麻豆传媒

Wandering eyes

SHE has drawn admiring glances from all over the world, and is said to repay them in kind: visitors to the Louvre often claim Mona Lisa鈥榮 gaze seems to follow them around the room. But science is here to show that this isn鈥檛 strictly true.

A study published in i-Perception recounts how volunteers looked at the famous painting straight on, then marked the direction of her gaze on a carpenter鈥檚 rule in front of them.

On average, 15.4 degrees to their right 鈥� in other words, just over their shoulder. Perhaps she is admiring Veronese鈥檚 Wedding Feast at Cana, which is hung opposite her?

鈥淎 roadside sign tells Julia Butler 鈥淲itness littering? Report offenders鈥�. She says 鈥淎nd I thought suborning them was bad鈥�.鈥�

Mighty bitey

TYRANNOSAURUS REX may have had a fearsome bite, but in relation to body size, it was nothing special. After adjusting for size, Darwin鈥檚 finches have a more powerful bite, according to a comparative analysis of living and extinct species.

A 33-gram finch generates 70 newtons of force with its bite, making it 320 times as powerful, pound for pound, as T. rex. Humans, however, have an exceptionally weak bite because our big brains take up the space where larger biting muscles would be. Hopefully the resultant smarts are enough to keep us out of any strong sets of jaws.

Climate of fear

TWO weeks after declaring war on the Amazon, Brazil鈥檚 new far-right president Jair Bolsonaro was blessed by mother nature with a rain of spiders. Residents of the town of Esp铆rito Santo do Dourado 鈥� named after the patron saint of horrifying arachnid portents, we believe 鈥� could only watch as millions of hairy omens fell like soft, .

Hopefully this will be enough of a warning for the current administration to shelve plans for greater development of the rainforest. If not, it is only a matter of time before more threatening meteorological phenomenon are unleashed: fog filled with angry wasps, a flood of poison frogs, tornadoes of electric eels. Brazilians are cordially reminded that there is no bad weather: just insufficiently plague-proof clothing.

Finders keepers

IT FEELS like only last week that we were discussing the travails of Dutch whizz-kid Boyan Slat鈥檚 plastic collecting boom [It was last week 鈥揈d].

Having recovered it from the Pacific, he may need to deploy the boom closer to home, after a cargo ship spilled some 280 containers off the coast of the Netherlands.

The contents of these huge boxes washed ashore across the country鈥檚 northerly islands, offering enthusiastic residents a smorgasbord of free shoes, toys, IKEA furniture and slightly sodden large-screen TVs. Which just goes to show that attitudes to ocean plastic vary greatly depending on what that plastic is.

Feedback offers a novel means to clean up ocean litter: sprinkle a few high-value items into the Pacific to entice bargain hunters. There is nothing like the lure of a free ODGER dining room chair to get beachcombers out in force.

Word of mouth

ONE of Santa鈥檚 little elves 鈥� or rather, Christine Akre 鈥� informs us that the discombobulated lyrics offered by Google for The Twelve Days Of Christmas are in fact taken verbatim from an acapella group called Straight No Chaser (22/29 December 2018). Mystery solved!

Known unknowns

published in Nature Human Behaviour has grilled US residents on their attitudes towards genetically modified foods. It turns out that those most concerned about the dangers of GM foods also knew the least about GM foods. As the authors say: 鈥渢he less people know, the more opposed they are to scientific consensus.鈥�

On the face of it, this ought to be good news, suggesting that by sharing more information about GM foods, opposition to these more nutritious, less environmentally damaging crops would fade. If only it were so!

The team also found that those who knew the least about GM foods were convinced they knew the most. It is perhaps a lovely example of the Dunning-Kruger effect, in which those with little expertise think they know it all.

for these people to be more confidently sceptical of GM technology would be if they had never heard about it at all. Which might be happier for everyone involved.

Ice caps

FINALLY, Jim Logan reports an unlikely discovery in a hotel gift shop. 鈥淚t was very posh,鈥� he says, the sort where souvenirs come with five-year payment plans.

鈥淥ne item was a ballpoint pen priced at 拢125.鈥� Querying the value of such a pen, the assistant told him they are made in Switzerland, and the clear piece on the end of the cap was ice chipped from a genuine Swiss glacier.

This prompts a very obvious question, which Jim dutifully asked. He was breezily informed that the Swiss use 鈥渁 special process鈥� to keep the ice solid at room temperature.

Feedback isn鈥檛 sure what is worse: that the great minds behind this Vonnegutian invention have gone unrecognised by the Nobel committee, or that it is being used to sell novelty pens rather than, say, stop the ice caps melting. Then again, you can鈥檛 sign a five-year payment plan with an ice cap.

You can send stories to Feedback by email at feedback@newscientist.com. Please include your home address. This week鈥檚 and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website.