Weird Science Weekly: Scientists thwart civet-poop coffee counterfeiters

Weird science happens every day, all around us. This week, I've pulled together five of the weirdest examples, including scientists finding a way to curb counterfeiting of the world's most expensive coffee, an Alberta dentist who wants to clone John Lennon from a tooth, and how the lowly dung beetle may be helping us fight climate change.

Authenticate your civet-poop coffee

Scientists in Japan and Indonesia have teamed up to stamp out fraud in the world's most expensive coffee — the beans that are processed through the digestive tract of the adorable Asian palm civet. The beans, which run about $150 to $230 per pound, are harvested by hand from the critter's droppings before being fermented and roasted into the coffee known as Kopi Luwak.

A labour-intensive process — not just for the civets but also for the poop-picking-workers — the expensive delicacy is a natural target for impostors. We can breathe easy now, though, since researchers have managed to definitively I.D. the real thing by looking at the levels of certain acids in the beans.

I guess when you're paying $80 a cup, you want to know where it's been.

[ Related: Weird Science Weekly: Fake poop helps cure nasty infections ]

We judge music by its looks

You'd think the most important thing in a music competition would be the way the music sounds. Turns out, you'd be wrong, at least according to a study done by London-based psychologist, Chia-Jung Tsay.

Tsay, who's participated in music competitions for years, set out to learn more about how people judge musical performances. Surprisingly, participants in the study were a lot better at picking the winners when they viewed silent footage of competitors playing — they were able to guess who won 46 per cent of the time watching the video-only clips. Audio-only or a combination produced results no better than if the results were just chosen randomly.

The findings suggest to Tsay that when we're receiving a lot of information at once — in this case the often-dramatic visuals of a musical performance along with the music itself — we focus on one sense. Most people default to sight in such situations and so, ironically, even beautiful music is still just noise to us.

Next time someone's watching a music competition show and you're not interested, though, this information and the good old 'mute' button may come in handy.

Alberta dentist wants to clone John Lennon

After spending $30,000 on the music legend's molar, dentist Michael Zuk is investigating the potential to create a Lennon 2.0.

Dr. Zuk is working with researchers at Penn State, who are now working on ways to extract DNA from the 60-something year-old chomper. Of course, even if they manage to get a peek at the late star's DNA, human cloning isn't going to be on the horizon any time soon. Which is probably for the best, because the whole thing is still pretty creepy.

The dentist has used the celebri-tooth to help promote certain charities, so it's not all about resurrecting the 'bigger than Jesus'. Zuk does seem to have a penchant for slightly creepy dental memorabilia, including one of Elvis Presley's crowns. Could make for quite a concert in the distant future.

[ Related: Weird Science Weekly: Seeing your heartbeat can trigger an out-of-body experience ]

Speaking of Beatles...

Or beetles, in this case. Researchers in Helsinki have found that the lowly dung beetle may be a critical fighter in the war against climate change. It's pretty widely known that cattle farming contributes to greenhouse gases; cows burp and fart a lot, producing about 100 million tonnes of methane per year. As it happens, the same gases seep out of cow dung.

Cow pats, according to the authors of the study, are a veritable smörgåsbord for a lot of organisims, including dung beetles. The creepy crawlies do their part to reduce greenhouse gases just by living their lives; they dig around, stir up the dung and prevent methane from forming (methane-producing bacteria hate oxygen).

The cow pies still give off carbon dioxide instead, which isn't great, but given that methane is 20 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas, it's better than the alternative.

Why the long Face(book)?

In yet another study of how Facebook affects us, a University of Michigan study is reporting that the more you use the social media site, the worse you feel. And it's not from the endless game requests or reading what new parents are finding in Junior's diapers, either.

The researchers surveyed 82 young adult Facebook-users several times a day to see how they felt and what they were up to. It turns out that use of the site correlates to a downturn in both the way participants felt at any given time, and in how satisfied they were with their lives. Oddly enough, the effect seemed to be worse for people who were more social offline than for those who were more introverted.

John Jonides, co-author of the study, said they hadn't examined the reasons behind Facebook-induced gloominess, but he suspects simply comparing your life to others' probably plays a role.

But I'm sure the silly hoaxes and duckface selfies don't help.

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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!

(Photos courtesy: Getty Images)

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