Philippa Kaur

Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more

Humans

15 December 2021

Josie Ford
2021, eh? While undertaking the end-of-year reordering of our extensive piling system, we are tempted to file the past 12 months under “see 2020”. But leafing through our leaves with moistened forefinger, we find much to delight ourselves from this year as we dole out the Feedbys, the coveted annual Feedback awards.
New and shiny
As billionaires competed to get to space in 2021, those of us left on the ground got a feel for the high life thanks to “zero-gravity” chairs and beds that featured in our pages this year – the former with super-atmospherically super-useful UV-resistant mesh seating, the latter with anti-snore preset positions ensuring that, even if in space someone could hear you snore, they wouldn’t.
We also discovered hydrogenated water, now the secret of Feedback’s eternally fresh’n’young-looking skin. But our award for Innovation of the Year goes to a forward-thinking, digital addition to the personal grooming space: Nimble, “the world’s first device that uses artificial intelligence to self-paint and dry nails in under 10 minutes”. Feedback has four on order with a special telescopic applicator stick, for those rushed mornings when we need to look just fabulous.Advertisement
Computer says wot?
Staying in the digital space, February brought us the story of Liam Thorp, a 32-year-old journalist based in Liverpool, UK, who received an urgent call-up for an early covid-19 vaccine. The assessment of Thorp’s BMI as 28,000 kg/m2 turned out to be based on interpreting his height of 6 foot, 2 inches as 6.2 centimetres.
But on the basis that human error might well have played a part here, Malgorithm of the Year goes to the Facebook photo-checking algorithm that found shots of a high-rise building, the England cricket team and a herd of cows overly sexual, and denounced a set of tramlines in Reims, France, for violating its ticket sales policy.
A herring’s throw
Ever-more inventive ways to explain 2 metres to people were a feature of 2020’s Feedbys. This year, we are pleased to honour authorities in the Netherlands who combined social distancing with a vaccine incentive, by offering free portions of Hollandse nieuwe pickled herrings with a jab. And that is quite enough covid – for this year.
Poles apart
And so to Brexit. In a year when blaming global supply chain issues on Brexit and Brexit-related supply chain issues on global problems became a UK national sport, we doff our hat to the maker of “bipolar magnetic dog collars”, which in April explained to reader Peter Holness that a monopolar version wasn’t available due to “Brexit-related supply issues”. End-of-year update: physicists hunting for magnetic norths sans souths at the Large Hadron Collider, a facility beneath an EU external border, are also still suffering persistent supply problems. Point proven, whatever it was.
Flame grilling
“nope. science itself isn’t ‘true’ it’s a constantly refining process used to uncover truths based in material reality and that process is still full of misteaks. neil just posts ridiculous sound bites like this for clout and he has no respect for epistemology”. This tweet from frozen steaks manufacturer The Steak-Umm Company to astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson came in response to his tweet “The good thing about Science is that it’s true, whether or not you believe in it”. A dual award for Social Media Takedown and Epistemological “Truth” of the Year.
Getting the measure
This year was, by any standard, the time it took Earth to orbit once around the sun measured against the fixed stars. Or possibly just 365 days. Or the time after which a fingernail would extend 1/30th of the distance around Earth’s orbit, if nanometres were kilometres.
This was indeed the year of the bamboozling measurement unit. We had the baby boy whose length at birth was, said UK newspaper The Sun, almost 24 inches long, or “two footlong Subway sandwiches for perspective”. We had The Guardian‘s sterling efforts, including depicting Earth’s annual heat absorption as the heat output of “630bn common household hairdryers blowing all day and night, 360 days a year” and a mass of sea cucumber excrement in multiples of the Eiffel Tower.
Special mention goes to a Colorado sheriff’s office that tweeted about a road blocked by “a large boulder the size of a large boulder”. But for sheer dedication to the cause of inexplicable explication, The Wall Street Journal wins Measurement of the Year by urging us to imagine an “adult African male elephant suspended from a rope that’s the same diameter as a table tennis ball”. It was about the tensile stress of tempered glass, natch.
Keeps popping up
It is tempting to grant our last award, for Person of the Year, to Keith Weed, whom so many of you were intent on informing us is the president of the Royal Horticultural Society. We make that his third mention, so instead the award goes collectively to you, our dear readers, for all the smiles and giggles in another trying year. A happy new year to you all, and see you for possibly too much more of the same in 2022.
Got a story for Feedback?
You can send stories to Feedback by email at feedback@newscientist.com. Please include your home address. This week’s and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website. More

Snowflakes can form in either a plate or column shape, but no one understood why – until physicist Kenneth Libbrecht investigated. His theory is the result of two decades making snow in the lab

Humans

15 December 2021

By Kenneth Libbrecht
Courtesy of Kenneth Libbrecht
SNOWFALL in Pasadena, California, is so rare, it’s almost unheard of. Except, that is, at the California Institute of Technology, where Kenneth Libbrecht can conjure it up using the world’s most sophisticated snowflake-making equipment.
As a physicist, Libbrecht has tackled some fairly epic questions, like the nature of gravitational waves and the internal workings of the sun. But he also has a delightful sideline in the science of snowflakes, which are far more complex and mysterious than you might think. One of the biggest unanswered questions about them is why they appear to come in two distinct types.
Libbrecht went on a 20-year odyssey to solve this mystery. Recently, he published the fruits of that journey in the form of a monograph that runs to more than 500 pages. It contains a kind of grand unified theory of snowflakes, explaining for the first time how and why they grow into the delicate shapes they do.
Joshua Howgego: What got you interested in snowflakes?
Kenneth Libbrecht: One day I was chewing the fat with one of my students and we got talking about how crystals grow and take on shapes. We started thinking about what we could study in this area and I thought: well, water would be cheap and easy. Then I thought: actually, that would be the physics of snowflakes, I wonder how that works? Apropos of nothing – I was just curious – I started reading up on research on snowflakes and I found it really fascinating.
“I can turn knobs to control the conditions exactly, so I can get these designer snowflakes”
What was the big question … More

William of Ockham was tried for heresy before the Pope, only to make a daring escape. His big idea, known as Occam’s razor, remains the keenest tool for honing our understanding of the world

Humans

15 December 2021

By Johnjoe McFadden
Kiki ljung
ON MY daily drive into work at the University of Surrey, I pass a road sign to Ockham. Perhaps a slight difference in spelling is one reason why it took me a surprising while to realise the English village’s connection to one of the most fundamental concepts in science – I would argue, in my now more enlightened state, perhaps its most fundamental concept.
I am talking about Occam’s razor. The creation of a 14th-century theologian with a racy life story, this is a principle often quoted as “entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity”. It urges us to choose the simplest explanations or models for any phenomenon we observe. If you see moving lights in the night sky, say, think of known existing entities such as aeroplanes, satellites or shooting stars before considering flying saucers.
It has been a tool for scientific progress, not to mention a guiding principle for our own thoughts, right up to the present day. But I believe that modern science has rather lost sight of the simple fact that simplicity is the sharpest guide to greater truths.
Ockham is linked to Occam’s razor by virtue of William of Ockham. Born in the village around 1285, William went to a local Franciscan school before being sent to Oxford to study theology, then known as “the Queen of Sciences”. This title was largely due to the influence of Italian theologian Thomas Aquinas, who had recently Christianised the work of the greatest scientist of ancient Greece, Aristotle.
That mind-meld had supplied five scientific “proofs” of the existence of God, a variety of metaphysical essences of reality known … More

By David Robson
Dario Mitidieri/Getty Images
“WHILE there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour.” So wrote Charles Dickens in A Christmas Carol. He was in London in the 1840s, but these words ring true in any time or place. Laughter is one of humanity’s few universal traits. Even in the time of covid-19, many people have found that a good chuckle has helped them cope with the stresses, uncertainties and interminable lockdowns.
It is surprising, then, that psychologists and neuroscientists were once reluctant to devote serious attention to laughter, with many believing expressions of mirth to be less important than those of unhappiness or despair. “Psychology still has a lot of catching up to do to balance out what is known about negative emotions with positive ones,” says Gina Mireault at Northern Vermont University.
This has been science’s loss because recent results reveal that there is far more to laughter than you might think. Beyond the obvious connection with humour, it offers some truly profound insights into the nature of our relationships and the state of our health. The study of infant giggles may even help us understand how we develop our sense of self and the ability to read the minds of others. What’s more, laughter turns out to be surprisingly common in other species.
Non-human animals aren’t known for their sharp wits, but many do engage in play, often producing characteristic sounds to signal that their behaviour is friendly rather than aggressive. According to a review by Sasha Winkler and Gregory Bryant at the University of California, Los … More

Hop plants are largely what distinguish your dark ales from your refreshing pales, and each has its own “terroir”. With changing weather affecting how and where they grow, what does the future hold for brewing and beer?

Humans

15 December 2021

By Chris Simms
Wicked weed: freshly harvested hop flowersJean/Stockimo/Alamy
WATER, malted barley and hops. It is the classic recipe for the world’s favourite intoxicant. According to a law declared in 1516 in the German state of Bavaria, a place that likes to see itself as beer’s spiritual home, those are the only three ingredients it may contain – the yeast that converts the sugars in the barley to alcohol being out of sight and out of mind back then.
Today’s craft beer revolution takes such strictures less seriously, with new and exotic brews catering for all manner of tastes. But one ingredient remains a constant – indeed the fulcrum – of good beer. Hops give beer the bitterness that counterbalances the sickly sweetness of the fermenting grain and imparts subtle flavour tones that distinguish one brew from another, all while acting as a natural preservative.
That is reason enough to declare the hop one of the world’s most important, if often overlooked, plants. Yet trouble is brewing, with a perfect storm of changing tastes and changing weather contriving to shake up its cultivation. The question frothing on many a lip now is whether an ale and hearty future for the hop can be assured.
Hops weren’t always so universally beloved. In England, they were once dubbed the “wicked weed”, and traditional ales were brewed without them. It is a myth that Henry VI once tried to ban them, although the city of Norwich did in 1471, as it tried to defend the purity of yeoman English ale in the face of perfidious hopped continental imports. Before … More

The covid-19 pandemic has forced millions to participate in one of the biggest social experiments of our time. Nearly two years in, it’s time to take stock: what happens when workers abandon offices?

Humans

15 December 2021

By Alice Klein
Working from home has led to rises in productivity for someExperience Interiors/iStock
THE covid-19 pandemic has forced millions of us to participate in one of the biggest social experiments of our time: what would happen if office workers largely abandoned their workplaces and began working from home? More than 18 months in, it is time to take stock.
One thing seems clear: more people working remotely has brought some benefits for the environment. With less commuter traffic, wildlife has been able to reclaim urban spaces while people have been tapping away at their home keyboards.
But what about the benefits to people? The major perks of home working include people having more flexibility to mould jobs around their family, exercise and leisure time, being able to wear whatever they like, controlling their own heating and lighting and not having to commute. The lack of commuting may be the biggest bonus, since surveys show that workers typically rate their commute as the worst part of their day, unless they walk or cycle.Advertisement
Many people have also been able to get more done while working remotely, possibly due to fewer distractions. A survey by Boston Consulting Group of 1500 managers at large European companies found that more than half had seen productivity levels rise as their employees shifted to remote work during the pandemic.
“There used to be a lot of resistance to working from home because managers thought employees would just goof off and watch Netflix, but there’s a lot more trust now,” says Sue Williamson at the University of New South Wales in Canberra, Australia.
However, the experiment hasn’t been all positive. Many people forced to work from home have reported feeling isolated and finding it harder to switch off due to the blurred boundary between work and home life.
“Surveys show that workers typically rate their commute as the worst part of their day”
Many managers have also reported declines in innovation, which is probably because “it’s hard to get those serendipitous conversations between people that spark ideas” when everyone is physically separated, says Anne Bardoel at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia.
Then there is “Zoom fatigue”, the drained feeling that often accompanies virtual meetings, even though they tend to be shorter than in-person ones. This may be because people have a stronger sense of being on show while on screen and feel more pressure to present well, says Allison Gabriel at the University of Arizona.
As vaccines help to control covid-19, many organisations are hoping to reap the best of both worlds by letting employees work from home on some days and travel to the office on others. The coming months and years will undoubtedly involve trial and error as companies and employees settle on the optimum mix of office and work-from-home days. But one thing seems certain: now that office workers have been given a chance to really think about how they want their work lives to look, there is no turning back.
“It is this opportunity to reset and rethink how we actually work, and I think that’s a very positive thing,” says Bardoel.

2021 in review
This was a year of tackling great challenges, from the covid-19 pandemic to climate change. But 2021 was also rich in scientific discoveries and major advances.

More on these topics: More

By New Scientist
Martin O’Neal
*Some questions have multiple correct answers
1 Health benefits of intimacy
A Cuddling increases bone density
B Sex is a nasal decongestant
C Masturbating improves eyesight

2 States of matter
A In condensed matter physics, a “hyperfluid” is a material with zero viscosity, meaning it can flow backwards in time and, when stirred, will spin forever (both forwards and backwards in time)
B In condensed matter physics, a “time crystal” is a state of matter in which the configuration of the component parts shifts in a repeating cycle forever without using any energy
C In condensed matter physics, an “ontological condensate” is an ultracold gas that could reveal the true nature of being, should we ever be able to isolate it

3 Hairy faces
A Beards might have evolved to keep faces warm
B Beards might have evolved to store food in through winter
C Beards might have evolved to soften the blows from punches

4 Animals at play
A Komodo dragons play tug of war
B Crows play blackjack
C Elephants play hide and seek

5 Celestial bodies
A Astronauts could use their own hair to create Martian space suits
B Astronauts could use their own blood to build a Martian base
C Astronauts could use their own nail clippings to create rocket fuel

6 Grand delusions
A Capgras syndrome is the irrational belief that a familiar person has been replaced with an exact duplicate
B Fregoli syndrome is the irrational belief that a familiar person, typically someone persecuting the affected individual, is disguised as various other people
C Cotard syndrome is the irrational belief that part of … More

By Layal Liverpool
Shutterstock/Mariia Tagirova
BING CROSBY dreamed of a white Christmas. This December, I’m dreaming of categorising snowflakes. All in the name of science, of course.
White Christmas or not, you too can get up close and personal with snowflakes and contribute to climate research by taking part in the online Snowflake ID project. It invites volunteers to flick through high-resolution snowflake photos taken around the world – from Alaska to the Swiss Alps to Antarctica – and help classify them by characteristics, such as their size and shape. You can access the project via the Zooniverse citizen science platform.
Snowflakes come in many … More