Trouble flaring up
BAD news, everyone. On 23 August, skywatchers received an ominous red alert from AuroraWatch, after sensors at Lancaster University, UK, registered an off-the-charts spike in geomagnetic activity. Rather than encouraging people to rush to prominent outcrops to see the aurora, a solar flare of that magnitude ought to have sent recipients scrambling into underground bunkers, from which they could emerge months later to rebuild civilisation from the charred remains at the surface.
As Feedback is writing this, and you are reading it, this scorching finale obviously never took place. An posted to the AuroraWatch website later that day announced that the red alert had been cancelled: the source of the disturbance was in fact 鈥渃aused by University staff mowing the grass on a sit-on mower鈥�.
Advertisement
鈥淚mmortal words from the i newspaper, in which a headline announces: 鈥溾�溾赌�
Men鈥檚 liberation
GOOD news, everyone. Sexism is over, according to the majority of US men by the Pew Research Centre. Of those questioned, 56 per cent agreed with the statement: 鈥渙bstacles that once made it harder for women than men to get ahead are now largely gone鈥�. Strangely enough, just 34 per cent of women felt the same way.
Political leaning also tipped the scales: only 35 per cent of Republicans felt that 鈥渟ignificant obstacles still make it harder for women to get ahead than men鈥�, compared with 68 per cent of worrywart Democrats. The results emphasise that there is at least one significant obstacle facing women in the world: convincing half of men that sexism exists.
Me in mind
FEEDBACK previously discovered that male scientists鈥� favourite expert to cite was, invariably, themselves (20 August). Guy Cox is reminded of a study he read in the early 1970s.
鈥淚t compared scores in the Science Citation Index with academic position attained,鈥� he writes. Generally, 鈥渢he more citations an academic鈥檚 papers received, the higher he or she got on the academic ladder鈥�.
However, when the study authors ran the numbers again, after subtracting self-citations, the correlation evaporated. A literal case of self promotion?
Banish the blues
HE鈥橪L be back 鈥� wearing some snazzy yellow shades. Arnold Schwarzenegger is just one of the celebrities spotted toting , mustard-tinted spectacles that promise to make you 鈥渟leep better, burn fat, get focused, feel energised鈥� and most importantly, perhaps, 鈥渓ook cool鈥�.
The glasses are designed to block blue light from mobile devices, popularly believed to disrupt sleep cycles and the most fashionable pollutant to avoid since BPA. But how does wearing these glasses help you burn fat, get focused and feel energised? Er, by getting more sleep, according to the Swannies website.
You could just go to bed an hour earlier. But for those who can鈥檛 give up their late night Twitter binges, it may be cheaper and more convenient to install one of many free apps that gradually reduce the blue light content in your device鈥檚 display as the day wears on. Question is, would you 鈥渓ook cool鈥� favouriting the Governator鈥檚 photos on Instagram if you did it without a pair of yellow glasses on?
Cell biology
PREVIOUSLY, Feedback discussed how scatty naming conventions were confounding attempts to compile stool-related research (27 August).
Now scientists have uncovered a new categorisation error: 20 per cent of scientific papers in genetics journals contain mutations produced by contact with Microsoft Excel.
Writing in , the authors say that the popular spreadsheet program introduces transcription errors to many genes, converting septin 2 (SEPT2) to a date, and so forth.
The bug was most frequently found in files of supplementary data, 鈥渁n important resource in the genomics community that are frequently reused鈥�. Feedback reminds geneticists that it鈥檚 important to sanitise your tables 鈥� both in the lab and beyond.
Why the long face?
WATCH out for bored-looking horses. Aleksandra G贸recka-Bruzda and her colleagues have been studying yawning patterns in wild and domestic varieties, writes Dieter Britz. Writing in , the researchers say that while there was no difference in the frequency of yawning between the two, aggressive colts tended to yawn more often. They hypothesise that yawning may help to reduce tension. We find a nap helps with both.
None hotter
SELF-CONFESSED pedant John McCallum writes: 鈥�, reporting on the record hot July, said that it 鈥榓dded weight to fears that 2016 will go down in history as the hottest year since records began鈥�.鈥�
Why is this to be feared, asks John. If 2016 proved to be the high-water mark in global warming, surely that would be a good thing.
鈥淚f, on the other hand, there is a subsequently hotter year, then it is unlikely that 2016 will go down in history after all.鈥�