Amidst the vastness of a study on old French pig postcards, there is an image from a once-famous, now-somewhat-neglected way to teach drawing. The pig postcard study is: “Visions of Pork Production, Past and Future, on French Belle Époque Pig Postcards,” Michael D. Garval, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, vol. 14, no. 1, Spring 2015. The drawing […]
“Time” as they say “is money.” Especially relevant perhaps, in a plastic surgery operating theatre, in which running costs can reach $66 a minute. And where, for example, “A 10% reduction in operative time per hour equals savings of $396 per hour.” What might help to speed-up surgeons’ performance (without of course compromising accuracy and […]
Pigs, like humans, can get bored. Perhaps they’d like to play a game to amuse themselves? Even better, with interacting humans? A project designed to examine such possibilities is underway at Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht and Wageningen University Livestock Research Department in The Netherlands. It’s called ‘Playing With Pigs’ and is “researching the complex […]
What smells like boar taint to you might not smell like boar taint to other people, suggests this study: “How olfactory acuity affects the sensory assessment of boar fat: A proposal for quantification,” Johanna Trautmann, Jan Gertheiss, Michael Wicke, Daniel Mörlein [pictured here], Meat Science, Volume 98, Issue 2, October 2014, Pages 255–262. The authors, […]
Rob Ives‘ automaton called “Swine Flew”:
Catherine Douglas, co-winner of the 2009 Ig Nobel Prize in veterinary medicine for determining that cows who have names give more milk than cows that don’t, has now done research on the happiness of pigs. In this inverview with the BBC, she explains that a glockenspiel figured prominently in the research: (Thanks to investigator Scott […]