Turning point
For bedtime reading to preschoolers who love engineering, there is nothing quite like , published recently in Industrial Lubrication and Tribology. The title is a vocabulary builder and a soporific. However, the details may be too complex for the youngest youngsters.
So鈥� how to foster a toddler鈥檚 yen to engineer? Tell them about things that roll. Things that rotate. Feed their fondness for things that seem to go round and round without necessarily going anywhere. Tempt them with facts about ball bearings.
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Tell them that many things that turn, turn on the ability of many things to turn with minimal friction and vibration. These, in turn, depend on the skill of the engineers who measure the roundness of ball bearings and other mechanical components that spin.
Tell them that insights make possible later insights, each gained through painstaking experiment and measurement. For example, a in 2004 examined 鈥渢he effect of ball bearing waviness鈥�. A year later, engineers were treated to the publication of a paper called .
And that paper, in its own turn, led to a study published this year in the journal Scientific Reports. It is called .
The authors lament that 鈥渢here is relatively little research on the rotational accuracy of rolling bearings鈥�. For youthful great explorers, keen for adventure, this unmapped territory beckons.
A biting issue
A toothy smile can be a pretty sweet prelude to violence. David Sweet and Iain Pretty tried to make that clear in their study , published in the British Dental Journal in 2001. 鈥淗uman bitemarks are most often found on the skin of victims,鈥� they write, adding to the drama thus: 鈥渢hey may be found on almost all parts of the human body鈥�.
Pretty and Sweet didn鈥檛 stop there. Nine years later they published . Their new message: be wary, because the appearance of bite marks cuts both ways. They describe evidence that skin, especially cadaver skin that is used for research into bite marks, isn鈥檛 鈥渁n accurate material鈥� for recording and preserving bite marks. Pretty and Sweet conclude: 鈥淏itemarks have the ability to exonerate the innocent, protect children from harmful caregivers, and convict the guilty. However, they also may be the enemy of natural justice.鈥�
This year, Pretty took on a sweeter subject. He co-authored a study about . The rituals that first-time parents try to establish for very young children 鈥� routines 鈥渋deally including toothbrushing鈥�, says the study 鈥� can be instilled rapidly. The trick is to have someone send the parents text messages filled with support and information every night.
Four years ago, Pretty also peered into the story, and not a very sweet one, of older people and their teeth. The Pretty team looked at what happens when you ask some older folk the question:
The answer, as described in a study in the International Journal of Health Services: plenty.
On arithmomania
The new study 鈥淧layfully Studious Teaching as a Reparative Affective Replacement for Microfascism鈥�, by Nick Kasparek, published in the Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, includes things that may be unfamiliar to non-specialists. Perhaps most intriguing is the mention of a 2019 study called 鈥淎rithmomania and the art of rounding鈥�, by Fidelio Tata.
鈥淎rithmomania is the clinical description of a mental disorder causing people to engage in obsessive-compulsive counting,鈥� explains Tata, offering this example: 鈥淒uring presentations, some people feels [sic] the urge to verify row and column sums in data tables.鈥�
Tata explains that, commonly, presenters tweak their numbers 鈥渢o give them the appearance of being correct鈥�. The tweaking takes a toll on any people with arithmomania in the audience. Tata suggests that when preparing a talk that includes data tables, one can do anyone with arithmomania a kindness by including a sudoku in the presentation.
This condition is an intriguing puzzle to brain scientists and psychiatrists. Two, at least, of its medically reported causes are a bit grisly. A report in the journal Revue Neurologique, called , was published in 1992. More than four decades earlier, C. Boittelle explained in Annales Medico-Psychologiques how one patient鈥檚 condition was a side effect of surgery. The paper鈥檚 title neatly summarises the affair: .
Maddeningly, for scientists and people with arithmomania, and for those who count themselves as being both, the exact number of causes for the condition could turn out to be uncountable.
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