Suspicious eyes, Dad’s superpower, Poo proofs, Apple-a-day

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Suspicious eyes — In the year 2001, US president George W. Bush foreshadowed a hope that decades later would pervade the robotics industry. Bush stood next to Russian president Vladimir Putin at a press conference in Slovenia […]

Sheepish Fears, Tooth Diversity, Crepitus, 4-Leaf Clovers

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Sheepish fears — … They performed experiments exposing sheep to a dog sitting in a window, and to the window without the dog. They tried giving the sheep drugs to reduce anxiety and giving them drugs to […]

Bite mark vagueness; Dr. Lean and Dr. Stout; Duck-swan mutual dining; Knitting

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has five segments. Here are bits of each of them: Biting biting remarks — …Bite-mark analysis hoo-ha, so far, mostly applies to identifying human biters. Mostly, but not entirely. Enter a new paper called “Forensic determination of shark species as predators and scavengers of sea turtles in […]

Does “the earthquake chewed my data” trump “the dog ate my homework”?

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has five segments. Here are the beginnings of each of them: Earthquake snack — The traditional excuse “the dog ate my homework” has a new counterpart: “the earthquake chewed my data.” … Strained fishy pun — Andrew Knapp and colleagues have added to the history of […]