New Year’s Fireworks, Wild Geese Chased, Fish and Arms, Caller Pre-ID

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: New Year’s Eve Adventures — Happy New Year to ears, noses and throats – and to the people who minister to them! Julia Werz at Ulm University Hospital, Germany, and three colleagues began the celebration early, publishing the […]

Tongue ID

[sometimes it seems as though] As soon a new biometric security technology is developed, someone will find a way to bypass it. (see, for example, Progress in Fake-Finger Thwarting Improbable Research, April 16th, 2010). Steps towards implementing so-called ‘liveness detection’ mechanisms, which detect inert fakes, have helped. But in an ideal world, biometricians would like […]

Bugged by buggy bug IDs

Alex Wild writes in his Compound Eye blog: Why are media insects misidentified? That’s not a bee…. How does a fly end up advertising a book whose target audience, not to mention the mortified authors, will instantly recognize as a mistake? Publishers, photo editors, and stock agencies—those entities that purchase from image creators—trust photographers to correctly […]

Improbable Research