Canine two-dimensional perception
READERS continue to be fascinated by their dogs’ 3D perception, or lack of it. John Dobson writes of trying to replicate the experiment reported in a letter to 51¶ŻÂţ by Elizabeth Girling (5 March, p 33). She climbed a tree and called her two dogs: the pointer found her immediately but the retriever, trained and bred to find game on the ground, was mystified.
“Brew Wharf’s cuisine draws on the traditions,” the website of the claims, “of brassieres and brew houses of Northern Europe.” “There’s an uplifting idea!” Martyn Thomas says.”
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John’s 7-year-old male black Labrador retriever appeared to follow him to the tree by scent, then to try to follow the scent up the tree. “Clearly,” John concludes, “further research is required.”
Sniffer dogs obey human prejudices
FEEDBACK has found such research in the shape of work reported by Lisa Lit and colleagues in the paper “Handler beliefs affect scent detection dog outcomes” (Animal Cognition, ). Eighteen dog handler teams specialising in drug and/or explosives detection each completed two sets of four search scenarios. The researchers report that handlers were falsely told that two of the scenarios included a paper marking the location of a scent. In fact, however, no drug or explosive scent was present and so “any alerting response was incorrect”.
The researchers conclude: “Handlers’ beliefs that scent was present” led to “handler identification of detection dog alerts. Human more than dog influences affected alert locations.”
So when, to take a relatively harmless example, sniffer dogs are deployed at London Underground stations to catch dabblers in unauthorised pharmacology, it seems very likely that they are merely echoing their handlers’ prejudices.
As one such dabbler commented online, the lesson for him is plain: “Get a haircut and buy a suit.”
STUDENTS! Win a trip to Geneva! To… address the seventh review conference of the on 5 December. OK, so it may be less than sunny then – but at least the will have opened.
The convention came into force in 1975. But, thanks to intransigence by “one country” – as diplomats diplomatically refer to it to avoid naming the powerful – the convention has “no enforcement or even monitoring mechanism”, reports our correspondent Debora MacKenzie, in her role as Ms Apocalypse.
So it is down to you. The treaty member countries are not keeping watch on potential weapons bugs themselves: they are asking scientists to do it. They’ll have someone else to blame when something gets out, Apocalypse sniffs.
Undergraduate and graduate students can submit 800 words on “Responsible conduct in the life sciences, the importance of safety and security as well as the role for international collaboration” to the UN office at Geneva () by 1 November. You could win a glass microbe sculpture from renowned artist Luke Jerram, as well as the above-mentioned trip.
Oh, and world peace.
Hidden washing machine instructions
COLLEAGUE Mick O’Hare recently visited Australia, and came back with a photo of instructions on the inside of the lid of a laundry machine in the hotel there: “1. Measure detergent into wash tub; 2. Load dry clothes loosely into wash tub; 3. Close lid…” and thus instructions 4, 5 and 6 were hidden from him.
“But you had the photo!” we pointed out. “The writing was very small,” came the reply. Nowadays, only those who carry cameras and can zoom their viewfinder images can expect clean clothes. By their creases shall you know the Luddites.
Rights reserved on all inhabited planets
FINALLY, while getting to grips with the glorious eight-part harmony of Deus in Adiutorium by the 16th-century Mexican composer Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla at choir rehearsal the other night, a colleague spotted the stern admonition: “© 1988 Vanderbeek & Imrie Ltd – all rights reserved for the world and solar system.”
Our colleague couldn’t help wondering whether, “given the explosion in our knowledge of worlds orbiting other stars since 1988, this formulation now offers adequate protection”.
At the very least, we should perhaps extend the equation devised by Frank Drake (9 January 2010, p 25) to calculate the likelihood of our being alone in the universe, by one more term. Call it P (phot), he suggests: “Probability of Technologically Advanced Alien Civilisation Having Developed Photocopier”.
We asked the UK , which said it was “glumly impressed” by the publisher’s apparent thoroughness in obtaining all rights from a composer . The alliance “looks forward – patiently” to the conclusion of an agreement to distribute revenue from photocopying fees by Earthly collecting societies and their Saturnian colleagues, to the benefit of composers everywhere.
