The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK. In the Ig Informal Lectures, some days after the ceremony, the new Ig Nobel Prize winners attempt to explain what they did, and why they did it. The 2022 Ig Nobel Prize for Economics was awarded to Alessandro Pluchino, Alessio Emanuele Biondo, and […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has three segments. Here are bits of each of them: Dogged hospital presence — Dogs should be kept out of human (that is, non-veterinary) hospitals – or, depending on circumstances, welcomed into them. Research papers make the case one way and another.“Towards dog-free hospital campuses in […]
If you were to design wings for flying fruit, how best to optimize the wing shape? If you don’t already know the answer to that, you might begin your knowledge adventure by reading this study: “Curving to Fly: Synthetic Adaptation Unveils Optimal Flight Performance of Whirling Fruits,” Jean Rabault, Richard A. Fauli, and Andreas Carlson, […]
The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK. In the Ig Informal Lectures, some days after the ceremony, the new Ig Nobel Prize winners attempt to explain what they did, and why they did it. The 2022 Ig Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Frank Fish, Zhi-Ming Yuan, Minglu Chen, […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has three segments. Here are bits of each of them: Double Jeopardy — … Jane Ridley assesses a tough legal problem in an Insider.com article with an extremely long headline: “Identical college twins were accused of cheating in an exam by signaling. They won $1.5 million […]
This advice about cats, from an artificial duck farmer — a farmer who raised ducks under artificial conditions — was published in 1906, in the book Natural and Artificial Duck Culture by James Rankin: Do Not Have Neighbors Too Near. Another source of discomfort was our neighbors’ cats. Now, we are eminently social in our […]
The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK. In the Ig Informal Lectures, some days after the ceremony, the new Ig Nobel Prize winners attempt to explain what they did, and why they did it. The 2022 Ig Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Frank Fish, Zhi-Ming Yuan, Minglu Chen, […]
Many published research studies include list of “key words” — words that should or might help people (and help search engines) discover that the study exists. This new study includes an unusual word in its list of key words: “Endogenous opioid release following orgasm in man: A combined PET-fMRI study,” Patrick Jern, Jinglu Chen, Jouni […]
Here’s a teaser video for the film “Polarized World’: And some background info about it, from ELTE [Eötvös Loránd University, in Budapest]: TRICKED INSECTS – AND WHAT WE CAN DO FOR THEM In 2016, ELTE researchers received the prestigious Ig Nobel prize for physics for the funniest research of the year . The award-winning publication of Gábor Horváth and György Kriska asked […]
The title of this study doesn’t say it all. But it says enough to make any thoughtful person want to take a look, and see what’s what: “Too Much Excitement under Highway 87,” D.E. Hook, R.L. Volpe, and C. Chamness, in Pipelines 2006: Service to the Owner, 2006, pp. 1-9. The authors begin their summing […]