Earthquake snack
The traditional excuse 鈥渢he dog ate my homework鈥� has a new counterpart: 鈥渢he earthquake chewed my data.鈥�
reports the case of Atsunori Kamiya at Okayama University in Japan, who is accused of faking data in a paper published in Nature Neuroscience. Kamiya is lead author.
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According to Retraction Watch, which cites information from the university, Japanese newspapers and the journal: 鈥淲hen asked for the paper鈥檚 underlying data, Kamiya claimed that the hard disk storing them fell and broke during the June 2018 North Osaka earthquake. The paper versions were destroyed after chemical liquids from refrigerators and shelves fell on them during the earthquake, Kamiya told investigators.鈥� At the time of writing, Kamiya鈥檚 study hasn鈥檛 been retracted, but its status may be on shaky ground while investigators doggedly pursue the truth.
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 . It occupies several pages in the journal Evolution. The neurocranium is the portion of the skull that surrounds and protects the brain. The paper tells how eons of evolution are likely to have fine-tuned the now-characteristic shapes of the neurocranium in different kinds of fish.
Blatantly fishy as it is, the paper鈥檚 title is a piece of evidence about people 鈥� evidence that the human neurocranium adequately, though unfortunately, protects the machinery that produces moan-inducing puns.
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, that adventure in the journal Primates.
Thus, armed with a fair amount of confidence in the relative desirability of the fruit and the vegetable, Verspeek and Stevens felt able to stage a series of psychological encounters between seven bonobos. They hoped to see how the bonobos reacted to being treated fairly or unfairly.
Each fairness encounter was between two apes. Sometimes one was given a grape then the other a parsnip, sometimes the reverse, and sometimes both got identical treats. Enough encounters were staged to make sure, say Verspeek and Stevens, that they observed 鈥渁ll possible combinations of partners in each condition鈥�.
The researchers judged the reactions by judging each bonobo鈥檚 arousal, partly from a chemical analysis of the ape鈥檚 saliva, partly from trying to measure how much 鈥渞ough self-scratching鈥� the animal did upon experiencing the unfair or fair giving of snacks. Further details, as well as their conclusion that bonobos aren鈥檛 keen on being treated unfairly, can be found in the .
Bonobos are by no stretch the first non-humans to make a meal of parsnips. Feedback will mention one other, little-publicised species: parsnip webworms, of which you can learn exciting details by reading Arthur Zangerl and May Berenbaum鈥檚 2003 mini-opus .
Fashionable superpower
Feedback continues its search for trivial superpowers 鈥� 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鈥檚 invitation to help catalogue them.
The innately colourful Diane Tunnell says: 鈥淚 have the ability to carry a colour shade accurately in my head so I don鈥檛 have need for swatches when looking for a match.鈥�
Celia Berrell says: 鈥淢y husband has what I call 鈥楾heodolite Eyesight鈥�. At ten paces from an item of clothing, he will point and say 鈥榯hat鈥檒l fit you鈥� whilst viewing a skimpy dress, well-fitting pair of jeans or whatever is on display at a market or hanging on a rack (usually in a second hand clothes shop). He鈥檚 been correct, time and time again for over 30 years now. But unfortunately he often underestimates his own waistline dimensions when applying this superpower to himself.鈥�
Stoney superpower
Dianne Scetrine, too, claims mastery of a rare trivial superpower.
She says: 鈥淚 discovered I am possessed of a trivial superpower some years ago when my ex husband told me he and his brother would throw a beach pebble into the air away from them and then throw another and try to hit the first. They never succeeded. I tried and repeatedly hit the first pebble with the second. Totally useless talent.鈥�
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