On Friday, September 29, we will be doing TWO (2) shows of Improbable Dramatic Readings as part of the Cambridge Science Festival, organized by the MIT Museum. What Luminaries (of various wattage) will each do brief dramatic readings from seemingly absurd, genuine research studies and patents. Some of those studies and patents have won Ig […]
The Ig Nobel Prize-winning study about why strings get tangled got an appreciative nod in the Veritasium video about knots and knot theory. The mention moment comes at about 31:50 in the video: Of course the video is not not worth watching in its entirety: The 2008 Ig Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Nit-picking literature — Little things bother some people. Elizabeth Kowaleski Wallace wonders why little things failed to bother Robinson Crusoe, the hero of Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel, who spent 28 years documenting his plight as a castaway […]
Willfully or not, some leaks can under certain circumstances stop themselves. This study explores that notion: “How a Leak Can Stop Itself,” Caroline D. Tally, Heather E. Kurtz, Rose B. Tchuenkam, and Katharine E. Jensen, arXiv:2202.02644, 2023. The authors explain: We often consider how to stop a leak, but here we ask a different question: […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has five segments. Here are bits of each of them: Down, with texting — Want to guess what might happen if someone walks while texting? If you prefer a formally educated guess to an autodidactic supposition, Paulo Pelicioni and his colleagues at the University of New […]
This experiment perhaps applies most to people who soak their teeth (dentures, or in-jaw teeth that include artificial elements) in coffee: “Does hot coffee or cold coffee cause more discoloration on resin based composite materials?” Bilge Ersoz, Elif Aybala Oktay, and Numan Aydin, Serpil Karaoglanoglu, European Oral Research, vol. 57, no. 2, 2023, pp.103-107. The […]
Nippon.com is running an ongoing series of profiles of Ig Nobel Prize winners. They say: ‘The Ig Nobel Prize recognizes scientific research that “makes people laugh and then makes them think.” Japanese researchers have consistently been among its recipients since 2007, including a Bandai employee who won the illustrious prize for developing the Tamagotchi and […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Al’s AI ailment — AI spells trouble for all the Alanas, Alannas, Alannahs, Alainnas, Alans, Alains, Allans, Allens, Alens, Alins, Aluns and other persons whose names begin with the letter pair “A then L” or the pair […]
This month’s selected study about Coca-Cola in a cat is: “Endoscopic administration of Coca-Cola for medical management of a wedged intestinal trichobezoar in a cat,” Savanah Wilson, Devin Dobbins, Lukas Kawalilak, and Joseph C Parambeth, The Canadian Veterinary Journal, vol. 64, no. 8, 2023, pp. 747-752.
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Suspicious eyes — In the year 2001, US president George W. Bush foreshadowed a hope that decades later would pervade the robotics industry. Bush stood next to Russian president Vladimir Putin at a press conference in Slovenia […]