Detective work sometimes involves hazarding guesses about hazards, as this study demonstrates: “Earthquakes and Terrorism: The Long Lasting Effect of Seismic Shocks,” José G. Montalvo and Marta Reynal-Querol, Journal of Comparative Economics, epub 2019. (Thanks to Manuael ANsede for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at UPF-BarcelonaGSE-IPEG, and UPF-ICREA-BarcelonaGSE-IPEG, Barcelona, Spain, explain: “In this […]
Wine bottle bottom dimple enigma
Why do wine bottles (usually) have a raised-up internal dome-like structure [its technical name is a ‘punt’] at the bottom of the bottle? If you have a theory about such things, yours can be compared to a substantial list of possible explanations – bearing in mind that experts in the field are as yet undecided […]
Boom! “Science that’s hard to take seriously and even harder to ignore”
Scott Lafee‘s Wellnews syndicated column often presents tidbits about things that have won Ig Nobel Prizes. Here’s the most recent (August 19, 2019): Ig Nobel Apprised The Ig Nobel Prizes celebrate achievements that make people laugh and then think — a look at real science that’s hard to take seriously and even harder to ignore. […]
Recent progress in robotic topiary
The ever expanding list of professional activities that are in imminent danger of replacement by AI and/or robots has a new addition – Topiarists. A topiary-bot is currently under test at Wageningen University, The Netherlands, as part of the the university’s TrimBot2020 project. Which is seeking to “advance the robotics and computer vision technology needed […]