Throwing Physics and Math(s) at the Mona Lisa

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 […]

The use of woodcutting ants as characters in Brazilian Nativity-scenes [study]

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 […]

Dermatological manifestations in artworks [study]

The painting, by Ragnar Sandberg (1902–1972) entitled Chicken Handler (Hönsskötären , 1937), depicts a farmer and his chickens. Although many may have overlooked the red face-rash that the farmer evidently has, professor Nicolas Kluger of The University of Helsinki | HY-Skin and Allergy Hospital, has not. “The farmer displays a striking medio‐facial redness located on the […]

“Bullshit Makes the Art Grow Profounder” (new research study)

Jonathan Fugelsang, whose team was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize in 2016 for studying the power of pseudo-profound bullshit, has a new study, with other colleagues, about the power of bullshit: “Bullshit Makes the Art Grow Profounder,” Martin Harry Turpin, Alexander C. Walker, Mane Kara-Yakoubian, Nina N. Gabert, Jonathan A. Fugelsang, and Jennifer A. Stolz, […]