love time
Valentine's Day celebrates coupling. Alan McWilliam told Feedback about an offer he received from a US-based biotech company before the most recent Valentine's Day. It combines charm with other qualities.
Alan says: “I received the following marketing email. I have never before been offered a “free breeding pair of genetically modified mice” for Valentine's Day. What could be more romantic than staring into the eyes of a mouse over the flame of a Bunsen burner before implanting a tumor and humanely euthanizing it a few weeks later? ”
Here are the notes:
“Dear Alan,
love is in the air, [REDACTED]share the love with a special Valentine's Day promotion just for you.
Theme: The perfect combination in research
Promotion: This Valentine's Day, we're giving away a free breeding pair of genetically modified mice using our genetic targeting service.
Coupon code: FREECOUPLE
This limited time offer is designed to enhance your studies and provide you with the perfect study companion. ”
Regardless of the romantic or commercial effects of this offer, its most powerful use may be as a psychological test. How would a person seemingly react to this opportunity?
political restraint
With a growing trove of top-notch data, British psychology researchers are keen to sift through it for lessons about leadership. Feedback infers this from news accounts.
of BMJ (formerly known as this) british medical journal) create medical care Note It has been reported that Chancellor Rishi Sunak is “fasting for 36 hours at the beginning of every week''. Sunak's past and current medical data may be of interest and inspiration to physicians, psychologists, and nutritional researchers. Over time, does the body of evidence expand or contract? How much of that inflation or deflation is due to leaders' first-person food control?
More complete data may already be available about the effects and effectiveness of self-regulation (or basically self-asserted restraint) by former Prime Minister David Cameron, who served as Prime Minister from 2010 to 2016. There is sex.
new scientistA 2015 report on Cameron Fluid Engineering explains: While this technique may be effective, it also appears to help people tell more convincing lies. ”
(By a happy coincidence, the 2011 Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to Award It was given to researchers in the UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Australia and the US to test the effectiveness of the delayed voiding technique. The award was announced naked weeks before Prime Minister David Cameron went public with his penchant for peeing. )
If it someday turns out that other British prime ministers have also exercised restraint, researchers will have even more data available.
Under the tarantula hole
Fascinating and surprising delights about living things can linger in the bibliography section of scientific papers about things that went extinct long ago.
Trilobite researchers still chat about their research. ”Frontal auxiliary impression of the Ordovician trilobite Darmanitina reed, 1905, from Varandian region, Czech Republic.' was published a few years ago. Earth Science Bulletin.
But only the most diligent researchers discovered something unexpected deep in the bibliography section at the end of the paper. It was a reference to the paper “''.Connection between heart and sucking stomach during tarantula ingestionWritten by Jason Dunlop, John Altringham, and Peter Mill, published in 1992 Journal of Experimental Biology.
And deep within that heart- and stomach-sucking paper lurks a different kind of surprise, a reminder that scientists must always proceed with caution. “In the absence of detailed information about the tarantula's body fluid flow, any model is speculative.”
gentle youth
Dave Kirby noticed another cookbook: anarchist cookbookperhaps a warning is needed (feedback suggested something like “If you don't cook the anarchist to the correct temperature, you may run into problems”).
Dave says: “In addition to the books you mentioned, you can also add the following. River Cottage Baby and Toddler Cookbook. My local restaurant's bookshelf is full of cookbooks, and I found this one there a few months ago.
“I was hesitant to look at the fine print on the menu.”
Depending on the cat
This is probably reassuring news for people who fear being temporarily separated from their cats.
A study conducted in California titled “Comparing people's attachment to romantic partners and pet cats'' was published in the journal anthropozoanAccording to a report, some people “don't necessarily need the reassurance from a cat or feel distressed in its absence, as would be the case with a romantic partner.”
Mark Abrahams hosted the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony and co-founded the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Previously, he was working on unusual uses of computers.his website is impossible.com.
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