The US Armed Forces Pest Management Board presents… The Living Hazards Database The Living Hazards Database (LHD) is a comprehensive compilation of more than 500 species worldwide, which are reported to cause serious injury or death of humans…. Information on each species listed includes: description, habitat, behavior, known harmful effects, geographic distribution, taxonomy, and a representative […]
Tag: animals
The new opera about each and every species of life
A new opera, called “The Best Life“, will premiere next week — as part of the Twenty-Fifth 1st Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony. Here’s the story line of “The Best Life“, as explained in the program that will be handed to all 1100 audience members in Harvard’s Sanders Theatre: The story: It’s the day before the greatest competition […]
Shepherd physics: Capturing a skittish lamb, using statistical physics
A trio of theoretical physicists have recently used ideas from statistical mechanics and probability theory to try to develop an optimal strategy for capturing a skittish lamb near a precipice. The situation that they model is an idealization of “the capture of a diffusing, but skittish lamb, with an approaching shepherd on the left and […]
Trojan Butterflies
The name is alcon. Maculinea alcon. Like a suave British superspy, or maybe even a trojan horse or the proverbial cute abandoned baby left on a doorstep, some butterfly larvae mimic the chemicals of ants to get worker ants to bring them home to the nest. But that’s not all: as Francesca Barbero and Luca […]