Full of fellow feeling despite being dead
SALMON appear to be able to recognise people’s emotions, according to our first take on research by Craig M. Bennett and colleagues. They showed a fish a series of photographs of humans in “social situations with a specified emotional valence” while peeking into its brain with an fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) scanner. This revealed, they say, “active voxel clusters in the salmon’s brain cavity and spinal column”.
A clue to the researchers’ motivation is provided by the title of their paper in the lovely Journal of Serendipitous and Unexpected Results (): “Neural correlates of interspecies perspective taking in the post-mortem Atlantic salmon: An argument for proper multiple comparisons correction”. The fish, in short, was dead.
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Brain-scan results should, the authors conclude, be handled with extreme statistical caution.
“The packaging of Ross Illingworth’s Vicks Sinex spray includes the unexpected legal advice: “Do not sue Vicks Sinex for longer than 7 days without medical advice”
THE instructions for the Pin Ball Plinko game Bill Francis has been given say it can be played by “one person or an infinite number of people can take it in turns”. He concludes that he had “better make more sandwiches” for a games night.
WORRIED about radiation? Who wouldn’t be? It can cause cancer and stuff. And, your mobile phone – it gives out radiation!
So why not invest in a PhoneShield? It costs, it says on the site, only £12.50, plus £1.50 for postage and packaging.
How does it work? We have read and reread the company’s FAQs and “Scientific proof” article and, though they make clear it’s a sticky patch containing crystals, they give no further clue. The latter document concludes by introducing the very wonderful concept of “Empirical proof by Testimonial”.
In the FAQ we find that “among the first users of the PhoneShield was… Arsène Wenger”, the celebrated manager of Arsenal Football Club in London. So, as with sporting figures endorsing the Power Balance bracelet (Feedback, 20 November 2010), is this proof enough?
Most of the reported “tests” used “bioenergetic” biofeedback devices. Some are attributed to Coghill Research Laboratories, a sometime promoter of, yes, you have guessed it, magnetic bracelets (). According to the FAQs, however, it was apparently a “simple kinesiology test” performed by a Phoneshield representative that convinced Wenger.
In the FAQ we also find the statement that “A study published in May 2002 by the Department of Trade and Industry showed that devices to cut radiation from mobile phones can ‘significantly reduce’ exposure to potentially harmful radiation.” We asked this UK government department’s successor, the , and it could find no such study. Enquiries continue.
But we also read that “The PhoneShield does not attempt to stop or limit the level of radiation”. Is this a sign of some confusion, or is it focused vagueness at work?
WHAT can this mean? Alan Henness sends us an ad that he saw alongside the online , with the slogan “All you can eat in Reading” and a box containing the mysterious claim “Up to -70%”. The ads originate with an outfit called that offers discount coupons if enough people ask for them.
Perhaps, we puzzled, this means that you will be charged as much as 70 per cent less than the usual price.
But has the “up to” get-out clause (Feedback, 14 August 2010) backfired? “Up to -70” would appear to mean any number between minus infinity and minus 70, which could make us very rich indeed… if it means anything at all.
FINALLY, temperatures below absolute zero are a tricky concept, so when Feedback came across a Digitron thermometer alleged to work down to -750 °C we had questions to ask (4 December 2010). “For one thing,” we mused, “at such a temperature the entropy of the thermometer – loosely, the measure of its disorderedness, and often equated with its information content – would have been large and negative.”
Science, however, is most fun when it shows what seems obvious to actually be wrong. Thus it was that just after we sent those questions off to their early-bird appointment with our printers, David Shiga filed a news story about theoreticians proposing an improved way of achieving temperatures below absolute zero (4 December 2010, p 15).
Apparently, you can’t pass absolute zero and go below it, but if you jump directly to a negative temperature, the entropy rises as the energy falls. And heat energy should flow from your beyond-ultra-cold thing to a merely very cold thing.
Which would suggest that the thing at below-absolute-zero temperature should… well, we are not sure, partly because we are confused and partly because it will be a few years before anyone applies the theory to get more than a few atoms that cold.
But congratulations to Digitron on being ready for them.