Maybe dogs and kids are a key, arriving at last, to understanding how the brain thinks thoughts and feels emotions. Maybe. It’s still essentially a mystery how the brain (which has been called “the most complex object in the universe“) does most of what it does. The mystery is especially deep about how — specifically — […]
Year: 2014
2014 Ig Nobel Prize Winners added to sortable database
The sortable database of Ig Nobel Prize Winners now includes data from all 24 years of prizes, including the recently announced 2014 prizes. The information lives on the Silk data publishing platform, and helped us determine that we have awarded Ig Nobel Prizes in exactly 50 categories. It also helped University Ranking Watch compare the […]
If you can measure it, it must be important: Ear lobe vs ear lobe vs body fat
If you can measure it, it must be important — a principle demonstrated in this study: “Predicting visceral obesity based on facial characteristics,” Bum Ju Lee and Jong Yeol Kim, BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 2014, 14:248. The authors, at the Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine, report: No studies on the best predictor of visceral […]
Imperfect Potato Problems
Two items to add to your imperfect potato collection: First, an influential (it has been cited in one other study) study, in a singular writing style: “Possible Mechanisms of Human Teratogenesis by Imperfect Potato,” Isabel Gal, Humangenetik, vol. 19, no. 3-4, 1973, pp. 311-314. Here is an imperfect potato extract: Second, an admission, by Dean Burnett, […]