Does running downhill affect maximum speed? A team from the Structure and Motion Laboratory at the Royal Veterinary College in the UK have been investigating the relationship between running-speed and slope. The rapidity of thoroughbred racehorses (Equus caballus), greyhounds (Canis familiaris) and human subjects (Homo sapiens) was logged under a number of different uphill and […]
About: Martin Gardiner
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Posts by Martin Gardiner:
Towards a Boredom Recognition Engine
Although boredom very rarely escapes the notice of those suffering from it, constructing a purely technical instrument for reliably recognising boredom in humans is currently rated as a non-trivial task. But recently, a team from George Mason University, the University of North Carolina, the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Naval Research Lab, Washington, DC […]
Academic fossilisation alert
“The practice of having Ph.D. graduates employed by the university that trained them, commonly called ‘academic inbreeding’ has long been suspected to be damaging to scholarly practices and achievement,” says this report: But, until recently, precise details regarding the levels of possible damage have not been formally quantified. Progress has been made, however, by a […]
Art: Boadwee rectal squirt method
Over the past few centuries, artists have successfully developed a host of imaginative and unusual methods for applying paint to canvas. But few are more colourful than the rectal squirt method developed by Keith Boadwee, Adjunct Professor of Fine Arts at the California College of the Arts, and visiting faculty member at the San Francisco […]
Sprouting Encouragement in Arizona
Can music encourage seeds to sprout? According to research published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, Volume 10, Number 1, 2004, pp. 113–122, the answer is yes. Gary E.R. Schwartz, Professor of Psychology, Neurology and Psychiatry, at the University of Arizona performed a set of experiments with colleague Katherine Creath, Ph.D. (Optical Science), […]
Logical Eyebrow Peak Landmarks
“The aesthetically appealing eyebrow shape has been defined by its arch, located near the junction between the medial two-thirds and lateral one-third. The position of this arch has been historically described by arbitrary anatomical landmarks that have no logical structural relationship.” These observations feature in the latest eyebrow-related research from Dr. Bradon Wilhelmi, the Leonard […]
Some chimps like it [spiced crackers] hot
Perhaps it was the title: ‘Acquired preferences for piquant foods by chimpanzees.’ but whatever the reason, Paul Rozin, Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, found it very difficult to get his research paper published. It was inspired by observations he had made in Mexico, when he noticed that – “…virtually everyone in a […]
Optimal shirking
Shirk : verb ‘To avoid work, duties or responsibilities, especially if they are difficult or unpleasant.’ [source: Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary ] The word normally carries quite pronounced negative connotations. But are there circumstances when shirking might have beneficial effects? For example in the efficient operation of teams? According to new research from Tadashi Sekiguchi […]
Gerbil psychoacoustics update
There are new clues in the quest for a fully coherent theory of the perception and neural representation of size-variant human vowels in the Mongolian gerbil. Previous investigations in the US (see: Improbable Research, January 15th, 2010) found that Mongolian gerbils can easily be trained to recognise vowel sounds in human speech. Now, however, Uwe […]
Nose Art Psychology
Of all the available publications on Aircraft Nose Art, very few have investigated its psychological undercurrents. An exception is ‘Aircraft Nose Art: From World War I to Today’ (1991). Chapter 1 of which was authored by the late George R. Klare, who was Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Ohio University. In his essay ‘Why Nose […]