This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has five segments. Here are bits of each of them:
- Window Pains — When you donate your future former self “to science”, your generosity might open a door (and, as you will see, close a window) to adventure. A 2012 paper titled “Finger injuries caused by power-operated windows of motor vehicles: An experimental cadaver study” used the index, middle, ring and little fingers of 10 cadaver hands to “simulate real events in which a finger is jammed between the glass and seal entry of the window of a current motor vehicle”….
- Hamburger and Fries — Rob Eason went on an intellectual snack run through the library, where he snagged two nominative determinism treats. “Inheritance of mixed cryoglobulinemia”, a paper by Max Hamburger, Louis Fries and colleagues, was published in 1981 in the American Journal of Human Genetics. Eason says: “Cryoglobulins are abnormal proteins in the blood. Maybe their presence is due to the contributions from the Hamburger and Fries involved?” …
- Stone on Stone — Further nominative determinism. Eric Bignell sends word that: “The Stone Masons Livery Company in London has just published a book about its history. The book is written by Ian Stone.”
- Annikan Flycatcher — … Laura Connell says: “Your listings of trivial superpowers put me in mind of a student I knew when I was teaching. Annika, while chatting, was able to casually reach up and pick flies off her face. They never got away, or even tried. And she never rushed or tried the sneaky stealth approach. Teachers and students alike were gobsmacked, but she often was not even aware that she had done it, so habitual was it. And she never understood our amazement.” …
- Storied Superpower — Mark Hessler says that he has a trivial superpower: “I like telling stories and I think my most notable ability may be the special instinct I have about who’s already heard which story. When I have an impulse to speak with someone or in a group it’s nearly always accompanied by a corresponding sense of who present may have heard it before. It’s become a point of pride for me…