Marc Abrahams's Blog, page 38

The Very Mention of a Modern Maybe Generalist

Generalists take note of this study, about a certain wasp:

“Ormyrus labotus (Hymenoptera: Ormyridae): Another Generalist that Should Not Be a Generalist Is Not a Generalist,” Sofia I. Sheikh, Anna KG Ward, Y. Miles Zhang, Charles K. Davis, Linyi Zhang, Scott P. Egan, and Andrew A. Forbes, Insect Systematics and Diversity, vol. 6, no. 1, 2022.

 

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 four 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 strained biological puns. Knapp is a postdoctoral researcher at the Natural History Museum, London. His co-punners are scattered across the UK and the US. In concert, they wrote a paper called “How to Tuna Fish: Constraint, convergence, and integration in the neurocranium of pelagiarian fishes”. It occupies several pages in the journal Evolution….Parsnippety Bonobos —Parsnips have become a go-to tool for testing and manipulating the emotions of bonobos. Jonas Verspeek and Jeroen Stevens at the Royal Zoological Society of Antwerp in Belgium recorded video of 38 sessions in which they handed bonobos either a grape, which was delicious, or a parsnip, which was OK, but not as delicious. Verspeek and Stevens had earlier judged the relative deliciousness, to bonobos at least, of grapes and parsnips…Fashionable Superpower — Feedback continues its search for trivial superpowers – abilities to perform tasks that may seem mundane to their wielders, but impossible to most other people. Some such powers may be innately colourful, and two examples pop out from the swirl of responses to Feedback’s invitation to help catalogue them. The innately colourful Diane Tunnell says: “I have the ability to carry a colour shade accurately in my head so I don’t have need for swatches when looking for a match.” …

Religious Devotion, Inspired by Black Goo

In an essay called “Patience Amid Long Experiments“, in the Adventist Review, Justin Kim says “The pitch-drop experiment teaches our faith community some lessons.” Kim goes on to explain:

“A parody of the world-famous Nobel Prize, the Ig Nobel Prize was established in 1991 to recognize achievements that first ‘make people laugh, then think.’ In 2005, this ‘honor’ was given jointly to John Mainstone and the late Thomas Parnell of the University of Queensland for one of the world’s longest experiments called the pitch-drop experiment….

“More than 500 years ago, another long-term experiment started among God’s reforming church. This experiment tested whether the Bible was really the only source of authority for the Christian (sola scriptura), was the first source against which all other things were tested (prima scriptura), and whether the entire Bible could really be interpreted by itself (tota scriptura). Nearly 174 years ago this experiment began, and it continues its maturity in God’s Advent movement.”

 

The special FORMULAS & RECIPES issue of the magazine

The special FORMULAS & RECIPES issue (vol. 29, no. 3) of the magazine is now out and about. The table of contents and several of the articles are online.

As you might guess, it’s full of improbable research about formulas, and also research about recipes.

You might want to subscribe, or buy a copy of this issue, or snag some back issues. They are all in magnificent PDF form.

Aesthetic scrotums, Workaday, Me-in-a-museum

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has three segments. Here are the beginnings of each of them:

Aesthetic scrotums — Surprises abound in “The scrotum: A comparison of men’s and women’s aesthetic assessments”, a study done by plastic surgeon Carolin Eimer in Hamburg, Germany, and two colleagues at the Medical School of Hamburg.It begins by citing a 27-year-old psychology paper called “Gender and attractiveness biases in hiring decisions: Are more experienced managers less biased?” It avers that “studies have yet to investigate aesthetic preferences as regards the scrotum”. It…Workaday experiment — What would two scientists discover by adding some small requirements to a person’s work day, then later removing one requirement?Here are the added requirements. (1) Eat nothing overnight or in the morning before coming to work. (2) Arrive at work more than an hour earlier than usual. (3) Prior to beginning the day’s work, sit quietly for 15 minutes while technicians prepare to wire you up so they can record electrical activity from your brain and heart as you do some mental tasks (in which you look at visual images and decide whether to press a button). Then, (4) fill out a 24-item survey designed to get at the question “How do you feel right now?” Then, (5) let the technicians extract a small amount of your blood. Then…Me-in-a-museum — Have you discovered, in a museum, some non-human exhibit that looks startlingly like you? A taxidermied bird, perhaps, or a rock sample, or a historic old shoe? A waxwork flower? A fossil? Maybe a painted or sculpted depiction of some animal, vegetable, microbe or molecule? If so, we would love to hear about it….

‘Frozen Finger’ in Anal Fissures, Appreciated

“Acute anal fissures are usually managed by various invasive and non-invasive modalities ranging from simple lifestyle changes to chemical and surgical sphincterotomies. Frozen finger, prepared using a water-filled ordinary rubber glove, was successfully used in one hundred patients, thus providing a cost-effective and simple solution to the problem.”

That’s a quote from the study ” ‘Frozen Finger’ in Anal Fissures” (by Megha Tandon and Rohan Khandelwal, published in Tropical Doctor, vol. 39, no. 4, 2009, pp. 225-226 ), perused in the article “Medical Research: Walking in Water, Frozen Finger, Chilling Hand” in the special WATER issue (vol. 29, no. 2) of the magazine.

Counting moths

Counting moths is not as easy as it may seem. Jamm Hostetler, and collaborators at the University of Florida’s Natural History Museum, created a system to count moths more indefatigably than most people would be able to do it.

It’s called AutoMoth. The heart and eyes of it are an Android app called BioLens. Biolens is, in official language, “A flexible, open-source Android app for interval imaging and wildlife monitoring.” Biologists, professional or amateur, use it to count all sorts of critters that fly, walk, crawl, or in whatever way move themselves from here (wherever that is) to there (wherever that is).

Two Generations (and Counting) of Counting

Jamm Hostetler is following in, and whooshing in parallel to, the footsteps or wingbeats of his father, entomologist Mark Hostetler. In 1997 Mark Hostetler was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize for entomology, for his scholarly book, That Gunk on Your Car, which identifies the insect splats that appear on automobile windows.

Spacey & Timely Superpowers, Life in Triplicate, Man Sniffs Dog

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are the beginnings of each of them:

Spacey superpowers — Some people have a superior knowledge, and maybe control, of space and direction. That is evident in the harvest from Feedback’s call to identify trivial superpowers – a person’s ability to reliably do some particular task that seems mundane to them, but that most people find impossible to do except once in a while by sheer luck. Also evident, in the views expressed by some harvesters, is that other people have an inferior knowledge.Martin Pettinger says: “I almost always can sense which direction is north (or east/west/south) without looking at a map or the sun. My children can also do it, but my second wife and her family, and apparently others, cannot.”Jan Horton says…Timely superpowers — Other people have a superior knowledge of time. These time-related abilities may be the most beneficial of trivial superpowers.Bonnie Packert says: “I have no idea whether this is common. I shared this ‘talent’ with my father but have not heard from others who could do the same. When I set an alarm to wake up, I usually awaken just before it goes off, within a minute or two of the set time, maybe as much as five minutes early. It is nice not to have to listen to the blaring and to leave my partner sleeping peacefully.”George Greider says:Life in triplicate — While perusing the latest crop of research news about estimating mesocarnivore abundance on commercial farmland using distance sampling with camera traps, Feedback happened across a paper by three researchers from Durham University, UK, who happened across some Caracal caracal caracal.Caracal caracal caracal is, it is perhaps needless to state, one of several species that have been graced with a triple tautonym for their formal scientific name.A tautonym is a name – for some particular kind of animal, plant, alga, fungus or whatever – that has the same word for both genus and species. A triple tautonym has that same word repeated a third time for the subspecies.Caracal caracal caracal brought to mind Bison bison bison. Bison bison bison triggered memories of Bufo bufo bufo….Man sniffs dog — A twist on the old joke about “man bites dog” is playing out in homes where well-groomed dogs live together with (presumably) well-groomed people. “Dog Cosmetics: Another unexpected source of allergen exposure” reads the headline of a report in the journal Contact Dermatitis.Authors Livia Francine Soriano, Shannon Kimberly Soriano and Deirdre Buckley surveyed “all 163 dog cosmetic products sold face-to-face in five high street pet stores in Southampton, UK”, paying special attention to the lists of ingredients….

Longing for a long-named product

If you have long longed for a product with a long, long name, your wait is potentially nearly over. You can choose to find and purchase a “Custom Printed Aluminum Foil Mylar Kraft Paper Stand up Flat Bottom Side Gusset Food Grade Packaging Bag Pouch with Zipper Recyclable Barrier Rice Coffee Bag“.

The Peace Prize, and the Peace Prize

“The Nobel Peace Prize has never been awarded to a character whose work has been to reduce armies and their weapons permanently. For this reason, in 1991, and with a didactic desire, an alternative Committee was created that awards the Ig Nobel prizes…”

— So writes Antonio German Torres, in his essay [here translated from Spanish to English] titled “Peace Prayer”, in La Comarca