A GADGET from Intelligent Health Systems supposedly “eliminates itchiness and inflammation” from mosquito and other insect bites “in just a few clicks”. Mosquito-Click works by piezoelectricity, and its maker claims that “any irritating or poisonous substance introduced under the skin by an insect is altered and therefore inactivated by the application of electric pressure”.
Being sceptical by nature, we showed this to a colleague who edits medical features for 51¶ŻÂţ. “The mechanism it describes is definitely nonsense,” he commented. “But it might work another way: the electrical impulses could affect the nerves causing the itching sensation. A quick search reveals a couple of papers which show that electric currents can both ease and cause itching sensations, though it’s not clear if the Mosquito-Click generates strong enough current to have any effect.”
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His conclusion: “This might be a new category for Feedback: a product that works, but not for the reason its manufacturers claim.”
MUCH has been written about call centres and helplines outsourced to far-off lands. The reward for getting past the wall of recorded announcements most companies surround themselves with may be “help” that is a lot less helpful than you would wish – if you can understand it at all.
A colleague recently tried sending a written query by email in the hope of bypassing internet giant AOL’s automated call centre and helpline.
“A notice on a the window of a restaurant on the south bank of the Thames in London states: “Sorry, no children allowed inside or out.” Carla Pittau wonders how this can possibly be accomplished”
“Dear Member” came the prompt reply, “With reference to your mail sir in this case we will request you to kindly get in touch with our member services… and they will do the need full for you. And that’s about all for now.”
Just for the heck of it our colleague phoned the number as he had been so quaintly advised, only to be plunged back into a maze of recorded announcements and “Please press 1, 2, 3 or 4” options.
ON A map of walks in Cornwall in south-west England, Eddie Street found the legend “Non-existent footpath”. Why they should have decided to mark this particular non-existent footpath out of all the other non-existent footpaths in the area he does not know – and nor do we.
EVIDENTLY, the science books need updating, says Phillippa Bricher. She’s referring to page 1 of the March issue of Australian Science which casts doubt on all previously held theories about the history of science.
“Approximately 46,000 years ago Australia’s megafauna – including giant wombats, kangaroos and marsupial lions – suddenly became extinct,” the journal states. “Since then the scientific community has been divided over whether climate change or the arrival of humans brought about their demise… “
Perhaps the science community also devoted time to peer-reviewing aboriginal rock art when it wasn’t too busy pondering these issues, Bricher suggests.
CONGRATULATIONS to the website for contributing to our collection of odd units of measurement. An article about computing that Olaf Lipinski was reading said: “To illustrate the point for non-computer experts, this means that Albert2 is capable of performing 12,288,000,000,000 floating-point arithmetic operations per second. To equal this computing power, all the inhabitants of the city of Munich (1.3 million) would have to multiply two eight-digit numbers every three-and-a-half seconds for a year.”
Phew. We wonder how long it would take the citizens of Munich to work out that comparison.
FROM a review of the Nintendo Wii at the Tomshardware site: “The higher sales figures are primarily attributable to the Wii, which launched in November and sold over two million units in as many months.”
“Two million months,” queries Nathan Kitchen. “Did I miss out the last few millennia? Is it really AD 168,673? Time to check the savings account.”
THIS week’s dreadful punning award goes to David Reed, Jessica Light, Julie Allen and Jeremy Kirchman for their paper “Pair of lice lost or parasites regained: the evolutionary history of anthropoid primate lice”, published in BMC Biology (7 March).
CITIZENS of the US are accustomed to obeying highway signs in the imperative, such as “Use Caution” or “Slow Down”. Some understandable confusion can therefore be caused by the occasional switch to a declarative, such as “End Road Work” or the common “End Construction”. K. Roeyer, who pointed this out to us, wonders if “… and Help Stamp Out Progress” should be added to the latter.
FINALLY, the packet of Jordan’s cereal purchased by Perry Bebbington stated that it was “The Original”. Above this, however, it said: “New recipe with 10 per cent more fruit”. So which is it, Bebbington wants to know. New or original?
