This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has five segments. Here are bits of each of them: Catochromatograph — Laboratories looking to purchase a highly efficient coiled parallel gas chromatograph could save money by instead adopting and adapting a cat. Perhaps. A study called “Domestic cat nose functions as a highly efficient coiled […]
Tag: plant
Flowery polymorphic perversion / Screwing up / Plant on meat
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has three segments. Here are bits of each of them: Flowery polymorphic perversion — … Grażyna Gajewska at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland is one of the few academics who is now overtly studying polymorphic perversion on a broad, societal level. Her recent treatise “Polymorphic perversion […]
Cyborg botany [study]
Over several million years, Venus Flytraps have been triggered to snap shut by flies. A new research project has shown they can also be triggered by a mouse – viz. a computer mouse [As shown in the video above]. The many and varied possibilities of creating ‘Cyborg Plants’ has been investigated by Harpreet Sareen of […]
Plants can take-up microplastics – should we be happy about it? [new study]
“Waiter, there’s plastic in my lettuce” isn’t a phrase you’d expect to hear very often. Nevertheless, several studies have now shown that plants can, and do, take-up microplastics [MPs] from the soil and incorporate them into stems, roots and leaves. Should we be worried – or happy? The latter is a possibility that should be […]

