In need of a buzzy new cosmetic? You could always brew one up

Caffeine boost

Coffee is something to put into people; it is also something to put onto people. Though some folk choose to roast, brew and drink coffee, innovative scientists use the bean and its byproducts to make cosmetics.

Fernanda Maria Pinto Vilela and her colleagues at Brazil’s Federal University of Juiz de Fora did a worldwide search for every recent patent that applies coffee to that purpose. They found patents for producing emulsions, gels, suspensions, solutions, powders, aerosols, sticks, creams, lotions, ointments, shampoos, serum, soaps, essences, masks and sprays – all of them meant to be dripped, rubbed or otherwise applied to human skin. Some are designed specifically for lips, some just for scalps, some only for the neighbourhood of the eyes.

Most of the new patents come from either China or South Korea. Here are some that drew special attention from the team: an unguent for the lower eyelid that “forms a breathable biological film in cooperation with oat sugar to lift the periphery of the eyes”; a cream “which can reduce lip wrinkles”; a “pure natural bath composition with a frosting effect” and a substance that “suppresses the generation of senile body odor”. One of them includes “a formula that prevents hair loss and promotes hair and uses coffee powder obtained from grounded coffee”.

The Brazilian patent searchers published their roundup in the International Journal of Cosmetic Science. They note – lamentedly – that “although Brazil is the largest coffee producer worldwide”, none of these patents come from Brazil.

A royal endeavour

Stimulated by the news about new inventions in coffee cosmetics, Feedback did a patent search for recent innovations in another of coffee’s non-gustatory uses: coffee enemas. Six new patents for coffee enema technology were published during the past year, all in China.

This perhaps marks an international passing of the torch. Until recently, the UK led the world in exploring and promoting coffee enemas’ benefits. The public face of that effort, the now former Prince Charles, recently assumed new professional duties. Unless someone else is appointed soon to carry on the work, UK industry and the general populace might soon face a coffee enema gap.

Abyss of infinite lunacy

The academic field called evolutionary psychology suffers from an image problem among scholars in general. There is a suspicion that much of the discussion there is just slick storytelling, with only skimpy evidence for the stories. Some reputations, complainers grumble, are more marketed than earned.

Even many marketing professors are known to keep their distance from evolutionary psychology. But they shouldn’t, suggests Gad Saad, a marketing professor at Concordia University in Canada, in a study called “The marketing of evolutionary psychology”, published in the Journal of Business Research.

Saad says: “Evolutionary psychology suffers from an image problem amongst marketing scholars, many of whom remain uninterested at best and hostile at worst in applying the evolutionary lens within their research programs.” This is sad, Saad implies. He then explains, wordily: “The reality is that innumerable theoretical, epistemological, methodological, and applied benefits would accrue to marketing academics and practitioners alike by adopting the evolutionary framework within the science and practice of marketing.”

Saad has published extensively. His papers include “Advertised waist-to-hip ratios of online female escorts: An evolutionary perspective”, “Finger length ratio and attitudes toward several product categories” and a study about oxytocin, the so-called love hormone. That paper asserts: “Breastfeeding women serve as a group of particular interest when studying the effects of oxytocin, as they are under its influence,” going on to say that “breastfeeding women are less prone to retaliate than men” when a company treats them, as customers, unfairly.

In a recent paper called “The corrosive effects of idea pathogens”, Saad issues a battle cry against those who make foolish claims: “I use a neuroparasitological framework to argue that a superficially enticing set of idea pathogens have parasitised countless people in the West leading us resolutely towards the abyss of infinite lunacy.”

Feedback on Howls

Physicist Michael Berry sent Feedback feedback about our recent glance at research papers by Howls, Howling and Howling, about howling and other acoustic phenomena. Howls – Christopher Howls – was once Berry’s student. In fact, Howls’s treatise, a joyful look at logarithmic catastrophes at acoustic horizons, opens: “This paper is dedicated to Sir Michael Berry in celebration of his 80th birthday.”

Berry’s own note is dedicated to another Feedback item. “I can also contribute to your mention of the 11-year publication delay [endured by ecologist Peter Shaw]. Longer is the interval between submission (1747) and publication (1763) of a paper by Thomas Bayes (he of the eponymous statistics)”, published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. But “I would be surprised,” says Berry, “if this 16-year delay is the longest”.

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