Ig Nobel Prize-winning scientists who discovered that dung beetles use the Milky Way to navigate have now learned (together with some colleagues) how certain bees probably manage to tamp down traffic congestion. Their study is: “Accelerated Landing in a Stingless Bee and Its Unexpected Benefits for Traffic Congestion,” Pierre Tichit, Isabel Alves-dos-Santos, Marie Dacke and […]
Tag: Milky Way
Dance of the Dung Beetles: A book for all humans to savor
Ig Nobel Prize winner Marcus Byrne has a new book called Dance of the Dung Beetles. It can please and enlighten anyone—human or beetle or both (Beatle)—who ever has contact with with dance, dung, life, or the universe. The 2013 Ig Nobel Prize for biology and astronomy (a rare double-category win!) was awarded to Marie […]
Marcus Byrne tells of the dung beetles and the Milky Way
Marcus Byrne tells about the dung-beetles-and-the-Milky-Way research that led to an Ig Nobel Prize for him and his colleagues, in this University of the Witwatersrand video: That Ig Nobel Prize was awarded, in 2013, jointly in the fields of biology and astronomy, to Marie Dacke [SWEDEN, AUSTRALIA], Emily Baird [SWEDEN, AUSTRALIA, GERMANY], Marcus Byrne [SOUTH AFRICA, UK], […]
Marcus Byrne explains how dung beetles use the Milky Way
Ig Nobel Prize winner Marcus Byrne explains how dung beetles use the Milky Way, navigationally, to find its way home: [vimeo]80765214[/vimeo] (Thanks to Steve Ting for bringing this to our attention.)
Dung beetle Milky Way Ig Nobel winners implicate the sun
The Scientist magazine reports: Dung beetles (Scarabaeus lamarcki) scurry around cow pastures collecting little balls of poop from steaming heaps of excrement and quickly roll those balls to their nests, where they bury them for a future meal. (See a video of this behavior.) According to new research published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, the beetles’ […]
Marie Dacke explains how dung beetles navigate
Marie Dacke explains how she and her colleagues learned that dung beetles use the Milky Way to navigate their way home. The team was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize (jointly in the fields of biology and astronomy) for that work. This talk was part of TEDxLundUniversity: BONUS: The Lund University announcement about the Ig Nobel Prize
Auto exhaust along the Milky Way
Investigator Scott Sandford alerts us to this pathblazing study: “Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and the unidentified infrared emission bands: Auto exhaust along the Milky Way,” L.J. Allamandola, A.G.G.M. Tielens and J.R. Barker, Astrophysical Journal, vol. 290, 1985, pp. L25-L28.