This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them:
- Time for a nap — Brainy people get to dream a little more than not-quite-so-brainy people, correlationally speaking, if their brains and genomes accord with the findings of researchers from the University of the Republic in Uruguay, University College London and the Broad Institute in Massachusetts. “Our findings suggest a modest causal association between habitual daytime napping and larger total brain volume,” the researchers say in a study published in the journal Sleep Health…. Feedback is eager to see the modesty of the causal association evident in future head-size-normalised, genome-augmented studies, if there are any, of habitual daytime napping in huge and tiny animals (elephants, perhaps, and fruit flies), in notoriously nap-loving dogs and cats, and in two and three-toed sloths….
- Beyond sloth sleep — awakened to the range of sloth unknowns, an Australian team has published a study called “Sloths: The unusual hairs from these shaggy heteroclites“. The researchers hasten to explain their interest…
- Apples and onions — Elizabeth Gilliard cries foul over a medical team’s inconclusive conclusion, as reported by Feedback on 12 August, that “the effects of apples and apple derivatives on disease risk reduction are both challenging and encouraging”. “The present day maxim is a corruption,” Elizabeth tells Feedback, because “the original was ‘an onion a day keeps the doctor away’, and a roast onion is still reckoned good for colds.” Researchers in the US looked at the apple/onion distinction, then presented their findings at the American Thoracic Society’s 2023 International Conference in Washington DC….
- Eclipse of a meeting — Two persistent activities that physicists pride themselves on: achieving higher accuracy and seeking awareness of confounding factors. The American Physical Society (APS) displayed both qualities in this recent announcement…