“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 […]
Professional baseball umpires are not supposed to make errors, yet they sometimes do. That happens more often on days when the air is badly polluted, suggests a new scientific study. If umpires make more bad decisions on bad-air days, then maybe so does anyone who has to make rapid judgment calls. As the saying goes: […]
If you were tasked with anaesthetising a giraffe with a high-potency fast-acting opiod-based drug-combination (in order to perform essential veterinary work) you might have an urgent need for a suitable mechanical ventilator. But where could you find one? A unique and imaginative solution has been devised by Dr Scott B. Citino, DVM, Dipl ACZM, of […]
Elephants are big, and they get hot. Especially in Africa. Thus, from the elephant’s point of view, there’s sometimes an urgent necessity to dissipate excess heat. Some investigators have suggested that flapping their large ears (strictly, their ‘pinnae’) could provide a significant heat-loss mechanism. (e.g. Buss, I. O., and Estes, J. A., 1971, ‘The Functional […]
Some, alas not all, doctors strive for plain language. The headline of this medical report contains plain language: “A Real Airhead,” Declan McDonnell and Gillian Park, BMJ Case Reports, epub November 25, 2014. The authors, at Southampton General Hospital and Northwick Park Hospital, London, UK, report: “A 21-year-old man was taken to the emergency department after […]
Balloons : what do they mean to you? Harmless playthings? Medical devices? Educational tools? Or means for attending to the properties and spaces of air and geographies of atmosphere? For the latter, see the work of professor Derek McCormack, of the School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford, UK, who focusses on balloons as vehicles […]
Medical researchers, seeking insight, sometimes try to make simple sense of complex, difficult conglomerations of things that may or may not have effects on each other and on many other things. Sometimes coffee is involved, as is the case here: “Indoor Air Pollution, Nighttime Heart Rate Variability and Coffee Consumption among Convenient Store Workers,” Kai-Jen […]
This medical report presents a cautionary story — the possibly-unnecessary removal of a body part: “Non-surgical pneumoperitoneum after oro-genital intercourse ,” Shamir O. Cawich [pictured here], Peter B. Johnson, Eric Williams, Vijay Naraynsngh, International Journal of Surgery Case Reports, epub September 25, 2013. The authors, at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Jamaica, report: “A […]
For some people, mention of the phrase ‘Artificial Nose’ would probably conjure up notions of the many types of electronic aroma sensors currently in use. Say, e.g. NOSE II But these are by no means the only type of ‘Artificial Nose’. Take, for example the artificial nasal cavity built by J. T. Kelly, A. K. […]
The Journal of Material Culture is “concerned with the relationship between artefacts and social relations irrespective of time and place”. And, as part of this remit, the June 2013 issue of features one of the few academic studies of ‘Fresh Air’. ‘The air from outside: Getting to know the world through air practices’. “The article […]