Infrastructure and appearances: “made almost entirely of wood”

“[The] Germans themselves made extensive use of decoys to protect airfields and other targets. One example in the Netherlands was constructed with particular care, made almost entirely of wood and including hangars, gun positions, aircraft and vehicles. However, it took so long to build that Allied photo interpreters had plenty of time to observe it. […]

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 […]

A homosexual copulation, on first arrival in The Netherlands from the Cape Verde Islands

May 19th, 2013 was an historical moment in the history of European ornithology. Four Iago Sparrows (Passer iagoensis) arrived in The Netherlands from the Cape Verde Islands aboard a ship, named Plancius. They are the first know individuals of that species (endemic to the islands off West Africa) to have reached Europe. As the ship […]

Dutch bug-splatter-on-cars count

This graph shows seven days of bug-splat data. The bugs splatted onto the license plates of automobiles traveling in The Netherlands. The graph is color-coded to show approximate time-of-day when the splatting happened. It’s part of the Wageningen-University-based SplashTeller project. BONUS: Mark Hostetler was awarded the 1997 Ig Nobel Prize in entomology for his scholarly book, […]