Weird Science Weekly: Past and future meet with ancient nanotechnology

Weird science happens every day, all around us. This week, I've pulled together four of the weirdest examples, including ancient Roman nanotechnology, the rather unappetizing secret behind aspartame, what worrying about money does to your IQ, and what happens when two hadrons walk into a bar...

Ancient Roman nanotechnology inspires modern scientists

The colour-changing 1600-year-old Roman chalice known as the Lycurgus Cup is serving as muse to modern resesarchers. The cup has the seemingly-magical ability to change colour depending on where the light source is placed; green when lit from the front and red when lit from behind. The effect is caused by the electrons in minuscule particles of silver and gold — ground down to as small as 50 nanometers in diameter — that were mixed into the glass. Pretty remarkable for the 4th century.

This surprising ancient innovation is now at the heart of new attempts to upgrade modern medical and security technology. Gang Logan Liu, of the University of Illinois, and his team built a plastic, postage stamp-sized array mimicking the properties of the cup, and found it made a remarkably sensitive detector for different solutions. They're hoping a similar sensor might one day be used for everything from diagnosing disease on the fly to outing terrorists.

Those Romans and their clever ideas.

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Aspartame patent revealed; chalk up another use for E.coli poop

The artificial sweetener that launched a thousand health hoaxes has revealed its secrets, and it turns out one of the urban legends surrounding the much-maligned chemical is true — it really is made using E.coli by-products.

The patent for aspartame in Europe, recently made available online, cites "cloned microorganisms" as part of the production process. The microorganism in question is the very versatile E. coli bacteria; in this case a specifically engineered version that poops out proteins with the aspartic acid/phenylalanine amino acid that goes on to help make your soda sweet.

Before you go off to mock your diet soda-drinking friends, remember the regular kind has some weird stuff in it, too.

Financial hardship lowers your IQ (at least temporarily)

A study published in Science this week suggests that money problems hurt more than just your pocket. Researchers, including study co-author Jiaying Zhao from the University of British Columbia, tested some pretty different groups — shoppers in a New Jersey mall and farmers from Tamil Nadu in southern India, and found similar results in both groups. When preoccupied with money matters, people tended to make poorer decisions and it dinged their IQ scores accordingly.

New Jersey shoppers were given scenarios involving car repairs. When the repairs were cheap, lower- and higher-income people scored about the same. But when the cost of the repairs increased, poorer people's IQ test results dropped a whopping 40 per cent. The second study compared the scores for 464 sugar cane farmers in India before and after the harvest; that is, before and after getting their annual crop earnings. Once their wallets were refilled, the farmers' test scores jumped up 25 per cent. The study authors compared the swing in results to the difference between losing an entire night's sleep, or being a chronic alcoholic.

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Comedy at the LHC

What has 12 legs and tells jokes about the Higgs boson? Six research scientists at CERN, who are going to liven up the LHC with CERN after dark — a science-themed stand up comedy show premiering tonight in Geneva. Particle physicist Sam Gregson came up with the idea, looking for a fun way to engage in a little science outreach.

Talking to The Guardian, Gregon said "The use of stand-up comedy allows scientists to engage with audiences that may not attend the usual lectures and exhibitions and helps bring cutting-edge science more into the mainstream spotlight."

If you feel like getting your nerd-giggles on, the whole thing will be broadcast online, livestreaming starting at 8 p.m. local time in Geneva (you can convert to your local time over here).

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Keep your eyes on the wonders of science, and if you spot anything particularly strange you'd like me to check out for next week, comment below or drop me a line on Twitter!

(Images courtesy: Getty, CERN)

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