This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them:
- Intentional cattiness — When cats are forced to endure a crush of mass attention from an adoring public, do they continue to behave in their famous, endearing, imperious “cat-like” ways? Simona Cannas and her colleagues at the University of Milan in Italy produced some data that may bring attention to the question. Their study, “Assessment of cats’ behavior during a cat show“, published in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior, focuses on 82 cats at a cat show. (The researchers, using professional lingo, say the event was “a feline exposition”.) …
- What a yarn — Very long, thin things vary a lot in what their mathematician’s-eye-catching length-to-thinness ratio makes it possible for them to do. A press release from North Carolina State University hails the creation of “yarn-shaped supercapacitors”, so called because the devices are thread-like and can behave as capacitors, controllably storing and disbursing electrical charge….
- Measuring addiction — The old saying “If you can measure it, it must be important” haunts the many research efforts to explain why it is important to measure two of the five fingers on a person’s hand. Specifically, the second and fourth fingers. The two-finger quest kinda, sorta resembles an addiction. Sometimes this quest looks at addiction itself as being, maybe, something you can better understand by measuring fingers….
- The Denver sniff test — When something – and its headline – smells funny, maybe it is worth looking into. People who happen across a sombre study by environmental scientists in the US might react first to the ambiguity of its title: “Evaluating the environmental justice dimensions of odor in Denver, Colorado“….