Minerva

The side of the road that traffic travels on is not supposed to affect safety, but this might not always be true. A paper in Medical Hypotheses suggests that some older people with brain lesions might be less aware of traffic on their left side (Med Hypotheses 2009;73:20-3, doi:10.1016/j.mehy.2009.01.044). Spatial orientation and attention for the external space are confined to the right side of the brain and can be affected by right sided lesions such as those caused by stroke. More people have attention and spatial deficits for the left than for the right side of their environment, which might prove more problematic when the traffic is moving on the right.

Calling all medics—the Medical Research Council is currently attempting to quantify the number of contacts we all have to better predict the spread of infection and any future pandemic. They realise that medics tend to be incredibly busy but are also amongst the most likely to have contact with infectious patients, so they’ve recruited researchers at the Warwick University to devise a short questionnaire, which they’d like you to complete at www.contactsurvey.org/medical, where there are links to the scientific …