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 […]
About: Martin Gardiner
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Posts by Martin Gardiner:
Caudal Communication in the Canids
A research team from the Department of Biology at the University of Victoria, Canada, have, for the first time, investigated the behavioural responses of domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) to the asymmetric tail-wag of a life-sized robotic-dog model – one which was configured to wag its tail, either to the right or to the left, at […]
Giraffe height recalculated
There are two ways to determine the height of the tallest possible running, breathing organism on planet Earth – one is to measure it – the other to calculate it from scratch. The groundwork for the calculation was performed in the 1980’s by Professor W.H. Press and colleagues. But now Professor Don N. Page from […]
How high and why
If one is encumbered by something, one tends to assume that other people are encumbered too — even when they’re plainly not. That’s the implication of recent research by the Perceptual-Motor Dynamics Lab at the University of Cincinnati, US. Half of the experimental subjects were fitted with ankle-weights – which encumbered them. They were then […]
Mongolian Gerbil psychoacoustics
Mongolian Gerbil psychoacoustics have been under investigation for several years now by Dr. Joan Sinnott, Endowed Professor of Research at the Psychology Department, University of South Alabama, US. And now, for the first time (?) an experiment has quantified gerbils’ ability to recognise vowel sounds in human speech. The study finds that “Gerbils easily learn to differentiate […]
Seated Performances
Dr. David Bissell, lecturer in sociology at the Research School of Social Sciences, the Australian National University, points out in a recent exploratory article that: “Sedentary bodies invariably spend much time seated.” The research paper examines the broader concept of ‘comfort’ by focussing in particular on one commonly-used comfort-provider — The Chair: “I explore sitting […]