This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them:
- A frothy matter — A report called “Beer foam is a carrier of aroma” may be the crushing blow beer foam aroma sceptics – if there are any – feared….
- Hierarchy of dog needs — … Maslow’s list of universal human needs motivated several generations of psychologists to write thousands of papers. And perhaps to take pride in using the non-vernacular phrase “self-actualization”…. Over decades, the list – and its usefulness to scholars – evolved. Now, in 2023, it has become superhuman. Karen Griffin, Saskia Arndt and Claudia Vinke at Utrecht University in the Netherlands wrote a study called “The adaptation of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to the hierarchy of dogs’ needs using a consensus building approach“….
- Hierarchy of dino needs — Recently, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs also lent itself to the scholarly appraisal of two movies. Tidtaya Puteri Larasanty made it the heart of her 2023 dissertation at Diponegoro University, Indonesia. She called it “Hierarchy of needs of the main character in The Good Dinosaur (2015) movie“….
- Superpowerlessnesses— David Collins demonstrates a classic technique of scientific inquiry: look at the opposite of something that is already known. He studied Feedback’s collection of trivial superpowers and says: “I was becoming depressed at the astonishing range of superpowers claimed by New Scientist readers. So I offer my own contribution. I have no sense of direction….