This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has five segments. Here are the beginnings of each of them: Earthquake snack — The traditional excuse “the dog ate my homework” has a new counterpart: “the earthquake chewed my data.” … Strained fishy pun — Andrew Knapp and colleagues have added to the history of […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are the beginnings of each of them: Spacey superpowers — Some people have a superior knowledge, and maybe control, of space and direction. That is evident in the harvest from Feedback’s call to identify trivial superpowers – a person’s ability to reliably do […]
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, […]
“Did My Cat Just Hit On Me? An Adventure in Pet Translation“, a report in the New York Times on August 29, 2022, by Emily Anthes, tells about new attempts to build computer-based devices that will translate cats’ and dogs’ utterances into human speech. The report does not mention that these devices follow in the footsteps […]
“Icky Cutesy Research: Lettuce Lego, Dog” (read the article free, here online) is a featured article in the special ICE CREAM issue (volume 28, number 1) of the magazine, Annals of Improbable Research.
The quest to more often communicate with one’s dog, if one has a dog, takes a big bounce forward with the invention of a tennis-ball-based dog-to-human internet communication system. A new study offers detail on how, and how well, it works: “Forming the Dog Internet: Prototyping a Dog-to-Human Video Call Device,” Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas, Roosa Piitulainen, […]
“It is desirable that dogs that perform jobs in restaurants, hospitals or other health care facilities, and manufacturing areas wear distinctive garments to indicate that they are service dogs and not unauthorized pets. Such garments are preferably also protective for the dogs and for the facility.” United States Patent 7975656 , assigned to Californian inventor […]
Scientists barked like dogs at toads to make them pee in order to save the species from extinction, according to an Associated Press report by Dánica Coto: 1st in vitro Puerto Rico crested toad gives scientists hope …Extracting semen from toads that measure up to 4.5 inches (11 centimeters) long is normally easy: they release […]
Alexander Levin has joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists™ (LFHCfS). Russell Moss, who nominated him, says: Dr. Levin is a renowned researcher of grapes. He loves to water them and also not water them and write papers about it. One thing that he is careful to water are his long curly locks. Tales […]
Scary animals, a new study reveals, can be separated into five distinct clusters : “(1) non‐slimy invertebrates; (2) snakes; (3) mice, rats, and bats; (4) human endo‐ and exoparasites (intestinal helminths and louse); and (5) farm/pet animals. However, only snakes, spiders, and parasites evoke intense fear and disgust in the non‐clinical population.” The diagram below […]