This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has five segments. Here are bits of each of them: Time for love — Valentine’s Day celebrates coupling. Alan McWilliam tells Feedback about an offer he received, before the most recent Valentine’s Day, from a US-based biotechnology company. It couples charm with other qualities. Alan says: “I […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Corporate determinism — Nominative determinism occurs not just to people, but also to companies. This is evident from an Associated Press report about a lawsuit aimed at a firm named Chopt Creative Salad Company: “The lawsuit filed […]
Mark Benecke, forensic entomologist and international theatrical star, sends this review of the dining facilities at CERN, the vast particle physics laboratory located on and under both sides of the Swiss-French border, partly in Geneva. [This continues a long AIR tradition of reviewing dining facilities at science research facilities.] Two of the restaurants (for U.S. […]
The Journal of Food Science has a nice essay today (October 16, 2023) about the Ig Nobel Prizes. We take the liberty of reproducing it here: EDITORIAL Ig Nobel awards This month’s topic will be a little different, although I promise to bring the discussion back to peer review next month, as we look back […]
A research study about lights, food, a rotating chair, and earmuffs is featured the “May We Recommend” column in the special Rotation and Spinning issue (volume 28, number 5) of the magazine. You can read that article free online. Better still, buy a copy of the issue (it’s in PDF form). Or better better still, subscribe […]
Cold, wet, and wobbly though it may be, the blancmange has not been ignored by academia. Many of its aspects – culinary, historical, technical, sensory, and mathematical – have been the subject of scholarly explorations. Here are some example studies : ● From Fast to Feast: Analyzing the Ubiquitous “White Dish” Called Blancmange by Erin Sunshine […]
“Breatharianism is a type of belief system started by Jasmuheen… that hypothesizes and claims to prove that humans can live without consuming solid foods…. She even received the Ig Nobel prize, a satirical parody of the true Nobel Prize, which means she joined the likes of L Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology and the […]
The original meaning of the word ‘corporation’ strongly hints at the idea that a firm can be regarded, in some ways (including, on occasion, legally) as a ‘person’. Could the idea of corporality be expanded to include ‘organizations’? If so, what if they eat too much – or too little? Professor Miguel Pina e Cunha […]
“It all started in 2008, when Professor Charles Spence received the Ig Nobel Prize for his “sonic chip” experiment. Nothing to do with the Nobel Prize, but a recognition for the strangest and most absurd researches, which first make you laugh and then make you think. And in fact the study on the Pringles made […]
People eat sandwiches to give themselves energy. A new study explains how to get electricity from those sandwiches without going to the bother of eating them. The study is: “Sandwich as a Triboelectric Nanogenerator,” Jingyi Jiao, Qixin Lu, Zhonglin Wang, Yong Qin, and Xia Cao, Nano Energy, vol. 79, no. 105411, September 2020. The authors, […]