Some of the old experiments at or near the Air Force research labs in Dayton, Ohio, are on display in this video. The video comes with this info, added by someone somewhere at some time: Coverage of research at the Aerospace Medical Division HQ 657Oth Aerospace Medical Research Laboratories including scenes of F-104 seat ejection; […]
Tag: pigeons
Richard Nixon’s inauguration day haul of dead pigeons
“In his previous inauguration, Nixon had noticed that there were a large number of birds in the trees, and didn’t like the thought of being pooped on as he drove down the National Mall in Washington DC in an open-top limo. Nixon ordered that the pigeons were to be removed – and so the US […]
Pigeons as Trained Observers in the War on Cancer
Pigeons may be as good as some bad radiologists, in some ways, maybe, suggests this new study: “Pigeons (Columba livia) as Trainable Observers of Pathology and Radiology Breast Cancer Images,” Richard M. Levenson, Elizabeth A. Krupinski, Victor M. Navarro, and Edward A. Wasserman, PLoS ONE, 10(11): e0141357. (Thanks to Ig Nobel Prize winner Elizabeth Oberzaucher for […]
The Virtual Pigeon’s Progress
Professor Shigeru Watanabe was one of the co-winners of the 1995 IgNobel psychology prize (for success in training pigeons to discriminate between the paintings of Picasso and those of Monet.) Since then, the professor’s research team at Keio University, Japan, have linked up with Queen’s University, Ontario, Canada, to create and test what could well […]
Why Do Birds Bob Their Head While Running? (Locomotion, part 2)
The question : ‘Why do some*(see note below) birds bob their heads when walking?’ has perplexed scientists for many years. Some researchers suggest that head-bobbing may be correlated with the morphology of the retina, but others propose that it’s mechanically linked to the locomotor system, and that its visual functions are secondarily adapted. Either way, […]
For the birds: “Hoe hoe hoe”
While in Japan Professor Yukio Hirose worries about pigeons pooping on statues, in The Netherlands a young man is making a musical stink about the high prices being paid for racing pigeons. He, the young man, expresses himself in this song: His plight is translated, both in language and context, for people outside the Netherlands, […]
The Traveling Pigeon Problem
In the award-winning children’s book ‘Don’t let the pigeon drive the bus’ by Mo Willems, (Hyperion Books for Children, 2003) a persistent pigeon ‘asks, pleads, cajoles, wheedles, connives, negotiates, demands and uses emotional blackmail in attempts to get behind the wheel’. The bus driver is decidedly reluctant to let the pigeon drive. But why? “On […]
Non-local pigeons banned from movies?
A proposed new law restricts the appearance, in films, of non-local pigeons. Here is the complete text of the bill: HOUSE DOCKET, NO. 2203 FILED ON: 1/12/2009 HOUSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . No. 816 AN ACT RELATIVE TO PIGEONS IN MOTION PICTURES. Be it enacted […]