Observations During Itch-Inducing Lecture is a study published by German researchers in the year 2000. It delivers exactly what the title promises. Professor Uwe Gieler [pictured here] at Justus-Liebig University in Giessen and two colleagues begin with the basics: “Itching is defined as a sensation associated with an impulse to scratch.” They invited people to attend a […]
Hiccups: An alternate, lollipop solution, reportedly, sort of
The New York Times “You’re the Boss” blog reports about a teenager who is starting a hiccup-remedy business, possibly because neither she nor her doctors did much Internet research and thereby (or thereNOTby) failed to learn about the digital hiccup treatment devised by Ig Nobel Prize winner Dr. Francis Fesmire. The report: To silence her […]
Cheese and dogs and a pill to kill mosquitoes
Bart Knols explains—and also demonstrates—three related things: How to use cheese and dogs and a new kind of pill to kill malaria mosquitoes. Knols and Ruurd de Jong were awarded the 2006 Ig Nobel Prize in biology for showing that the female malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae is attracted equally to the smell of limburger cheese and to […]
The wisdom of flerds [JER video]
As part of their ongoing commitment to postmodern range sciences, the USDA-ARS, Jornada Experimental Range, Las Cruces, New Mexico, has prepared a video profiling the concept of a flerd. (defined thus:) “A group of livestock containing two or more species which stay together under free-ranging conditions is defined as a flerd”