What might the humble house mouse be trying to tell us?

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What is in a creak?

The experience of the mice of feedback is unfortunately confined to the dead (or, sometimes barely alive) that one of our felines insists on entering the house. This means that we heard more than our fair share of hits.

We were therefore surprised to learn that mouse clogs were almost entirely ignored by science. Journalist Alex Wilkins assures us that he is true, after reading a recent study in Biology letters Entitled “Hidden in Plain Sound: the scientific potential for homemade mouse clogs”.

The push is that studies of homemade mouse vocalizations have focused on ultrasonic sounds that humans cannot hear. Perhaps these felt new and surprising, so they stole the spotlight. Meanwhile, the authors say, audible squeaks “have received less attention”, leading to a “research shortage focused on grinks”.

It is clearly an error. The creak has a “considerable scientific potential”, they say, because “the extent to which the grinks transmit information on the vocalizer and affect the behavior of the listener in different social contexts has not yet been studied in depth”.

Retropping suspicious is a very effective communication. We recall that by reading Terry Pratchett that the character of Grim Reveresh known as the death of rats could transmit a lot with a well -chosen creak. Maybe we need a slogan. What do we want? Grow. When do we want it? Grink!

Punitive determinism

Sometimes, nominative determinism comes to us in a slightly diverted way.

Paul Meara underlines that a feature film on body clocks (August 2, 30 p) featured Angela Relógio, researcher at the MSH Medical School Hamburg in Germany, who is also chief executive of a company called Timeteller.

Unfortunately, the comments do not speak Portuguese, or we would have known, like Paul, that “Relógio” means “clock”.

Likewise, feedback is aware that decades of research on the role of a protein called amyloid in Alzheimer’s disease.

We were therefore even more surprised to learn that the British University of Dundee has an Alzheimer’s specialist called, Er, Amy Lloyd.

Hard as nails

On September 18, the most important prices on the scientific calendar were announced during a stifled ceremony of scientists: the Nobels IG. These celebrate fanciful and offbeat research which nevertheless has a meaning. Or, as the creators of the event say, “the achievements are so surprising that they make people laugh, then think”.

The comments did not go to the event. Fortunately, the entire show is available to watch online.

Among the various prices, we were the most intrigued by the price of literature. This was given to teacher and clinician William Bennett Bean (1909-1989), “to constantly record and analyze the growth rate of one of his nails over a period of 35 years”.

His work on this subject included a 1953 study, simply entitled “a note on nail growth”, in which Bean described “the observations made in the past 10 years”.

Several others in a similar vein followed, culminating in the Magnum opus of the 1980s “Nail growth. Thirty-five years of observation ”, published in the Internal Medicine Archives. The comments obtained this culminating nail paper and joined through.

Bean describes his study as “a very long recording of the growth of the fabric with obsolete human leaf” which “provides a Kymographer of Kératin in a slow motion which measures the age on the inexorable abscissa of time”.

What about results? Bean’s first discovery was that the different nails grow at different rhythms and that this is coherent in time.

“In simple terms, the nails develop more slowly than the nails of the hand, and the adult’s nail grows faster than the nails of the thumb or the little finger or the other two medium fingers. By measuring a nail, the growth rate can be calculated for everyone. ” After that, the discoveries accumulated about the speed nails.

However, some factors can cause detectable slowdown in nail growth. Bean had the mumps in 1950 and it caused a “decided slowdown”, but after recovering “there was a compensatory acceleration”. Finally, he identified a long -term slowdown. “The average daily growth of the left miniature, for example, varied from 0.123 mm per day during the first part of the study when I was 32 years old to 0.095 mm per day at the age of 67.”

Our only question is why it took so long for the Nobels IG to give Bean a price, when he was so clearly a researcher worthy of the IG.

Other prices have done research on “the extent to which a certain type of lizard chooses to eat certain types of pizza”, “what a nurse baby feels when the baby’s mother eats garlic” and “if the cows painted with zebra stripes can avoid being bitten by flies”.

The comments particularly appreciate the price of chemistry, rewarded for trying to know if eating improved foods with indigestible teflon makes you feel full on fewer calories, a project that is very similar to an alcohol bone. An experience on rats suggested that it works and is not toxic, but nevertheless we want to warn readers not to try this at home.

To be safe, we may have to invent our food with powdered nails.

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