Lavie Tridhar writes, in Nature, a gummy tribute of sorts to the 2021 Ig Nobel Ecology Prize winners, Leila Satari, Alba Guillén, Àngela Vidal-Verdú, and Manuel Porcar, who used genetic analysis to identify the different species of bacteria that reside in wads of discarded chewing gum stuck on pavements in various countries. Tridhar’s tribute begins: […]
Tag: chewing
Children Chewing
“Children Chewing” is a featured revue article in the special Children issue (volume 27, number 5) of the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Read this article, free, on the web. Then, if research about kids chewing inspires you, subscribe to the magazine, or buy individual back issues.
Misery at Hearing Other People Chew [Ig Informal Lecture]
Here is the Ig Informal Lecture by the winners of the 2020 Ig Nobel Medicine Prize. The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK. In the Ig Informal Lectures, some days after the ceremony, the new Ig Nobel Prize winners attempt to explain what they did, and why they did it. [In non-pandemic years, […]
Podcast Episode #207: “The Psychoanalysts’s Nose”
The Psychoanalyst’s Nose, the Year of Lint, the Impact of Cold Wet Underwear, Boys Will Be Boys, the Pride of the Pride (of Lions), Hair (and Hare) Research, Social Dilemmas from the Not-So-Distant Past, Chewing on Knowledge, and Fold When Wet (If Naked Underwater). In episode #207, Marc Abrahams shows some unfamiliar research studies to […]
Jaw power (new patent)
“As electronics devices become increasingly powerful and smaller, powering these devices has become a significant concern. It may be troublesome to find compatible power sources when a user is frequently mobile and devices often require multiple recharges per day.” There’s now a new energy-harvesting solution to the problem – the chew-powered fake-tooth piezoelectric generator. It’s […]
Food-chewing-noise patent application
“Successful dieting requires long-term behavior modification in terms of eating and physical activity. A diet plan is only one part of the solution. Sticking to the plan requires behavior modification that is generally beyond the ability of most people to implement without external assistance.” An invention, designed to provide assistance on such occasions is proposed […]
Does chewing gum improve our mind and our productivity?
For advocates of chewing gum in school, if there are any, the past decade of research has brought data, and perhaps hope. A project called The Effects of Gum Chewing on Math Scores in Adolescents studied the mathematics grades and test scores of 53 teenage students who chewed gum and 58 who did not. Craig Johnston of the Baylor College of […]
Slow Bite™ — Bite Slow and Fight Obesity (new patent)
“Overweight [sic] and obesity are some of the most common health and social problems. Millions of people suffer from overweight [sic], which is considered to be a main cause for diseases and early death. “ So what’s to be done? The quote above comes from a new US patent (Feb. 19th 2013) which offers a […]
Effects of Chewing on Cognitive Processing Speed, Maybe
This study adds a big “maybe” to the possibly-thought-inducing question of whether chewing speeds up a person’s brain, or parts of a person’s brain, or aspects of what might happen in part or parts of a person’s brain, more or less. The researchers reach a tentative “could” in the final sentence of their summary: “Effects […]