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I bet you didnt know that

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As people here work in various jobs / professions they might know things from work or study no one here knows yet. this is what this topic is about.

what do you know that we have never heard of?

Eg: you don't need to be great at maths to be an architect

this is obvious to me but everyone says to me "i wanted to be an architect but i was bad at math,i can barely add"

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GBX

I see. I don't eat bananas I find them repulsive but its interesting. :pac:

It's amazing how we have adapted food through science and whatever means. Obviously its come on hugely in more recent times and long may it continue.

ohnonotgmail

Buford T. Justice V wrote: »

All new varieties of food crop are developed to target a number of criteria. Yield, harvest time, flavour etc etc are huge factors in deciding which varieties are progressed beyond the breeding stage for commercial trials to see how they perform in the real world rather than in the lab/glasshouse.

Probably chief among those traits is resistance to disease. It's a constant battle to find resistant genotypes growing in the wild and incorporate the relevant traits into commercial crops for use in growing our food.

Just taking potatoes, blight is a constant threat to potatoes growing here due to our climatic conditions, specifically rain, which greatly favour the growth and dispersal of the disease around the country.

There is a large number of groups in South America looking for new strains of potato in the wild, where potatoes are native, which show possibly desired traits and incorporating those traits into breeding programmes.

Even if the trait can be incorporated into a commercial strain of the crop, other factors may come into play which prevent the crop being grown, such as low yields, irregular shapes, resistance to other diseases, ability to stay rot free in storage etc. And even then, the strains of blight mutate and slowly develop to overcome the bred resistance over time.

Less than 1 in a million developed strains reach the end stage of large scale production and the same is true for all commercial crops, there is a very small chance of hitting the jackpot like the Rooster potato which is widely grown today.

There are promising trials of GM potatoes which have a huge and seemingly more persistent resistance to blight, basically they cut some decades of breeding out to develop a strain which is extremely close to being commercially viable. It also has the added bonus of reducing fungicide by a factor of over 50%, just by the addition of wild genes to already commercial crops.

The Cavendish was bred conventionally to provide resistance to the Fusarium strain that devastated the Gros Michel.

was it bred to be immune or was it picked because it was immune?

Tacitus Kilgore

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

There may be something to that. In the 1950s the dominant commercial variety of banana was wiped out by disease. It was replaced a variant that was immune. Even these variants are starting to show signs of the disease so the banana as we know it may go extinct.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_disease

When I worked on the banana plantations in QLD Australia, they were absolutely terrified of Panama Disease - even the workers on the ground. There was one farm in the far North showing signs of it in 2014/15 and it was essentially razed from the face of the earth and is still under strict quarantine.

Awful disease, once it takes hold there's no stopping it.

Buford T. Justice XIX

GBX wrote: »

Was it naturally immune or was it developed to be immune? If the latter would this be the beginning of GMO type food?

All new varieties of food crop are developed to target a number of criteria. Yield, harvest time, flavour etc etc are huge factors in deciding which varieties are progressed beyond the breeding stage for commercial trials to see how they perform in the real world rather than in the lab/glasshouse.

Probably chief among those traits is resistance to disease. It's a constant battle to find resistant genotypes growing in the wild and incorporate the relevant traits into commercial crops for use in growing our food.

Just taking potatoes, blight is a constant threat to potatoes growing here due to our climatic conditions, specifically rain, which greatly favour the growth and dispersal of the disease around the country.

There is a large number of groups in South America looking for new strains of potato in the wild, where potatoes are native, which show possibly desired traits and incorporating those traits into breeding programmes.

Even if the trait can be incorporated into a commercial strain of the crop, other factors may come into play which prevent the crop being grown, such as low yields, irregular shapes, resistance to other diseases, ability to stay rot free in storage etc. And even then, the strains of blight mutate and slowly develop to overcome the bred resistance over time.

Less than 1 in a million developed strains reach the end stage of large scale production and the same is true for all commercial crops, there is a very small chance of hitting the jackpot like the Rooster potato which is widely grown today.

There are promising trials of GM potatoes which have a huge and seemingly more persistent resistance to blight, basically they cut some decades of breeding out to develop a strain which is extremely close to being commercially viable. It also has the added bonus of reducing fungicide by a factor of over 50%, just by the addition of wild genes to already commercial crops.

The Cavendish was bred conventionally to provide resistance to the Fusarium strain that devastated the Gros Michel.

ohnonotgmail

GBX wrote: »

Was it naturally immune or was it developed to be immune? If the latter would this be the beginning of GMO type food?

naturally immune i think but only to variant of the disease that wiped out main variety in the 1950s. The bananas we eat are all propagated by man. they cannot reproduce on their own. They are effectively clones hence why the main variety was so susceptible to disease.

GBX

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

There may be something to that. In the 1950s the dominant commercial variety of banana was wiped out by disease. It was replaced a variant that was immune. Even these variants are starting to show signs of the disease so the banana as we know it may go extinct.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_disease

Was it naturally immune or was it developed to be immune? If the latter would this be the beginning of GMO type food?

Buford T. Justice XIX

sbsquarepants wrote: »

Now first the disclaimer - this could well be an urban myth!!

You know those little foam banana sweets - that taste delicious but not quite like a banana, they're distinctly bananaish however?
Well the story I heard, is that is what bananas used to taste like before a fungal infection wiped out the variety everyone used to eat. When we switched over to a different variety they never updated the artificial flavour in the sweets, leaving them stuck in some sort of delicious banana time warp.

The Gros Michel banana was the most widely grown banana in the world until it was attacked by the fungal disease, Fusarium Oxysporum. It was replaced by the Cavendish banana which is now under attack by another strain of the Fusarium fungus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_disease

ohnonotgmail

sbsquarepants wrote: »

Now first the disclaimer - this could well be an urban myth!!

You know those little foam banana sweets - that taste delicious but not quite like a banana, they're distinctly bananaish however?
Well the story I heard, is that is what bananas used to taste like before a fungal infection wiped out the variety everyone used to eat. When we switched over to a different variety they never updated the artificial flavour in the sweets, leaving them stuck in some sort of delicious banana time warp.

There may be something to that. In the 1950s the dominant commercial variety of banana was wiped out by disease. It was replaced a variant that was immune. Even these variants are starting to show signs of the disease so the banana as we know it may go extinct.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_disease

sbsquarepants

Chancer3001 wrote: »

So we add that to food instead of an actual banana.

Now first the disclaimer - this could well be an urban myth!!

You know those little foam banana sweets - that taste delicious but not quite like a banana, they're distinctly bananaish however?
Well the story I heard, is that is what bananas used to taste like before a fungal infection wiped out the variety everyone used to eat. When we switched over to a different variety they never updated the artificial flavour in the sweets, leaving them stuck in some sort of delicious banana time warp.

New Home

Artificial banana flavour derives from artificial vanilla flavour.

Chancer3001

Probably obvious to everyone else but artificial flavouring kinda blows my mind

There's just some chemical that a scientist created that sends the same signals from your tongue to your brain as say strawberry or banana.

So we add that to food instead of an actual banana.

Its mad

Thepillowman

StupidLikeAFox wrote: »

Bamboo scaffolding on Google images:

https://www.google.com/search?q=bamboo+scaffolding&safe=off&client=ms-android-samsung&prmd=isvn&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiW0fST4uvfAhWGRxUIHRaeAEoQ_AUoAXoECAsQAQ&biw=360&bih=560

Was channel hopping this evening and there was a programme about Hong Kong showing bamboo scaffolding. Presenter enquired as to high up they go with it they told her 68 stories was the record.

Chancer3001

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

The platypus (other egg laying mammals) does not have a stomach. Its food goes straight from the esophagus to the intestine.

Wow . Apparently loads of fish evolved the same trait. Carp family eg

johndaman66

Sajid Javid wrote: »

The expression the hair of the dog, for an alcoholic drink taken to cure a hangover, is a shortening of 'a hair of the dog that bit you'. It comes from an old belief that someone bitten by a rabid dog could be cured of rabies by taking a potion containing some of the dog's hair, it never cured anybody.

I always thought it was more a case of rubbing the hair of the dog into the wound though and Wikipedia would seem to confirm that
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair_of_the_dog

loyatemu

Ipso wrote: »

And then Kubrick decided to leave out the bits that explained what was going on.

The movie wouldn't be half as influential and revered if it explained itself.

ohnonotgmail

The platypus (other egg laying mammals) does not have a stomach. Its food goes straight from the esophagus to the intestine.

quickbeam

Homeopathy gained traction in its early years, simply because it did nothing, which was an improvement on the medical interventions at the time (such as bleeding), so patients survived better.

(According to Brian Cox on an episode of Infinite Monkey Cage)

Sajid Javid

The expression the hair of the dog, for an alcoholic drink taken to cure a hangover, is a shortening of 'a hair of the dog that bit you'. It comes from an old belief that someone bitten by a rabid dog could be cured of rabies by taking a potion containing some of the dog's hair, it never cured anybody.

Ipso

Wibbs wrote: »

Well, sorta M. The story was based on a previous piece by Clarke, The Sentinel. Him and Stan met and decided to flesh it out into a novel and screenplay and yep those two were concurrent alright.

And then Kubrick decided to leave out the bits that explained what was going on.

Wibbs

Well, sorta M. The story was based on a previous piece by Clarke, The Sentinel. Him and Stan met and decided to flesh it out into a novel and screenplay and yep those two were concurrent alright.

mzungu

Stanley Kubrick made 2001: A Space Odyssey at the same time the novel was being written. Both Arthur C. Clarke and Kubrick worked on the novel together, but eventually, only Clarke was listed as the author.

StupidLikeAFox

Bamboo scaffolding on Google images:

https://www.google.com/search?q=bamboo+scaffolding&safe=off&client=ms-android-samsung&prmd=isvn&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiW0fST4uvfAhWGRxUIHRaeAEoQ_AUoAXoECAsQAQ&biw=360&bih=560

Water John

Bamboo is used in the far East as formwork for the builders of even skyscrapers.

Adyx

Discovery Channel keeps repeating an episode of How It's Made with bamboo (& steel) framed bikes. Company is in Colorado I think.

SuperS54

Alanna Thousands Valley wrote: »

Forget fancy 2k all-carbon bikes, light bamboo cycles could be the next craze!

https://www.google.com/search?q=light+bamboo+cycles&rlz=1C1CHBD_enTW758TW758&oq=light+bamboo+cycles&aqs=chrome..69i57&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 :eek:;)

gozunda

Lady Haywire wrote: »

Carrots with tops on will go off far quicker than those with the green leafy parts removed. On the flip side, the ones with fresh, healthy tops on them are the freshest carrots, but should be used asap or tops removed to keep them from going bendy.

Fresh carrots with green tops placed in a bucket of sand in a cool sheltered place will keep for far longer than those without.

The majority of carrots go off very quickly once removed from storage facilities where they are kept just above 0C for up to 7-9 months, though 5-6 months is more typical.

4068ac1elhodqr

Bamboo is lighter and has greater tensile strength (or resistance to being pulled apart) than steel, and it withstands compression better than concrete.
This strength allows it to grow upto 50 feet tall without any chance of breakage or bending.
Forget fancy 2k all-carbon bikes, light bamboo cycles could be the next craze!

Also, by adding 1lb of valadium to 1ton of steel, you can double it's strength.

There is probably some fancy 'nano-graphine spiderweb embedded' steel that beats bamboo, but isn't cheap or available for mass production.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

apparently bamboo shoots have been used as a form of torture. The victim was tied down over the shoot and the shoot would grow through them. Mythbusters did an episode on it and it will pierce through flesh as it grows.

I heard stories of such torture from a man who served in the far east during WW2, but any research I have done on it always said it was of doubtful authenticity, with no actual reliable evidence for it.

ohnonotgmail

Chancer3001 wrote: »

Wow

I Wikipediad that bamboo and found this insane stuff too

One plant produced culms growing a remarkable 47.6 in (121 cm) in 24 hours.!!! You'd nearly see it grow in real time

The flowering interval of this species is very long, about 120 years!
You wouldn't want to be waiting around for a bouquet!

apparently bamboo shoots have been used as a form of torture. The victim was tied down over the shoot and the shoot would grow through them. Mythbusters did an episode on it and it will pierce through flesh as it grows.

johndaman66

py2006 wrote: »

Wikipedia disagrees...

In good faith took straight from the Christmas Irelands Own that was lying around and didn't research further to validate.

I see as per Wikipedia that Charlie Chaplin's mothers birth name was Hannah Harriet Pedlingham Hill. It mentions that her father Charles Frederick Hill was a shoemaker who may have been of Irish Protestant descent.

As per Wikipedia Alfred Hitchcock's mother was Emma Jane Hitchcock, nWhelan and along with his father was a Roman Catholic, with partial roots in Ireland.

Seems that both mothers had Irish heritage but yes to say that they were from Ireland would indeed be incorrect.