This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Nut deficiency — What would happen if you removed most of the nuts from the bolts on three of the four sides of a tall electrical power pylon? New data speaks to that question. Newshub reported on […]
“Magpies swoop bald men more often, eight-year-old’s viral survey finds,” says an Australian Broadcasting Corporation report. Some years ago, Australia’s Department for Environment and Water offered this advice: “Magpie swooping season is here! Find out why they swoop and how you can try and avoid them”. And this suggestion: “Carry an open umbrella above your […]
“Medical Research Review: Flower Pot on the Head” is a featured revue article in the special Haphazard issue (volume 27, number 3) of the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Read this article, free, on the web. Then, if a flowerpot on the head inspires you, subscribe to the magazine, or buy individual back issues.
The old technique of judging people by examining their head bumps gets a new looking-at, in this study: “An Empirical, 21st Century Evaluation of Phrenology,” Oiwi Parker Jones, Fidel Alfaro-Almagro, and Saad Jbabdi, bioRxiv 243089, 2018. The authors, at the University of Oxford, UK, explain: Phrenology was a nineteenth century endeavour to link personality traits […]