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And inhaling…
To achieve success in science, having good ideas and conducting effective experiments is beneficial. However, mastering the art of crafting a catchy acronym is essential. If you can distill a description of your project into an acronym, you’ll be onto something great.
That’s how I came up with names like Antarctic Moon, Neutrino Detector Arrays (Amanda), and Telescope Axis Exchange (CoSTAR) in the Modified Optical Space. Unfortunately, some folks resort to manipulating letters to craft the acronyms they desire—leading to humorously awkward titles like the BMJ 2014 paper titled “Title”Search for humor and luxurious acronyms: A completely inappropriate name of a critical clinical trial (science): qualitative and quantitative systematic research.”
A hat tip to Raif Sheeben, Yoel Zimmerman, and their team for a July survey in NPJ Food Science. They developed a “chemical language model for predicting molecular taste,” a machine learning model capable of forecasting the flavor of chemicals based on their molecular structure. Trained on over 15,000 compounds, the researchers successfully categorized tastes into four distinct groups.
Remarkably, this model achieved over 91% accuracy and can assist in flavor creation. Naturally, the team dubbed it a flavour analysis and recognition transformer, or ‘fart’ for short.
Food engineer Andy Clayton flagged this, humorously pointing out that “regardless of its value, one can’t read it without laughing.”
We encourage readers to share their stories about the most ridiculous acronyms and cringe-worthy attempts they’ve encountered in their pursuits.
No surprises here
Feedback called upon readers for “Shit, Sherlock”: an illustration of scientific endeavors that invest extensive time and effort to demonstrate something rather obvious. Your responses have been coming in since.
Maggie Jacobs highlighted an article from Discover about The psychological benefits of loneliness, referencing a 2023 study. This research examined whether individuals reap benefits from maintaining a balance between solitude and social interactions, concluding there was no evidence of an ‘optimal balance.’ It found no negative consequences, especially when people consciously chose to spend time alone. As Maggie aptly states, “When people choose their activities, they tend to be happier.”
For extra context, the study’s authors utilized the outdated term “selective” to suggest individuals are intentionally engaging in activities rather than opting for a more contemporary term like “intentional.”
Meanwhile, Ernest Ager pointed out the obvious title of a The Conversation article: “Can you spot a ‘fake’ accent? It depends on where you’re from.” While it seems straightforward, the findings were even clearer: people from the US, Canada, and Australia are less adept at identifying fake versions of various UK accents than those native to the UK.
Farewell to Tom
We were saddened to hear of Tom Lehrer’s passing on July 26th. He was a brilliant satirical singer-songwriter renowned for his clever takes on mathematics. His song element has undoubtedly become his most recognizable tune. Thanks to countless devoted chemistry educators, Feedback appreciates his satirical take on nuclear warfare in songs like When we go, we all go together and his delightfully dark love songs such as Masochistic Tango.
In 2022, Lehrer made all of his music available under copyright, so you can access it freely at Tomlehrersongs.com. We highly recommend checking out the site for a treasure trove of lesser-known tracks that weren’t part of his popular albums.
For instance, we hadn’t encountered his piece Love Song by a Physical Anthropologist before. It humorously critiques that “every traditional love song that addresses the physical attributes of a beloved individual limits its praise to features like hair, eyes, and lips, whereas physical anthropologists can utilize an extensive array of descriptive adjectives” and hence, “I love you / she is beautiful, she is enchanting / it is traumatic, vascular, riffipilous, laryngeal production / my gal of metriocephaly.”
We were curious to discover, via Opalescentopal on Bluesky, some of the clever antics Lehrer pulled while serving in the US military. Notably, he worked for the NSA, and one of his papers is now publicly available at his discretion, titled “Defeating the gambler with his heartfelt enemies.” It delves into enduring mathematical challenges.
At the conclusion of the 1957 paper, there are six references, one of which is humorously attributed to “Lobachevsky,” relating to analytical and algebraic topology, claiming it discusses a topology of infinitely differentiable Lemanian local Euclidean metrics. [sic] This is actually a joke, referencing Lehrer’s own “Lobachevsky” rather than a legitimate mathematical paper.
This is how people play the long game. A very long game, indeed, Tom.
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