The streets of Rome are a little quieter today as thousands of locals have chosen to skip work and head for the hills after a huge earthquake was predicted to hit the Italian Capital some time today by a well-known Italian seismologist, over 30 years ago!
Raffaele Bendandi was a self-taught scientist who believed that earthquakes were caused by the gravitational influence of the Sun, Moon and other planets. Though he never attempted to provide proof for his theories, which he believed were intuitively correct, Bendandi scored a number of notable successes in 1910s and 1920s that led to him being feted as “the man who can predict earthquakes” and made a Knight of the Crown of Italy by Mussolini (who also banned him from making public predictions). Because of this ban, Bendandi made no further earthquake predictions until the 1970s, when he successfully forecast the 1976 quake that hit Friuli, Italy.
Bendandi also claimed to have detected another planet, which he named Faenza, orbiting closer to the Sun than Mercury, but, like his science of ‘seismogenics’, his findings are roundly dismissed by modern scientists as imaginative but nothing more.
That he even made today’s prediction is a matter of dispute. Many sources claim that the prediction comes from dates written on notes found after his death and do not give a specific event or location at all, and even among Bendandi’s dedicated following, there is argument as to whether he predicted the Rome quake is due today or in 2511.
Still such is the reputation of Bendandi, who died in 1979, that as much as 18% of city employees are reported to have called in sick today, and many stores are closed and shuttered. (BBC News).
Rumination is the practice of bringing food back up from the stomach after it's been swallowed, rechewing it, and then swallowing it again. When cows do this, it's called "chewing the cud." When humans do it habitually, it's considered to be an eating disorder. The Wikipedia article on Rumination Syndrome tells us:
The disorder has been historically documented as affecting only infants, young children, and people with cognitive disabilities (where the prevalence is as high as 10% in institutionalized patients with various mental disabilities). Today it is being diagnosed in increasing numbers of otherwise healthy adolescents and adults, though there is a lack of awareness of the condition by doctors, patients and the general public.
But in an article by Johns Hopkins psychiatrist Leo Kanner, "Historical Notes on Rumination in Man" (Medical Life, 45, 1936) we learn a strange factoid. Kanner writes:
It is, indeed, a curious fact that not less than fourteen physicians are known to have been habitual ruminators. This is especially interesting in the light of the statistical evidence of the extreme rarity of this condition.
Kanner's list of ruminating physicians begins with a 17th century medical student who reported that rumination was "sweeter than honey and accompanied by a more delightful relish." The most famous name on the list is the 19th century French physician Edouard Brown-Séquard who developed a rumination problem after conducting a series of self-experiments in which he repeatedly swallowed a sponge and tried to vomit it back up.
Kanner's list was written in 1936, so it's possible there are now more ruminating physicians that could be added to it. Why physicians would ruminate in greater number than members of other professions, I have no idea.
You've probably heard of the Russian researcher Ivan Pavlov who conditioned dogs to salivate whenever they heard the ringing of a bell. Less well known, but more appropriate for Weird Universe, are the experiments of Pavlov's American student W. Horsley Gantt, who was a researcher at Johns Hopkins. Instead of making dogs salivate, Gantt had a dog named Nick who became conditioned to develop an erection whenever he heard a tone. Mandy Merck briefly describes the experiments with Nick in her book In Your Face: 9 Sexual Studies:
Gantt's subjects included Fritz the Alsatian, Peter the beagle, a male poodle known as "V3," and especially the mongrel Nick, subject of "the most meticulous and complete case history of a single animal to be found in the conditioned reflex literature." These animals and others like them were subjected to a barrage of procedures to study conflicts of the drives between, for example, experimentally induced anxiety states and sexual excitement... Nick, in particular, exhibited symptomatic erections and ejaculations whenever he encountered stimuli associated with previous situations of anxiety. Years after one such experiment, in which anxious reactions were elicited by requiring dogs to make a difficult distinction between two tones of similar pitch (a distinction that determined whether the dog was fed), Nick would develop a "prominent erection... within a few seconds after the onset of the tone," Gantt enthused. "We could always count of Nick for a demonstration."
Shown is a picture of poor Nick demonstrating his unusual talent.
Outside it is not much to look at, little more than a discoloured rock dredged up from the sea floor. But an x-ray scan of the object, actually a pocket watch recovered from a 17th century shipwreck, has revealed that the internal mechanism has been perfectly preserved. The computer aided tomography system used was sensitive enough to pick out the tiniest details, included the engraved name of the master watchmaker, one Niccholas Higginson of Westminster, London (Gizmodo).
As if more proof were needed that they don’t build them like they used to, a UK group has started collecting donations to build the first fully working version of Babbage’s “Analytical Engine”. The original design, dating from 1837, was never completed, possibly due to a combination of the strict engineering tolerances needed and Babbage’s notoriously prickly temperament. If the final machine works as advertised, it will be very strong confirmation of the claim that Babbage designed the first general purpose, programmable computer (BBC News).
Meanwhile, in Slovenia, Borut Povse and his team are busy teaching a modern descendant of Babbage’s design to hit people. Somehow Povse has convinced six volunteers to let an industrial robot hit them on the arm with various sharp or blunt implements in an effort to determine how much pain each blow causes. Obviously this has a beneficial use in that robots can be programmed not to exceed certain levels of force near a human obstacle, but will also be of immense interest to the machines during any future robot uprising (New Scientist).
Another robot out to supplant humans is HRP-4, a gynoid (female android), that has learnt to sing by copying the inflection and expressions of a human performer, right down to the breathing. The hope is to make robots behave in a more convincingly natural way, and so overcome the so called ‘uncanny valley’. From the video, it looks like they’ve still got a way to go (Daily Mail).
When you think of the periodic table, a bunch of blocks may pop into your mind. It's time to revise your thinking, and you may be the next to invent a new design. I like this galaxy model.
This arrow shaped one has even more information you really don't see in the lego version.
Yet another try in a circular pattern.
Here's a link to a story from the New York Times about developing a new shape.
Spontaneous combustion is a type of combustion which occurs without an external ignition source. It's also fairly uncommon. But this summer, in Little Rock, Arkansas, an insurance claims adjuster concluded that the fire that caused $20,000 worth of damage to the Duncan's home was a classic case. Brian Duncan said a flowerpot on the porch was the culprit. You can read the full article here.
Humphrey Bogart regarded this as his biggest dog of a film. He plays a mad scientist who went to the electric chair, died, was revived with "synthetic blood," then had to subsist by draining the blood of others.
And here's the weirdest thing: almost every scene in this trailer is an outtake, not seen in the actual film! I wonder if viewers of the era felt ripped off.
Build a better mousetrap, it is said, and the world will beat a path to your door. The implication being that there are some problems which are just crying out for a solution. And then there are the solutions crying out for a problem - those inventions that, while inspired, are just a tad “out there”. It is this later category I shall be celebrating today.
First up, how clean is your cow? This age old problem has nagged at the minds of farmers down the ages, are their cows clean enough? And why isn’t there an easier way to clean cows? Well these merchants of the soil need worry no more thanks to a Swedish company that has developed the fully automated “cow wash”. Supposedly improving the health and yield of cows that use it, the cow wash uses a free swinging revolving brush to groom the cows while simultaneously stimulating their circulation. Apparently the cows enjoy using it and the makers DeLaval have sold over 30,000 in Sweden alone (Daily Mail).
Bigwigs in the US military will also soon be able to sleep sounder in the knowledge that the men under their command are safely in their underpants. We’re not just talking about any undies though, these have been specially designed by University of California professor Joseph Wang. Not only will his techno-trunks monitor the vitals of the personnel wearing them, they can even administer painkillers or antibiotics as the situation demands (Post Chronicle).
And if your pants don’t save you, at least your modesty will be preserved when you are taken to hospital, all thanks to the University of Montreal. For it is from that fine establishment’s School of Industrial Design that our next invention hails, a hospital gown that isn’t quite so revealing. The DUO gown is the brainchild of Noemie Marquis and Denyse Roy and consists of two overlapping panels, front and back, that is easy to put on and requires no fasteners making life simpler for both patients and staff (Medical News Today).
Meanwhile British scientists have been working on an altogether sterner cover. Nicknamed “bullet-proof custard” by its inventors, Bristol based BAE systems have developed a liquid armour consisting of layers of Kevlar combined with a secret “shear-thickening” liquid that hardens as force is applied. The company’s eventual aim is to produce lighter, more-flexible body armour for the military (BBC News).
You've probably heard of the Russian researcher Ivan Pavlov who conditioned dogs to salivate whenever they heard the ringing of a bell. Less well known, but more appropriate for Weird Universe, are the experiments of Pavlov's American student W. Horsley Gantt, who was a researcher at Johns Hopkins. Instead of making dogs salivate, Gantt had a dog named Nick who became conditioned to develop an erection whenever he heard a tone. Mandy Merck briefly describes the experiments with Nick in her book In Your Face: 9 Sexual Studies:
Category: Authorities and Experts, Disasters, Eccentrics, Science, Weird Theory