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posted by janrinok on Monday November 20 2017, @10:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the what-a-pa_laver dept.

Scientist's lives matter:

The tasty Japanese seaweed nori is ubiquitous today, but that wasn't always true. Nori was once called "lucky grass" because every year's harvest was entirely dependent on luck. Then, during World War II, luck ran out. No nori would grow off the coast of Japan, and farmers were distraught. But a major scientific discovery on the other side of the planet revealed something unexpected about the humble plant and turned an unpredictable crop into a steady and plentiful food source.
...
Fortunately, on an island at the other end of Eurasia, Kathleen Drew-Baker had recently gotten fired. She had been a lecturer in botany at the University of Manchester where she studied algae that reproduced using spores rather than flowers. But the university did not employ married women. So when she got married to fellow academic Henry Wright-Baker she was kicked off the faculty and relegated to a job as an unpaid research fellow.

Drew-Baker focused on a type of nori unfamiliar to nearly everyone: Porphyra umbilicalis. It's a leafy seaweed that grows off the coast of Wales. Locals harvest it, grind it up, and use it to make bread or soup. Known colloquially as laver, it's still eaten in Britain but has not attained the international standing of nori.
...
Thanks to Drew-Baker's work, Segawa was able to invent the industrial process that lead to the stable, predictable production of nori, for which everyone with a taste for sushi should be grateful.

If not for her work, sushi rolls would probably not be eaten today.


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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by edIII on Tuesday November 21 2017, @02:23AM

    by edIII (791) on Tuesday November 21 2017, @02:23AM (#599487)

    But that doesn't happen with the buttsex. You need to watch the purple Teletubby for that, or any of the liberal agenda programming that turns our kids gay.....

    /sarc

    The real contributors to the gay population, is, and always will be, the straight population :)

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