This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Cola: a swell tale — … If you are a male mouse who drinks lots of Pepsi or Coca-Cola, and if you mainly enjoy reading manly adventure stories, get yourself a copy of the latest write-up from […]
Seeing that Shakespeare introduced many words to his audiences, the makers of modern homogenizers are using Shakespeare to introduce the introduction of their product’s name to their audience. The nature of the product may already have been familiar to many people because of a charming old ad, reproduced here (thanks to Scott Langill for bringing […]
“This twitter account calls out press releases of studies on mice that discuss the studies as if they were performed on humans,” says Samantha Joel. The twitter feed is @justsaysinmice. The feed itself is the work of James Heathers.
Herpes gladiatorum is caused by a highly infectious version of the human herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) and is associated with high physical-impact sports – it frequently plagues rugby players (who know it as ‘Scrumpox’), along with Judo participants and Sumo Wrestlers. For details of the latter, a paper by Fumihiko Ban, Satoe Asano, Shigeru […]
The proprietor of the EasternBlot blog has made (wrought?) a poem entirely from the titles of 40 academic articles that begin with the phrase “Of Mice and Men”. The poem begins: Of mice and men.2 Of mice and men, metals and mutations.3 Of mice and men, corticosteroids, and vicarious participation.4 Of mice and men–universality and breakdown […]
Wheels sometimes do crop up in nature, especially when a human placed them there. Humans recently did it again, as this report makes clear: “Wheel Running in the Wild,” Johanna H. (“Joke”) Meijer [pictured here] and Yuri Robbers, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, vol. 281 no. 1786, July 7, 2014. The authors, at Leiden University […]
Rumours that Elvis’s DNA lives-on in a race of genetically engineered mice have been greatly exaggerated. Back in 2012 there were a flurry of mainstream (and sidestream) news items covering Koby Barhad’s project ‘All that I am‘. [Please note that some links below, from Archive.org are slow to load, but given time, they should] At […]
“Everyone has heard of a kangaroo court. But how about a court for kangaroos? What about a court for caterpillars? Impossible though it seems, for 250 years French, Italian, and Swiss legal systems had just that. Their ecclesiastic courts tried insects and rodents for property crimes as legal persons under the same laws and according […]
Krystal Paco reports, in Guam News: It’s a bird, it’s a plane, no it’s dead mice baits filled with acetaminophen being dropped from helicopters. As today marked the fourth mice drop atop forested areas of Anderson Airforce Base since September, U.S. Department of Agriculture assistant state director supervisory wildlife biologist Dan Vice explains the process […]
First came rats, now mice, in having offered to them a cure for the ailment known as jetlag. RATS, then: The 2007 Ig Nobel Prize for aviation was awarded to Patricia V. Agostino, Santiago A. Plano and Diego A. Golombek of Universidad Nacionalde Quilmes, Argentina, for their discovery that Viagra aids jetlag recovery in hamsters. [REFERENCE: […]