麻豆传媒

Blushing chickens

People 鈥� humans 鈥� blush. Chickens aren鈥檛 entirely inhuman in that they, too, show emotions on their facial skin. Delphine Soulet at the University of Tours, France, and colleagues how skin redness might be a reliable indicator of 鈥渢he affective states of hens鈥�. Reader Fr茅d茅ric Darboux brought the project to Feedback鈥檚 attention.

This is the story, to the extent it is a story, of six hens in a wooded outdoor range covered with grass. They had free access to a hen house and to as much water and feed as they wanted, whenever they wanted it.

This is a story, also, that was essentially a reality TV programme. The chickens were given no script to follow. But they were placed in situations that almost forced them to react in ways that would induce compelling video viewing.

The adventure stretched over three consecutive summer weeks. Among the main events: a 鈥淐apture Test鈥� that involved 鈥渋ndividual hens being caught by the experimenter, who restrained the wings with two hands鈥�. The hens also found themselves involved in a 鈥淩ewarding Test鈥� that involved a glass dish containing mealworms and wood shavings 鈥減laced in the middle of the test arena鈥�.

The researchers captured video of 鈥渃alm states鈥�: resting, preening or feeding. Other footage showed 鈥渆xciting and rewarding states鈥�: dustbathing and exposure to mealworms. Inevitably, there were also 鈥渇ear-related states鈥�, most notably seen in the Capture Test.

The colourful data came from a process of 鈥渆xtracting redness from still frames from hen profiles鈥�. In the old days, before digital technology was available for chicken-emotion research, this might have been a matter of subjective artistic appraisal. The 2020s method removes human emotion from that aspect of the data gathering. Electronic video processing extracted 鈥渢he mean red (R), blue (B), and green (G) values for each bare skin region of the hen face (comb, cheek, ear lobe and wattle)鈥�.

After analysing the data from the videos, the scientists reached a conclusion as to when the chickens had blushed most strongly. The hens, says the final report, 鈥渆xhibited the highest degree of facial skin redness in negative situations of high arousal鈥�.

Eclectically smectic

If, somehow, your interests are eclectic and you are cathectic (but not apoplectic) about exploring words that rhyme with dialectic, try 鈥渟mectic鈥� 鈥� as in the title of the study 鈥溾��.

Written by Zala Korenjak and Matja啪 Humar in a journal with the intriguing name Physical Review X, that paper explains how it doesn鈥檛 take much to make a soap bubble become a laser.

Or, for a mildly jolly burst of melancholy, reach back to 1987 for P. Oswald鈥檚 treatise in Journal de Physique, 鈥溾��.

Tending towards entropy

Physics often gets portrayed as a field so abstruse that most people can鈥檛 understand or directly use it. A new study called 鈥溾�� shows how wrong some people feel that notion might be.

The researchers write: 鈥淭he principle of 鈥榚ntropy increase鈥� is a universal law describing a natural progression from order to disorder. This paper is innovatively the first to take the principle as a theoretical basis for assessing how tourism influences human health from a sociomateriality perspective鈥�.

Back in 2000, a collaboration between physicists in Italy, Brazil and the US tried to make sense of a different and borderline-unruly aspect of the concept of entropy increase. They published a paper called 鈥溾��.

Tourism professionals both do and don鈥檛 like tourism to happen at the edge of chaos: they do for the excitement, but don鈥檛 for the danger, the danger being both corporeal and financial. Too much entropy over too short a period could intensify both kinds of danger.

A about the new tourism research does note that 鈥淓ntropy is classified as the general trend of the universe towards death and disorder鈥�. But other than that, the press release accentuates the positive. It says: 鈥淔or the first time, an interdisciplinary study has applied the theory of entropy to tourism, finding that travel could have positive health benefits, including slowing down the signs of ageing.鈥�

In theory 鈥� in this theory 鈥� people might believe that principles of physics, adroitly deployed, can help a person delay seeing wrinkles. Raise this to a literary plane, Feedback muses, and it becomes a reminder to read Madeleine L鈥橢ngle鈥檚 sci-fi novel .

That book鈥檚 plot involves travel. That book鈥檚 publication was reputedly delayed by publishers鈥� indecision as to whether the story was meant for adults or children.

Pointy reckoning

A couple more additions to Feedback鈥檚 collection of conversation-starting titles of research papers.

鈥溾�� gave incisive knowledge to subscribers of BMJ in 2006, while 鈥溾�� supplied some fast and, in some respects, hard numbers to readers of the Archives of Oral Biology in 1995.

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