Good Froth and Bad Froth The drink on the left was shaken with egg white; the one on the right with gelatin. The two were equally frothy just a moment before the photo was taken. Paul Adams

At a cocktail convention, McGee and other experts unleash a cutting-edge arsenal of handy science

The annual Tales of the Cocktail convention happened again in New Orleans last week, I seem to recall. And somewhere between the sazeracs and the rusty nails, I attended a series of enlightening seminars (each accompanied by appropriate cocktails, of course).

Harold McGee, author of On Food and Cooking and probably the most famous name in food science, was present at Tales for the first time, to lend his expertise to a deserving cocktail world. He sat on a panel with Audrey Saunders, celebrated owner of New York's Pegu Club, and Tony Conigliaro, who pushes the frontiers of molecular mixology at London's 69 Colebrooke Row. Read more »

Michael Lemonick at TIME points out that despite all the “wow, it really is getting hotter” headlines about this new report titled “State of the Climate in 2009” (just released by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC)), this report is not actually telling us anything that climate science hasn’t already been saying for the last 20 years: it’s just giving us a lot more detail of exactly how the planet is warming. This latest USA report is not the only recent comprehensive report on the data, either.

It’s all about the actual measurements, from, as the NCDC’s Tom Karl said at the press conference, “weather stations, satellites, buoys, ships at sea, observatories, field expeditions, submersibles. Every bit of monitoring capability we can get our hands on.” Read more »

A Map of the Mind The highways and byways connecting the various regions of a Macaque monkey's brain. PNAS

A significant stride towards reverse-engineering the darn thing

Researchers at IBM have created the most complex neurological map ever seen, detailing the comprehensive long-distance network that makes up the macaque monkey brain in unprecedented detail. Such a roadmap through the brain's complex networking processes could have major implications for attempts at reverse-engineering neural networks and creating cognitive computer chips that "think" as powerfully and efficiently as the biological brain. Read more »

A new antibacterial paper could lead to food wrappers that keep food fresh longer, shoes that never stink, and bandages with a built-in ability to deter infection. It turns out a paper-like material made of graphene - thin sheets of carbon just a single atom thick - have antibacterial properties that could have vast applications. Read more »

One of the media’s favourite phrases is “Labor hard-head”.

The term has connotations of someone not necessarily part of the public shopfront of the ALP, someone ruthlessly pragmatic, politically astute, common-sensical, probably from the party’s right wing, and with more than a whiff of implication of maleness.

However, I think that something like this is what the term really means.