This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them:
- Moss excitement — “It’s not every day you can watch moss grow!” says a press release from the University of Wollongong (UOW), Australia. Too true. The details in the press release lead to an invitation….
- Astronomers and burglary — University of Sydney astronomer Charlie Sharpe takes time (and space) in a new study to thank the New South Wales police “for ensuring a swift return of his belongings, including his laptop, after having them burgled from his house a few weeks before this paper’s submission”. Sharpe also thanks his “neighbour, Gary, who spotted the burglar and, rather than simply phoning the police and staying put…
- Knowing Me, Knowing You — The phrase “Knowing Me, Knowing You” appears in the title of many scholarly publications, and also a song by a Swedish singing group. One of the newest research reports to do this is called “‘Knowing me, knowing you’: Personalized explanations for a music recommender system”. It shares little…
- Tandoori safety — There are no sure things in life, probably. Food technology experts, like other kinds of experts, find ways to express the certainty that something is probably certain. The National Institute of Food Technology Entrepreneurship and Management, in Sonipat, Haryana, India, supplies a new example, with the concluding assertion that “the consumption of tandoori chicken may be considered as safe”….
Here is video of the song that inspired the titles of well more than 200 scholarly publications: