THE whole point of publishing patents is to make new science and technology more widely available. The world鈥檚 patent offices now publish patents on the internet. But, as this magazine has noted, they make them ridiculously difficult to find and read (3 April, p 19).
The European Patent Office in Munich, Germany, told us it was now going to make some changes. And indeed it has. To see for yourself, go to and click on the big red boast: 鈥淲orldwide 30 million documents鈥�. If you follow its example for how to enter a world patent number 鈥� for example, Disney鈥檚 new patent WO0434692 鈥� nothing comes back. The patent is there. You have to deduce that the 04 is a year and expand it to 2004, and guess that the rest of the number also needs to be padded with a leading 0: WO2004034692. Hey presto: 鈥淟atent effects projection systems鈥�.
Simple, really. If you鈥檙e a laterally thinking computer programmer with time on your hands, that is.
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PARTICLE physics could do with much more serious coverage in serious newspapers. So we welcome the feature on the Large Hadron Collider and the computing grid that appeared in the Irish Times on 30 April. So serious is this coverage that it manages to avoid any tacky populism in its announcement of a truly earth-shattering discovery. Not blazoned across the front page, not even headlined, but tucked away in the tenth paragraph, is the news that the LHC will operate at 鈥渕inus 3000 掳C in temperature鈥�. (That鈥檚 minus 2727 kelvin, for thermodynamic purists 鈥� 0 kelvin being absolute zero, of course.)
THE department of unusual units has spawned a sub-department of unusual economics. A press release from Future Forests notes that 鈥渘early 拢5 billion is wasted on energy in the UK every year. This could pay Kate Moss to get out of bed every day for over 1500 years.鈥�
Actually, sweeties, it was Linda Evangelista who famously declined to get out of bed for less than $10,000. But never mind. We now have a new unit of currency 鈥� the supermodel-arising unit, equal to about 拢5500 or 鈧�8300 according to current exchange rates.
IT鈥橲 not often that the blurbs on 鈥渉ealth鈥� products slip up and make actual testable predictions. So congratulations to Blue Water 鈥淣atural Detoxifying Alpine Drinking Water鈥� of Liphook, Hampshire, UK. The water 鈥渉as so much energy it can literally energise your body. One way of demonstrating this unique property is to do the 鈥榣emon test鈥�.鈥�
And what would that be? 鈥淪queeze the juice of one fresh lemon into two glasses. Place one glass next to the bottle of Blue Water. Keep the other at least 5 feet away. Wait 5 minutes. Try the 鈥榗loser鈥� juice first. Most people notice an amazing change caused by the natural energy of Blue Water. Seeing is believing. Tasting is knowing.鈥�
Now, if they鈥檇 just let us amend that to a proper double-blind trial, we would be really impressed.
SCIENTISTS know a lot about not jumping to conclusions in their work. Apparently, though, social lives are another matter. Feedback hears from a research psychologist who published a paper based 鈥� as is psychologists鈥� wont 鈥� on observations of his own baby daughter. He added her name as a co-author. An honourable move. If you鈥檙e going to suffer the embarrassment that invariably attends being born to a psychologist, you may as well get ahead in the citation stakes.
But at the next conference the psychologist attended he was upset to find hitherto friendly colleagues giving him the cold shoulder. The explanation that gradually emerged was that they had inferred from the names on the paper that he must have traded in his wife, whom they had grown to know and like, for a younger model.
WE HAVE all heard about ex-employees of collapsed high-technology firms reduced to flipping hamburgers at fast-food joints or stocking shelves at Wal-Mart. Warren Leathers of Chico, California, wasn鈥檛 having any of that. After 25 years working on optical coatings, each layer of which is less than a micrometre thick, he has now moved on to driving a 35-tonne cement mixer, he reports in a letter in Photonics Spectra. Laying it on thick, you might say.
MARK Waller had the misfortune to have to attend the emergency department at an Oxfordshire hospital recently. While he was waiting to be seen, he noticed a sign on the wall, the bottom part of which had been torn away. It read: 鈥淭he Oxfordshire National Health Service Trust accepts no responsibility for the loss of patients.鈥� He was not reassured.
FINALLY, a hopeful note on a whiteboard, seen by Simon Decker in his university鈥檚 theoretical astronomy department: 鈥淣obody is perfect. I am a nobody. Therefore I am perfect.鈥�
The environmentally friendly note in the on-line user manual for Tom Collup鈥檚 M90 barcode-capture unit states: 鈥淭his publication is printed on recycled paper鈥�
