Nit-Picking Confidence, Algorithmically in Parallel

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 […]

Volkswagen’s Ig Nobel Prize-winning research also used cartoon-watching monkeys

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 […]

Advances in toilet system testing: Wigglers & Pseudo Poop

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, […]