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The Gulf War is having an effect on the merry-go-round of international
conferences. A two-day symposium on ‘Advances in the Treatment of Myocardial
Infarction’ (that’s heart attacks to most of us) due to take place in London
last week has been postponed until April. The reason? A handful of the speakers
were from the US and they had been told not to fly. What’s more, the site
of the conference was a bit close to Grosvenor Square, home of the US Embassy.
It’s enough to give you a heart attack just thinking about it.

Mathematicians are usually keen to point out that computing is basically
a (rather trivial) branch of their own discipline. How, then, do they explain
this pair of statistics from the Department of Education and Science? Proportion
of teachers who feel confident in the use of information technology with
children: maths teachers, 48 per cent; music teachers, 49 per cent. Answers
please.

If you can’t work that out, try this one. Are British scientists underfunded
and underpaid? Whitehall says they’re not. But last month a House of Lords
committee heard the facts from Paolo Fasella, the head of the directorate
in Brussels that runs Europe’s collaborative Framework research programme.
He said that when senior scientists from member states met recently to discuss
the salaries of senior research staff on sabbaticals overseas, the British
and German salaries appeared to tally almost exactly.

Naturally, said Fasella, there was some surprise. Then the source of
the confusion was discovered. It turned out that one figure had been given
in pounds, the other in marks. ‘The true difference was a factor of three,’
he said.

Everyone knows that more and more waste is being dumped in the oceans.
But how long does it take to go away? The Hellenic Marine Environment Protection
Association reveals that a humble bus ticket takes two to four weeks to
decompose in sea water. That’s far longer than a ‘multi-use ticket takes
to become unusable in the average pocket.

A wool sock, meanwhile, takes a year to decompose, though the association
does not specify who wore it, and for how long, before it was dumped. A
painted piece of wood (such as ‘No Dumping’ sign) takes 13 years to decompose,
a tin can takes 100 years, an aluminium can (which is what most tin cans
are) takes 300 years, and a plastic bottle, 450 years. The Greeks, who after
all invented science, were certainly in a position to have begun such an
experiment 450 years ago . but where did they get the plastic?

Last month saw ‘The Night of the 1000 Toads’ in Bisbane, Queensland.
Toadbusters gathered in the city centre with the goal of annihilating 1000
toads in the city’s Botanic Gardens. The giant toads were put into bags
and then frozen to ensure a supposedly humane death.

The toads were introduced into Queensland back in the 1930s. The idea
was that they would eat the cane beetles which were devouring the state’s
sugar cane. Well, it didn’t work. The life cycles of the beetles and the
toads don’t match up, so the toads couldn’t eat the beetles even if they
wanted to. But they ate (and eat) virtually everything else and have become
a major pest themselves. So the predator has become prey.

Most people cheered the toad-killers on. But Bill Freeland, principal
wildlife officer with the Northern Territories Conservation Commission,
said that the toad has had a bad rap. Freeland says that native animals
have found ways to avoid being poisoned by the toxin contained in glands
on the toad’s head. Avid toad-eaters such as egrets and herons flip the
toad on its back, ignore the glands and eat the insides. Freshwater crocs
shred toads before swallowing them, which seems to work too.

Alderman Greg Stegman from Brisbane City Council’s Cane Toad Eradication
Committee said that it was ‘the most successful environmental night ever
held in Queensland’. He says 1,000 people turned up, gathering a total of
1,578 toads. ‘Whole families came with their torches and plastics bags.’

Music on hold infuriates most phone users and embarrasses many firms,
especially hi-fi manufactures, who do not want to play anaemic synthesised
music down the line to callers who are waiting for an extension. Often there
is no way of disabling the offending microchip, which the switchboard manufacturer
has insisted on burying deep in the works. At least British Telecom has
the good grace to play full-bodied orchestral music to people who call for
international directory enquiries.

Now there’s an even better idea for providing callers on hold with some
sound to reassure them that they are still connected. CNN, the Cable News
Network based in Atlanta, Georgia, which has been providing by far the best
coverage of the Gulf War, simply plays callers on hold the sound of the
latest new bulletins.

Collaborators, beware. The editors of Physical Review Letters have noticed
a trend that Feedback spotted some time back – lists of coauthors almost
as long as research papers, in some cases more than 200. In turn, this has
led to long contents pages, which are hard for readers to scan quickly,
says an announcement in the 21 January issue. To prevent such problems,
the editors of this journal will now limit the number of authors listed
on the contents page (but not the title page) to a mere 40. Larger groups
will be listed by first author, ‘et al’ and (optionally) the name of the
collaborating group. Get in first, that’s what we advise.