This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them:
- Under footage — The green-and-white sign you see here is plastered on the floor of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts. It says: “MAINTAIN 6 FEET THANK YOU”.Upon inquiry, Feedback was told that no, the sign is not a plea to protect and defend our planet’s insects.
- Lives of the gamers — Here is good news for gamers, from Catarina Matias at LusÓfona University in Portugal and her colleagues. The team studied 235 Portuguese gamers, explaining (in the journal Computers in Human Behavior) that the bulk of them don’t conform to the unhappy stereotype of gamers having “mental disorders and an unhealthy lifestyle pattern“. Detractors say gamers are oddballs. But the study says that…
- Glaring proof — Research done at Texas Tech University prods a person to reflect on a fact: the software in our everyday life grows ever more complex by creating and tackling ever more complex problems, the solutions to which create still more complex problems. Hassan Wasswa and Abdul Serwadda conducted a study called “The proof is in the glare: On the privacy risk posed by eyeglasses in video calls“. They show (they say) that…
- O! E! What? — Non-scientists aren’t alone in their confusion at reading scientific papers. Scientists who glance at papers about specialities other than their own stumble on phrases that baffle them too. Anyone can feel ignorant and embarrassed. Do you know what “O horizon” means? Do you? If a stranger, in conversation, were to say “E horizon”, would you internally cower in confusion and shame? Would you? If you are a scientist who studies tundras, invasive earthworms or soil structure, perhaps you pepper and salt your everyday conversation with those two phrases. Otherwise, Feedback leaves you to your own devices (an internet search, a paper dictionary or a clever 10-year old) to discover what the phrases mean….