Dropped red herring attacks

The ‘Dropped Red Herring Attack’ was first (Improbable believes) described by Professor Brad Karp (pictured right) and colleagues Dr. James Newsome and Professor Dawn Song in their paper for Proceedings of the 9th International Symposium On Recent Advances In Intrusion Detection (RAID 2006), entitled: ‘Paragraph: Thwarting signature learning by training maliciously’. “In the Dropped Red […]

Frozen chicken, wild fish, and fingernails

Frozen chicken, wild fish, and fingernails all come together in a single, scientific investigation: “Frozen chicken for wild fish: Nutritional transition in the Brazilian Amazon region determined by carbon and nitrogen stable isotope ratios in fingernails,” Gabriela B. Nardoto, et al., American Journal of Human Biology, Epub May 31, 2011. The authors explain: “Amazonian populations […]

The Candy-Fish Sustainability Experiment

Candy fish gain an additional and/or alternative kind of value in this study: “Ecological and evolutionary effects of harvesting: lessons from the candy-fish experiment.” Beatriz Diaz Pauli [pictured here] and Mikko Heino, ICES Journal of Marine Science, vol. 70, no. 7, 2013, pp. 1281-1286. (Thanks to investigator Martin Aker for bringing this to our attention.) The […]

It’s a land fish, they say

The self-proclaimed first highlight of a new study is this: The Pacific leaping blenny, Alticus arnoldorum, is a land fish. The study is: “Natural selection in novel environments: predation selects for background matching in the body colour of a land fish,” Courtney L. Morgans and Terry J. Ord, Animal Behaviour, epub October 23, 2013. Here, in chart […]

If you like to drop things, measuredly

If you like to drop things because you want to measure what happens to them, consider using the drop tower at the University of Bremen, Germany. Pertinent info abounds. Read Geoff Manaugh’s essay in Gizmodo (“This Tower Exists Solely for Dropping Things“). Read the tower authority’s attractive brochure, if you like — read that in German (“Experimente unter Schwerelosigkeit”) […]