This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them:
- Lipstick in the brain — Lipstick interacts with the human brain mostly in indirect ways. Kazue Hirabayashi and colleagues have been modernising the search for some of those interactions. Their stated goal is to find “a real-time brain-based product evaluation method which detects the incongruency between a product, in this case lipstick, and a consumer’s expectations”. The latest explorations led to a study called “Right prefrontal activation associated with deviations from expected lipstick texture assessed with functional near-infrared spectroscopy“, published in Frontiers in Neuroergonomics….
- Face value of lipstick— But here is perhaps one better example of lipstick-and-brain-centric interdisciplinary research: a study by Dhuha Hadiyansyah, Era Bawarti and Maria Ulfa at the Al-Azhar University of Indonesia. The trio sought to determine how female students at the university “represented particular meanings through their choice of lipstick colours”….
- Cicadas and tinnitus— This bounty year for cicadas (see “A cicada double brood is coming – it’s less rare than you think“, newscientist.com/article/2427004) has Feedback remembering a medical experiment that used cicadas to treat tinnitus….
- Measured policing— Feedback’s search for hiring restrictions specifying numbers that aren’t based on actual job-performance requirements stirred memories for reader David Curtis. He writes about some history in his country, Australia. “Your request for job requirements based on measurements bring to mind an ad from the 1970s to increase female participation in the police forces. A picture was shown of a male and female in uniform asking the question ‘What is the difference between these two police officers?’ The answer was given as ‘6 inches’. “ …