Can you hear the strains of an imaginary Bing Crosby?

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has three segments. Here’s how each of them begins: May your daze be merry — A recent study builds on more than half a century of experiments to see whether people think they hear Bing Crosby crooning White Christmas. Crosby’s recording of the song, released in […]

Old Tea Leaves for Supercapacitors

Not everyone uses used tea leaves to make supercapacitors. The authors of this study are among the people who do: “Eco-Friendly and High Performance Supercapacitors for Elevated Temperature Applications Using Recycled Tea Leaves,” Sanket Bhoyate, Charith K. Ranaweera, Chunyang Zhang, Tucker Morey, Megan Hyatt, Pawan K. Kahol, Madhav Ghimir, Sanjay R. Mishra, and Ram K. […]

As the ball bearing turns / Pretty Sweet biting / Arithmomania

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has three segments. Here’s how each of them ends: Turning point—… And that paper, in its own turn, led to a study published this year in the journal Scientific Reports. It is called “Influence of roundness errors of bearing components on rotational accuracy of cylindrical roller […]

Sleeping in the Audience at Science Meetings

At least one co-author of this study stayed awake while the data for the research was being collected. Probably. The study is: “Dreaming During Scientific Papers: Effects of Added Extrinsic Material,” Richard F. Harvey, Melvin B. Schullinger, Alexis Stassinopoulos, and Erica Winkle, British Medical Journal (Clinical Research Edition), vol. 287, no. 6409, 1983, pp. 1916-1919. […]

Karaoke endurance / Kinetics and monkeypox / lint as renewable / biosupercapacitor

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here’s how each of them ends: Sing it loud—… One implication from that intensive Hong Kong experiment: most karaoke singers manage to keep the quality of their singing fairly constant, no matter what. Kinetic excitement— … Then the word “kinetics” takes centre stage, […]