56 | New Scientist | 6 November 2021
undertaking service. We can’t
better Quentin’s description of it
as a quantum business governed
by the collapse – or not – of the
customer’s wave function. We are
left wondering about the quality
of the driving.Menage au fromage
This week’s prize for research
that made us involuntarily
choke on our cocoa is “Sex in
cheese: evidence for sexuality in
the fungus Penicillium roqueforti”.
Our late-night stilton eating
may never be as innocent again
with the revelation that, far from
living a life of monastic asceticism
and reproducing purely asexually,
the little blue-cheese-making
blighters are – we know of no way
to put this delicately – at it all the
time. “The screening of a large
sample of strains isolated fromdiverse substrates throughout
the world revealed the existence
of individuals of both mating
types, even in the very same
cheese,” the researchers write,
with what sounds like glee.
Investigating the sexual
capabilities of cheese mould isn’t
something we had considered as
a calling before. The affiliation of
the team involved – the National
Museum of Natural History in
Paris, France – causes us to narrow
our eyes ever so slightly, while
giving the faintest of wise nods.Where’s my elephant?
Nick Parlow writes taking exception
to a suggestion made in our thread
on finding an elephant in the room
(4 September and 2 October).
“I’m sure that others have pointed
out how ludicrous it is to paint an
elephant’s toenails red and hide it
in a cherry tree,” he writes. “That
amount of red nail varnish would
be prohibitively expensive. Happily
there is a far more practical method:
paint the soles of its feet yellow, and
hide it upside down in the custard.”
We are pleased to make this
plain, Nick, given also that you
reference the source ”Cunningham
and Blake (1974), The Puffin Joke
Book”, leaving us in no doubt that
this is settled science and that
the old ones are the best.Elementary errors
While in the vein of nostra culpa,
opprobrium – an alkaline earth
metal, we believe – has rained
down on the Feedback inbox
following an ad for New Scientist
subscriptions in our 23 October
issue. With the tagline “That’s
elementary”, it promised the
gift of some rather surprising
chemistry this Christmas. The
non-metal selenium became
a lanthanide, while both the
transition metal rhenium and
the excitingly short-lived halogen
tennessine were Nobel gases.
No prizes there. Apologies to all
who felt pH-imbalanced, and for all
those asking what we intend to do
with those responsible: barium. ❚We fear the clues may be in the
quotes in the headline, “Living
‘concrete’ made from bacteria
used to create replicating bricks”,
and in the first line of the article,
“A type of living concrete made
from bacteria could one day help to
reduce the environmental impact
of the construction industry”.
No, Mike and all: to the best
of our knowledge, we cannot
grow concrete. Mind you, with
all the wonderful things we are
learning you can do with cellulose,
grasping at straws may prove to
be a viable alternative.Taking the low road
“They got you covered, either way”,
is Quentin Macilray’s comment as
he writes from Santo Domingo in
the Dominican Republic with a
picture of a van advertising Camino
Eterno, a combined ambulance andGone with the wind
How do natural disasters affect
intimate relationships? Feedback
maintains a long list of questions
we had never thought of asking,
a fact that will surprise no one
who knows of our predilection
for impossible logic. So we are
pleased to see this query now
comprehensively answered
in the paper “Experiencing a
natural disaster temporarily
boosts relationship satisfaction
in newlywed couples” by Hannah
Williamson at the University of
Texas at Austin and her colleagues.
The study involved 231 couples
in Harris county, Texas, around the
time of Hurricane Harvey in 2017,
and is the “first to use longitudinal
data collected before and after
a natural disaster to examine its
effect on relationship outcomes”.
This rather raises the question
in our mind of how long the
researchers were waiting, patiently
observing, for disaster to strike – or
perhaps it is merely a case of when,
rather than if, in that part of Texas.
Or maybe they have a button they
can press, in which case we think we
and the ethics board should be told.
No matter: for anyone wondering
whether a fortuitously timed
tornado might put the whirlwind
back into their romance, whether
a wildfire can relight their fire or
whether Earth moving makes the
earth move, the answer is yes –
but make hay while the sun’s
not shining. Couples soon “revert
to their prehurricane levels of
functioning as the recovery period
continues”. For a longer-term
boost, you will just have to move
to somewhere more dangerous.Block head
Feedback is excited to learn that
an article in New Scientist has
been cited in the defence of
Mike Graham, the presenter at
talkRADIO – a UK radio station
where the opinions can be as
suddenly shouty as the name –
who claimed while interviewing
environmental activist Cameron
Ford that you can grow concrete.Got a story for Feedback?
Send it to [email protected] or New Scientist,
Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT
Consideration of items sent in the post will be delayedTwisteddoodles for New Scientist
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