56 | New Scientist | 19 February 2022
cheese thing, as Twitter user Tyler
Conway remarked, “let he who has
not snorted grated parmesan off
the countertop cast the first stone”.Sperm waving
If not cheese, SpermTree – “a
species-level database of sperm
morphology spanning the animal
tree of life”, recently described
in the journal Scientific Data –
promises some real, hard science.
What researchers get up to with
descriptions of more than 4700
types of sperm, we hardly need to
know. We are busy following an
atavistic impulse by downloading
the spreadsheet and reordering in
descending order of sperm length.
Top of the list by some margin
is the fruit fly Drosophila bifurca,
with sperm over 5.8 centimetres in
length when fully unfurled. This
strikes us as a mite exhausting foran insect just a few millimetres
long. We aren’t surprised to
learn elsewhere that this limits
its output to a few hundred cells in
its lifetime, an apparent limitation
on its reproductive chances that
has been dubbed the “big sperm
paradox”. This is clearly a sticky
problem. Still, we are pleased to
learn via a graph in the SpermTree
paper that publications on sperm
morphology are on the up and up.Toast’s flip side
“Dear Professor Feedback,” Jonty
Rix writes, warming the cockles
of our heart. “As a social scientist,”
he continues, chilling our blood
again, “I am perplexed (and a little
disappointed) by the failure of your
discussions about the landing
outcomes of ‘toast’ to fully consider
socio-cultural or post-materialist
understandings of the possibilities.”
We are beginning to regret
reopening correspondence on
the fate of falling buttered toast
(8 January). But pray continue.
“For example, the nature of upness
seems a fundamental problem, as
does a lack of a rich consideration
of the numerous spaces in which
toast is experienced, and of course
our underlying definitions of
toast and butter and the power
relations inherent in their
production and usage.”
We nod uneasily, wary of
saying the wrong thing. We hope
some opening into this whole
new metalevel of debate is given
by Toby Bateson. He disagrees
with our assertion, backed up with
references, that toast will always
land butter-side down in any
universe that supports intelligent
bipeds (29 January). “By simply
making the toast twice as long it
will rotate at half the speed and
so will land butter side up,” he
writes. “The problem arises due
to a fundamental flaw in the
proportions of toast which can
be adapted to solve the problem
in any universe, regardless of
table height and the intelligence
of the bipeds who made the toast.”
We’re off to have a lie-down
and burn some calories. ❚use your mouth, but the taste
has changed!” the company’s
website continues. A welcome
release for those of us who had
been attempting to discover
flavour by snorting our water.Smell my cheese
We note merely in passing a press
conference held on 7 February by
New York City’s new mayor, Eric
Adams, in which he claimed that
people wouldn’t be able to tell
the difference between “someone
hooked on heroin” and “someone
hooked on cheese”.
Entirely our experience too.
Meanwhile, Adams’s own claim
that he eats a vegan diet has
been called into question after
he was seen eating fish. Given
that phylogenetically there is no
such thing as a fish, we can’t rule
out a plant-based variety. As to theSleep, perchance to diet
That April is the cruellest month has
yet to pass peer review, but there is
little doubt February is the shortest.
Feedback considers this just as well.
Some of our more southerly readers
may be sunning themselves on
the beach, but in our pre-Arctic
stationery cupboard hole, we are just
waiting for the winter murk to clear.
It is at this time of year, when
we are thinking about getting fit for
the bikini season and doing nothing
about it, that we want to read, and
not question too deeply, headlines
such as our own “Getting enough
sleep may lower the amount of
calories you eat”. The study in
question, from a team at the
University of Chicago Sleep
Research Center, found that an
extra hour’s sleep at night allowed
participants to cut their energy
intake by 270 calories a day –
“the equivalent of around three
chocolate digestive biscuits”, as
the Press Association helpfully
put it in its story on the research.
Why stop there? A comforting
graph swims into our head of a
rising line of hours not consuming
calories, crossing over a falling line
of calories consumed. The most
effective weight-loss mechanism is
surely to never get out of bed at all.Getting up the nose
As we take some horizontal
exercise, a PR puff is popped our
way by a svelte, overslept-looking
colleague with a straw hanging
from their nose. “To inspire those
who struggle to reach their
recommended daily intake of
water, air up is a world first in food
technology that utilises retronasal
smell to provide a zero-calorie,
zero sugar, zero additive way to
drink 100% pure water which
tastes flavoured,” we read.
Flavours “from Lime and
Orange-Passionfruit to Cola and
Iced Coffee” are created by using
a special widget to inject bubbles
of scented air into the previously
100 per cent blameless water.
“We’ve revolutionised the way
we drink water. You still have toGot a story for Feedback?
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