Nut deficiency
What would happen if you removed most of the nuts from the bolts on three of the four sides of a tall electrical power pylon? New data speaks to that question.
Newshub on 24 June that a pylon had fallen in Glorit, on New Zealandās North Island, after a āmaintenance crewā removed some nuts from bolts connecting the tower to a base plate.
Advertisement
In the news video, Alison Andrew, chief executive of the Transpower company, reads aloud a presumably carefully worded statement: āOur view is that the specifications and procedures for this type of work were not followed. All the nuts securing the tower to the base plate on three legs had been removed, which caused the tower to lift off the base plate and fall. It is unprecedented and inconceivable that so many nuts were removed at once.ā
The consequence of the Glorit nuts removal might have been, but apparently was not, predicted by applying textbook engineering principles.
Hold on to your hats
The āpoor availability in Ireland of hatsā ā a phrase featured in a paper in the journal Clinical and Experimental Dermatology ā refers not to all hats, just to some hats, specifically to sun hats.
Marion Leahy and her colleagues at University Hospital Galway stuck that phrase into the of their 2022 study about the perilous state of menās heads, especially older menās heads, in the west of Ireland.
They warn that men there are demographically at high risk of melanoma, that these men traditionally protect themselves with hats, but that āmost hats available to the male population in Ireland [do] not offer adequate photoprotectionā.
Properly chosen and properly worn, a hat protects a head from the relentless assault of the sun. In 1992, B. L. Diffey and J. Cheeseman wrote a paean to the goodness of good sun hats and the badness of bad sun hats. Published in the British Journal of Dermatology, Diffey and Cheesemanās paper, titled āā, is famous for ā or should be famous for ā its main photograph. To cap off your appreciation, track down a copy online.
This portrait of scientific equipment jars with the stereotypical array-of-test-tubes imagery that has, for decades, been inculcated into the minds of children. It shows, at a rakish angle, six plastic, bodyless, hairless artificial heads. They are outdoors, mounted at intervals along a rod 2.4 metres in length. Hats sit on five of the six. Nothing sits on the third head. Each head sports little squares of sunlight-degradable polysulphone film that are affixed with Blu Tack onto the forehead, nose, cheeks, chin and neck.
A second, less avant-garde photo shows āthe 28 hats worn in the studyā, arranged in four rows of seven hats or hatlike objects. The styles range considerably, and include a crownless green plastic visor, an āairline pilot peaked capā, a āchecked deerstalker capā and a āRussian fur hatā.
Much of this is dermatological madhattery, Diffey and Cheeseman lead us to believe, on display under the blazing sun.
Spacey superpowers
Bruce Stavert sends a reminder to Feedbackās growing collection of trivial superpowers that talent by itself doesnāt guarantee success.
He says: āI thought Iād contribute to the discussion on spacey superpowers. My superpower sense of north becomes a superhindrance in the northern hemisphere, where I constantly find myself driving or walking in the opposite of my intended direction.
āClearly the position of the sun plays a large role in these superpowers. I have to stop and think āthe sun is in the south hereā before making any directional decisions. I was in the US at a conference dinner once and was telling an American participant about this problem. āDoes it still rise in the east?ā he asked. Mind you, he also found it hard to believe that it was winter in Australia while we were enduring a terribly hot Boston summer.ā
The Ghod Dam limit
Bapu Deokar and colleagues lay out some Ghod Dam water bookkeeping basics in a paper in the Asian Journal of Environment and Ecology, āā. They explain that as the water level behind the dam plummets, the regionās car wash businesses respond by sucking up increased amounts of groundwater. āAs a result,ā the study warns, āthe groundwater level is decreasing, leading to a shortage in the volume of groundwater.ā
Feedback boned up on some Ghod Dam basics by digging up a copy of a should-be-beloved-because-of-its-title study called āVolcanic vents of the Ghod Dam areaā, published in 1997 in the Journal of the University of Poona. It confirms that the Ghod Dam is ānear Chinchni, in the district of Poona, in Indiaā.
Recently, in the , Hanumant Dattatray Shinde of Shri Padmamani Jain Arts and Commerce College calculated that, over the course of a year, āup to 1.56 TMC [thousand million cubic metres]ā of water evaporates from the Ghod Dam. No matter how you describe it ā āGhod Damā or just ādamā ā the structure passes a lot of water.
Marc Abrahams created the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony andĀ co-foundedĀ the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Earlier, he worked on unusual ways to use computers. His website isĀ .
Got a story for Feedback?
You can send stories to Feedback by email at feedback@newscientist.com. Please include your home address. This weekās and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website.