Suggestions is our weekly column of weird tales, implausible promoting claims, complicated directions and extra
People
3 November 2021
Josie Ford
Gone with the wind
How do pure disasters have an effect on intimate relationships? Suggestions maintains a protracted listing of questions we had by no means considered asking, a reality that can shock nobody who is aware of of our predilection for inconceivable logic. So we’re happy to see this question now comprehensively answered within the paper “Experiencing a pure catastrophe quickly boosts relationship satisfaction in newlywed {couples}” by Hannah Williamson on the College of Texas at Austin and her colleagues.
The examine concerned 231 {couples} in Harris county, Texas, across the time of Hurricane Harvey in 2017, and is the “first to make use of longitudinal knowledge collected earlier than and after a pure catastrophe to look at its impact on relationship outcomes”. This moderately raises the query in our thoughts of how lengthy the researchers have been ready, patiently observing, for catastrophe to strike – or maybe it’s merely a case of when, moderately than if, in that a part of Texas. Or possibly they’ve a button they’ll press, wherein case we predict we and the ethics board needs to be instructed.
Irrespective of: for anybody questioning whether or not a fortuitously timed twister would possibly put the whirlwind again into their romance, whether or not a wildfire can relight their hearth or whether or not Earth shifting makes the earth transfer, the reply is sure – however make hay whereas the solar’s not shining. {Couples} quickly “revert to their prehurricane ranges of functioning because the restoration interval continues”. For a longer-term enhance, you’ll simply have to maneuver to someplace extra harmful.
Block head
Suggestions is happy to be taught that an article in New Scientist has been cited within the defence of Mike Graham, the presenter at talkRADIO – a UK radio station the place the opinions could be as out of the blue shouty because the identify – who claimed whereas interviewing environmental activist Cameron Ford you could develop concrete.
We concern the clues could also be within the quotes within the headline, “Residing ‘concrete’ produced from micro organism used to create replicating bricks”, and within the first line of the article, “A sort of residing concrete produced from micro organism may someday assist to cut back the environmental impression of the development trade”.
No, Mike and all: to the very best of our information, we can’t develop concrete. Thoughts you, with all of the great issues we’re studying you are able to do with cellulose, greedy at straws could show to be a viable various.
Taking the low street
“They received you lined, both approach”, is Quentin Macilray’s remark as he writes from Santo Domingo within the Dominican Republic with an image of a van promoting Camino Eterno, a mixed ambulance and endeavor service. We will’t higher Quentin’s description of it as a quantum enterprise ruled by the collapse – or not – of the client’s wave perform. We’re left questioning concerning the high quality of the driving.
Menage au fromage
This week’s prize for analysis that made us involuntarily choke on our cocoa is “Intercourse in cheese: proof for sexuality within the fungus Penicillium roqueforti”.
Our late-night stilton consuming could by no means be as harmless once more with the revelation that, removed from residing a lifetime of monastic asceticism and reproducing purely asexually, the little blue-cheese-making blighters are – we all know of no technique to put this delicately – at it on a regular basis. “The screening of a giant pattern of strains remoted from various substrates all through the world revealed the existence of people of each mating varieties, even in the exact same cheese,” the researchers write, with what appears like glee.
Investigating the sexual capabilities of cheese mould isn’t one thing we had thought of as a calling earlier than. The affiliation of the workforce concerned – the Nationwide Museum of Pure Historical past in Paris, France – causes us to slim our eyes ever so barely, whereas giving the faintest of smart nods.
The place’s my elephant?
Nick Parlow writes taking exception to a suggestion made in our thread on discovering an elephant within the room (4 September and a couple of October). “I’m positive that others have identified how ludicrous it’s to color an elephant’s toenails pink and conceal it in a cherry tree,” he writes. “That quantity of pink nail varnish could be prohibitively costly. Fortunately there’s a way more sensible technique: paint the soles of its toes yellow, and conceal it the other way up within the custard.”
We’re happy to make this plain, Nick, given additionally that you simply reference the supply “Cunningham and Blake (1974), The Puffin Joke E book“, leaving us in little doubt that that is settled science and that the previous ones are the very best.
Elementary errors
Whereas within the vein of nostra culpa, opprobrium – an alkaline earth steel, we consider – has rained down on the Suggestions inbox following an advert for New Scientist subscriptions in our 23 October subject. With the tagline “That’s elementary”, it promised the reward of some moderately stunning chemistry this Christmas. The non-metal selenium turned a lanthanide, whereas each the transition steel rhenium and the excitingly short-lived halogen tennessine have been Nobel gases.
No prizes there. Apologies to all who felt pH-imbalanced, and for all these asking what we intend to do with these accountable: barium.
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