For people who like to find faults, good news appeared in 1989, in this study: “Locating Faults in a Constant Number of Parallel Testing Rounds,” Richard Beigel, S. Rao Kosaraju [pictured here], and Gregory F. Sullivan, Proceedings of the First Annual ACM Symposium on Parallel Algorithms and Architectures, March 1989, pp. 189–198. The authors, at […]
The research that won an Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize for Volkswagen also involved monkeys watching cartoons while they inhaled automobile fumes — a fact that was not publicly known at the time the prize was awarded. Nor was it known to the Ig Nobel Board of Governors. The monkeys/cartoons news was reported today by Jack […]
Whither waste? Toilet testing, not everyone’s cup of tea, makes things flow better, for society’s sake. Metafilter features a little roundup of toilet testing info (thanks to investigator Scott Langill for bringing it to our attention): Pseudo Poop for Testing Toilets Testing toilet flush performance naturally requires the replication of real-world loads. Striving for accuracy, […]
A study in New Zealand tested the tearing of knickers, and found that meaningful results are not easy to obtain if one examines only the fabric itself: “Tearing of Knicker Fabrics,” T.J. Dann, D.J. Carr, R.M. Laing, B.E. Niven and J. Kieser, Forensic Science International, 217 (2012) 93–100. (Thanks to investigator Erwin Kompanje for bringing this […]
Where does one test gunbarrels in a big city? In London, one tests them at the Proof House of the Gunmakers Company, explains the Caroline’s Miscellany blog: On Commercial Road, E1 is a rather curious-looking little building, out of scale with the structures surrounding it… The current building of 1757 replaces one damaged by repeated […]
News reports (in the Israeli newspaper Globes, in the NANOJV defense intelligence blog, and elsewhere) say that on Wednesday, December 22, Israel’s army is going to test a new tank-defense system by firing live anti-tank missiles at a tank that contains two of its own soldiers. (Thanks to investigator Yossi Levi for bringing this to […]
Flora Lichtman of Science Friday interviewed “Brenda Tan and Matthew Cost, high school seniors from Trinity School in New York City, used a technique called DNA barcoding to find out what species were present in over 200 animal products.” A surprising finding: most street vendors’ hot dogs — at least the ones the students tested […]