I noticed this morning that my cereal box has the following claim on it: “A study shows that 8 out of 10 who eats Kellogg’s All-Bran at least 3 times a week experience better digestion*”.
“*Source: Nordic study based on 643 respondents (who eats Kellogg’s All-Bran at least 3 times per week). The Nielsen Company 2007.”
This claim is reiterated on the Norwegian site, but the US site makes no such claims. (googling for “Kellogg’s health claims” might explain why).
Now, when making a health claim one would usually (unless you’re a homeopath, faith healer, acupuncturist, chiropractor, aura cleanser, can shoot rainbows out of your tummy, etc..) back up that claim with good scientific evidence, in other words you can show to a collection of scientifically valid experiments/studies.
This so called study as described above certainly raises a couple of red flags, and I suspect this “study” is of extremely poor quality, or maybe even be just a simple poll (not a scientific study at all).
Of course being a curious fella I sent the following mail to Kellogg’s:
Regarding the study being referred to on the All-Bran packaging and the website (http://www.allbran.no), carried out by The Nielsen company 2007.
How may I obtain a copy of this study?
How did the selection of participants for the study take place?
What’s the distribution of participants between the different nordic countries, age composition and sex composition?
What where the criteria for participant selection?
Which questions where used, and how were the answers quantified?
Of the 643 persons referred to in the study, how big a part of the total participants in the study do these represent?
Is the data collected only based on self reporting of the daily intake of All-Bra, and the self reporting of the perceived increase in digestive function?
Which methods were used to account for the placebo effect?
Today (Just passed midnight, so here in Norway it’s Saturday 6th) is Carl Sagan day, the day each year where we celebrate the greatest human to ever walk this planet, Carl Sagan.
If I had to choose a favorite person of all of history, it would without any doubt be professor Sagan. A professor of astrophysics, and awesome scientist. He’s most known for being an important part of SETI and his PBS documentary Cosmos, which is a very good show and if you haven’t watched it, it’s definitely worth your time (note, the first episode might be a bit dull for some peoples taste, but it gets better from the second episode). Unfortunately I will be traveling to Spain Saturday, so will not be able to celebrate the day as much as I’d like.. But I will be watching my favorite episode of Cosmos, and maybe go out and have a glimpse at the stars if the weather permits.
A little taste of Cosmos, if you don’t watch it Zergs will rush your base and destroy all your barracks! (no seriously!)
I finally got around to hanging the picture I made of Neil Degrasse Tyson on my wall today, I finished it over a month ago and now it’s finally up there for the whole world to enjoy (well, at least anyone who might happen to visit my apartment).
Now I can have this handsome hunk of an astrophysicist watch over me while I work
The picture took about 10 hours to do, and is made from 8100 small plastic beads (perler). The picture itself is 45×45 cm, I wanted to have it much bigger, but when you have a girlfriend you learn to compromise)
If you’re not already, you should follow him on Twitter (@neiltyson), he has very interesting tweets about science and astronomy.
It can measure almost anything from -32 to 350c at a distance using a infrared sensor.
So far I’ve made some amazing scientific discoveries for mankind:
The surface temperature of hands and arms varies between 33-36 c
The perfect frying pan temperature for making veggie burgers is 220 c
65-70c is the optimal temperature a slice of pizza
A sleeping ferret only has a temperature of 28c, thanks to good insulating fur
The thermometer can be used to detect sleeping ferrets (there are lots of blankets in the living room)
The mean temperature difference between the floor and ceiling in my apartment is 2.2c
Driving at 80 km/h on a motorcycle a cold spring night gives your legs a surface temperature of 16 c (full riding gear).
The paint from a can of spray paint (the kind used for cars/motorcycles) is quite cold: 0-1 c
When using quick epoxy, the chemical reaction from mixing the base and primer makes the epoxy 35 c (in a 14 c ambient temperature).
The tapwater temperature
In an effort to prevent Stacy from using to hot water while making lemonade, I measured the temperature in 100 ml increments, showing that the water will at first have the room temperature of the kitchen, followed by the room temperature of the basement before reaching the optimal 4-5 c temperature. This took around 8 liters (or 15 seconds), but will of course vary from building to building.
I needed a picture of Carl Sagan for a project (I’ll post some info and pictures on this project soon).
Anyway, this was the best image I could find, but it’s kinda old, blurry so I fixed the colors, contrast, sharpness removed artifacts, etc.. in photoshop and I think the end result is pretty good considering my photoshop noobness. So if your looking for a large good picture of Carl Sagan (And let’s be hones, who would NOT want such a picture??) here it is:
original to the left.. shopped to the right (The improvements don’t really become visible until you view the large version)
I’ve always been a big fan of particle physics and astronomy. So when CERN fired up their massive particle accelerator to 50% today (7 TeV PER PARTICLE! which is kinda sick), that was definitely a 9.98 out of 10 on the awesome scale
Hopefully some preliminary results can be released this summer
One thing that really surprised me was the funky graphics produced:
And the fact that they use VLC, the best video playback software ever made
Heisenberg went for a drive and got stopped by a traffic cop. The cop asked, “Do you know how fast you were going?” Heisenberg replied, “No, but I know where I am.”
