Sheepish fears
Jessica Monk, Dana Campbell and Caroline Lee, at government research agency CSIRO in Armidale, Australia, gathered knowledge about how difficult it can be to predict whether some particular thing will (a) attract a sheep or (b) scare the sheep. Details are in the journal .
They performed experiments exposing sheep to a dog sitting in a window, and to the window without the dog. They tried giving the sheep drugs to reduce anxiety and giving them drugs to increase anxiety.
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They tried using food as a tempting distraction when the sheep encountered something scary. Would they choose to flee the menace or stay for the snack? Alas, calibrating the interplay of food, fear and sheep proved too complex for the researchers鈥� current understanding of sheep cognition. Offering food as a sheep distractant, they say, should be attempted only 鈥渋n future studies where appetite is not expected to be a confounding factor鈥�.
Monk, Campbell and Lee also point to a quasi-lively 1982 experiment by Judith Franklin and G. D. Hutson at the University of Melbourne, recorded in the journal . Franklin and Hutson, they say, 鈥渇ound that the use of a taxidermy sheep as an attractant was unsuccessful as test sheep showed fear responses to the taxidermy model rather than affiliative responses鈥�.
Urchin teeth inspiration
Politicians who screech the word 鈥渄iversity鈥� as an epithet to inflame their followers鈥� all-purpose anger have yet to hoot specifically about tooth diversity. Actual information, should those politicians desire to seek any, about tooth diversity is in fresh supply in a study called .
Di Wang, Shuangxia Han and Ming Yang at Jilin University in China surveyed current knowledge about teeth from many animals, including 鈥渉uman teeth, herbivore and carnivore teeth, shark teeth, calcite teeth in sea urchins, magnetite teeth in chitons, and transparent teeth in dragonfish鈥�.
For anyone seeking a potentially scary-sounding term to inject into political discourse, the highlight of the paper is the word 鈥減olyphyodont鈥�. For that limited, political usage, polyphyodont is most potent for its sound rather than its meaning. (Wang, Han and Yang do supply a definition. They explain that many vertebrates, though not most mammals, 鈥渁re polyphyodont, continuously replacing worn teeth throughout the lifetime鈥�.)
Politicians who give a hoot about what science has to offer (in addition to big scary words) might notice the stated purpose of this tooth diversity study. The authors say they hope to 鈥渟timulate further efforts in the synthesis of tooth-inspired materials鈥�. Their paper includes photos of 鈥淎 claw-like device inspired by sea urchin teeth鈥�. Those photos are reprinted from a paper co-authored in 2016 by Steven Naleway, who five years later was awarded an for a rather different research project.
Naleway鈥檚 Ig Nobel prize-winning work produced knowledge of value to people whose followers are filled with all-purpose anger. Naleway, together with colleagues Ethan Beseris and David Carrier, tested the that humans evolved beards to protect against punches to the face.
Crepitus, for the children
One way to give children a healthy fascination with science is to teach them some technical word that 鈥� they can hope 鈥� will disgust adults.
鈥淐repitus鈥� is a fine word to feed to kids for this educational purpose. 鈥淐repitation鈥� is an equally good word that means the same thing: any grinding, scraping, creaking, cracking, clunking, grating, crunching or other sound that comes from a person鈥檚 body parts.
Crepitus (the ailment, though maybe not its name) is especially on the minds of middle-aged athletes who, alarmed they have noisy knees, seek medical advice. Is knee noise a harbinger of disaster? Will exercise make it worse?
Alexandre Kovats and his colleagues at the University of New South Wales in Australia have news for medical advisers to pass on to clickety-clack-kneed patients. After scouring much of the medical literature about knee crepitus, they in the Journal of Clinical Exercise Physiology. 鈥淜nee crepitus,鈥� they write, 鈥渋s unlikely to change in individuals with established [knee osteoarthritis] following exercise. Thus, Exercise Physiologists can provide reassurance to people who are concerned about their noisy joints that exercise should not exacerbate symptoms.鈥�
Fourfold superpower
Claire Haresnape Tyson adds a seasonal, colourful detection skill to Feedback鈥檚 growing catalogue of trivial superpowers. She says: 鈥淢y super power is the ability to find four leaf clovers. I will find them regularly during the spring and summer. I have shared this super power with my husband. Friends regularly lament that they never find one.鈥� Claire sent a photo (above) documenting one of her discoveries.
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