Do scientists get paid for studying this stuff??

susnfx · Post by **susnfx** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 11:28 am

Unpopped popcorn studied:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/04 ... index.html

Susan

ChrisA · Post by **ChrisA** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 11:51 am

Yes, yes, they do. That's kind of cool that they've show that, although
given how long I've suspected that was the case, I don't know why
it wasn't 'known' before. Having been studied, though, despite what the article
says about not being able to screen, I'll bet it's not more than a couple years before
there's some kind of popcorn-hull scanning machine to filter out bad kernels.
(Probably 3 years until the first filtered products hit the market, though, there's
always a lag between engineering something and getting to market.)

I know, I know, it's going to be a hard, long wait for those perfect-pop bags!

jGilder · Post by **jGilder** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 11:56 am

I hope you signed up for their email alert on the subject.

susnfx · Post by **susnfx** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 12:03 pm

jGilder wrote:I hope you signed up for their email alert on the subject.

Nah...I'll just watch for updates in my monthly copy of BioMacromolecules.
Maybe it'll be in the same issue as this fake paper by a group of MIT students:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/04/21 ... index.html

"Three MIT graduate students set out to show what kind of gobbledygook can pass muster at an academic conference these days, writing a computer program that generates fake, nonsensical papers. And sure enough, a Florida conference took the bait.

The program, developed by students Jeremy Stribling, Max Krohn and Dan Aguayo, generated a paper with the dumbfounding title: "Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy." Its introduction begins: "Many scholars would agree that, had it not been for active networks, the simulation of Lamport clocks might never have occurred"

Susan

TonyHiggins · Post by **TonyHiggins** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 12:14 pm

There's an article on popping corn in the most recent Discover magazine. Interesting details about breeding for size at the expense of flavor. Physics of popping with a high speed strobe photo set of a kernel popping. Says the moisture inside the kernel heats and liquifies the starch, which explodes and instantly solidifies into the shape you see.
Tony

avanutria · Post by **avanutria** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 12:37 pm

Hey, this was off-off topic and ought to have been marked as such:

The CNN.com article wrote:The research, funded by Purdue's Whistler Center for Carbohydrate Research...

Post by **Nanohedron** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 12:55 pm

I suppose that spending lots of perfectly good money to seek the perfect kernel of popcorn is a worthy goal. I shall now bite my tongue henceforth.

jsluder · Post by **jsluder** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 1:05 pm

Nanohedron wrote:I shall now bite my tongue henceforth.

Well, that's certainly better for your teeth than biting an unpopped kernel of popcorn, but it probably won't do much for the health of your tongue.

missy · Post by **missy** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 1:06 pm

if I told you half the studies (and the years, the people, and money) I know have been done just by my company alone, you'd never believe me!!!

Missy

Post by **Nanohedron** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 1:08 pm

missy wrote:if I told you half the studies (and the years, the people, and money) I know have been done just by my company alone, you'd never believe me!!!

Missy

Tell you what: I'll suspend my disbelief and wax credulous. C'mon. Dish.

norseman · Post by **norseman** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 3:30 pm

In high school chemistry class we had a lab just before Christmas called something like "Heat of formation of an edible hydrocarbon and saturation point of a colored sugar solution". Basically, we made popcorn and Koolaid as a lab since we couldn't just have a Christmas party.

Bob

missy · Post by **missy** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 3:37 pm

ok - Nano, let me see if I can do a "Reader's Digest" version of this, and keep it unidentifiable...........

We have one facility where they do a lot of "esoteric" stuff - trying to come up with new ideas, etc. They were working on a totally unrelated idea when they combined a couple of things and came up with this compound. This was in 1962........
Studies would be put on the backburner, but the idea would keep coming up every now and then, and someone would work on it some more. This went on until 1983 - when it was finally decided that this would "save the company" and lots of effort began to be put to it.
It wound up having it's own department, with - oh - probably 30 or more engineers and technicians supporting it. Eventually, there were close to 10 analytical people working exclusively on developing methods to analyze it and components and various products for it.
Because of what the use of it was going to be, all work had to be done by GLP or "good lab practices". That's very labor and time intensive because of all the record keeping involved.
Feeding studies had to be done. Clinicals had to take place. Special labs had to be set up for analysis because certain things being used couldn't be brought into the "regular" building.
Finally all the work was ready to go to the government agency that would give "clearance" for the sale and use of the product. The paperwork was filed in 1987 - two semi-truck loads of supporting paperwork, chromatograms, etc.etc. went to Washington. The agency came back at least twice to request more studies and data - another two truckloads were eventually sent. Numerous hearings were held, with VP levels from the company having to testify.
The "go ahead" for use of the product was finally given in 1996. A state of the art facility had been built to produce the product - developed to run economically 24/7.
But - because of lots of things totally out of our control- the product never came near what was expected. The manufacturing rights were sold in 2002.

So - I have NO idea of the total monitary amount that went into the end development of this product - 1962 to 1996 before it is first sold..... all the people, manhours, equipment, facility to make it, etc. And, after 5 years, it's evident it is NEVER going to be what it could be so we dump it. If you pro-rate money to today's value, I'm sure we're talking billions, and we did NOT get that for the sale of the manufacturing rights.

Missy

Post by **Nanohedron** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 4:13 pm

Wow. And all for one crapshoot.

Flyingcursor · Post by **Flyingcursor** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 2:34 am

Sounds suspiciously like the pharmaceutical business to me. Now things are submitted more by CD which eliminates the truckloads of paper.

Caj · Post by **Caj** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 8:51 am

susnfx wrote: http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/04/21 ... index.html

"Three MIT graduate students set out to show what kind of gobbledygook can pass muster at an academic conference these days, writing a computer program that generates fake, nonsensical papers. And sure enough, a Florida conference took the bait.

I actually got frequent emails from this fellow Nagib Callos, of the "Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics," soliciting papers. As far as I could tell, it's just a conference about nothing in particular, or maybe about everything.

The name itself is almost as nonsensical as the submitted paper. I never took it seriously.

The MIT students probably submitted to this thing for the same reason: it seems like a bogus conference, so let's test that theory.

Caj

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Do scientists get paid for studying this stuff??

Do scientists get paid for studying this stuff??

Re: Do scientists get paid for studying this stuff??