Darwin Now competition 鈥� the winner
THANKS to everybody who entered our Darwin Now competition. We asked you to come up with ways in which animals and plants might evolve under human influence, much as hedgehogs have evolved not to freeze in car headlights.
Many entrants picked up the hedgehog and ran with it (so to speak). Noting that pheasants tend to suffer one of two inglorious fates 鈥� shot as they fly out of the woods or squashed as they walk across the road 鈥� Martin Addicott predicts that they will eventually evolve to walk out of the woods and fly across the road.
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Mike Adams, meanwhile, predicts that the opossums of New England will respond to the nightly toll on their numbers by evolving coats that fluoresce in car headlights. Unfortunately, this will backfire on them when the fur becomes a fashion fad and they are trapped to extinction.
Another theme that emerged was the natural world biting back. 鈥淎nthropophagy, if they know what鈥檚 good for them,鈥� wrote Elizabeth Newman, concisely summing up several entries. Also popular was an even worse evolutionary novelty, best expressed by Alida Venter: 鈥淪ilent mosquitoes. The horror.鈥�
Dominic Houghton, meanwhile, predicted the evolution of spiders that build their webs on car wing mirrors to sieve insects out of the air. Unfortunately, this appears to have happened already. Feedback鈥檚 wing mirrors look like Halloween decorations. So we ruled that one out.
By far the most popular theme was cuteness, and this crop of entries provided our winner. As is widely recognised, conservation resources get disproportionately spent on appealing, cuddly animals such as pandas. This must be putting selection pressure on even the most repulsive of species to evolve cuteness.
鈥�2095: Species Cuteification Continues,鈥� wrote our winner Christopher Dionne. 鈥淗agfish populations rebound as one of the few fished animals left have finally followed suit and developed fur, large soulful eyes and a propensity to play with string.鈥�
Congratulations to Christopher, who will be flown from California to London to attend the Origin Day celebrations on 24 November.
鈥淭he care label on a scarf that Chris Timson bought from a street market in Sidmouth, UK, reads: 鈥淒ry clean only in cold water鈥�. Would that be ice-cleaning?鈥�
HOT on the heels of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory鈥檚 鈥� which turns out to be Laser Inertial Fusion Engine and is perhaps a bit ambivalent over whether it鈥檚 for or against things living (19 September) 鈥� comes another example of acronymic jiggery-pokery.
Back on 17 June 2006, Feedback noted a phenomenon which we dubbed Malformed Acronym Syndrome (MAD). This was in the context of an observation that there has to be a rule that you must assemble a cute and vaguely acronymic name when seeking funding for your collaboration.
This rule, though clearly effective in raising cash, can backfire. A New 杏吧原创 writer, directed to contact a co-author of a research paper at the 鈥淯N-SPIDER Office for Outer Space Affairs鈥�, was tempted to reject the whole thing as an obvious Marvel-comic-based hoax.
Fortunately, she checked and discovered that the United Nations Platform for Space-based Information for Disaster Management and Emergency Response (UN-SPIDER) is very real 鈥� see . This makes it another example of MAD naming.
As before, please consign other MAD examples directly to the European Union research-naming research programme, the Sixth Framework Unambiguous Moniker And Tagging Organisation (SFUMATO).
TIME, as writer Douglas Adams observed, 鈥渋s an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so鈥�. May he have been inspired by an old advertisement built into the stained-glass window of a pub in Herne Hill, south London? A vertical wooden post interrupts the sign, which appears as 鈥淟UNCH EONS鈥�. Certainly in today鈥檚 hectic world we have largely forgotten the pleasure of the extended midday break, but still it seems a little surprising that even the English once expected to linger over a pint of ale and a meat pie for quite as long as a billion years.
Unreal food at the supermarket
NOT long after Feedback readers鈥� concerns over virtual and/or imaginary ingredients in Walkers snack-food products (19 September), supermarket chain Tesco trumpets its new policy of selling a line of . Costa Rocos wonders whether the marketing executive who came up with this label was perhaps too sincere? What will happen to sales of Tesco鈥檚 other lines, now apparently revealed to be unreal?
FINALLY, are you worried about sunspots being the harbingers of solar flares that could wipe out our wonderful communications technologies at a stroke?
Or are you just puzzled by their rhetorical deployment in online arguments about climate change? Worry no more. 鈥淪ay goodbye to sun spots,鈥� proclaims the advert that George Masin copies to us. It turns out to be for a skin cream that 鈥減romises to fade discolorations in one week鈥� and costs only $22 a pot.