Improbable Research

Jerry Andrus’s head-turning dragon, though made from mere cut-and-folded paper, is truly a head-turner. It was designed in honor of Martin Gardner. You can download a PDF version, and cut and fold yourself an object that will startle visitors.

Thanks to Martin G of ohpurleese.com for reminding us about the enlightening press release , issued in the year 2000, about University of Illinois Professor Brian Wansink‘s reported discovery that ?people’s soup choices reflect their personality types.?

Computer science cognoscenti know what Ping is, and also know that Mike Muuss is the proud author of same.

(Thanks to Dan Piette for bringing this to our attention.)

Veterinarians must learn, somehow, to examine the inside of a cow. The definition of "somehow" is now broader than it used to be, thanks to Sarah Baillie‘s haptic cow hind simulator at the University of Glasgow. The official description of this device is almost lyrical:

Veterinary students are trained to palpate the bovine reproductive tract in order to perform pregnancy diagnosis and fertility examinations. These are difficult procedures to learn and require considerable practice to identify structures accurately. The teaching takes place both at university and during extramural studies (EMS) on farms with veterinary surgeons and students need to examine as many cows as possible to get the opportunity to develop skills adequately by the time of graduation. With regard to teaching, when a student is examining a cow the teacher is unable to observe the student’s technique inside the cow and therefore, it can be difficult to instruct the student in the procedure.

Here is a brief guide to some unfortunate explosions of a particular type. The details sit quietly in back issues of medical journals. Only occasionally does anyone come to see them. The visitor is, in most cases, either a doctor in sudden need of information or a scholar in search of violent titillation….

So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian.

The "Puzzling Solutions" column in the special Security Issue of the Annals of Improbable Research presents several more from our collection of puzzle solutions to which we have lost the puzzles.