What do we know about pine cones?

Various pine cone designs (Dyck Arboretum, Hesston College)

Pine cones are the seed-bearing organs of conifers and cycads (trees with cones and needle-like or scale-like leaves that are typically evergreen). Conifers are members of the group of plants called gymnosperms, and in addition to having cones and needles, they do not have flowers but their seeds are "naked". That means they are exposed on the cones instead of being protected inside an ovary or fruit like angiosperms (flowering plants).

Cycad Encephalartos lehmannii from South Africa with its one cone

(South African National Biodiversity Institute)

Pine cones come in many sizes and shapes. Sizes range from 2.5-5 cm (1-2 inches) to >50 cm (>20 inches). They can be long and slender or rounded or oblong. Some have thin parts (bracts, see below), while others are thick and look almost like a wood carving. Many have single cones growing independently, others have pretty clusters, and others like Lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) show twisted groupings.

Various shapes and groupings of pine cones.

Top left, white pine; Top middle, Coulter pine; top right, Lodgepole pine.

Bottom left, Scots pine; bottom center, Bosnian pine; bottom right; Ponderosa pine.

Images from AZ Animals.

Some remain closed until humidity or moisture conditions are right. One, the Lodgepole pine, opens only after fire exposure. 

There are male and female pine cones. Males are smaller than females, and they tend to hang from lower branches while females are higher. Since they produce pollen, they are also called pollen cones. They are also lighter in color and softer. They fall off every year. On the other hand, female cones are hard and woody, and they produce seeds, so they care sometimes called woody cones or seed cones. They take 2–3 years to mature, stay on the tree after releasing seeds, and may remain attached for several years (decades for Lodgepole pine).

Male and female cones from Doublas fir (Allerma)

In true fir trees (genus Abies), the cones do not fall off whole like pine or spruce cones. After the seeds mature inside, the cone scales loosen and drop off one at a time. Seeds are released gradually, leaving just a bare central spike (the cone axis) sticking up.

Abies fir cone whole (left) and fallen apart with age (right) (Wikimedia)

With angiosperms, pollen is carried by wind, rain, insects, animals, or just close contact. But with gymnosperms, only the wind carried pollen to spaces inside the cone body (or strobilus). Notice that the leaf-like tips of the female cone body are not the seeds. They are called scales and two types are there for protection (seed scale) or support (bract scale). Both are modified leaves! 

Seeds form deep inside near the central stem of the cone, and pollen needs to get that far to meet up with the ovule to fertilize it and create a seed. When the scale opens, it allows the seed to fall out.

Diagram of female pine cone in cross section (from Libre Texts)

But female cones don't always look this open. When the air is dry, the cone scales lose moisture. As they dry, the scales shrink unevenly. This causes them to bend outward. The seeds are then released to gravity or the wind. Since this happens in dry weather, seeds have a greater change to float on the wind farther to spread the growth of more pines.

Video showing a pine cone opening as daylight dries the air

You can force pine cones to open and close yourself. Put open cones in warm water and watch them close. Or to dry them, you could heat closed ones in a microwave oven and watch them open.

The bract are very tightly bound when cones are closed. As they open, you can even hear them make a cracking or snapping sound.

 

Videos demonstrating the sound of female pine cones opening

The seeds of pine cones are sometimes edible, and in those cases they are called pine nuts. The following are pine nuts you can eat:

• Pinus pinea (Mediterranean/European variety, Italian stone pine)
• Pinus koraiensis (China, Korea, parts of Japan)
• Pinus sibirica (East Asia)
• Pinus edulis (Colorado pinyon)
• Pinus monophylla (American Southwest)
• Pinus lambertiana (sugar pine, Western United States (California, Oregon, parts of Nevada))

Many pine nuts can be eaten, but they may simply be too small to make it economical, whether on a large scale or in simple foraging in the woods by yourself. In all cases, the shells must be removed before the seed inside can be eaten.

European pine nuts after shell has been removed (Wikipedia)

Of course, many animals eat pine nuts. Squirrels, chipmunks, birds like crossbills, woodpeckers, and jays, even bears are the main foragers. They are all after the fiber and nutrients in the seeds, such as 

• Vitamin K
• Manganese
• Protein
• Thiamin
• Zinc
• Phosphorus 
• Magnesium

Pine nuts also contain 670 kcal/100 grams, 13–14 g of protein/100 grams, 68 g of fat/100 grams (mostly unsaturated heart-healthy, but also some polyunsaturated and monounsaturated),  13 g of carbohydrate/100 grams, and a fatty acid like pinolenic acid.

If you want to collect pine nuts in the forest, here is one video to show how it can be done with a gentle method. Here is another video with a bit harsher method. Both offer some good tips that the other one doesn't. 

Screenshots from the two videos above

Squirrels tend to eat green immature female cone seeds, but they will eat mature nuts, too. The immature seeds are more tender. And, with green cones, there is less chance that some of the seeds might have fallen out of the cone, so they get more per cone!

Upper cone uneaten, bottom cone completely eaten (Discover Wildlife)

Did you know that squirrels might be considered left- or right-handed? You can tell by the way they pick at a cone vs hold it as they eat. The hand rolling the cone is what is used to judge lefthandedness or righthandedness. The other one merely steadies it. According to one website, "Squirrels will start at the bottom and work their way upwards in a spiralling motion. If the spirals go [counter]clockwise then they are left handed, and if they go clockwise then they are right handed!" Other researchers at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid classified 893 pine cones they found as "left-gnawed" or "right-gnawed". The type of cone didn't matter, but populations of red squirrels only 30 km away from each other were either lefties or righties.

This squirrel appears to favor his right paw to turn the cone.

Researchers from the State University of New York also learned that the farther away a squirrel is from its home, the shorter time it takes to each nuts. When they ate 200 seeds 5 meters (16.5 ft.) from cover, they held each seed for a little over five seconds, but when they were 15 m (50 ft.) from cover, they handled each seed for less than two seconds. That's not their idea of "fast food", but more closely related to self-preservation. Sitting in the open further from cover is more dangerous.

Data from the study described above. Handling time in seconds.

Recipes for human consumption of pine cones are more numerous than you might think. 

A Russian recipe for jam boils them for 30 min, allows them to sit for 12 hours, then removes the cones and adds sugar. A few finishing touches produces a thick jam. Another recipe simply alternates cones and sugar, and over time a honey-like syrup is formed. Another chops and brews very young cones to make a tea.

This video shows how to make pickled pine cones. 

Mugolio is another sweet syrup, but this takes longer. This website has a lot of details, but essentially you just add brown sugar to green pine cones, cover, and wait a month or more.

Mugolio at different stages (Forager Chef)

Why Pizza And Beer Taste So Good Together According To Science

Link to article

Pizza is an Italian food that comes in many varieties. It may be thick or thin crust, deep dish style, and topped with just about everything from vegetables, to meats, to seafood, and even pineapple. About 5 billion are sold worldwide every year, with the U.S. commanding the lead with 3 billion of them (some say 4 billion if you include frozen pizza). Beer is an alcoholic beverage that is usually made from water, malted grains (usually barley), hops, and yeast. Over 190 billion liters are sold annually, with the most in China. Many people find the combination of eating pizza and drinking beer a satisfying experience. Let's see if there is a scientific reason that this may be so.

A mug of beer and a slice of pepperoni pizza (Chowhound)

While pizza is a food that many attribute to Italy, its origins are a little fuzzy. The word "pizza" was first recorded in 997 CE in Gaeta, which is a seaside resort in Lazio, Italy between Rome and Naples. It might have come from any of three sources:

• Germanic people settling in Italy and speaking Lombardic ("pizzo", meaning bite or mouthful)
• the Greek word “pitta”, which means a round, flatbread baked in an oven
• the Latin word "pinsere", meaning to press.

Map of Italy showing the location of Gaeta

Flatbreads are widely cooked all over the Mediterranean countries. Sixth century BC Persian soldiers at it with dates and cheese on top. Greeks made plakous with toppings such as herbs, onion, cheese, and garlic. A Roman bread covered with cheese spreads called moretum, and fruits was called adorea or libum adoreum. Tomatoes were introduced to Italy in the 1540s by Spanish merchants selling goods from the Americas. By the late 1700s, poor people in Naples began putting tomatoes on top of their flatbreads. In 1889, Italy's Queen Margherita became tired of the gourmet French food and then ordered the most famous  pizza-maker there,  Raffaele Esposito, to make pizza for her. He made three types: pizza marinara with garlic, pizza Napoli with anchovies and a third with tomato sauce, mozzarella and basil leaves. The third one was her favorite, and it bears her name now. 

Image of a Margherita pizza; Queen Margherita of Italy (Lifestyle)

Naples grew to be populated with many poor people, so cheap & fast meals were necessary. That area of Italy also developed higher heat ovens than northern Italy, so foods like flatbreads could be cooked faster. The higher heat also helped to evaporate water from tomatoes to avoid soggy crusts. This is essentially how pizza of today evolved. 

Beer has been around much longer, several thousand years. Pottery from China and Iran showed traces from 5,000 years ago, as did a "beer jar" from 2300 BC in Egypt. There is even 13,000 year-old evidence from nomads in Israel. There, depressions called mortars were found in cave bedrock floors, and these bowl-shaped mortars had residue of barley starch from various stages of fermentation.

Stone floor mortars in Israeli caves showing traces of beer materials (BBC)

Early beer was more like porridge, and people often used a straw to drink only the liquid top portion when the grain settled out. During the Middle Ages (5th to 15th centuries), beer was more common than water for consumption possibly because water sources were frequently contaminated, while brewing's boiling process killed bacteria. But early beers contained less alcohol content than now, so it was acceptable even for children. It is possible that people soaked grain in water simply to soften it, and heating helped to encourage that, but it also changed the taste. Coincidentally, it may have also started a fermentation process.

Drinking beer through a straw in Egypt, 1300 BCE (gethistories.com)

Generally, beer begins by soaking, germinating, and roasting grains to release the starches and change them into sugar. This is called malting. Next, they are crushed (milled) and soaked in hot water to activate enzymes that change the materials to fermentable sugars (a wort). It is then boiled, hops are added (known sincee 822 CE) for flavoring. Finally, yeast is added to digest the sugars and convert them to alcohol and carbon dioxide. Romans called their beer "cerevisia", and the most common yeast for beer brewing is Saccharomyces cerevisiae in its honor.

Beer-making process (Micet)

Beer had been touted for medicinal and health-promoting properties over the centuries. Recently, it was learned that barley fiber and polyphenols in it can be broken down in the gut to form short-chair fatty acids (SCFA). Those are good for metabolism (regulating blood sugar) and calming an immune response (thus easing inflammation). They also strengthen the walls of the intestine as the by-product butyrate feeds colon lining cells. These effects are good only in low doses.

So, beer and pizza have yeast in common. But that really doesn't relate to why people think beer and pizza go together well, although some would say taking in two yeasty products harmonize the meal.

Pizza can be salty, fatty (with cheese and oil), and a bit acidic from the tomato sauce. The bitterness in beer comes from hops, and your body naturally responds by producing saliva to counteract the dry sensation. Saliva helps peel fat off your mouth, breaks up oily films there, and speeds swallowing and clearing of the early digestive tract. The carbonation (essentially dissolved carbon dioxide in the form of a mild acid) adds to that clearance. Your mouth is then ready for another bite. 

Carbonation adds gas to the stomach, of course, leading to a filled sensation. But the stretching of the stomach walls stimulates a belching reflex, and after a burp, a person feels better and perhaps more ready to eat. In addition, some of the gas moves out of the stomach and pushes partially digested food down into the small intestine. The bubbles relieve some of the stomach pressure that way, but they also break up food particles a little, so your fullness is a bit lighter than with larger chunks of food there. But it's important to sip not drink large amounts of beer, to get just the right amount of carbonation acting properly.

Left, carbonation moving food down.

Right, carbonation building up to burp.

The mild sweetness from the malt component of beer helps to counteract tomato sauce's acidity, too.

People would often say that they just like the combination of beer and pizza flavors. No special reason given. One helps the other go down better, they say. 

The Sprecher Brewing Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin came up with a Mama Mia! Pizza Beer to supposedly kill two birds with one stone. This "culinary beer" was made with basil, oregano, tomato and garlic. It didn't do well, and it is no longer on the market.

Image from The Beer Cast

Reviews were pretty average on its overall taste, citing a strong oregano and tomato sauce-like. Critic The Takeout described it as follows:

"In spite of showy displays of sniffing and swirling, the overwhelming first reaction was along the lines of, "Huh, tastes like beer." Further sipping and swishing gradually revealed subtle undertones that can only be described as "vaguely Italian-y," and subsequent burps affirmed that there was, indeed, pizza in this beer."

Another rater said "if I wanted pizza, I would eat pizza and not drink it”.

Some people advocate for drinking wine not beer with pizza. Considering that the two beverages are fermented with the same yeast, it may come down to a matter of personal preference in alcohol. Wine maker The Federalist claims, "If the sauce is red/tomato based, I'm reaching for the Federalist zinfandel," the reason being, "Its juicy berry notes, spice, and soft tannins would work so well with the acidity of the tomato sauce and the richness coming from the cheese." Wine maker Corey Garner says to avoid wines that are "overly tannic, like a young cabernet or young Nebbiolo, which might clash with the acidity of the tomato sauce, creating more of a harsh rather than harmonious vibe."

Tannins are polyphenols from grape skins, seeds, and stems, so once again this type of chemical works like the polyphenol in beer. So, the cheese fat and proteins bind to the tannins in wine before the tannins bind to saliva and get washed away. 

Not all pizzas have a tomato base, and Corey Garner has this to say about choosing a different wine with "a white-sauced veggie pizza, I would go with something crisp and refreshing, The Federalist sauvignon blanc would highlight the fresh vegetable flavors while still cutting through any of the creamy, fatty cheese elements." Nicole Bean (owner and operator of Pizaro's Pizza Napoletana in Houston, Texas) makes even more specific suggestions: she advises ordering white wine with "white pizza (no tomato sauce), fish, chicken, mushrooms, leeks, arugula, and prosciutto or pesto."

Pairing pizza with wine. Suggestions by WineSelectors.com

But there is even more involved. Researchers Robert J. Harrington (University of Arkansas), Daniel C. Miszczak (University of Guelph), and Michael C. Ottenbacher (San Diego State University) published a paper in 2008 on "The impact of beer type, pizza spiciness  and gender on match perceptions". They interviewed 34 men and women ages 20-70 for their reaction to lager, ale and stout beer with two pizzas identical (thin crust, herb tomato-based pizza sauce, and shredded pizza cheeses) except for addition of crushed red pepper. 

• 90% of males said the lager was the best match for the non-spicy pizza, and 10% said it was stout. In contrast, the females said lager was the best match (54.2%), followed by ale (41.7%) and stout (4.2%). 
• For the spicy pizza, the males preferred the lager and ale equally at 40% each followed by the stout at 20%. Females voted for the ale (58.3%) first, then lager (37.5%), and finally the stout (4.2%).

Image from freepik.com

So for some reason, males' taste preferences changed far more than females' when spiciness was added. The study concluded that "restaurateurs need server training programs and communication methods that save time and increase suggestions of pairings for customers." 

So, there might actually be some usefulness in doing this sort of research.

Tetsuya "Ted" Fujita, Mr. Tornado

Tetsuya Theodore “Ted” Fujita, photo by Roger Tully, PBS.org

Tornadoes are incredibly powerful weather events. They can appear as just one funnel or multiples. Studying how they work can be dangerous research. Japan is known for its violent phenomena such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions, but not tornadoes. Tetsuya Fujita's curiosity put him on the map as an expert in  such weather, but most of his work took place in the United States. He developed a ranking system (the Fujita Scale) for the intensity of tornadoes which was put in use in the early 1970s.

Tornado forecasting in the U.S. had begun around the 1800s. In 1884, John Park Finley worked for the U.S. Army Signal Corps and used 1,000 people to spot weather conditions that might precede a tornado. In 1887, the Corps banned the use of the word tornado from any forecasting in order to prevent panic, and that ban lasted until 1950. After the Corps was taken over by the U.S. Weather Bureau in 1890, Finley left. Although much data had been collected when tornadoes started, no one had put together a sound theory for how they were created. Ideas ranged from the Earth's distance from the sun, to sunspot activity, various electrical hypotheses, and the unclear notion of air currents with different temperatures colliding. To quote meteorologist Edward M. Brooks: "a  major problem in explaining the formation of a tornado is to find the source of the potential energy and the manner in which it is converted to kinetic energy".

John Park Finley (1917, Wikimedia) and his 1887 map of known locations of tornadoes in the U.S. (The Weather Doctor)

Tetsuya Fujita was born on October 23, 1920 in a small town of Sone-machi (a suburb of Kitakyushu city) in the northern part of the island of Kyushu. His childhood interests varied around science topics such as asronomy (especially the tidal effects of the moon), catching clams on the beach, topographic mapping of the seacoast cliffs, and tracking sunspots with a homemade telescope. He graduated from Kokura Middle School in 1939 and won the Science Award for all of his efforts.

Family picture with Tetsuya at 14 on the right; (right) aged 19 ready to enter college

(images from Fujita's memoirs)

He then entered Meiji College of Technology, even though he was also accepted at the Hiroshima College of High School Teachers, on the basis of his father. Tetsuya majored in mechanical engineering (ME) and was a part-time assistant to Professor Tadaichi Matsumoto, who was in the Geology Department. A research project Matsumoto directed him to do was mapping aerial views of four volcanic calderas in the area, which was accomplished easily due to his earlier interest in topography. His own thesis was under Professor Hajime Nakagawa in the ME department. Tetsuya measured the impact force of steel balls hitting the ground, and his thesis was published in English and German. He learned both languages by dictionary translation of reference books from Prof. Matsumoto.

He graduated 6 months early in 1943 when the university changed its policy so that graduating students could enter military service during World War II. He became a full-time assistant in the Physics Department, and he was promoted to assistant professor in just one month.

Fujita's interest in meteorology came about in odd ways.

• In 1944, the Navy contracted him to determine location of enemy planes using 3D triangulation with searchlights. He learned about bending of the beams in certain weather conditions. 
• Assigned to research on coal mines in 1945, he measured flucturating temperature and barometric pressure at points in mine shafts. These events caused him to become more interested in meteorology. 
• He even used his knowledge to estimate the altitude of the fireball from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Fujita studying Nagasaki damage: his triangulation method for the Nagasaki fireball altitude calculation

(Images from Fujita's memoirs)

Fujita got a grant in 1946 to reeducate elementary school teachers, and he chose weather science as the topic because, as he wrote in his memoirs: "it could be studied rather cheaply with pencil and paper". After collecting data from a weather station, he created 200-300 booklets per month for the teachers. The weather maps created from temperature and pressure readings fascinated him, but the direction and speed of winds during certain storms didn't fit basic laws of motion that he had learned. 

In 1947, despite taking measurements from the base and top of a mountaintop at a weather station and writing a research paper about micro-gusts of wind every 10 minutes (micro-analysis), he determined that the wind sometimes gusted strongly downward. As he wrote in his autobiography, "nobody in Japan in 1948 thought about a downard current...in a thunderstorm". He presented his data in a paper titled "Thunder-Nose", but his work received no recognition.

Graph from his paper "Thunder-Nose". Note the red downdraft created in the bigger storm updraft.

This shows a cross-section of the moving storm at altitudes above ground, and the storm moves from right to left.  So, the strongest winds occur in the downdraft ahead of the storm.

On September 26, 1948 he surveyed 9.8 km-long damage from a tornado for his first time, walking the length of the path of destruction and observing how it affected buildings and rice fields. He spent a year collecting data from weather stations in the area (more micro-analysis), too, and published it in 1951 in English in Geophysical Magazine. He'd had to borrow money to buy a typewriter, and he translated it himself and typed it all with one finger.

After a presentation to the Fukuoka District Weather Service on the Thunder-Nose data in 1949, one of the meeting participants said he had found a 1942 paper on a similar topic in the garbage can of a U.S. Air Force installation at the top of the mountain where Fujita had collected his own data! During his doctoral studies at Tokyo University on typhoon damage in Kyushu, he sent his earlier journal articles to the author of that paper, Dr. Horacy Byers, at the University of Chicago. Byers was amazed at how detailed Fujita's data were despite much less sophisticated equipment at hand, and responded, "This problem is attracting a great deal of attention in the United States at the present time, and the U.S. Weather Bureau has a special project to investigate these smaller disturbances". He continued, "I have looked over your paper, Micro-analytical Study of Thunder-Nose, and note that in view of the fact that you were not familiar with the work of the U.S. Thunderstorm Project on this subject your conclusions are highly valuable and really represent an independent discovery of some of the factors derived from our work. In particular you deserve credit for noting the importance of the thunderstorm downdraft and outflowing cold air".

Seburi-yama weather station of the USAF, where Dr. Byers' 1942 paper was found.

Fujita finished his doctoral program in 1953 with a thesis titled "Analytical Study of Typhoons". (Typhoons are hurricanes in the west Pacific.) Byers invited him to Chicago to study severe storm phenomena in the U.S. with him. 

Fujita in 1950 at age 30 while attending the Kyushi Institute of Technology (From his memoirs)

For the next few years, Fujita (who had now adopted the name Theodore, or "Ted) worked with Byers in Chicago and Dr. Morris Tepper who was doing research at the U.S. Weather Bureau in Washington, D.C. Following a tornado outbreak in Kansas and Oklahoma in June 1953, he applied his style of analysis on many aspects of the weather records before and during the storms. Sharp dips in the barometric pressure data were termed "mesocyclones". The prefix "meso" refers to Fujita's "mesoscale" analysis (mesoanalysis) of the weather data including

• the area within a storm
• areas around or ahead of storms

Contrast that to a huge scale (100s to 1,000s of km wide) and a microscale (just a few kilometers). A mesoanalysis takes in data between the size of those areas. Fujita felt they were the most important.

Byers asked Fujita to study the photographic evidence from a June 1957 tornado in Fargo, North Dakota that had damaged 1,300 homes. Over 2 years, he pieced together 150 photos from 53 ground sites to plot the path of the tornado and cloud features at one-minute intervals, and from them he was able to identify the storm wall cloud (from which tornadoes often descend) and tail cloud. 

Fargo tornado, June 1957 (Wikipedia)

In 1965, he studied aerial photos of 36 tornadoes in the Midwest and noticed that the tornado tracks paralleled each other in "families". That is, where one tornado damage path ended, another one began a few miles east-northeast of it. He also noticed patterns of damage in corn fields which led him to believe that a tornado had multiple smaller ones inside it rotating around the center.

Fujita's model of multiple mini-tornado gusts inside a single one (uchicago.edu)

These smaller cyclones would swirl around the center in seconds adding 100 mph to the main tornado's winds and cause specific damage patterns, which Fujita recognized. They were confirmed by aerial photos like the one below. He said this pattern (which Fujita named cycloidal marks) might explain why one house could avoid damage while others nearby would be hit.

(Left) Notice the two curls on the right in this Magnet, Nebraska tornado path from 1975 (PBS).

(Right) Fujita's photo from 1970 indicating the cycloidal marks (Monthly Weather Review). 

A multi-vortex tornado which generates cycloidal marks. (weather.com)

Moreover, Fujita's keen eye for detail also noted different levels of destruction of houses. At that time, hurricanes followed a 12-point ranking of wind speeds and sea conditions called the Beaufort Scale, but the maxium for that was 73 miles per hour (64 knots).  

Beaufort Scale (Wikipedia)

Since tornado winds are much stronger, Fujita created his own scale in 1971, which he called the Fujita Scale or F-scale. Here it is compared to the Beaufort Scale and the Mach scale for speed of sound. The original F-scale was later modified in 2007.

Comparison of Fujta Scale (tornadoes), Beaufort Scale (hurricanes), and Mach scale (speed of sound) (Wikipedia)

Original Fujita Scale and the 2007 Enhanced Fujita Scale

Keep in mind that Fujita's analysis was done at a time when there were no weather satellites and no radar stations to monitor weather. His work was done all by gathering empirical evidence from ground and aerial photos, weather records, and descriptions of damage. Fujita visited 300 sites himself and took ground and aerial photos, plus conducted interviews with survivors and emergency teams.

(Top left & right) Fujita inspecting tornado damage (KPBS video)

(Bottom) Fujita taking photos from a plane (KPBS)

He also built a tornado simulator using dry ice for laboratory analysis at the University of Chicago.  

Fujita's tornado simulator (YouTube)

Fujita with his tornado machine up close (WOUB Public Media)

With his accumulated knowledge growing, he was able to identify patterns called downbursts, which were sudden strong (62 km/hr, 39 mph) downdraft winds from thunderstorms, such as the one he suspected caused the crash of Eastern Airlines Flight 66 at John F. Kennedy Airport in 1975. He later refined them in 1981 as macrobursts and microbursts. 

• Macroburst: winds up to 188 km/h (117 mph) spreading in a path >4 km (2.5 miles) wide and lasting from 5 to 30 minutes
• Microburst: winds ~270 km/hr (170 mph) <4 km (2.5 miles) in diameter and lasting <5 minutes

Result of a microburst, leaving a focused pattern of tree damage (Fujita, 1978)

Although Fujita had tried to distuinguish these types of air movement with specific terms, they still fell under a collective title of wind shear. Many meteorologists did not believe in his concept of downbursts, but eventually he collected enough data from around the country to show them that they were real phenomena. His work led to better pre-flight checks on commercial aircraft.

From 1976 to 1978, he received funding for project NIMROD (Northern Illinois Research on Downburst), and then joined a team called JAWS (Joint Airport Wind Shear) in Colorado. It wasn't until June 12, 1982 while working on JAWS that he actually saw his first tornado!  It is said that after he discovered downbursts, he almost never flew without being invited to the cockpit to meet with the flight crew. After this, special Doppler radars were installed at karge commercial airports to improve safety.

Fujita's study of storms also produced the term bow echo, which describes the bow-like shape of a storm. Parts of it may produce very high horizontal winds, and other parts might generate downbursts. These data helped weather forecasters to warn the public.

A real bow echo in Kansas City, 2008, and a diagram showing how such things form. 

Note how the diagram shows the storm front moving left to right, but the ends are curling around. (Wikipedia)

Despite retiring in 1990, Fujita continued investigating things like hurricanes and El Niño. He became a naturalized American citizen in 1968, and he got the nickname Mr. Tornado from a National Geographic article in 1972. He was the recipient of many awards in his lifetime ever since his middle school science award. Here is a partial list:

• Okada Award, 1957 (Meteorological Society of Japan)
• Kamura Award, 1965 (Kyushu Institute of Technology)
• Meisinger Award, 1967 (American Meteorological Society)
• Admiral Luis de Florez Flight Safety Award, 1977 (Ottawa, Canada)
• Aviation Week and Space Technology Distinguished Service Award, 1977 
• Applied Meteorology Award, 1978 (National Weather Association)
• Distinguished Public Service Medal, 1979 (NASA)
• Losey Atmospheric Sciences Award, 1982 (American Institute of Aeronautics
• and Astronautics)
• Fujiwara Award, 1990 (Meteorological Society of Japan)

Fujiwara Award, with cyclonic pattern on the front side

The Kyushu Institute of Technology Library created the Tetsuya Fujita Memorial Collection with 406 books and articles.

Tetsuya "Ted" Fujita died in his sleep on November 19, 1998 at age 78.

A peek inside human brain shows a way it cleans out waste

Link to article

Why do we sleep? Science has not answered that yet, but several reasons have been proposed. It gives time for physical rest, of course. It might allow the brain to reorganize thoughts and memories. Sleep also helps us to remain alert and capable of clear reasoning. Many more ideas abound. But new research also says it allows the brain to physically clean itself. How is that done?

The circulatory system in the body is the collection of veins and arteries that carries red blood cells (for oxygen), white blood cells (for defense against bacteria and viruses), and platelets (which clot wounds to stop bleeding). Arteries carry blood away from the heart; veins carry it back. Part of the job of this system is to send blood for cleaning, too, as explained below:

• In the lungs, fresh air is exchanged to remove carbon dioxide and fill blood with oxygen.
• In the kidney, waste products (like urea) are removed, and so are extra water, and some toxins.
• In the liver, blood is detoxified of harmful substances (like drugs or alcohol)

Left, whole body circulation; right, brain circulation (red: arteries, blue: veins)

Another system in the body is called the lymphatic system, which is made of several organs (like the thymus, tonsils, and spleen) and lymph nodes. They are all connected with a different system of tubes that run near the circulatory system and sometimes intersect with it. The lymphatic system has three basic functions: 

• deliver white blood cells to the body to fight infection, 
• carry nutrients to cells and tissues, and 
• serve as a drainage system for fluids leaking out of capillaries when the surrounding tissue does not absorb it. This clear liquid is called lymph. 

How the lymphatic system (green) collects and flushes the body (Current Biology, 2021)

About 20 liters of fluid from the blood seeps from capillaries (where arteries and veins join) and into the surrounding tissues. It's like a leaky garden hose under the soil. This fluid carries nutrients and oxygen. But 17 liters of that flows back into the capillaries to carry out waste and carbon dioxide. The remaining 3 liters is picked up by the lymphatic system, like a series of drainage pipes getting bigger and bigger until they reach the lymph node. It is then deposited in the bloodstream for further removal.

If you look at the diagram below, you can see that there appears to be no lymphatic system in the brain. Lymph channels in the head are actually on the back but not surrounding the skull. If you compare the diagram with an earlier one, you can see there is a blood circulation system around the brain, though, because it needs oxygen.  

Body diagram modified from Wikipedia; head diagram from SaintLukesKC.org

 
Normally, the blood vessels that surround the brain exchange oxygen for carbon dioxide when they cross the capillary cell wall (at the point where arteries meet veins). Bigger molecules can pass into the brain but do so through protein filter seals called tight junctions built right into the capillary wall cells. But they are so tight that they block germs from entering the brain. This blood-brain barrier is all over the brain except in certain areas like the pituitary gland which needs direct access to the bloodstream to deliver hormones.

Comparison of cross-sections of blood vessels in the body and the brain. (From YouTube)

So, aside from carbon dioxide, what needs cleaning in the brain that needs a special system of drainage?

The brain is composed of living cells, and like other cells in the body, they need nourishment and excrete waste products. A common waste is lactate from sugar metabolism.  A not-so-common waste is called amyloid beta peptides (Aβ). These fragments of protein come from a bigger molecule (APP) that is part of the cell membrane of oligodendrocytes (cells which wrap around and make up the insulating myelin sheath around the long part of a nerve cell). 

Two images of oligodendrocytes wrapping around nerves to make myelin coatings

(left) from YouTube; (right) from Wikipedia

The part of APP sticking out of the membrane is sliced off by 2 enzymes leaving the Aβ to float around outside the cell. They can be further broken down and (a) removed or (b) join with metal ions to create groups that may eventually form plaques found on brain cells of senile patients. They interfere with nerve cell signaling, trigger inflammation, and contribute to cognitive decline and memory loss. So, it is important to flush these out.

Formation of amyloid beta peptides (Modified from Redox Biology, 2018)

Amyloid plaques (orange) on nerves (blue) (from Alzheimer's Disease Research)

Researchers at the Oregon Health & Science University have just discovered a third system of channels in the body; it drains waste from around brain cells like the lymphatic system does elsewhere in the body. It is called the glymphatic system. It is composed of a special type of glial cell (a type of nerve cell that does not conduct impulses, but instead it provides support, protection, and nourishment to nerve cells that do conduct impulses). 

It gets it name by combining the nerve cell name and the draining action like lymph:

Glial + Lymphatic-like = Glymphatic

(left) Dark blue shows the lymphatic system in the brain using an MRI scan with blue dye.

(right) Cross section of brain tissue showing lymph vessel (LV) blood vessels (BV).

(Images from YouTube of Dr. Daniel S. Reich at NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke)

Notice in the picture above how the glymphatic system tracks with the blood system in the first picture on this page.

What gave scientists hope that humans would have this drainage system came about in 2015 when mice were examined during research on Alzheimer's disease. A similar system was found in zebrafish in 2019 when researchers were simply investigating how the lymphatic system overall develops in those fish. They are the fish equivalent of white mice and are used a lot in genetic studies.

Left, zebrafish; Right, mouse

Brains with networks of lymphatic systems (in green)

(from Hogan and Bower, 2021)

In a 2019 study by David Holtzman, his team showed how tau protein gets cleared from normal mice. The tau protein normally helps support a cell structure, but abnormal tau molecules can lead to plaques like APP. Follow the blue dye-stained normal tau in this mouse brain to see how it should be removed and is within 72 hours.

Blue tau protein gets drained out by the lymphatic system of a mouse brain (Molecular Neurodegeneration, 2019)

Even before the glymphatic system was discovered, researchers still noticed that when mice slept or were anesthetized, drainage was better than when the mice were awake. 

Drainage of amyloid beta from mouse brains (Science, 2013)

At the time, just 2 years before the drainage system in mice was discovered, scientists did not know how chemicals like amyloid beta were removed from the brain, but the key point was that it took place faster and better when the animals were sleeping. In fact, when they were awake, more amyloid beta was made, leading the mice to stay awake longer in a vicious circle.

Now, we know more about the plumbing system. Moreover, sleeplessness caused by insomnia and even short bursts of waking in cases of apnea may aggravate the process and eventually lead to dementia or death unless changes are made in a person's sleep schedule. We know more about why now. It's not just to rest our minds, but to clear out harmful materials.