56 | New Scientist | 6 February 2021
The back pages Feedback
Through the motions
A strange feeling of relief and
gratification floods through
Feedback as, after years of
straining, science finally plops out
an answer as to how wombats
produce cube-shaped faeces.
This question has been hanging
in the air for some time, with
preliminary results having emerged
in 2018. But the job remained
half-done until the publication by
bioengineer Patricia Yang and her
colleagues of the definitive paper,
“Intestines of non-uniform stiffness
mold the corners of wombat feces”,
in the journal Soft Matter. Yang’s
previous research record includes
finding that all mammals weighing
over 3 kilograms clear their bladders
in 21 seconds (plus or minus
13 seconds), regardless of body size.
Now, co-opting the massed ranks
of the Australian wombat research
establishment to supply intestines
for dissection and employing some
hardcore fluid dynamics modelling,
her team concludes that wombat
number twos require peristaltic
contractions of gut regions varying
by a factor of two in thickness and
four in stiffness to produce pellets
with flat faces and sharp corners.
As ever, Feedback salutes the
onward march of science. But we
are left with that age-old criticism:
it’s very good at telling us the how,
but less good at telling us the why.Bird brain
Also asking why is Bonita Ely,
who writes in from Marrickville,
New South Wales, Australia, with
a touching story of a loving pair
of pigeons, who perch under the
eaves of her neighbour’s roof on
an electrical junction box. “He
brings her bits of grass to make
a nest that immediately blow
away in the wind,” she writes.
“She coos encouragingly, and lays
eggs that fall off the box and break
on another box directly below.
They’ve been doing this for years.”
Rather ruining the moment,
Bonita adds that at least their genes
won’t be passed on. We pause, and
consider this might depend onthe issue by installing a pirated
version of Flash at 4:30 a.m. the
following day”.
This is, we consider, an innovative
response to the problems posed
to crucial computer systems
worldwide by obsolete “legacy”
software (7 November 2020, p 44).
Meanwhile, news from Great
Britain that its railways continue
to run at historically high levels
of punctuality during the UK’s
third lockdown suggests a rather
more obstinate barrier to the
running of an efficient railway:
people wanting to travel on it.Dare not speak its name
Feedback’s all-seeing eye spots the
appearance elsewhere in this issue
of Roger Kneebone, professor
of surgical education at Imperial
College London (page 40). We
mention this so you don’t have to.Foiled
Tony Rimmer writes in to query our
ongoing references to the use of
tinfoil hats to shield from unwanted
electromagnetic radiation, alien
mind control and the like. Surely, he
asks, devotees of metallic headgear
would use the much more widely
available aluminium foil?
We think not, Tony. A brief survey
of electromagnetic attenuation
lengths in various metals – we never
did get out much, and lately it has
been just that bit less – satisfies
us that tinfoil’s considerably higher
atomic weight affords vastly
superior protection against probing
photons. The question, indeed,
must be why the tin in our foil
was replaced by aluminium in
the first place. Wake up, sheeple!Big. Very big.
Feedback sometimes mocks
miscued attempts to express the
size of things in terms of the size
of other things that are presumed
to be more familiar. But Raffi Katz
fears our esteemed colleagues
may be going a little too far in the
other direction to prove a point.
“Dinosaur found in Argentina
may be largest land animal”, we
recently titled a story (23 January,
p 18). Newly emerged titanosaur
fossils, we went on to say, may
represent “the largest land animal
that scientists have ever found” –
indeed, the researchers behind the
find wrote, “probably exceeding
the Patagotitan in size”. This latter
dinosaur is itself “sometimes
claimed to be the largest land
animal to ever exist”, we wrote.
Regardless of the truth of that,
we were told that the new find
was “undoubtedly a huge animal,
among the largest ever discovered”.
“Whatever happened to measuring
creatures against whales or
double-decker buses?”, Raffi wails.
We are chastened and bowed, and
promise betterment in future.
To get a handle on the true size
of the titanosaur, we refer you to
an article from 2020, “The biggest
dinosaur ever may have been
twice the size we thought”. ❚how many years “years” is. If it
extends beyond a generation, this
could mean that other pigeons
have taken their place and it is
an instance of the inheritance
of stupid behaviour, stretching
once again the conceptions of
evolutionary theorists.Wrong type of software
AppleDaily in Hong Kong reports
that the railway system in Dalian,
China, came to a standstill for up
to 20 hours on 12 January when
programs using the Adobe Flash
Player software stopped running.
This came after, in a long-trailed
move, Adobe stopped supporting
the software on 31 December 2020.
Whether the railway authorities
apologised for the almost two-week
delayed arrival of the disruption
to the service isn’t stated. However,
the report continues that they “fixedGot a story for Feedback?
Send it to [email protected] or
New Scientist, 25 Bedford Street, London WC2E 9ES
Consideration of items sent in the post will be delayedTwisteddoodles for New Scientist