Toshiyuki Nakagaki, Atsushi Tero, Seiji Takagi, Tetsu Saigusa, Kentaro Ito, Kenji Yumiki, Ryo Kobayashi of Japan, and Dan Bebber, Mark Fricker of the UK, were jointly awarded the 2010 Ig Nobel Transportation Planning prize for using slime mould to determine the optimal routes for railroad tracks. See: ‘Rules for Biologically Inspired Adaptive Network Design’ in […]
Tag: spider
Virtual cockroaches alleviate fear of cockroaches
Not many people with a fear of, say, cockroaches, would be happy to let a few of them roam across their bare hands (in order to alleviate their fears by habituation). In other words: “Although in vivo exposure is the treatment of choice for specific phobias, some acceptability problems have been associated with it.” In […]
A graph for those who like coffee and spiders
Do you like coffee and spiders? If the immediate, unthinking answer to that question is “Yes”, then perhaps you will like this coffee spider graph. A coffee spider graph specialist (who goes by the pen name “Staff”) at a company called Coffee Analysts explains it on their web site: Coffee Taste Spider Graphs Explained By […]
The vampire spiders and the transplanted mosquito heads
This tweet by May Berenbaum will lead you, if you let it, to an entomological adventure: Testing vampire spider preferences by transplanting male mosquito heads on female mosquito bodies. It’s alive!! See J Exp Biol 6/7 Berenbaum refers, tersely, to this study: “The discerning predator: decision rules underlying prey classification by a mosquito-eating jumping spider,” Ximena […]