GhostRadar is a device that "may beep as often as once an hour in a place that’s haunted but might fall silent in other spots," according to an Associated Press report in the April 3, 2005 issue of USA Today. GhostRadar is more fully tested than, and fully as effective as, the U.S. strategic missile […]
Month: July 2005
Show me your teeth
Small, as well as large, insights contribute to the making of a good doctor. The July 9, 2005 issue of the BMJ contains an insightful letter from Dr. Jonathan Stacey of Risca, Gwent. It reads, in part: I took a history and examined her, including a rather slapdash cranial nerve examination. Testing the integrity of […]
Greek cheek dimples
How many Greek children have dimpled cheeks? Until recently no one really knew, but now there is detailed information as to exactly how many do, how many don’t, and where the dimples are…. So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian
Battlefields and bladders
The July 2 issue of the Washington Post carries a compelling quasi-medical report: Battlefields and BladdersBy Don Oldenburg At a cocktail reception to open "Civil War Medicine," a new exhibit at the ever-so-curious William P. Didusch Center for Urologic History, located in the Baltimore burbs, onlookers quietly groan as a Civil War surgeon tosses a […]
Dead shopping malls
Historians, sociologists and entomologists may find much of interest in the concept of dead shopping malls.
McVities’ crumb test dummy
The McVities web site explains that: "McVities have revealed that they created a biscuit munching robot to help with the development of their new Milk chocolate and Orange Digestive. With its mechanical mouth and teeth the Crumb Test Dummy has been specially designed to munch biscuits and produce crumbs in the same way as the […]
Mousetrap-powered cars
Mousetrap-powered cars are cars powered by mousetraps.
Sexual cannibalism in sagebrush crickets
Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS) member Tracie M. Ivie and two colleagues co-authored the study "Female remating propensity contingent on sexual cannibalism in sagebrush crickets, Cyphoderris strepitans: a mechanism of cryptic female choice," J.C. Johnson, T.M. Ivy, and S.K. Sakaluk, Behavioral Ecology, vol. 10, 1999, pp. 227-33.