A LAWYER in Melbourne has managed to patent the wheel under Australia’s new
Innovation Patent system.
The system was introduced in May to make patenting cheaper and easier. Patent
attorney John Keogh filed his patent for a “circular transportation facilitation
device” to demonstrate that the system is flawed, because applications under it
do not need to be examined by the patent office.
An application for an Innovation Patent can be filed on the Internet and
requires a “lower inventive threshold” than a standard patent. It can be
prepared without professional help, while a standard patent must be drafted by a
registered patent attorney and then examined by the patent office.
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Keogh was issued with his patent for the wheel within days of the new system
being introduced. According to the Melbourne Age, he has no immediate
plans to patent fire or crop rotation.
SAD people make the best workers—or so suggests a study by Robert
Sinclair of the University of Alberta.
Sinclair looked at two groups of people—one who tests showed to be
feeling happy and another who were feeling sad. When the groups were set to work
assembling circuit boards, it was the sad workers who proved more productive.
The two groups assembled the same number of circuit boards, but the sad workers
made fewer mistakes, so their useful output was greater.
Sinclair has some ideas about why this is so. Happy workers, he thinks, fear
that the task might detract from their good mood, so they devote part of their
energy to maintaining their happiness. The sad workers, on the other hand,
immerse themselves in the work in order to forget about feeling sad.
We can’t imagine that any corporation or institution would be cynical enough
to deliberately make its employees miserable just to boost productivity, so we
suppose Sinclair’s research is sadly all for naught.
EVER keen to keep up with the times, the emirate of Dubai has set out the
correct form of text message to use when you want to get a divorce. According to
Agence-France Presse, Abdel Salam Darwish, head of the family reconciliation
department at the Dubai courts, says four conditions must be met: “The first is
the husband should be the sender, the second is that he should have the desire
to divorce, the third that the phrasing should be unmistakable, and finally the
wife should receive it.”
In a recent case, a woman received a message on her mobile phone in which her
husband told her: “You are divorced because you are late.” Dubai lawyers agreed
that the divorce would be valid as the right conditions had been met, though
happily in this case the couple were reconciled before proceedings were
finalised.
IS THE British Screenwriting Institute placing its faith in telepathy? Reader
Gaz Collins recently received this e-mail from the institute: “There are a few
people who have joined the BSI recently who have not given an e-mail address. We
conduct all our business by e-mail and so if there is no e-mail address there is
no means for me to send items, screenplays etc. Would the following people
please send me their e-mail address . . .”
A list of names followed. Collins has been concentrating very hard ever
since, in the hope that the people concerned will sense his telepathic message
and contact the BSI.
IMAGINE you’re in an operating theatre about to have your ailing lunula seen
to. Is the surgeon going to operate on (a) your fingernail or (b) your heart?
You would hope it would be your fingernail, and last week on the Irish version
of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? contestant Shane O’Doherty lost
93,000 Irish punts when he chose the heart instead of the fingernail. But was
his answer really wrong?
According to several major dictionaries, the lunula is indeed the white
crescent shape at the base of each fingernail. But not necessarily so, says one
of Ireland’s leading heart surgeons, Maurice Nelligan. “The lunula is part of
the aortic pulmonary valve within the heart,” he says. “It’s a definite
anatomical term.”
Nelligan’s professional opinion created uproar with the game show’s owner,
Tyrone Productions, which hit back with statements from four eminent scientists
and over 60 references to support its case.
So who was right? O’Doherty, that’s who. After much wrangling and wringing of
hands, Tyrone Productions allowed him back on the show on 1 July to attempt the
next nail-biting question, worth IR£250,000. To everyone’s disappointment,
he got the answer wrong.
OUR sympathies go to the editors of Nature Biotechnology. Across the
top of their correspondence page in the June issue were the words “Letters june
be edited for space and clarity”. It’s the sort of word-processing mishap which
can happen to all of us, but not usually so appositely.
READER David Whitmarsh and his colleagues received a batch of “Labguard”
laboratory hand soap, manufactured by Day-Impex. The soap came with a safety
data sheet which, under “First-aid measures”, had this advice: “Skin contact:
Wash skin.”
Whitmarsh wants to know what he should wash it with.
IN CAWSAND, Cornwall, where extensive municipal works were recently taking
place, temporary public toilets were erected in the village’s public car park.
The portable buildings were squeezed into a corner next to a car park sign, so
as visitors left the conveniences they were faced with a message which
challenged them, in large letters, “Have you Paid and Displayed?”
FINALLY, think hard about how many people you invite to tea if you are
dishing out “Cantuccini” Italian almond biscotti, made by Corsini. The nutrition
information panel on the package states: “Size cookies 40g—servings about
6.25.”
