Echocardiography – the wild side

Performing echocardiography (ultrasound examination of the heart) is now so widespread that it might be called a routine procedure. But using the diagnostic technique is not always straightforward. What happens, for example, it the patient has feathers? Or a perhaps even a shell? Guidance for echocardiographing animals is at hand from Yolanda Martinez Pereira, LdaVt […]

Dwyer’s 1976 patent for shotgun-shell garden seeding

A “new” Swedish invention (and/or perhaps publicity-seeking device) seems just a repeat of an American invention patented in 1976.  See below for details of the original patent. (Thanks to investigator Jesse Eppers for bringing this to our attention.) The Swedish project, called Flowershell, has promotional videos. Here’s one of those: Huffington Post discusses it: “‘Flower Shell’ Makes […]

Russian tank invention: To lay waste upon the enemy

Aleksandr Georgievich Semenov patented an efficiently disgusting weapon system. Using his method, soldiers inside an armoured tank, under battle conditions, can dispose of their biological waste products in an unwasteful way: encasing those materials, together with explosives, in artillery shells that they then fire at the enemy. Semenov, residing in St Petersburg, can and does […]