An animated look back at the 2016 Ig Nobel Prize winners

PanSci, in Taiwan, produced this video animation report about the 2016 Ig Nobel Prize winners and that year’s ceremony: This Year’s Ceremony The 2018 Ig Nobel Prize ceremony—the 28th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony—will happen on Thursday evening, September 13, 2018. A limited number of tickets are still available. And yes, eight-year-old Miss Sweetie Poo […]

The adventures of Uterus Man

“Uterus Man” is an animated manga, created by LuYang. Reviewer Rowan Hooper (of New Scientist magazine) says: “Uterus Man rides a pelvic chariot, flies using blood powers, eats placenta.” Here is the video: [vimeo]82164043[/vimeo] BONUS (related): A more traditional — some might say unmanly or nonmanly — look at the uterus:   BONUS (possibly related, possibly not): […]

Rod constraints for simplified ragdolls

Programmers sometimes love rag dolls. This study is the fruit of one such love: “Rod constraints for simplified ragdolls,” Chris Lewin, Matt Thorman, Tom Waterson, Chris Williams, and Phil Willis, Proceedings of the 12th ACM SIGGRAPH/Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation, pp. 79-84. ACM, 2013. The authors, at the University of Bath, UK, and Electronic Arts, […]

The broken-spaghetti physics behind Illustrator

Research on how spaghetti breaks (research that was honored with the 2006 Ig Nobel Prize in physics) had an influence on modern computer-aided drawing tools. Melanie Kaplan in SmartPlanet reports: During a recent conversation with Eitan Grinspun [pictured, spaghetti-less, here], I found myself wondering whether he is more obsessed with food or with movement. But then […]