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‘Who knows more about science, New Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ journalists or University
of Edinburgh academics?’ This was the challenge thrown down in the Edinburgh
Science Festival official programme in response to claims that science writers
don’t know what they’re talking about. NS and the university picked up
the gauntlet, and on Sunday 17 April an enthusiastic audience gathered in
the Old College at the University of Edinburgh to see the two sides fight
it out. Four doughty NS hacks took on the cream of the university’s biology,
chemistry, physics and electrical engineering departments, attempting to
answer six rounds of fiendishly difficult questions.

The result of the tense contest was a draw of 39 points each, after
a trailing NS made a last-minute rally with a brilliant exposition of Young’s
modulus by Marcus Chown.

But do NS readers know even more about science than the two sides in
the contest? To find out, see if you can answer 10 of the questions the
two teams had to grapple with. We’ll give you the answers next week.

1. By what name is the order of insects Dermap-tera better known?

2. What is the largest asteroid in our Solar System?

3. Take a famous pair of jeans, add the square of world wonders and
subtract the chocolate flake in an ice-cream. What burning number do you
get?

4. Take the number of carbons in the Hatch-Slack pathway and multiply
it by the number of points in an isosceles triangle. Add it to the number
of legs in two insects to get the supposed number of spots on the only vegetarian
ladybird in Britain.

5. Which planet is farthest away from the Earth?

6. Why can’t you make mousse or jelly using fresh pineapple?

7. Which chemical builds up in the diaphragm to cause a stitch?

8. What wheel did Pascal invent in the search for perpetual motion?

9. Give three definitions of the word ‘chimera’.

10. What word links the drug phen-cyclidine, a tropical American river
fish, and the spun sugar found in cake decorations?

* * *

One of Britain’s institutes of engineers (it doesn’t want us to say
which) recently conducted a mail survey to assess the marketability of one
of its databases – a computerised bibliographic catalogue which it hoped
to sell as a CD-ROM package. The survey was intended to ascertain which
institutes, universities, government bodies, libraries and training centres
might be interested in such a service and, in particular, how much they
would be willing to pay for it.

Most organisations said they would be prepared to shell out between
£200 and £300 for the database – the usual price for a similar
CD-ROM package. The Ministry of Defence, however, sent back a survey form
which appeared to suggest a price of £8900. Closer examination revealed
that this was in fact ‘ £8-900’, a price only rivalled by the US
Navy’s $2500.

Feedback wonders if the MoD regularly pays 300 per cent more for goods
and services than other people do, and if so, would someone at the ministry
give us a call about a second-hand Fiat Uno we’re trying to dispose of (nice
little runner, only 30 000 miles on the clock, going for a snip at £10
000 ono).

* * *

What sex is an aeroplane? Ships, as we all know, are female, and so
are other ‘vessels’ like cars. But planes?

It’s about time someone decided because the quality press is in a muddle
about it. In its coverage of plans for a second generation of supersonic
aircraft, The Daily Telegraph headlined its article ‘Superjets’ sons fight
for the sky’ and referred throughout to Concorde’s planned successor as
‘Son of Concorde’. The Financial Times, on the other hand, headlined its
article ‘To Concorde: a dominatrix daughter?’ and went on to suggest that:
‘Concorde’s daughter could be a seductive creature. She could combine the
slender graceful lines of her parent with the power to dominate the world
of business travel . . .’

Whatever the truth of the matter, we should be told. The world is complicated
enough without its skies being filled with bisexual, ozone-depleting aeroplanes.

* * *

Engineers sometimes gripe about the long time it can take to set industry
standards. The recently published British Standard 7742: 1994 could well
set the all-time record. The new BS defines the ‘specification for pre-recorded
capa-citance grooveless videodisc system 50 Hz/625 lines, PAL, on Type
³Õ±á¶Ù’.

The Japanese company JVC developed the VHD videodisc system in the 1970s
as a rival to Philips’s Laservision and RCA’s CED Selectavision. Laservision
used an optical disc and still survives under the name Laser Disc. CED
used a grooved disc and stylus, and quickly flopped. VHD used a stylus but
no groove. Thorn EMI backed the system, built pressing plants and planned
a grand launch in Europe in 1982. But the launch was cancelled and Thorn
EMI wrote off £25 million spent on the project. Virtually nothing
has been heard of VHD since.

Now, 12 years on, the British Standards Institution has published a
standard ‘to ensure interchangeability of discs and players’. At a cover
price of £57.50, this looks most unlikely to be a best seller.

* * *

A fortnight ago Feedback tempted fate by stating that ‘this column never
lies or exaggerates’. Now we learn that the Sydney Morning Herald has cast
doubts on our story about the chicken that squawked while cooking in the
oven (12 March).

‘Surprisingly,’ the newspaper reports, ‘Anthony Preshaw, a Mascot veterinary
surgeon, is ‘suspicious’ about the story . . . Unable to swallow it, even
though it was published in the august New Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ, he says that vocal
cords in birds are ‘as rare as hen’s teeth’.

‘Birds indeed have a larynx (the voice box in mammals), but no vocalisation
occurs here,’ he writes. ‘Voice production in birds comes from the syrinx
. . . located where the trachea splits into the two primary bronchi. This
is found in the chest, near the base of the heart, and undoubtedly removed
when processed.’

So, readers, it is up to you. Do you believe Preshaw and the august
Sydney Morning Herald, or Feedback and the august Auckland Sunday Star
(the source of the story)?