“Why are they using SALIVA to clean works of art?” is a short video in the Química por aí series. It explores the Ig Nobel Prize winning research about using human saliva — spit — to preserve and repair valuable paintings, sculpture, and other art works: The 2018 Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize was awarded […]
Just stumbled across a big box of press clippings from the 90s. Here’s Bill Lipscomb with the plaster cast of his left foot on display. This article in the Harvard Gazette on October 2, 1997, says: IG NOBEL FEET: William N. Lipscomb, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry in 1976, holds his foot up against a display […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has two segments. Here’s how they begin: Physics vs Mona Lisa — The wood and smile of the Mona Lisa fascinate scientists. Not wooden smile. Wood and smile. A new study in the Journal of Cultural Heritage reveals how researchers have spent 18 years exploring the wooden panel on which Leonardo da […]
Ants were in use as miniaturized characters in Brazilian nativity scenes until at least the 1960s. “Present in Brazil since the beginning of Portuguese colonization, crèche nativity scenes were soon adapted to local reality, a propitious circumstance for the appearance of heterodox conceptions and the use of exotic elements of the fauna and flora peculiar […]