Dairy cows, particularly in alpine regions (Switzerland, Austria &etc) are often seen (and heard) wearing bells. See photo: Although it’s traditional to fit such cows with bells, a question can, and indeed has, been asked : ‘Do Bells Affect Behaviour and Heart Rate Variability in Grazing Dairy Cows?’ Answers are provided in a 2015 PLoS […]
Tag: Switzerland
Viagra Induces Fractal Growth in Mushrooms in Switzerland
“Viagra Induces Fractal Growth in Mushrooms in Switzerland“, by Gabriele Losa [pictured here], appears in the special Cloning & Evolution issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. (The article is also online.) It begins: This study investigates the effect of Sildenafil (a synthetic drug that is known to much of the public as “Viagra“) on the growth […]
Smelov’s investigation of HPV on toilet seats in international airports
Lead author Smelov and colleagues write, in this letter to a medical journal, about a careful investigation that may (and may not) have small or nonexistent implications: “Are human papillomavirus DNA prevalences providing high-flying estimates of infection? An international survey of HPV detection on environmental surfaces,” Vitaly Smelov [pictured here], Carina Eklund, Laila Sara Arroyo […]
Cafeteria Review: CERN
Several Improbable Research persons (I am one of them) are at CERN for a few days. We sometimes dine in CERN’s main cafeteria, and are delighted at the goodness of the food and the general atmosphere — and equally delighted at the kindness, friendliness, and relaxed cheeriness of the people who work at the cafeteria. It’s […]
The vertical fossil and the exploding ichthyosaur theory
Ancient seagoing animals did not explode nearly as often as scientists believed, according to a new study called Float, Explode or Sink: Postmortem Fate of Lung-breathing Marine Vertebrates. The authors, an all-star team of palaeontologists, pathologists and forensic anthropologists [one of them, Achim Reisdorf, is pictured here] from six institutions in Switzerland and Germany, deflated a hypothesis […]
What psychiatrists say your gut says
Some psychoanalysts can find meaning in the most ordinary-seeming bits of your life. Some discern it even in your intestinal rumblings. There’s a technical name for those digestive sounds: borborygmi. Several published studies tell how to interpret people’s gut feelings – how to translate those borborygmi into common everyday words. In 1984, Prof Dr med […]