This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has three segments. Here are bits of each of them: God’s recent works — What has God done lately? Professionally, much of God’s work these days aims to help humans fly more safely, more efficiently and more profitably. As head of the Institute for Aircraft Cabin Systems […]
Add another study to the collection that focuses on a question of consumer acceptance of pork pâté enriched with cricket powder. This one is: “Nutritional Analysis and Evaluation of the Consumer Acceptance of Pork Pâté Enriched with Cricket Powder – Preliminary Study,” Krzysztof Smarzyński, Paulina Sarbak, Szymon Musiał, Paweł Jeżowski, Michał Piątek, and Przemysław, and […]
News on the meat, medical, and electro-communications fronts: “Mbps Experimental Acoustic Through-Tissue Communications: MEAT-COMMS,” Andrew Singer, Michael Oelze, and Anthony Podkowa, arXiv preprint arXiv:1603.05269 (2016). The authors, at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, report: “This paper describes experimental transmission of digital communication signals through samples of real pork tissue and beef liver, achieving […]
A project at Aalborg University, in Denmark, observed what happens when a drone’s whirling propeller collides with a hunk of pork. This video captures the collision, showing it in slowed-down motion: Kelsey D. Atherton wrote about this, for Popular Science magazine. BONUS: Here’s video of an unplanned experiment, by a different research team, with a drone […]
Stanford Magazine (the university’s alumni magazine) profiles their latest Ig Nobel Prize winner. Dr. Ian Humphreys, together with three colleagues, was honored for treating “uncontrollable” nosebleeds, using the method of nasal-packing-with-strips-of-cured-pork: …Typically, doctors would next resort to sealing off the nearby artery. But in this case, doing so could have left the child blind. Running out […]
A new study inspired the until-now unasked question: Should packaged meat labels include pre-slaughter rectal-temperature info? The study does not itself overtly ask that question. The study is: “Pre-slaughter rectal temperature as an indicator of pork meat quality,” L. Vermeulen, V. Van de Perre, L. Permentier, S. De Bie, and R. Geers, Meat Science, vol. 105, […]
One of academia’s most prominent accounts of ‘Pigness’ in motion pictures was authored in 2010 by Dr. Mark von Schlemmer (University of Central Missouri, Department of Communication and Sociology) in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, With reference not only to leading examples of cinematic pigs (like Babe and […]
Improbable readers may be familiar with the Pork-Cat Syndrome (a link between allergic sensitivity to pork meat and cat epithelia), details of which were first published in 1994. Perhaps less well known though is the Horsemeat-Hamster Syndrome, which could have implications for those who have been exposed to the current UK outbreak of Involuntary Hippophagia. […]
A new medical study recommends a method called “nasal packing with strips of cured pork” as an effective way to treat uncontrollable nosebleeds. Ian Humphreys, Sonal Saraiya, Walter Belenky and James Dworkin [pictured here], at Detroit Medical Centre in Michigan, treated a girl who had a rare hereditary disorder that brings prolongued bleeding. Publishing in […]
A 1983 medical report about Mexico [see details below] conceivably helps explain this January 28, 2010 AFP report (in the Windsor Star) from Argentina: Eating pork is at least as effective as popping a Viagra pill to spice up your sex life, according to Argentine President Cristina Kirchner, who claims to have tested the theory. […]