Urination-duration Ig winner: physics of animals keeping clean

David Hu, 2015 Ig Nobel physics prize winner (together with several colleagues, for testing the biological principle that nearly all mammals empty their bladders in about 21 seconds, plus or minus 13 seconds ) has a new paper out, written with colleague Guillermo Amador. Their institution, Georgia Tech, describes it: A CAT’S SURFACE AREA IS EQUAL […]

Language of science: The Berry Phase begets the Belly Phase

“The Berry Phase” is not the only Berry phrase. Quantum physics turns (in more than one sense) on a concept called “the Berry phase“. The phrase, and in a way the concept, has recently given rise to a name for a phenomenon that occurs in your stomach: “the belly phase“. (Note for quibblers: Yes, quantum […]

A frog in the throat of a frog

A frog in the throat of a frog dominates the discussion in this study: “To have a frog in the throat: micro-CT imaging of anuran prey in Ceratophrys ornata (Anura: Ceratophryidae),” Thomas Kleinteich [pictured here], Salamandra, vol. 51, no. 2, June 30, 2015, pp. 209-211. The author, at Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Germany, reports: “Frogs of the […]

Profiling Professor Persinger – part 1

Human brains and lightning-discharges – what might they have in common? Could there be potentially congruent scale-invariant quantitative properties connecting the two? These questions have been examined by professor Michael A. Persinger of the psychology dept. at Laurentian University, Ontario, Canada. The professor presents his findings in the May 2012 edition of the scholarly journal […]

Improbable Research