear it. “We can now start designing for it,” said Weber.

And n ow you know…..

WE have seen news of lab grown meat and now they are aiming for chocolate….

Compared to just about every other trade in the books, the chocolate industry has changed remarkably little since the 1800s. The entire supply chain still relies on the exploitation of West African labor, colonial trade routes, and a few powerful monopolies acting as middle-men.

Consumers are starting to notice. Outrage over additives — from titanium dioxide still used in some white chocolates to the heavy metals like cadmium and lead in dark chocolate — has resulted in a torrent of complaints about the waxy, artificial flavor of modern candy bars.

In other words, there’s a business opportunity for anyone that can figure out how to provide a more authentic chocolate taste at Hershey prices. The problem is that cocoa can only be grown in a narrow band of the world near the equator — and now a pair of food companies think they can culture it in a lab instead.

One promising collaboration is between Belgian food ingredients giant Puratos and a West Sacramento foodtech startup called California Cultured, which recently announced a partnership to create a commercially viable, lab-cultured chocolate by the end of 2026.

https://futurism.com/future-society/chocolate-lab-grown-cocoa

Continuing with the food meme….are bugs what’s for dinner?

Investors once bet billions that dinner plates and feed troughs would be crawling with bugs; that future is now looking very bleak. At Vox, Kenny Torrella charts how insect agriculture—touted in TED Talks, backed by a major UN report, and showered with roughly $2 billion in public and private money—has stumbled on two basic problems: people in rich countries won’t really eat insects, and raising them at scale is too pricey to compete with soy and fishmeal for livestock feed. To boot, bugs may hold the capacity to feel pain. “Evidence is building that there’s a form of sentience there in insects,” says Jonathan Birch, a London School of Economics philosopher who runs the Foundations of Animal Sentience project.

Of about 20 major insect-farming startups, nearly a quarter have already folded, including French giant Ÿnsect, which alone had attracted more than $600 million. Tyson Foods has quietly put a flagship Nebraska insect plant with Dutch firm Protix “on hold indefinitely,” and big projects in partnership with agribusiness heavyweight ADM have stalled, too. High energy costs, expensive feed, tight regulations on using food waste, and uncertain environmental benefits have all undercut the “bugs will save the planet” pitch. Torrella concludes the sector is shrinking into niche roles—pet food, specialty snacks, feed additives—far from its promise to transform meat. Read the full piece at Vox to see how a hyped climate fix unraveled.

Cancer and veggies…..

Of all the lifestyle factors that are known to influence health, diet is probably one of the most talked about – and argued about! Many believe that a more plant-based diet – whether vegetarian or vegan – is better for general health, but what about cancer risk specifically? The largest-ever study on this question has just been completed, and some of the results might just surprise you.

Five different diet types were included: meat eaters, poultry eaters (who did not consume red or processed meat), pescatarians, vegetarians, and vegans. Previous studies have lacked sufficient representation of vegetarians, so these researchers pooled data from over 1.8 million people from across three continents.

Among each diet type, the risks of 17 different cancers were compared.

For some, no difference was found between vegetarians and meat eaters, including: colorectal cancer, stomach cancer, lung cancer (in people who had never smoked), bladder cancer, and leukemia.

https://www.iflscience.com/veggie-and-vegan-diets-lower-risk-of-several-cancers-but-new-biggest-ever-study-raises-a-few-surprises-82759

A return of the giant insects?  Something to think about or have nightmares at the thought.

When we think of giant insects, our minds often conjure images from science fiction or prehistoric times—massive dragonflies with wingspans like eagles, or millipedes as long as cars. While today’s insects are relatively modest in size, Earth once hosted arthropods of truly staggering proportions. The question of whether giant insects could ever make a comeback isn’t just a fascinating thought experiment; it intersects with our understanding of evolution, atmospheric science, and the future of our planet. As climate change reshapes Earth’s ecosystems and oxygen levels fluctuate, some scientists wonder if conditions might someday favor the return of mega-bugs. This article explores the fascinating history of giant insects, the factors that enabled their existence, and whether modern conditions could ever support their return.

Could Giant Insects Make a Comeback?

How does one lose 10 million tons of crap?

Factory farms in California routinely avoid pollution regulations intended to protect the state’s water, finds a new white paper out of Stanford.

Ten million tons of animal manure in the Golden State are unaccounted for, the report finds, thanks to a combination of non-compliance, non-enforcement and opaque disclosure rules. It is not known from public information where the manure went, says Zoe Robertson, JD candidate at Stanford Law and an author of the white paper, but some may well have ended up directly or indirectly in lakes, streams and other public waters.

Lax regulation of factory farm pollution in the United States isn’t unique to California. Factory farms, also known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), produce enormous amounts of pollution, yet federal laws to reduce it are limited in scope and riddled with loopholes. Even in states with ostensibly stricter regulatory regimes, like California, CAFO pollution frequently goes unchecked and unregulated.

Ten Million Tons of Manure In California Are Unaccounted for, New Report Shows

That is enough knowledge for one Saturday…..if weather permits go out and enjoy yourself…..and as always…..Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You KNow

“lego ergo scribo”