Two Ig Nobel Prize winners and some of their colleagues collaborated in a discovery about how some whales are able to communicate. A report from the University of Southern Denmark announces it: Baleen whales evolved a unique larynx to communicate but cannot escape human noise Baleen whales are the largest animals to have ever roamed […]
Discrete Mathematics with Ducks is a textbook about discrete mathematics and ducks: Discrete Mathematics with Ducks (second edition), by Sarah-Marie Belcastro, ISBN 9780367570705, 700 Pages, published June 30, 2020 by Chapman & Hall. (Mostly) unrelated: “How a dead duck changed my life”:
This April, 2024, the Ig Nobel EuroTour will spring to life after several years of hibernation (the hibernation was caused by the Covid pandemic). It’s all about research (and researchers) that makes people LAUGH, then THINK. Events are scheduled in GERMANY, DENMARK, SWITZERLAND, ITALY: Berlin — April 3, 4, 5 Aarhus — April 9 Copenhagen […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has six segments. Here are bits of each of them: Sweet or not, the end — Almost everyone who gets old dies. In a gross way, that brief sentence could sum up a Dutch/Danish/British study called “Use of sugar in coffee and tea and long-term risk of […]
This photo shows the performers in the Improbable Dramatic Readings session we (Improbable Research) did at Boskone (the scifi convention in Boston, Massachusetts), on February 10, 2024. The performers include: Sara Dion, James Bacon, Geri Sullivan, Roksi Freeman, Amy Kucharik, Robin Abrahams, Gary Dryfoos, and three timekeepers. The event was emceed by Marc Abrahams, with […]
If you’ve ever yearned to learn the difference between story drift and story displacement — it’s a story of how buildings can go awry — this eagerly-narrated video might fascinate you:
If you will be in Denver, Colorado this Saturday, join us at the Improbable Research show. After three pandemic years when the annual special Improbable Research session was done online, it will return in 2024 to having lots of people all together in a room at the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has five segments. Here are bits of each of them: On the other hand — It is maybe the most politically insightful psychology study published in the past 60 years. And it is maybe not. The study in question is “State resident handedness, ideology, and political party […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Learning from mole rats — Marketers who specialise in inflammation of the populace won’t have missed the Journal of Experimental Biology‘s appreciation of hyaluronan. Beneath the headline “Underground anti-aging secrets from burrowing rodents“, the journal says… Anarchist […]
The “Unclassified Ads” section of the magazine (Annals of Improbable Research) offers a marketplace for unusual items.