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Scientists want to study stampedes at places like sports arenas and music concerts, so they can figure out how to prevent them. They can’t study actual human stampedes, so what can they do??They stampede mice instead. They’ve discovered that fewer, smaller exits actually enable more mice (and people) to escape.

Gaia Vince writes in New Scientist that experiments on how panicked mice escape from enclosed areas show that they behave in the same way computer models predict humans do. Disasters such as the May 2001 stampede at a football stadium in Ghana that killed more than 120 people, and the February 2003 Chicago nightclub stampede that killed 21 people, have made scientists try to develop models to predict how people will behave when trying to flee.
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The California recall election was almost derailed due to fears about using the same type of punch card ballots that skewed the Presidential election in Florida. These, as well as traditional voting machines, are rapidly being phased out in favor of touch-screen computers. But like all computers, they can be hacked.
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Caviar may soon cease to exist, because the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) miscounted the number of wild sturgeon, leading to continued overfishing. Will the rich be happy about their tax cut if they can’t spend some of it on caviar?

Fred Pearce writes in New Scientist that CITES stated that beluga sturgeon numbers are on the increase, reaching 11.6 million in 2002, up from 9.3 million in 2001 and 7.6 million in 1998. Based on these estimates, it’s allowed Russia, Iran and other countries bordering the Caspian Sea to harvest up to 155 tons of beluga sturgeon and export up to nine tons of caviar.
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Forensic psychiatrist David Post thinks hypnosis may have been responsible for Hitler’s dreadful deeds. When he was recovering from wounds suffered during World War I, he was given a hypnotic suggestion that he misinterpreted as divine revelation, telling him he was destined for leadership and glory.
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