Intentional cattiness
When cats are forced to endure a crush of mass attention from an adoring public, do they continue to behave in their famous, endearing, imperious 鈥渃at-like鈥� ways? Simona Cannas and her colleagues at the University of Milan in Italy produced some data that may bring attention to the question.
Their study, 鈥溾��, published in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior, focuses on 82 cats at a cat show. (The researchers, using professional lingo, say the event was 鈥渁 feline exposition鈥�.)
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They gathered the data meticulously: 鈥渢he observer stood in front of the cages once an hour, from 10 to 17 [minutes past], for a total of 8 times for each cat鈥�.
They saw what they saw: 鈥淎nalysis of behaviors exhibited by cats during the exposition day revealed that most of them were sleeping (93.9%), resting (62.2%), and looking at their surroundings (92.7%).鈥�
The researchers鈥� conclusion leaves room, still, for debate as to what those cats had in mind. The study says 鈥渢he cat show environment represents a situation full of stressful stimuli for the cat; despite this, our results have identified few behaviors of discomfort or stress鈥� Further studies are required to confirm and deepen our results.鈥�
What a yarn
Very long, thin things vary a lot in what their mathematician鈥檚-eye-catching length-to-thinness ratio makes it possible for them to do.
A from North Carolina State University hails the creation of 鈥測arn-shaped supercapacitors鈥�, so called because the devices are thread-like and can behave as capacitors, controllably storing and disbursing electrical charge. The press release quotes Wei Gao, a co-inventor of the technology.
She said: 鈥淚magine you can make a yarn, just a regular textile yarn, that you also make into a battery. You can basically hide it in your clothing. If you can do that, you can add so many more functions to your clothing.鈥�
We may be entering a technological Age of Thin Things.
As Feedback has noted (1 October 2022), a new city planned as part of Saudi Arabia鈥檚 Neom project is designed to be 170,000 metres long by 200 metres wide. Could the North Carolinian yarn-shaped supercapacitor tech be incorporated into the Saudi city鈥檚 exoskeleton? That would be a drastic leap to the future for a country that insists it wants to move beyond its current economic reliance on oil.
This suddenly-almost-plausible possibility shows the prescience of Wallis Simpson, former Duchess of Windsor, who is said to have said almost a century ago: 鈥淥ne can never be too rich or too thin.鈥�
Measuring addiction
The old saying 鈥淚f you can measure it, it must be important鈥� haunts the many research efforts to explain why it is important to measure two of the five fingers on a person鈥檚 hand. Specifically, the second and fourth fingers. The two-finger quest kinda, sorta resembles an addiction. Sometimes this quest looks at addiction itself as being, maybe, something you can better understand by measuring fingers.
Typically, finger-ratio explanations grow in some vague way from the notion that hormone levels in the uterus before birth somehow explain the relative lengths, years later, of a person鈥檚 fingers.
Finger-ratio-centric research studies are numerous and imaginative. They vary widely 鈥� almost wildly 鈥� in the kinds of important mysteries the researchers seek to explain.
How varied? Here are a few of the subjects addressed in recent years in published digit-ratio studies: 鈥渧oice behavior in bankers鈥�; 鈥渉unting success among Hadza hunters鈥�; religiosity in university students; 鈥減arental income inequality and children鈥檚 digit ratio鈥�; artistic ability; 鈥渁ge at first marriage in semi-nomadic people from Namibia鈥�; 鈥減sychological features in a sample of cavers鈥�; bite injuries occurring in fistfights; 鈥渕anagerial skills of managers employed in public and private organizations of Udaipur City鈥�; and 鈥渘umber of sex partners鈥�.
And addiction. Mehmet G眉rkan G眉rok and colleagues at various institutions in Turkey have recently written a paper called 鈥溾��. They published it in the Journal of Ethnicity in Substance Abuse. Like most finger-ratio studies, this one was done with great care: 鈥淲e obtained the lengths of 2D and 4D of the subjects by using sensitive calipers and calculated the 2D:4D.鈥� And as is customary, it is full of promise: 鈥淥ur findings can be considered promising as to whether prenatal hormonal factors are important in the etiopathogenesis of addiction.鈥�
The Denver sniff test
When something 鈥� and its headline 鈥� smells funny, maybe it is worth looking into. People who happen across a sombre study by environmental scientists in the US might react first to the ambiguity of its title: 鈥溾��.
Was that title meant to be solemnly serious? Deadpannedly funny? Both? Whatever the intent, Feedback salutes its authors. Their wording triggered the olfactoric-linguistical sensibilities of Mason Porter, who alerted us to it.
Marc Abrahams created the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony and聽co-founded聽the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Earlier, he worked on unusual ways to use computers. His website is聽.
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