Josie Ford
Down, with texting
Want to guess what might happen if someone walks while texting?
If you prefer a formally educated guess to an autodidactic supposition, Paulo Pelicioni and his colleagues at the University of New South Wales, Australia, can supply it. Having studied the matter, they say: “Using a mobile phone to text while walking may compete with locomotor tasks, threat assessment and postural balance control mechanisms, which leads to an increased risk of accidental falls in young adults.”
The researchers analysed the adventures of 50 “healthy young adults” in a 10-metre-long hallway. They tell the story by implication – note their efficiency in choosing the word “impact” – in the title of their study: “Impact of mobile phone use on accidental falls risk in young adult pedestrians.”
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To summarise: while texting, a spring in the step can lead to a fall. What happens to people who have passed the “young adult” stage of life and reached the winter of their existence? The report does not presume. Instead, meticulously, it states: “Future research should further investigate the impacts of mobile phone use in other cohorts including… older adults.”
Man of more letters
The lengthy list of 16 academic abbreviations attached to a person’s name, as noted by Feedback last month (15 July), failed to impress Ian Glendon.
He says: “Your correspondent’s piffling 16 post nominals falls short of those in correspondence I had with an erstwhile colleague at the end of 2022 – who may have added more since – but who had these 22 at that time: BEd, BSc, MSc, MBA, MPH, MLitt, PhD, DLitt, MIIAI, MIEnvSc, FEPS, FSyI, PFHEA, FCIEHF, C.ErgHF, CGeog, CMgr, CSyP, CFCIPD, CPsychol, FAcSS, CCMI.”
Rendered curious, but possessing only the information Ian provided, Feedback turned to Google, which turned up exactly one person who fits Ian’s description. A certain research chair in risk and resilience at the University of Glasgow Business School, UK, comes thusly adorned: BEd, BSc, MSc, MBA, MPH, MLitt, PhD, DLitt, MIIAI, MIEnvSc, FEPS, FSyI, PFHEA, FCIEHF, C.ErgHF, CGeog, CMgr, CSyP, CFCIPD, CPsychol, FAcSS, CCMI.
Feedback notes that anyone who trudges, unslowed, through life with that many letters affixed to their name is a banner example of resilience.
Autophagy for all
Some guidelines are brief, others a lot less so. A research journal article called “Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (4th edition)” is less so. The article is 382 pages long. It includes a reference list that has 4068 items.
It also has approximately 2930 co-authors. (Feedback counted them, but isn’t confident in the accuracy of that count. The co-authors seem a bit shaky about their own ability to count. They say: “In a rapidly expanding and highly dynamic field such as autophagy, it is possible that some authors who should have been included on this manuscript have been missed.”)
The article was published in 2021 in a journal called Autophagy. In the tradition of specialist journals that are distinctly not aimed at non-specialists, nowhere do the guidelines tell the meaning of the word “autophagy”. Rather the opposite. The article says: “It is important to note that in this set of guidelines the term ‘autophagy’ generally refers to macroautophagy.”
Non-specialists must go elsewhere (the usual elsewhere: an internet search engine, a paper dictionary or a clever 10-year-old child) to find the meaning of the word “autophagy”. But the article isn’t without interest for non-specialists, if only for the mention on page 114 of the word clockophagy.
The article points to an informative future: “These guidelines are likely to evolve as new methodologies are developed and current assays are superseded.”
A jarring superpower
Ken Bradley adds a numberific trivial superpower to Feedback’s ever-expanding catalogue.
He says:”Two years ago, our 9-year-old grandson J., at his school in Australia, won no less than four competitions for the best estimate of the number of sweets (or, in one case, pencils) in a large jar. This month, now aged 11 and at school in England, he again won a prize, at a summer fete, by estimating that there were 584 sweets in a jar. The correct answer, according to the organisers, was – 584! J. had no ‘inside knowledge’ and tells me it isn’t guesswork. His twin sister has many talents; but not this one.”
Pleasing everyone
“You can’t please everyone,” says a report (“Remove, reduce, inform: What actions do people want social media platforms to take on potentially misleading content?“) by Shubham Atreja, Libby Hemphill and Paul Resnick at the University of Michigan School of Information.
Their conclusion echoes many conclusions, from many times, about many subjects. The lament always reduces to those same four words: “You can’t please everyone.”
Is the statement true? Or, au contraire, is there something that DOES please everyone?
If you know of just such a thing – a thing that pleases everyone – please send reliable documentation to “Pleasing Everyone”, c/o Feedback.
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