A new paper relates the apparent clumpings of stars to those of humans. Astronomer Alon Retter, who earlier posited a mathematical similarity between astronomical objects and human children, gives full details of his work: “An Intriguing Correlation between the Distribution of Star Multiples and Human Adults in Household,” Alon Retter, International Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics, vol. […]
Tag: people
Looking at looking at looking in elevators
Robert Krulwich, on NPR, looks at the research that looked at people looking or not looking at other people in elevators: She’s in Finland now, getting her Ph.D. at the University of Jyvaskyla, but before that, when she was in Adelaide, Australia, she studied elevator behavior. Rebekah Rousi [pictured here] hung around two tall office towers in […]
Rats Will Encounter Rat-Size People, and Vice Versa
Rats and people (or any two different size critters) can encounter each other on the same scale, virtually, under the scheme outlined in a new study. The image below demonstrates virtual rat-sized persons in a rat world. The study is: “Beaming into the Rat World: Enabling Real-Time Interaction between Rat and Human Each at Their […]
The more-than-seven ages of man (and woman)
William Shakespeare reduced the ages of man to a mere seven, in the play “As You Like It“. In this video, actor Benedict Cumberbatch presents that argument: In contrast, the maker of the video below went for a less literarily — but more mathematically — classical approach to age, assigning a different age for each year […]
A line of people each trace a line
An experiment by Clement Valla, who drew a line and then had 500 people each attempt, sequentially, to trace the line they saw: Villa did a similar experiment with a circle: [vimeo]19760997[/vimeo]
A democracy depends on uninformed individuals, we are informed
A democracy without a substantial number of uninformed individuals, may not know what it’s doing, metaphorically speaking. So implies this new study: “Uninformed Individuals Promote Democratic Consensus in Animal Groups,” Iain D. Couzin [pictured here in a blurry photo], Christos C. Ioannou, Güven Demirel, Thilo Gross, Colin J. Torney, Andrew Hartnett, Larissa Conradt, Simon A. […]
People in the Ig Nobel ceremony
Here are some of the people putting together this year’s Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. For lots more people, with biographies and such, click on the picture.