Research and other stuff that makes people LAUGH, then THINK.
In the hands of a scientist, musical instruments can do many sorts of things. This study tells how some instruments can be used to distinguish between different kinds of physical materials. “Musical Instruments as Sensors,” Heran C. Bhakta, Vamsi K. Choday, and William H. Grover, ACS Omega, vol. 3, 2018, pp. 11026−11032. The authors, at […]
If you are reading this on a smartphone, please monitor your sighing activity. As you read, and as you sigh, consider the details presented in the following study: “Reading on a Smartphone Affects Sigh Generation, Brain Activity, and Comprehension,” Motoyasu Honma, Yuri Masaoka, Natsuko Iizuka, Sayaka Wada, Sawa Kamimura, Akira Yoshikawa, Rika Moriya, Shotaro Kamijo, […]
The mystery of spice-induced lip tingling succumbed, partially, to investigation in the year 2013. Details are in this study: “Food Vibrations: Asian Spice Sets Lips Trembling,” Nobuhiro Hagura, Harry Barber, and Patrick Haggard, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, vol. 280, no. 1770, 2013: 20131680. The authors, at University College London, report: Szechuan […]
‘Struth, it is, that Struth is a co-author of this essay that deals with strategies for proving truths: “Proof Strategies,” Moller and Georg Struth [pictured here], in the book Modelling Computing Systems, pp. 131-154. Springer, London, 2013. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-84800-322-4_6
Sit down, if you can, and read this study about what it takes to get a folding plastic chair to the point where you can sit in it: “A study of design demand of applying quality function deployment in plastic folding chairs,” Chun Tung Chen, Applied Mechanics and Materials, vol. 284, pp. 3632-3636. The author, […]
The human who, of all the humans who have tried living life as a goat has become the most celebrated by fellow humans, looks back on his experience. NRC interviews and profiles Thomas Thwaites, and also checks in with Charles Foster, who lived parts of his life as different kinds of animals. The NRC profile […]
Statistics an be compiled about anything, independent of the question: is there any point in gathering statistics about this thing? The following study may be good fodder for teachers who wish to discuss that question with students: “The Temporal Making of a Great Literary Corpus by a XX-Century Mystic: Statistics of Daily Words and Writing […]
“Chocolate Packaging Cues and First Moment of Truth: An Exploratory Study on Young Consumers’ Mind” [ by Suraj Kushe Shekhar and P.T. Raveendran, published in Management Science Letters, vol. 3, no. 7. 2013, pp. 1851-1862] is a featured study in “Chocolate Packaging Research Review“, which is a featured article in the special Women (and Men) issue of the […]
How don’t and do pedestrians collide? Ig Nobel Prize winner Alessandro Corbetta, a physicist based at Eindhoven University of Technology, explains, in this short video. The 2021 Ig Nobel Prize for physics was awarded to Alessandro Corbetta, Jasper Meeusen, Chung-min Lee, Roberto Benzi, and Federico Toschi, for conducting experiments to learn why pedestrians do not […]
The COVID era continues to take its toll on Dead Duck Day, the international celebration of an incident that took its toll on a duck in Rotterdam and yet gave inspiration to millions of people to wonder at the mysteries that abound in nature. In a one-year break with tradition, Dead Duck Day 2022 will […]