ON A recent trip to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, Feedback was surprised to see a Niskin bottle mounted as a trophy on the wall of the institution鈥檚 lobby.
A Niskin bottle is a device for collecting samples of ocean water at great depth. It consists of a metre-long section of hollow tubing with snap-shut lids at either end that can be cocked before use. Once the bottle has been lowered into the water, the lids are triggered remotely and snap shut, trapping a sample.
The 鈥淣iskin Cup鈥� is awarded to the winner of the annual ice hockey game between Woods Hole and the Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island nearby. But why a Niskin bottle trophy?
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We were shocked to learn that competition between these sides has been so fierce in the past that teams have sunk to using ringers 鈥� accomplished players from outside the world of oceanography 鈥� to secure a win. So to stamp out this unfair practice, all players must now prove their pedigree by performing the tricky business of cocking and triggering the bottle before the game.
An admirable test, and one that set us wondering what trophies other disciplines might compete for.
IN ANOTHER lifetime, long ago, Feedback鈥檚 job was to draft patent applications for other people鈥檚 inventions. The trick was often to take the inventor鈥檚 simple idea and dress it up in such obscure legal and technical jargon that the poor examiner employed by the government patent office to sift inventors鈥� claims would be bamboozled into thinking something old and simple was really new and clever.
Those days were brought to mind recently when reader Alan Chattaway pointed us to a new patent application, number 20030002246, filed in the US by Apple Computer.
Apple is claiming monopoly rights on an 鈥淎ctive enclousure [sic] for computing device鈥� with housing, illuminable portion and light-emitting device 鈥渃onfigured to produce a light effect that alters the ornamental appearance of the computing device鈥�. There then follow no fewer than 75 legal claims with 25 pages of technical text and 26 drawings.
Does this mean that Apple has invented the idea of putting a light bulb inside a transparent computer case, asks Chattaway?
Well yes, it does rather seem that way. Buried deep in the patent jargon there is one reassuring plain English phrase. 鈥淏y way of example, a light source capable of producing green light may cause the light-passing wall to exude green鈥�.
We await the US Patent and Trademark Office examiner鈥檚 verdict with bated breath.
PRACTICAL science: a recent paper by Lora E. Fleming of the Marine and Freshwater Biomedical Sciences Center at the University of Miami reports on the diagnosis and treatment for ciguatera, the world鈥檚 most commonly reported form of seafood poisoning.
How do you find out if the local fish are contaminated? That鈥檚 easy. 鈥淯sing a household pet or even elderly relative as a simple bioassay was and may still be practiced in many island communities,鈥� Fleming states.
LAPTOPS pose unexpected dangers to their users, a letter in a recent issue of The Lancet warns. It details the plight of an unfortunate Swedish scientist who suffered a scorched penis and scrotum after balancing his computer on his lap for an hour while writing a report. The next day he began to develop painful blisters which later became infected.
Laptop manuals usually advise you not to use the computer while its base is resting on exposed skin, as the device can get very hot if left on for a long time. But the victim described in The Lancet was apparently wearing underpants and trousers.
This tale should be taken as a serious warning against taking the meaning of the word 鈥渓aptop鈥� too literally, says the letter鈥檚 author, Claes-Goran Ostenson of the department of molecular medicine at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
A TIN of Traditional Drinking Chocolate powder from Tesco stores states that its ingredients are 鈥淪ugar, Cocoa, Salt, Flavourings鈥�. It goes on to state: 鈥淐ocoa solids 25 per cent minimum.鈥�
Reader Ken Green points out that it does not appear to be unduly sweet or salty. So just what exactly is he drinking?
FINALLY, reader Ian Mosely was surprised by a snippet of information he found on the National Geographic website. A story about the removal of the elephants from London Zoo included an information section about elephants which told him: 鈥淓lephants eat roots, leaves, grasses and sometimes bark.鈥�
Mosely, whose experience of elephants is limited to zoos, has never heard one bark, and wonders if this is something they only do in the wild.
How much wine was consumed at the brainstorming session that produced this advert for Telgold, which sells international phone calls: 鈥淓veryone is using it. Are you?鈥�