“The world’s leading supplier of artificial laboratory stomachs just sold their 7500th unit, and they want the world to know about it,” writes investigator Alan Dove.
These electromechanical stomachs are more angular than their biological distant brethren. The Stomacher 400, pictured here, possibly in the act of vomiting, is also the subject of a narrated video.
The Polywater debacle has been called ‘one of the most famous mistaken scientific research programs of the past half-century’.
It was initially feared that the USSR’s discovery of highly viscous polywater, which froze at −40 °C and boiled at 150 °C, might spell the end for all life on Earth. If it escaped from the lab, perhaps all water on the planet might spontaneously polymerise?
It took around six years and a swathe of experiments for the global science community to able to finally confirm that (thankfully) it didn’t exist – by which time it had been mentioned in numerous research papers.
In hindsight, would scientists’ careers be damaged by having associated themselves with polywater?
Click to continue reading “Better not mention the polywater”
News reports about a new medical study trumpet headlines such as these:
But the study itself does not mention games or gaming or computers. See for yourself (though you’ll need a subscription to get the full version): 
“Diagnosis and management of vitamin D deficiency,” Simon HS Pearce and Tim D Cheetham, BMJ, January 11, 2010;340:b5664. (Thanks to Scott Langill for bringing this to our attention.)
The special Ig Nobel issue (vol. 15, no. 6) of the magazine (the Annals of Improbable Research) is now online. The pleasing-paper version was mailed to subscribers a while ago. Click on the magazine cover (below) to download a free PDF, or buy a high-quality PDF. Or subscribe to the paper version. Mel (right) says it’s swell.
Christopher Moyer has joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS), a conjoined-twin organization to the Luxuriant Former Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS). He says:
I’m in the Psychology Department at University of Wisconsin Stout, where my students and I conduct research on how massage therapy can reduce anxiety and depression. I know of no psychologist who has an easier job attracting research participants into his lab.
Christopher A. Moyer, Ph.D., LFHCfS
Assistant Professor of Psychology
University of Wisconsin-Stout
Stout, Wisonsin, USA
The legacy of Ig Nobel Prize winner John Paul Stapp (rocket sled rider, co-namer of Murphy’s law, prime mover behind automobile seat belt laws) continues. Fifty years ago, Stapp recruited Joe Kittinger for a daring, high-altitude leap. Now Kittinger passes the torch (or parachute). Discover reports:
Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner officially announced that sometime this year, he intends to jump from a balloon at a height of nearly 23 miles,
Click to continue reading “Stapp to Kittinger to Baumgartner”
