Research — on any and all subjects — that makes people LAUGH, then THINK.
“Not the Cat’s Meow? The Impact of Posing with Cats on Female Perceptions of Male Dateability” [by Lori Kogan and Shelly Volsche, published in Animals, vol. 10, no. 6, June 9, 2020, E1007] is a featured study in “Cats Research: Girls, and Men and Datability“, which is a featured article in the special Women (and Men) issue of […]
If you do high precision over-cooking — extremely high precision, compared with most cooks — feel free to savor and salivate on the details of this new study about a very new cooking tool. Its use in cooking would apply mainly (or exclusively) to those times when you are cooking dish to the point where the […]
Andrew Stafford took a look at the current state of the Ig Nobel Prize-winning pitch drop experiment. His report, in The Guardian, bears the headline ” ‘It’s literally slower than watching Australia drift north’: the laboratory experiment that will outlive us all“. The 2005 Ig Nobel Prize for physics was awarded to John Mainstone and […]
“Does the Sex of a Simulated Patient Affect CPR?” [by Chelsea E. Kramer, Matthew S. Wilkins, Jan M. Davies, Jeff K. Caird, and Gregory M. Hallihan, published in Resuscitation, vol. 86, 2015, pp. 82-87] is a featured study in “Medical Research: Rescuers’ Hands, Ponytail Headache, Elevation for Nursing“, which is a featured article in the special Women […]
Sunflowers have the reputation of all being dedicated to facing the sun. An Ig Nobel Prize-winning team has now tried to measure how well that reputation matches reality. They dispatched some drones and some software to do this. The research is documented in their new study “Mature Sunflower Inflorescences Face Geographical East to Maximize Absorbed […]
The physics of musical saws, explored by Ig Nobel Prize winner Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan, was profiled in the New York Times: “Now L. Mahadevan, a professor of physics and applied mathematics at Harvard, along with two colleagues, Suraj Shankar and Petur Bryde, has studied the way the saw produces music and drawn some conclusions that help […]
The scholars of wet floor signs commit scholarship to studying wet floor signs. Their web site displays pictograms, photos, and photo-realizations of many signs pertaining to wet floors. They are led by Elena Kamas, at Stanford University. (Thanks to Anna Beukenhorst for bringing this to our attention.)
Volume 20, number 4 of the magazine is a special Women (and Men) issue. The table of contents, and a few articles, are online. You can, if you are daring, purchase a PDF copy of the entire issue. If you are really daring, subscribe to the magazine.
“Tracking the Air Exhaled by an Opera Singer” [by Philippe Bourrianne, Paul R. Kaneelil, Manouk Abkarian, and Howard A. Stone, Physical Review Fluids, vol. 6, no. 11, 2021] is one of the studies featured in “Viruses Research Review: Group Sex, Singer, Saint, Count“, which is a featured article in the special Viruses and Pandemics issue […]
“Frozen Meat Against COVID-19 Misinformation: An Analysis of Steak-Umm and Positive Expectancy Violations” [by Ekaterina Bogomoletc and Nicole M. Lee, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, vol. 35, no. 1, 2021, pp. 118-125.] is a featured study in “Pandemic Dining: Gelato, Candy, Lettuce, Frozen Meat“, which is a featured article in the special Viruses and […]