Weird Science gets its kicks huffing glue from old books

November 15th, 2009

Sniffing the glue of old books: Lots of people speak fondly of the distinct aroma of libraries, both personal and private. It turns out they might not be imagining it. Researchers have done a wholesale identification of the volatile chemicals released by books and performed multivariate analysis on the results. It turns out that it’s possible to identify a series of chemicals associated with the degradation of paper, which could provide archivists a noninvasive way of determining which works need immediate attention.

Cheaper pharmaceuticals through computer pop-ups—for real: This one’s a randomized clinical trial that targeted the doctors, rather than the patients. Like everyone else, doctors are susceptible to advertising, and will often prescribe an expensive drug when there’s an equivalent but cheaper generic available. It turns out that simply adding an alert to the computerized prescription system was enough to counteract the impact of heavy marketing, and keep the use of less-well-marketed alternatives at a steady level.