Scientific news in small doses

A few milligrams of all the scientific news of the week.

An egg in space

A former NASA engineer turned YouTuber has managed after three years of effort to bring an egg to the frontier of space and recover it intact after a 30 km free fall. With the help of former colleagues, including one responsible for the protective landing envelopes for Mars probes, Mark Rober posted a video describing his work at the end of November. Who says science videos absolutely have to illustrate useful technologies?

Quiz

Which game has finally been mastered by artificial intelligence?

Stratego. Contrary to what one might think, this game is difficult for a computer to master because it combines a strategic aspect and a problem of “partial information” similar to that of poker. In Science at the end of November, computer engineers from the British firm DeepMind announced that their program had climbed into the list of the three best players in history on the Gravon platform, with a success rate of 84%. Stratego was invented in the Netherlands after World War II.

The number

500

It’s the average extra amount of water, in milliliters, a man drinks compared to a woman in a day, according to a new international study. Directed from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and published in late November in Science, the study measured the amount of water lost and regained by the bodies of 5,600 people of all ages from 26 countries. A 20-year-old woman weighing 60 kg, living in an area such as the northern United States or southern Canada, should consume 2.7 L of water per day. However, more than half of this water comes from food, according to the researchers. Which means that the recommendation to drink 2 L of water a day is overstated.

cold and cold

Harvard University immunologists have finally discovered why conventional wisdom links catching a cold to a higher risk of a cold. Molecules located in the nose, which have antiviral activity, are less effective when their temperature is below 20 ^ohC (recall that body temperature is 37 ^ohVS). The study was published in early December in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. Other studies did not find a higher risk of colds in cold weather, but did not test whether guinea pigs’ noses were cold, the authors argue.

Detect spoiled meat

Researchers at Concordia University have developed a paper-thin biosensor that can detect a toxin associated with spoiled meat. This toxin, putrescine, is responsible for the typical smell of rotting meat. It is toxic in large quantities, but also indicates the probable presence of bacteria. In the magazine Applied Bio Materials At the beginning of December, Montreal researchers explained the success rate of this biosensor in detecting putrescine in meat left for several days at room temperature. They now want to lower its cost of production.