Cannabis for construction workers, Romance research noir-noir-noir

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Cannabis for construction workers — A Nigerian study from 2015 hints at a cannabis boost to efficiency. Manasseh Iroegbu at the University of Uyo, Nigeria, is lead author of “Exploring the performance of mason workers in the […]

Deep Oesophagus, Snoozing Grumpy Face, Deep Secrets

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has three segments. Here are bits of each of them: Deep Oesophagus — Scientists, as a group, like to think they behave in ways a little distinct from the herd. The herd, as a herd, likes to think so, too. From time to time, Feedback receives furtive […]

A Face that Is Begging to Be Slapped

Words can be used to describe things. A study published in 2019 presents a striking example: “Transformative resources of the terminological internationalization (on the material of German and English),” Vladimir V. Elkin [pictured here], Elena N. Melnikova, and Anna M. Klyoster, in The International Conference Going Global through Social Sciences and Humanities, Springer, Cham, 2019. […]

How Much Older Do You Get When a Wrinkle Appears on Your Face? [study]

“In spite of the presumed relevance of wrinkles on facial age, the topic has received little attention in empirical literature.” Prompting J.Antonio Aznar-Casanova (University of Barcelona, Spain) along with Nelson Alves (Universidade Federal da Paraíba, Brazil) and Sérgio S Fukusima (University of São Paulo, Brazil) to perform a set of two experiments to help clarify […]

Difficult to Recognize: Insights about Recognizing Masked Faces

Some people might find it difficult to recognize the insights in this new study about whether people find it more difficult to recognize faces that are obscured by masks: “The COVID-19 pandemic masks the way people perceive faces,” Erez Freud, Andreja Stajduhar, R. Shayna Rosenbaum, Galia Avidan, and Tzvi Ganel, Scientific Reports, vol. 10, no. […]

Saying “FACE”, in gatherings in pandemic times

How to get people to pay more attention to NOT touching their eyes, nostrils, or mouth? We invited people, in a gathering, to say “FACE” whenever they saw a speaker touching a hand to their face. And most of those people said “FACE”, cheerily—appreciating that they were talking to themselves as much as to the […]