Julie Mennella, co-winner (with Gary Beauchamp) of the 2025 Ig Nobel Prize for Pediatrics, was interviewed by Kayla Yup of the Philadelphia Inquirer. The headline says: “The Philadelphia scientists who studied garlic-flavored breast milk won a 2025 Ig Nobel Prize — Mennella was one of two scientists at Monell Chemical Senses Center to win a […]
You might think that, in the eyes of the law, you ‘own’ your body and all its constituent parts. Think again. “Most women would be stunned to discover that the law does not consider a piece of their body to be their property” That’s when the body part under consideration is a placenta. This perplexing […]
What might be done to encourage babies to accept products which don’t naturally smell of human milk? “[…] babies prefer the odor attributes of human milk compared to those of artificial infant formula or milk products based on milk compositions of animal origin such as cow’s milk etc.” The Fraunhofer Society (owner, amongst much more, […]
Robots can smile, and human mothers can react to that. This study tuned up the timing of this dance: “Infants Time Their Smiles to Make Their Moms Smile,” Paul Ruvolo, Daniel Messinger, Javier Movellan, PLoS ONE 10(9), 2015, e0136492. The authors, at Olin College of Engineering, the University of Miami, and the University of California San […]