How to wash chicken more healthily? Here are some professional suggestions! | One Week Technology

Welcome to watch the science of the week. This week you will see: ① How to wash chickens safely; ② Drones fly through bamboo forests; ③ Planting plants on lunar soil; ④ Bats learn from bees; ⑤ Photosynthetic power supply.

Safely Wash Chicken

Do you wash raw chicken before cooking? Many organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States, recommend that people do not wash chicken because splashes of water may cause salmonella to spread in the kitchen. However, surveys show that many people still choose to wash their chicken[1].

How dangerous is it to rinse raw chicken? If you must wash it, how can you do it relatively safely? Some researchers have conducted experiments on this from the perspective of fluid mechanics [2].

Chicken cleaning experiment site | Caitlin D. Carmody et al.

Experiments using sterile water confirmed that faucet flushing does cause bacteria on the chicken surface to splash out with droplets. The distance between the chicken and the faucet has the greatest impact on the degree of contamination: the farther below the faucet, the more unstable the water flow, and the more droplet splashes. In addition, a large part of the splash droplets are generated when the water flow meets the chicken for the first time.

Locations far from the water outlet are more likely to cause splashes | Caitlin D. Carmody et al.

The researchers gave the following relatively safe suggestions for washing chicken:

Keep the chicken closer to the tap

Slowly open the tap and start with a small amount of water.

Keep cleaning time as short as possible

Of course, for packaged chicken with no obvious stains, not washing is still the wisest choice. Also, remember to wash your hands after touching raw meat.

Walking through the bamboo forest

Recently, researchers from Zhejiang University demonstrated in Science Robotics that a group of drones can move freely through a bamboo forest. Without the need for preset trajectories or external control, the group of small drones can traverse complex terrain full of obstacles simply by relying on their own “observation” and “thinking”[3].

Video demonstration: A flying system consisting of ten small drones flies through a bamboo forest | Fei Gao

These small drones are only the size of a palm and weigh less than a can of Coke. Despite being so light, the computers on board the drones still have high enough computing power to calculate and adjust the flight path in real time based on the environmental information collected by the drones themselves. This system does not rely on external information such as GPS, and it is expected to be used in disaster relief, terrain exploration and other fields.

A small drone that is lighter than a can of Coke | Fei Gao

Moon soil planting

Scientists have successfully grown plants in lunar soil—a first in human history[4].

Arabidopsis thaliana grown in lunar soil simulant (left) and real lunar soil (right) | Tyler Jones

The lunar soil planting experiment was conducted by researchers from the University of Florida, who used 12 grams of lunar soil samples from the Apollo mission. The researchers used cell culture plates as "flower pots", moistened the lunar soil with nutrient solution, and sowed Arabidopsis seeds. Almost all seeds germinated successfully, but over time, the seedlings in the lunar soil group had some health problems: compared with the volcanic ash control group, they grew slower and showed more signs of stress response at the gene expression level.

This experiment shows that lunar soil does have the potential to become a planting medium. However, if we want to happily grow vegetables when we move to the moon, there is still a lot of follow-up research to be done.

Bat False Bee

If you get close to a bat, you might hear the bat say - buzz buzz buzz?

The greater white-eared bat (Myotis myotis) has a strange call that sounds like the buzzing of a bee or wasp, and researchers recently discovered that the call may be a form of mimicry: By imitating bees, the bats can scare off predators and stay alive.

Greater rat-eared bat | Manuel Werner / Wikimedia Commons

They recorded the buzzing of bats and compared it with the sounds of western honey bees and European wasps. The results showed that human analysis tools can distinguish between the two types of sounds, but owls cannot. Tawny owls and barn owls, the main predators of greater owls, moved away from the player after hearing the buzzing sound; in contrast, if the social calls of bats were played, owls not only did not move away, but actively approached.

Generally speaking, birds stay away from insects with stingers, such as bees. Therefore, bats may scare away owls by imitating the buzzing of bees. Although some scholars are skeptical about this speculation, if the research conclusion is true, it will be the first time that humans have found an example of acoustic mimicry in mammals.

Photosynthetic power supply

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have developed a simple and durable biophotovoltaic energy harvesting system that can power a microprocessor for up to six months using only water and natural sunlight.[6]

Small power supply device using photosynthetic microorganisms | Paolo Bombelli

This small photosynthetic power device is similar in size to a No. 5 battery. Its anode part combines an aluminum matrix and living photosynthetic microorganisms, Synechocystis. In the experiment, it powered the processor with an average current intensity of 1.4 microamperes and a voltage of 0.72 volts. During the 6-month test period, the device did not experience power interruption, and the voltage and current did not show a significant decrease. During the dark period at night, microbial metabolism can still enable the device to continue to generate current.

Place it near a window to generate electricity | Christopher Howe/University of Cambridge

The current that this small device can provide is quite weak, but even so, it still has the potential to power small electronic devices in remote areas, and it only needs cheap and readily available materials to produce.

References

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25581194/

[2] https://aip.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1063/5.0083979

[3] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.abm5954

[4] https://nature.com/articles/s42003-022-03334-8

[5] https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(22)00486-9

[6] https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2022/EE/D2EE00233G

Author: Mai Mai, Rain Knocking on the Window

Edit: Window knocking rain

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