Samuel Shiro

Alcohol on the Big Screen Encourages Binge Drinking (apparently)

It was suggested in a US study, published in online journal BMJ Open, on the 21^st of February that actors who drink on the big screen are encouraging experimentation with alcohol amongst children.

The study says that the stars act as successful role models who encourage children to drink. The thinking goes that if a child looks at a famous actor and they are drinking heavily then it’s ok because they have already made themselves famous and they don’t look like they are suffering from health problems.

This study was unprecedented in the number of test subjects as it randomly selected more than 6,500 American children between the ages of 10 and 14 for a phone interview, and then another three additional interviews in the next two years. Obviously, they would have had an issue getting through to some children as their parents were too drunk to answer the phone at the time (hint hint).

The questions asked ranged from which movies they had seen, whether they currently drank or had drunk alcohol in the past, and whether they owned any merchandise which had any alcoholic brands attached to it. Of course, they were also asked about their school and home lives in general too.

The films used to compare the implied and actual consumption of alcohol by researchers were taken from films which had grossed at least $15,000,000 when the interviews had first started. After that the researchers then used the character’s implied and actual consumption and purchases of alcohol to find out the results.

The researchers found that youngsters, on average, had been exposed to roughly four to eight hours of viewing involving alcohol from the most popular films on the market. Other items of interest from the survey also showed that during the two year study, the number of respondents who admitted they had started drinking alcohol had risen from 11% at the start to 25% by the end of it.

Furthermore, the number of binge drinkers tripled from 4% to 13% by the end of the study; binge drinking, as outlined in this study, is having at least five drinks in a row.

Ok, these are startling figures as they do eclipse the figures gained from having bad parents, having lots of money, and a rebellious teen spirit. But can’t we see one fatal flaw in this experiment? How exactly do you isolate this one specific factor?

How are you going to isolate this one specific factor, which is alcohol in movies, without putting the kids in a room on their own? The answer is you can’t. So how can these figures really be that reliable? The answer is they can’t as they are also going to be exposed to a number of different factors at the same time; such as peer pressure, rebellion, and coming into money.

And let’s go further and make the point that a phone survey is just a phone survey. None of the test subjects were ever met in person so how can you be sure they are telling the truth? And when someone talks about alcohol we all know that people significantly underestimate how much they really drink, don’t we?

But let’s look at children. Children are always being told how bad it is to drink underage, which is against the law. So realistically how many of them are going to readily admit it? How do you know that some of the test subjects are not claiming they don’t drink when they really do? If they did this would further support the study’s conclusion, but it’s important just to bring up the point anyway.

Nonetheless, what we can expect from the findings of this study is that they will either slink away from the publix gaze into the darkness after a week or so or it will cause panic throughout America and parents will be covering their children’s eyes and protesting for the removal of all alcohol from films. Sooner or later we are going to end up living in a world where alcohol can’t be seen on TV, can’t be talked about on the radio, can’t have colourful packaging, and can only be drunk within the basement of one’s own home, when the child is at school.

So it’s either going to be a giant overreaction or completely ignored, what do you think?

Scientists Look to Create an Artificial Hamburger. Yum Yum?

We have now reached a new plane of science as the Dutch have managed to begin creating an artificial hamburger.

Dutch scientists are producing strips of muscle tissue using stem cells, as we speak, in order to create the first hamburger grown in a lab. The estimated end to this project is later this year, but don’t be expecting them in shops soon as the cost of this project is a gigantic £200,000.

But why are they wasting their time trying to create a hamburger? No, it’s not to challenge the global fastcrap shack that is McDonald’s, but it’s to help with the problem of an increasingly large and hungry population. And you never know, it may even prove to be an alternative to killing animals.

Professor Mark Post, while at a major science meeting in Canada. touted the possibility of introducing synthetic meat into wider society by saying that the concept could eventually decrease the footprint of meat on the environment by an incredible 60%.

Professor Post, who is running the experiment with his group at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, is carrying out the experiment by growing pieces of off-white muscle which are 1cm in width, 1mm thick, and roughly 2cm long in small bowls.

Artificial Hamburger — Is this the future of meat?

It’s expected that the strips will then be soaked with fat, which has also been artificially grown, and blood to grow a hamburger. The hamburger is expected to be completed by autumn of 2012.

The professor also commented that he was attempting to get Heston Blumenthal, the celebrity chef, to cook it for him. But he did say that the burger will taste quite bland as flavour is not really the priority at the moment.

Despite the high price, Professor Post did claim that he was confident that as production lines are sorted out the cost would come down. So it’s possible that synthetic meat could become a resource of the future. And this is incredibly timely as estimates say that the world’s food production will need to double within the next half-century in order to keep up with demand.

Professor Sean Smukler of the University of British Columbia also stressed the importance of this experiment as he claims that farmers will find it particularly difficult to keep up with demand as the amount of farmable land on the planet has been reduced dramatically.

At the moment the future looks bright when it comes to synthetic meat, as Professor Post confidently asserts that it will become more efficient than meat produced in a natural way. Currently there is an efficiency rate of 15% when it comes to producing natural meat, and synthetic meat is aiming for 50%.

The President of Earthsave Canada, David Steele, wasn’t so enthusiastic about the project, though. He claimed that instead of creating synthetic meat, which could be unhealthy due to the number of chemicals required to stop it from rotting, people could just eat less meat.

Now, while this would be a viable option in an ideal world, we have to remember one thing: most people couldn’t care less about the problems of the world unless it’s having a direct effect on them. It’s harsh, but people are generally unwilling to compromise on their own quality and luxury unless the problem is shoved directly in their faces.

And all of this means that the Dutch could be on to a winner here. The Germans may have had the Hamburger named after one of their cities, but it looks like their cultural archrivals have revolutionised it.

Switzerland Takes a Break from Making Watches to Clean Up Space

Finally the Swiss have put down their watches and they are now entering the field of science once again. Currently space researchers within the small European state are seeking funds to build a spacecraft which can grab pieces of space garbage and drag them down into the atmosphere so it automatically burns up in a colossal ball of fire.

So far the researchers at the Swiss Space Centre of École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne have been working on their master plan for three years, according to the director Volker Gass. They have the technology, they are seeking the funds, and they have their first possible target of a picosatellite named ‘SwissCube’ which was launched back in 2009.

The only problem is that to build the spacecraft, which has been prematurely named as ‘CleanSpaceOne’, will require a whopping $11 million to create and then another three to five years until launch. Clearly there is no austerity in Switzerland then!

Even though it sounds crazy, something does have to be done as space rubbish is becoming a large problem for humanity as more and more fragments of our junk is now heading back towards earth or coming into contact with some of our existing space structures. At the moment NASA is tracking 16,000 objects which are larger than 10cm, and that’s not forgetting the numerous smaller objects which could easily kill someone if they didn’t burn up whilst re-entering our atmosphere.

The new spacecraft will be used to remove larger pieces of space debris which are causing problems for astronauts. The Swiss space module will use a semi-automatic probe and a highly-technical guidance system to latch on to targets which could be travelling at speeds of up to 28,000 km/h, before its ion microthrusters will bring the craft alongside it. And that’s when the Swiss gripper will cuddle the object like a murderous Swiss octopus before the object’s final fiery destruction.

This all sounds pretty simple when it’s written down in front of you, however there are other problems which Gass outlines. The main problems, according to Gass, is that once the piece of debris has been snagged the combination of debris and craft will then have a different centre of gravity which could cause it to spin out of control. In order to survive, the probe will have to be able to stabilise itself so it can guide itself back on to the atmosphere’s curve.

The final result, Gass hopes, is that there will be a number of these craft which can act as a battalion of space maids, however at the rate we release garbage it’s doubtful that they would be able to keep up. If we can’t clean our own planet then how are we going to clean space? But, hey, maybe we can send it on to someone else instead in the true human spirit?