Inward looking
IT SEEMS that male scientists have one expert they like to cite more than any other: themselves. in a study in Physics and Society. And in the last two decades, male researchers have cited their own publications 70 per cent more often than females, reveal the authors.
Self-citation may sound like something your Sunday school teacher warned against, but the finding has a serious message: that the profile of women in science, already diminished by a gender gap, is further curtailed by men鈥檚 habit of putting their name at both ends of a publication. Feedback encourages these male authors to ditch the preference for self-reference and set their cites a little higher.
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鈥淩ob Watkins found himself on board a P&O ferry with a very exclusive Club Lounge. A sign on the door told him: 鈥楢dmission by ticket only. Tickets available from the Club Lounge.'鈥�
War chest
PREVIOUSLY, Feedback examined how UK prime minister Theresa May had learned to stop worrying and love the bomb (6 August).
Harvard law professor Roger Fisher once suggested keeping nuclear codes in the chest cavity of a White House staff member, so that the president would be forced to cut the volunteer open with a cleaver to launch a strike. Such a gory requirement would bring home the reality of what was about to unfold. Given the backstabbing environment in the UK鈥檚 House of Commons, it might be more expedient to implant the codes between a colleague鈥檚 shoulder blades.
Nuclear option
PERHAPS pondering the value for money offered by the UK鈥檚 nuclear deterrent, MP George Kerevan asked the new prime minister whether she was 鈥減ersonally prepared to authorise a nuclear strike that could kill a hundred thousand innocent men, women and children鈥� during a debate.
Perhaps Kerevan thought May would hedge her answer, as every prime minister has before. Instead, she immediately answered 鈥測es鈥�. If the art of a nuclear deterrent is to have one and never use it, we can only hope May pursues the same strategy with the Brexit trigger, Article 50, with the same resolve.
Feeling green
EARLIER this month, Feedback dredged the Twitter emanations of questionably coiffured US presidential candidate Donald Trump, whose famously stubby fingers have left him with only a slippery grip on science issues (13 August).
Now we have not only discovered that there is a Green Party candidate, but that her green fingers are no less buttery.
Medical doctor Jill Stein has come under fire for her lukewarm support for vaccination, most notably deleting 鈥淭here鈥檚 no evidence that autism is caused by vaccines鈥� to reiterate it with less conviction as: 鈥淚鈥檓 not aware of evidence linking autism with vaccines.鈥�
Leave them kids alone
AN OUTSIDER in the race to the White House, Stein can raise issues that leading candidates never would 鈥� such as the danger posed to children by computers. Asked by a member of the public about the 鈥渉ealth issues鈥� surrounding technology in schools, Stein responded that computers were 鈥渘ot good in all kinds of ways鈥� not good for their cognitive development鈥� We should be moving away from screens at all levels of education.鈥� She was prompted to add 鈥渨e should not be subjecting kids鈥� brains鈥� to .
Nonetheless, so long as Trump鈥檚 Twitter account is active, shielding children鈥檚 brains from the online world may not be such a bad idea.
Particle collider
IN YET another example of quantum physics observed at a macro-scale, Dan Carter reports that cars reaching the four-way intersection outside his home rarely come to a complete halt.
This phenomenon collapses in the presence of a police vehicle, however, and 鈥渁nother car coming through the intersection also generally causes the car to stop at the sign. If not, we may have entanglement.鈥�
Spicing up the news
ACROSS continental Europe, the summer slow-news season is associated with cucumbers, for reasons that remain obscure (30 July).
Peter Ratcliffe writes that it is known as Sauregurkenzeit (pickled gherkin time) in German. He says the term must refer to the time the gherkins are harvested. Does the association reflect a time when news-starved journalists dig around their pantry for preserves?
A diligent Wolfgang Gerster writes that the venerable encyclopedia of the German language, Duden, suggests the word is a mondegreen, a mistranscription of the Yiddish expression Z脫res- und J脫kresszeit (very roughly, lean times) 鈥� which sounds to German ears much like pickled gherkin time. Danke!
Weighing heavily
ANDREW COOPER says that weak-handed millennials 鈥渕ay be a real cause for concern,鈥� seeing as reduced grip strength is linked with 鈥渇uture risks of premature heart disease and death (23 July).
that 鈥渙ne of your entrepreneurial readers could invent a squeezing device to generate electricity for personal electronic devices鈥� 鈥� which would certainly enjoy widespread adoption in the target demographic.
A simpler intervention, we think, would be to set a mandatory minimum weight for all smartphones of, say, 0.000006 blue whales.