Fortune cookies – Japanese?

Some 3 billion fortune cookies are made each year, almost all in the United States. But the crisp cookies wrapped around enigmatic sayings have spread around the world. They are served in Chinese restaurants in Britain, Mexico, Italy, France and elsewhere. In India, they taste more like butter cookies. A surprisingly high number of winning tickets in Brazil’s national lottery in 2004 were traced to lucky numbers from fortune cookies distributed by a Chinese restaurant chain called Chinatown.

But there is one place where fortune cookies are conspicuously absent: China.

Now a researcher in Japan believes she can explain the disconnect, which has long perplexed American tourists in China. Fortune cookies, Yasuko Nakamachi says, are almost certainly originally from Japan.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/16/dining/16fort.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Human genome et al

Saw a speech by Craig Venter on BBC today. He spoke the human genome and his vision for the future. His prediction is that in the future synthetic chromosomes can be generated in the lab and they can also be used to create fuel cells in silos. This would help save the oil and coal dependency that is there and also reduce the huge carbon dioxide emissions that we have. This in turn would help us save our environment and create a ‘green’ world.

I am sure the oil industry won’t be happy about that. : (

More details are available at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Venter

Pregnant males!

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seahorse

Seahorses reproduce in an unusual way: the male becomes pregnant. “The female inserts her ovipositor into the male’s brood pouch, where she deposits her eggs, which the male fertilizes. The fertilized eggs then embed in the pouch wall and become enveloped with tissues.”^[5] New research indicates the male releases sperm into the surrounding sea water during fertilization, and not directly into the pouch as was previously thought.^[6] Most seahorse species’ pregnancies lasts approximately two to three weeks.