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<\/div>Suck it up<\/h2>\n
Reader Simon Leach responded to Feedback\u2019s call for papers in which The Title Tells You Everything You Need to Know with a cheery \u201cWell, you asked for it!\u201d.<\/p>\n
The \u201cit\u201d was a copy of a report published in the British Medical Journal<\/i> in 1980 under the headline \u201cPenile injuries from vacuum cleaners\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe title,\u201d says Leach, \u201ccontains everything you need to know. However, the report answers every question that might occur to you as well. The last sentence summarises by saying \u2018The present patients may well have thought that the penis would be clear of the fan but were driven to new lengths by the novelty of the experience and came to grief\u2019.\u201d Leach adds: \u201cAs junior doctors we may not have read the BMJ<\/i> as assiduously as we should, but we all read this one!\u201d<\/p>\n Feedback muses that, whether professionally or personally, one should love one\u2019s vacuum cleaner wisely, but not too well. If you know of another published research study with a title this satisfyingly complete, please send it to: Telltale titles, c\/o Feedback.<\/p>\n Shiheng Zhao and Pierre Haas grossly grab your attention with the title of their study: \u201cMechanics of poking a cyst\u201d<\/a>. That done, they shift into a less folksy tone.<\/p>\n Zhao and Haas are based at two of the three Max Planck Institutes in Dresden, Germany. They demonstrate how to shepherd a discussion so as to minimise the yucky and maximise the technomechanical.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cJust as one is wont to poke the fruity wares peddled in supermarkets to evaluate the immediacy of their comestibility,\u201d they begin, \u201cindentation of biological samples reveals mechanical properties that are intrinsically linked to their biological function.\u201d<\/p>\n After that, it\u2019s all about \u201cthe relation between the indentation force F<\/i> and the displacement e<\/i> of the indenter\u201d and \u201ccalculation of the elastic deformation gradient\u201d.<\/p>\n If you have a fascinating skin ailment but also have friends who cringe when you tell them about it, try using Zhao and Haas\u2019s genteel phrasing. Cysts, they point out, are simply \u201cspherical monolayers of polarised cells surrounding a fluid-filled lumen\u201d.<\/p>\n Several hundred Hamburgers \u2013 residents of the city of Hamburg, Germany \u2013 answered surveys about three kinds of sausage. These were select Hamburgers, all of a certain age range.<\/p>\n The survey\u2019s senders, Stephan G. H. Meyerding and Magdalena Kuper at Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, limited their questions to these varieties of sausage: \u201cMeat, plant-based or in-vitro salami.\u201d<\/p>\n Meat-based is the most traditional of the three salamis, while the plant-based kind has grown in popularity in recent decades. In-vitro salami \u2013 made using stem cells \u2013 is the newest comer, still finding its way from laboratories to dinner tables.<\/p>\n The researchers\u2019 aim? \u201cExplaining food product choice of generation Y and Z in Germany through carnism and the core dimensions of the food-related lifestyle scale\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n The verdict, in their data, seems to them clear: \u201cThe majority of Generation Y and Z in Germany prefer vegan meat over real meat, and in-vitro meat is more popular than beef or pork meat.\u201d<\/p>\n That verdict doesn\u2019t seem as meaty as it might be if the study is done anew some years from now. \u201cIn-vitro meat,\u201d say the researchers, \u201cis still unknown and not yet on the German market.\u201d<\/p>\n The old complaint that kids don\u2019t want to do what adults tell them to do has new confirmatory evidence. \u201cChildren don\u2019t like eating what they\u2019re supposed to eat\u2026\u201d<\/a>\u00a0according to the title of Vira R\u00e9ka Nickel\u2019s study about childhood nutrition.<\/p>\n Nickel is based at the Institute of Ethnology in Budapest and has gathered info about the past hundred years or so of \u201cpublic catering for children in Hungary\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n During that time, eating and food preparation habits changed drastically in the nation, driven, says the study, by \u201cthe obligation to provide public catering and the general obligation to work\u201d.<\/p>\n Nickel illustrates the they-don\u2019t-like-it problem with photographs, one of which bears the caption \u201cFried, breaded luncheon meat with creamed split peas is one of the \u2018classic\u2019 school meals, although it has never been one of the most popular\u201d.<\/p>\n There are certain meals that many children refuse to touch, a reluctance Nickel explores in some depth: \u201cDuring our research, fried liver was one such meal. In Eger, the problem was addressed by serving only rice if the child did not want the liver. In \u00d3zd, the children were not given this option. The catering manager in \u00d3zd drew my attention to an important fact when we asked about the possibility of serving children only the part of their meal they wanted to eat: \u2018it\u2019s against the law. The parents have paid for it\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCan non-human primates perform linear regression on a graph?\u201d ask Lorenzo Ciccione and colleagues in a study that refers to \u201cthe baboon as a statistician\u201d. Their tentative answer: somewhat, to a degree that \u201cvaries among individuals\u201d.<\/p>\n Marc Abrahams created the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony and\u00a0co-founded\u00a0the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Earlier, he worked on unusual ways to use computers. His website is\u00a0<\/em>improbable.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Got a story for Feedback?<\/b><\/p>\n You can send stories to Feedback by email at feedback@newscientist.com<\/a>. Please include your home address. This week\u2019s and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHow to de-cyst<\/h2>\n
Hamburgers on meat<\/h2>\n
Eat your liver<\/h2>\n
Statistics and baboons<\/h2>\n