What Soda Works Best For Disposing of a Human Body

A little while ago, the interwebs came alive with news that Mountain Dew could turn a mouse into a gelatinous blob.  Given my quite real addiction to the yellow stuff (if a go a couple days without a hit of the Dew, I feel awful, complete with splitting headache), I was particularly intrigued by this story.   Yet I don’t feel the need to go into detail about how this news effects my ritualistic consumption of the beverage of life because I couldn’t say it any better than this commentary by Chuck Klosterman.  Instead, I decided I wanted to witness these miraculous flesh-dissolving powers first hand.  So, I set up a very modest experiment.

The experimental design is actually quite simplistic.  I took raw chicken legs and wings and put a single piece of chicken into 14 different mason jars.  I chose to use the chicken legs and wings because they would provide I nice mix of muscle, skin, fat, and bone that gets as close as possible to an actual animal without raiding a hatchery.   The next step was to add sufficient liquid to the jars to completely cover the chicken.  Now here is where it gets interesting (at least to me).   The only way to really appreciate the true destructive power of Mountain Dew is to put it up against some of the lesser stomach corroding drinks that we commonly imbibe.  Each of the 14 mason jars got a different beverage.  I tried to include as varied a selection of sodas and soda-like substances as possible.  We know that those artificial sweetners in the diet soda give you cancer but do they eat skin.  Can we answer the universal question of Coke or Pepsi?  Red Bull may give you wings but what does it do to actual wings?  Over the course of the next couple of weeks we will find out.  The final roll call of this experiment is as follows;

1. Mountain Dew
2. Mountain Dew Code Red
3. Mott’s Apple Juice
4. Schweppe’s Ginger Ale
5. Caffeine-Free Diet Coke
6. Coke
7. Pepsi
8. Stop and Shop Brand Grape Soda
9. A&W Root Beer
10. Sprite
11. Red Bull
12. Monster Energy
13. V8 Splash Fruit Medley
14. Water (our control for this experiment)

After filling the jars, the lids were screwed on and the jars were placed in our basement.  And there they will sit, undisturbed, while I observe and document the changes that our battery of liquids is inducing in our chicken.  This is of course not a perfect experiment.  The mason jars are not air tight, so the soda will likely lose their carbonation more quickly than a sealed bottle of soda so if the pressure and carbonation is important to the degradation process, we will miss that.  Also, a basement is not exactly temperature controlled so variations in heat could artificially speed or slow the corrosion.  But at least all of the samples will be exposed to the same variations.  Finally, I am somewhat disappointed that I don’t have any quantitative measures for assessing what is happening to the chicken.  The fact that this isn’t the perfect experiment won’t stop us from doing small “s” science though.   Life’s great unanswered questions need to be answered and sometimes the means chicken wings in mason jars in a basement.

This blog post is sponsored by Slurm.

A Science Like Substance

After the kids saw this ad during this past week's My Little Pony episode, they were demanding that they get Taq Polymerase for their next birthday.  Bio-Rad knows how to market to the kids.

In case you didn't see the theme in last five sponsors (including today's), farewell to Chuck.  You won't be missed and barely, if ever, remembered.  Your lightweight storytelling that completely wasted the great Jayne made you immensely ignorable.  But hey you stayed on air for 5 years by selling your soul to Subway, so that has to count for something.  Congrats on that. 

This blog post is sponsored by Orange Orange.

Bad Medicine

In the wild, the natural enemy of the PhD student is the Med student.  Or even worse, the pre-med student.  The two species mix as well as a mongoose and cobra, or the Jets and the Sharks, or the Channel 4 news team and reporters from all of the other San Diego local stations.  Actually, the relationship between PhD students and Med students is much more like that between Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.  The PhD students are completely annoyed and constantly hating on them while the Med students are so self-involved that they don't even notice that anyone else in the world exists, let alone the PhD students.  So it is not surprising then that a big smile came across my face when I rediscovered an old article on Wired's website that spelled out a few of the reason's why those training to be haughty, patronizing quacks are such a hate-able species.  After teaching a couple of laboratory courses filled with pre-meds, I can personally vouch for all of the Wired characterizations of pre-med students.  It also helped me understand why it is so hard to find a good doctor.

Top 5 Reasons to Dislike Pre-Med Students by Aaron Rowe

5. They haggle with their teachers for extra points.
4. They use questionable tactics to get good grades..
3. They horde leadership positions and then run organizations into the ground.
2. They game the system to get good grades.
1. They are not motivated by curiosity.

This blog post is sponsored by Veridian Dynamics.

Mine. All Mine.

Just when I was sure that the only person to ever see the words that I type on this blog was me, my little sis went and left a comment on the last post.  Despite my claim that the humor in the Lady Gaga in a labcoat video was mainly for the lab rat set, she was there to let me know that it did have a more broad appeal.  Well, this can't be.  I have failed the most sacred tenet of this blog.  For just a brief moment, this blog brought a smile to the face of someone that is not me.  I will not let this stand.  If the last post was not sufficiently nerdy or dorky enough to turn off 99% of population, then I will make sure this one is.  And for that I will turn to the comic strip Piled Higher and Deeper (PhD).  It is based entirely around a group of poor, struggling graduate students and their eternal struggle to get there degree and move onto a job market that can't support them.  Now that is insider humor.  Try to enjoy this Teen.  A comic strip about how what we publish in scientific journals gets hopelessly twisted by main stream media and the average lay person (insider and elitist - now we are talking reader repellent).  Of course most people publishing articles in scientific journals would consider themselves lucky someone even read their work let alone have it wildly distorted by the main stream media.

This blog post is sponsored by Lunar Industries.

I Love Lady Gaga's New Back-Up Dancers

I have now been forwarded the Lady Gaga in a lab coat video enough times that I just have to go ahead and archive it here.  It doesn't hurt that no matter how many times I receive the "You have to watch this" e-mail, I can't help but do just that.  It is addictive.  It is hilarious.  It is the lab rats of the world taking something cool and dorking it up for their own amusement.  The fact that those who haven't done time in a lab can only shake there head at is they say, "Why would anyone make this" only makes it that much better in my mind.  Best use of NIH grant dollars yet.

This blog post is sponsored by Veidt Enterprises.

Real-Time PCR, More Than Meets the Eye

I have already written about two high-production value, web-only, musical advertisements for the tools of science. Well, now Roche Applied Sciences has taken it to the next level and produced the eagerly awaited sequel to Transformers. And in a huge twist, - SPOILER ALERT! - the Decepticons have apparently taken on the shape of the DNA double helix. Although, if that is the case, why would the Autobots take the shape of a machine that makes more DNA? So many questions. I guess we will just have to trust the genius of Micheal Bay and wait until the official release date to get all of our answers. For now we will have to make due with this Roche-sponsored trailer. I don't know if this CGI-heavy advert makes me want to spend several thousand dollars on a PCR machine, but it does make me want to watch WALL-E again. And it continues this new tradition of spending a ton money on commercials that noone other than the dedicated nerdy will see.

For a point of contrast, let me also offer-up this truly awful example of attempted viral marketing by Promega. Matching this effort with the four I previously presented is an insult to the other four. They look to have had $5 and a Big Mac as their production budget. Even by YouTube standards this is sad. Heck, I am not entirorly sure that some undergrads didn't do this to fill time between running gels and pirating movies. I wouldn't even embarrass my blog by including this commercial if it weren't for an OCD-like drive for completeness. So in the interest of cataloging all of the efforts of the biotech giants to use new media to sell their wares, here is "Vlad in the lab".

This blog post is sponsored by the Ajira Airways
.

When Shows are Nothing but Product Placements, the Commercials are the True Entertainment

I continue to contend that the best advertisements never make it to our TVs. Whether it is because they focus on too narrow a target audience (like lab coat clad test tube jockeys) or they are a tad bit too edgy (how this stuff is considered too edgy when the questionable content is bleeped out and shows like Grey's Anatomy are allowed to continue their assault on all that is good and descent I will never understand), we are missing out on some quality salesmanship. If my argument wasn't strong enough already, I now have two new pieces of evidence to present to the court. First is a combination of two of my most favorite things - geeky science in-jokes and boy bands (Why oh why have you forsaken us N*SYNC). If Eppendorf had the gumption to pony up the money for a TV broadcast for these entertaining productions, every kid would be asking Santa for a pipette in their stocking. For under the radar commercial number two, I give you a movie house exclusive. Not sure why this one hasn't seen the small screen yet. Catchy tune, funny lyrics. What am I missing? Is it the explosive combination of Wal-mart and Coke? Those two revelutionary brands being on the screen at the same time too much for the average consumer? Anyway, now that the commercial is on YouTube, I can finally learn the words to the new Christmas classic, "Joy! Enough to go Round". "My judo coach, my allergist, my MySpace friends, my Twitter list."

This blog post is sponsored by the Nakatomi Trading Corporation.

Sold on Science

Despite being a multi-billion dollar industry, you will never see an ad for a biotechnology company run during the Super Bowl. Up til now biotech ads have be relegated to the science geek ghetto of hard core, full frontal, peer-reviewed science journals. This meant of course that they always took the form of an exceedingly dry, stationary, 2-D solicitation. But thanks to the wonders of the internet, biotech companies can now finally enter the 19th century realm of moving pictures. And based on the geeky humor of these ads by microarray producer Illumina and general biotech supply company BioRad, biotech is ready to go straight to the big leagues. Come on, there are more people doing PCR than will ever drink PepsiMax (now with extra carcinogens).

Good Science

In line with the rationale for this blog, I wanted to note several fine science-related news articles from American's most reliable source of news, The Onion. I have been a big fan of The Onion since being an undergrad and working for a University of Wisconsin alumni that subscribed to the Madison-based satirical paper. Always funny with dead-on comedy and commentary. With science being near and dear to my heart, their mockery of the lab coat clad always gave me particular joy. With that here are a few of the favorites.

World's Scientists Admit They Just Don't Like Mice

Super Monkey Collider Loses Funding

Study: Multiple Stab Wounds May Be Harmful To Monkeys

Good Question

Youtube and CNN had the brilliant idea of allowing the voting public to ask the questions at the next Democratic presidential debate. Of course, the questions will be vetted by CNN so I imagine the questions will sound alot like all the other questions asked at all the other debates. Lots of gay marriage, abortion, war, and the evils of George Bush. And a lot of empty answers from spineless Democrats afraid to stand up to the Republican minority. But the thought was nice.

There was one video submission that really struck home with me. It of course focused on the media fixation de jour but the central conceit was right on. It dealt with the out of whack funding priorities in this country. How much money is going into destroying and then rebuilding another country and how little is going into the scientific research that could save lives here in this country for decades to come. Time to put some of that juice into other cups.

By the way, the central plot line of Flight Plan is so ridiculously implausible it ruins the entire movie. No one sees the little girl? No one? And the bad guys entire, elaborate plan rides on this implausibility. How could they possibly even imagine this to be a viable idea for a crime or a movie?