This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them:
- Hair pulling — Yes, when someone pulls your hair – if you have enough hair that someone can pull it – it hurts. But the truth of why that is, and some of the how much and some of the how, has only recently become evident, thanks to a team of researchers scattered across several countries….
- Honestly? — If you want to know the truth about dishonesty, good luck to you. That seems the underlying message from František Bartoš at the University of Amsterdam. His study called “The untrustworthy evidence in dishonesty research” looks at lots of evidence. Then it heaves what appears to be a sigh: “In conclusion, caution is advised when relying on or applying the existing literature on dishonesty.” …
- Self-crumbling satellite — Almost no one wants to have a satellite fall from its decayed orbit, plummet down, down, down and bonk them. That’s why a team of researchers has been playing with ways to make a self-crumbling satellite – building it partially of material that will automatically degrade as the thing plunges into the atmosphere, rendering the big solid object into little bits that burn to near-nothingness….
- Coconuts and self-colonoscopy — Two further additions to Feedback’s collection of research studies with titles that are useful either for starting or stopping conversations. First up, “Injuries due to falling coconuts” dropped into an issue of The Journal of Trauma in 1984. And then “Colonoscopy in the sitting position: Lessons learned from self-colonoscopy by using a small-caliber, variable-stiffness colonoscope” was inserted into the journal Gastrointestinal Endoscopy in 2006.