How to intriguingly begin a story about a collision

This medical paper demonstrates how to intrigue the reader right away, in the first two sentences: “Fracture penis: a case more heard about than seen in general surgical practice,” Manash Ranjan Sahoo, Anil Kumar Nayak, Tapan Kumar Nayak, Anand S, BMJ Case Reports, 2013.The authors, at SCB Medical College, Cuttack, Odisha, India, begin their report […]

How do pedestrians avoid collisions?

As you walk city streets, frustrated at why those other pedestrians behave so frustratingly, be aware that scientists are trying to improve the situation, but are making progress only in slow steps. Dr Taku Fujiyama [pictured here, receiving an award], one of the modern masters in this endeavour, is a lecturer at University College London’s Secret […]

Tidy Swiss garbage collector up, up in the sky

Just as certain computer scientists and engineers dream of doing better garbage collection in computers (for a dream come true, see Microsoft’s “Fundamentals of Garbage Collection“), scientists and engineers at Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne dream of doing better garbage collection in space. Dead satellites. Detritus from collisions between now-dead satellites and whatever slammed into them. Junk that […]