Chasing the tale
Silvia Leonetti and colleagues in the Netherlands, Italy, Austria, the US and Denmark don鈥檛 quite explain why dogs wag their tails, but they do explain that it is hard to explain.
In a paper called 鈥淲hy do dogs wag their tails?鈥� in Biology Letters, these dog-tail contemplators confront one, presumably easier, sub-question: 鈥溾��?
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This narrowed focus, they say, 鈥渟erves as a starting point to propose empirical low-hanging fruits, recommendations and suitable methodologies for future studies鈥�. They offer generalised guesses that the increased wagging could result 鈥� maybe directly, but maybe indirectly 鈥� from evolving while living with humans. Finding the real answer to even this little piece of the wag story, they conclude (leaving lots of waggle room), will require 鈥渄edicated experiments that not only better quantify tail wagging in general but also explicitly consider how the behaviour is controlled鈥�.
Thus, as many people suspected, understanding why dogs wag their tails requires understanding why dogs wag their tails.
Donald Duck dam jubilee
We are just a year away from the jubilee 鈥� the 50th anniversary! 鈥� of the publication of the most beloved technical report ever written by a deputy director of design and construction for the US Department of the Interior鈥檚 Bureau of Reclamation. That report, which perhaps needs no introduction, is 鈥淐onstruction of Grand Coulee [Dam鈥檚] Third Power Plant鈥�. Published in the Journal of the Construction Division in 1975, it was written by Donald J. Duck.
Duck, as his admirers well know, was based at the Bureau of Reclamation鈥檚 facility in Denver, Colorado. (His name is familiar to many, perhaps due to the publicity from a lawsuit brought against Duck and the United States of America, and also against three of Duck鈥檚 fellow government officials. The case concerned a directive to the plaintiff to repair a pipeline. A judge that lawsuit in 1980.)
Feedback suggests that you not procrastinate in preparing yourself and your family for the grand celebration.
Anti-covid tea gargling
The story of tea is now, in tiny part, the story of an attack 鈥� an attack by inanimate bits of tea on a virus that attacks humans: the coronavirus.
It is the story of 鈥淪ARS-CoV-2 viral particles resuspended in saliva鈥�, where those particles are assaulted by one or another kind of tea commercially available in North America. Julianna Morris and Malak Esseili at the University of Georgia in the US mounted that tea onslaught. They describe this in their study, 鈥淪creening commercial tea for rapid inactivation of infectious SARS-CoV-2 in saliva鈥�.
The Morris/Esseili adventure, violent though it may be at a microscopic level, is part of a large, mostly placid, not especially coordinated international search to recognise and verify all the different effects that tea might have on鈥� well, on everything.
Investigators are searching and testing for tea effects on the coronavirus in , , , and many other places. And the powers-of-tea quest grows ever wider in its hopes. Every new disease is a possible triumph-in-waiting for They Who Would Vanquish an Ailment with a Mighty Cupful or Potful.
Tea can invigorate, maybe. Tea can heal, maybe. Tea can rejuvenate, maybe. Tea can boost a person鈥檚 intelligence. Maybe. Maybe tea can do anything. Maybe.
Every year, the world finds itself awash in thousands of new research studies about tea and its imagined effects. Where will it all lead? Morris and Esseili express their current, specific vision of how and why to deploy tea. They hope that someday 鈥渞apid at-home intervention (tea drinking or gargling) to reduce infectious SARS-CoV-2 load in the oral cavity鈥� might also mitigate infection of the oral mucosa鈥�.
When the next new big disease comes down the turnpike, tea will be there to be hurled at it by researchers. Hope will brew eternal.
Just a wee experiment
An ounce of prevention was not worth a pound of cure in Jorge Castro鈥檚 attempt 鈥渢o find an easy to use, cheap, and universal substance to protect seeds against predators in forest restoration programs鈥�. Restoration Ecology published Castro鈥檚 explanation of what went wrong. It is called 鈥淗uman urine does not protect acorns against predation by the wood mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus): A field study with video recording鈥�.
Mark Benecke sent a copy to Feedback, who was relieved to learn that those videos 鈥� there are 1440 of them 鈥� deal mostly with the activity of the mice. Lots of pilfering of acorns, done artfully, quickly, efficiently.
Castro, at the University of Granada, Spain, came into this with two hypotheses. He came out of this deciding that only one of them is true: 鈥渢hat mice will be the main agent of acorn removal鈥�.
The experiment showed, he says, that the other hypothesis 鈥� 鈥渢hat human urine will repel wood mice鈥� 鈥� is false. Furthermore, he worries, it may be worse than false. Citing a 2002 paper, he warns that: 鈥淚f the mice do not perceive humans as a danger, our scent could actually have the opposite effect than expected.鈥�
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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