Medical Slang in British Hospitals is given a detailed examination by Adam T. Fox, Michael Fertleman, Pauline Cahill and Roger D. Palmer in : Ethics & Behavior, Volume 13, Issue 2, 2003. “The usage, derivation, and psychological, ethical, and legal aspects of slang terminology in medicine are discussed. The colloquial vocabulary is further described and […]
Tag: cheese
Cheese jumping
Why is Double Gloucester cheese called Double Gloucester, and why is Single Gloucester cheese called Single Gloucester? The British Cheese Board, which on its own authority is “the voice of British cheese“, says that no one quite knows, that “various stories exist”. Their history of those cheeses includes a description of how, long ago, certain […]
Cheese-making in the scientifical news
Two evocative passages from recent reports about cheesemaking: From Chemistry World: At Quicke’s, a cheesemaker puts a glass pipette into his mouth, sucks out some whey and titrates to track lactic acid development. At the correct acidity, he drains the vat into a cooler on a lower level and removes the whey, taking most of […]
They seek a language for cheese
The 21st century, at its birth, saw cheese researchers in something of a frenzy trying to solve the industry’s great language problem. The problem is this: say what you will, the taste of a cheese is hard to describe. This cheese – this one! – is better than the others, you insist. But how can you say why? Which […]
Was the microwave vital to the burn? The cheese pie question.
Forensic fun puzzle of the day: To what extent, if any, was the microwave vital to the import of this medical report? “Thermal burn of palate caused by microwave heated cheese-pie: A case report,” Cases Journal, Panagiotis Kafas and Christos Stavrianos, vol.1 (2008): 191. The authors, at Aristotle University, Thessalonica, Greece, report: “A female patient, […]
Holes in Swiss Cheese – a century of investigation
The formation of holes (a.k.a. ‘eyes’) in Swiss Cheese has been the focus of intense scientific scrutiny for more than a century. For a state-of-the art review of the literature – as it was around 100 years ago – see the work of William Mansfield Clark, [pictured right] late DeLamar professor of physiological chemistry at […]
Making cheese from humans’ foot, nose, armpit bacteria
“Make hay while the sun shines, but make cheese from places where it does not” is the unstated them of a project described in Christina Agapakis‘s Harvard PhD Thesis (and described more colorfully on her web site): “Descriptions of human body odors often overlap with those of cheese; Propionibacterium used to make Swiss cheese is a major […]
Sex in cheese
Though sometimes discussed (and perhaps sometimes observed) by cheesemakers, sex in cheese was, officially, to some extent a theoretical occurrence until the publication of this new study, which was performed in France: “Sex in Cheese: Evidence for Sexuality in the Fungus Penicillium roqueforti,” Jeanne Ropars, Joëlle Dupont, Eric Fontanillas, Ricardo C. Rodríguez de la Vega, […]
Cheese and dogs and a pill to kill mosquitoes
Bart Knols explains—and also demonstrates—three related things: How to use cheese and dogs and a new kind of pill to kill malaria mosquitoes. Knols and Ruurd de Jong were awarded the 2006 Ig Nobel Prize in biology for showing that the female malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae is attracted equally to the smell of limburger cheese and to […]
The Cheese and Salami Experiments
Through the clever use of cheese in 2004, researchers at the University of Reading claimed to have solved one of life’s great little mysteries. “Why is it relatively difficult, even with a sharp knife, to cut when simply ‘pressing down’, but much easier to cut as soon as some sideways sawing or slicing action is […]