Multi-frightening birds; Two more trivial superpowers; AI sheep-counting

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Multi-scare the birds — …Their report advises that: “At present, there is no bird control technique that provides maximum protection for crops, so it is recommended to use a combination of scaring methods at the same […]

“Is everything we eat associated with cancer?”

A new study looks at a plethora of glancing looks at cause and effect. The study is: “Is everything we eat associated with cancer? A systematic cookbook review,” Jonathan D Schoenfeld and John PA Ioannidis, Amercian Journal of Clinical Nutrition, epub November 28, 2012. The authors report: Objective: We aimed to examine the conclusions, statistical […]

Mathematicians who (or that) scare him

Daniel Look [pictured here], now an assistant professor of mathematics at St. Lawrence University, once created a web page called “Mathematicians That Scare Me“. (A non-mathematician might have phrased it differently: “Mathematicians Who Scare Me”. The link is now dead, alas — was it too scary? Perhaps someone will ask Professor Look to resurrect it. […]