“Medical Research Review: Flower Pot on the Head” is a featured revue article in the special Haphazard issue (volume 27, number 3) of the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Read this article, free, on the web. Then, if a flowerpot on the head inspires you, subscribe to the magazine, or buy individual back issues.
Tag: head
An Empirical, 21st Century Evaluation of Phrenology
The old technique of judging people by examining their head bumps gets a new looking-at, in this study: “An Empirical, 21st Century Evaluation of Phrenology,” Oiwi Parker Jones, Fidel Alfaro-Almagro, and Saad Jbabdi, bioRxiv 243089, 2018. The authors, at the University of Oxford, UK, explain: Phrenology was a nineteenth century endeavour to link personality traits […]
Envenomations by Rattlesnakes Thought to Be Dead, Then and Now
Old rattlesnake research gains new bite, with the news reports of a man who decapitated a rattlesnake, and then was bitten by the detorsoed snake head [“Texas Man’s Near-Fatal Lesson: A Decapitated Snake Can Still Bite” — New York Times]. The most pertinently focussed study was published almost 20 years ago: “Envenomations by Rattlesnakes Thought to […]
Six Cups of Coffee Goes to Your Head, for Surgical Guidance [research study]
A special hat filled with six cups’ worth of ground coffee may make it easier for surgeons to succeed at some kinds of nose and throat surgery. This study presents the news: “Coffee: the key to safer image-guided surgery—a granular jamming cap for non-invasive, rigid fixation of fiducial markers to the patient,” Patrick S. Wellborn […]
Two Heads (One of Them Real) Are Somewhat Better Than One
A new test of the old idea that apparently having a head at your rear might save your life, if you are a butterfly: “Two-headed butterfly vs. mantis: do false antennae matter?” Tania G. López-Palafox and Carlos R. Cordero, PeerJ, vol. 5, 2017, e3493. The authors, at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, report: “The colour […]
Hats Off, or On, From a Medical Perspective
Are there hat-wearing patterns in spectators who attended baseball games — patterns that might be discernible over a ten-year period, patterns that might be exploitable? This study claims to begin to answer those questions. “Hat-wearing Patterns in Spectators Attending Baseball Games: a 10-Year Retrospective Comparison,” Aaron S. Farberg, Stephen Donohue, and Darrell S. Rigel, Cutis, […]
Questions about Jerry’s Maggot
The questions precede the text. The questions, presented on Ms. Barker’s Science Wiki, are: Read the attached article titled, Jerry’s Maggot. On a separate sheet of paper respond to the following questions, using complete sentences, based on your knowledge of biology and your personal opinion. 1. What is Jerry’s “problem” and how did he get […]
The special HUMAN HEADS issue of the magazine is out!
The special HUMAN HEADS And GARLIC issue (vol. 22, no. 1) of the magazine (the Annals of Improbable Research) is now out! It’s bursting (as are all our issues) with carefully culled, improbable research snippets about everything, from anywhere, more or less. This is the very first issue of our all-PDF era. We hope you enjoy it, and that you will […]
Forge a head: Two ears bad, Four ears good
A dummy head (or Kunstkopf) is sometimes used to create ‘binaural’ recordings. There can however, be a problem with this approach – in the sense that from the listener’s point of view, it’s not always completely clear which way is the head facing, could it be back to front? Researchers at the Virtual Acoustics and […]
Medical report: “A Real Airhead”
Some, alas not all, doctors strive for plain language. The headline of this medical report contains plain language: “A Real Airhead,” Declan McDonnell and Gillian Park, BMJ Case Reports, epub November 25, 2014. The authors, at Southampton General Hospital and Northwick Park Hospital, London, UK, report: “A 21-year-old man was taken to the emergency department after […]