FEAST OR FAMINE

Neil Armstrong: A Life of Flight (2014) is written by Jay Barbree, NBC News Space Correspondent and longtime friend (since 1962) of Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. The book is touted as “the intimate, definitive biography” of the quiet astronaut. The book commences in 1951 with Neil Armstrong, at 21 years of age, on combat mission, leaving from the aircraft carrier Essex , and flying across the Sea of Japan and over the mountains of North Korea. By 1956 Armstrong was a research test pilot at Edwards NACA’s High Speed Flight Station, the forerunner of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) – but not before he married Janet. Barbree details the Space Race between the Russians and the Americans, launch by launch. On October 4, 1957, Sergei Korolev, the Soviet chief rocket scientist, watched his rocket R-7 and its satellite, Sputnik 1, become the first rocket in space. A month later the Soviets launched Sputnik 2 – this time with a “living ...

Kornelius, in Angela Merkel: The Chancellor and herWorld (2013), covers all aspects of Merkel’s personal and political life from Merkelmania to her future prospects. The novel concludes at the end of her second term in office in 2013. Merkel (1954-) the German Chancellor is in her third parliamentary term after coming to power in the November 2005 federal election, and winning again in October 2009 and December 2013. She’s been depicted along a continuum of criticisms from a mysterious, quiet, unknown to a dominatrix. But what is her worldview as leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) as leader of the Opposition – and as Chancellor of Germany under the grand coalition with the CDU and the Social Democratic Party of Germany? She is the first woman in Germany to hold both offices. Right now she has the historical burden of the banking crisis that mutated into the Europe economic crisis, as well as domestic issues. Kornelius starts with Angela Kasner’s upbringing ...

Are there clothing fabrics that beat body odour? Freshly secreted sweat has little smell, although some people are more prone to sweating, and more prone to body odour. But researchers say that the clothing a person wears while exercising can affect the amount of odour emitted from the body (Wellbeing No. 154, 2014; wellbeing.com.au – Applied and Environmental Microbiology). Fresh sweat in armpits has little odour because the fatty acids are generally too large to become airborne. However, bacteria live in armpits and warm spaces in the body, and when micrococci use their enzymes to transform fatty acids, hormones and amino acids into smaller compounds, the result is smelly airborne substance – i.e. body odour. So it is bacteria that make sweat smell. But there are also bacteria that appear on clothes. Researchers showed that micrococci will grow on polyester but not on cotton. Therefore, researchers recommend that if you don’t want to sm...

Faces are said to glow with a touch of sun and a touch of tan. But faces can also glow from pregnancy, and high levels of carotenoid. In humans, carotenoid comes from an intake of fruit and vegetables. Researchers wanted to see what type of facial glow was more attractive to other people (Wellbeing No. 154, 2014; wellbeing.com.au – Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology). They conducted three experiments. The first experiment involved people looking at images of faces that had a glow from an intake of high levels of carotenoids from fruit and vegetables and compared them with images of faces of people with low carotenoid levels. The best-known carotenoid is carotene found in crude palm oil, carrots and apricots (which gives them their bright orange colour). Hence images were of people who had increased their intake of carrots and apricots, and those who had not had a high intake of fruit and vegetables. People were asked to indicate which faces were attractive. The...