This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has five segments. Here are bits of each of them: Catochromatograph — Laboratories looking to purchase a highly efficient coiled parallel gas chromatograph could save money by instead adopting and adapting a cat. Perhaps. A study called “Domestic cat nose functions as a highly efficient coiled […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has three segments. Here are bits of each of them: Flowery polymorphic perversion — … Grażyna Gajewska at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland is one of the few academics who is now overtly studying polymorphic perversion on a broad, societal level. Her recent treatise “Polymorphic perversion […]
Over several million years, Venus Flytraps have been triggered to snap shut by flies. A new research project has shown they can also be triggered by a mouse – viz. a computer mouse [As shown in the video above]. The many and varied possibilities of creating ‘Cyborg Plants’ has been investigated by Harpreet Sareen of […]
“Waiter, there’s plastic in my lettuce” isn’t a phrase you’d expect to hear very often. Nevertheless, several studies have now shown that plants can, and do, take-up microplastics [MPs] from the soil and incorporate them into stems, roots and leaves. Should we be worried – or happy? The latter is a possibility that should be […]
Medical Energetics Ltd. of Galway, Ireland, has just been granted (Nov. 2018) a US patent for the invention of ‘Agricultural applications of a double helix conductor’ (DHC) The extraordinariness of which can probably only be appreciated by reading the patent document [click link or image above]. The company has also applied for another patent (March […]
A new project, promoted by a beer company, offers a promotional video called “How drones are helping to plant trees“: If successful, this project will to some extent offset the damage caused when drones crash into trees. Numerous videos document the phenomenon of drones crashing into trees. Here’s a video that compiles a very few […]
Troy Hurtubise, who won an Ig Nobel Prize in 1998 for devising and personally testing a suit of armor that he hopes will protect him against grizzly bears, has now invented and personally tested a machine that promotes the growth of hair on human heads, and also promotes the growth of plants, Chris Dawson of […]
Confused about the difference between the effects of plant size on (1) industrial relations and on (2) the expression of cleistogamy in Mimulus nasutus? These two studies might help you sort it all out: The influence of Plant Size on Industrial Relations, Sherrill Cleland [pictured here], Princeton University, 1955. and “The Effect of Plant Size on […]
This patent application describes how to use a human corpse to grow part of a copse: “Corpse Treatment Method,” U.S. Patent Application 12/160,699, Evert Dirk Van Ramshorst, filed January 15, 2007. “A new form of corpse treatment has also been developed: freeze-drying or lyophilization. In freeze-drying the body of the deceased is cooled to -18° […]