How to Waste Waste

It is possible to waste waste. Leaders of one nation’s government are taking forcible, self-trumpeted actions that will lead to wasting a whole lot of waste. Very special waste, that has been painstakingly gathered, preserved, and studied by the biomedical research community. This waste waste is potentially: a triumph for disease a point of pride […]

Dog tail wagging, Donald Duck dam jubilee, Anti-covid tea-gargling, Urine on acorns

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Chasing the tale — Silvia Leonetti and colleagues in the Netherlands, Italy, Austria, the US and Denmark don’t quite explain why dogs wag their tails, but they do explain that it is hard to explain. In a paper […]

Gift mice, Politicians’ food and pee, Tarantula sucking, Tender youth, Cat dependence

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has five segments. Here are bits of each of them: Time for love — Valentine’s Day celebrates coupling. Alan McWilliam tells Feedback about an offer he received, before the most recent Valentine’s Day, from a US-based biotechnology company. It couples charm with other qualities. Alan says: “I […]

Deep Learning to Help People Know Your Shit

A new, distinct form of backend processing— a very distant relative of potty training, for computers—is presented in this new study: “A mountable toilet system for personalized health monitoring via the analysis of excreta,” Seung-min Park, Daeyoun D. Won, Brian J. Lee, Diego Escobedo, Andre Esteva, Amin Aalipour, T. Jessie Ge, Jung Ha Kim, Susie […]

Improbable Research