Category:
Science
Science
Swallowed giraffe liver parasite
1928: Emmett Price of the US Bureau of Animal Husbandry swallowed the larvae of an unknown parasite he found in the liver of a dead giraffe. His boss explained that it was considered tradition within the parasitology section of the Bureau to self-experiment in this way.
Buffalo News - July 11, 1928
Indianapolis Star - July 2, 1928
Posted By: Alex - Tue Jul 23, 2024 -
Comments (2)
Category: Science, Experiments, 1920s
The 1941 Slide Rule Queen
This honor was bestowed by my home state's university, the University of Rhode Island.
Posted By: Paul - Fri Jul 19, 2024 -
Comments (4)
Category: Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Science, 1940s, Universities, Colleges, Private Schools and Academia
Male dance moves that catch a woman’s eye
In 2011, researchers from Northumbria University published an article in the journal Biology Letters about male dance moves. They used motion-capture technology to "precisely break down and analyse specific motion patterns in male dancing that seem to influence women's perceptions of dance quality."Here's the key part of their finding (for those men seeking to improve their dance moves):
We find that the variability and amplitude of movements in the central body regions (head, neck and trunk) and speed of the right knee movements are especially important in signalling dance quality. A ‘good’ dancer thus displays larger and more variable movements in relation to bending and twisting movements of their head/neck and torso, and faster bending and twisting movements of their right knee.
Below are two videos from their study showing male dance moves that women like, versus those that they don't.
Good Dancer:
Bad Dancer:
Posted By: Alex - Sat Jul 13, 2024 -
Comments (3)
Category: Science, 2010s, Dance
Arrow Storks
Arrow storks (in German Pfeilstörche) are storks that got arrows stuck in their body while wintering in Africa but nevertheless managed to fly back to their summer habitats in Europe. To date, around twenty-five Pfeilstörche have been documented.From wikipedia:
The first and most famous Pfeilstorch was a white stork found in 1822 near the German village of Klütz, in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. It was carrying a 75-centimetre (30 in) spear from central Africa in its neck. The specimen was stuffed and can be seen today in the zoological collection of the University of Rostock.
Image & text: Overlooked Sights. German Places. By Michaela Vieser and Reto Wettach.
Posted By: Alex - Mon May 20, 2024 -
Comments (1)
Category: Animals, Birds, Science
Miss Biological Research
Were biologists supposed to pin her picture up in their labs?
New York Daily News - Feb 12, 1964
Posted By: Alex - Wed May 15, 2024 -
Comments (2)
Category: Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Science, 1960s
Space Songs
Here's a sample track from the album depicted below. The rest of the tracks are on YouTube.And a bonus! The first side of ENERGY & MOTION SONGS.
Tom Glazer at Wikipedia.
Posted By: Paul - Mon Apr 29, 2024 -
Comments (0)
Category: Education, Music, Science, Vinyl Albums and Other Media Recordings, 1950s
Song about the human dimensions of the oceans
From the YouTube description:The song was commission by Dr. Lekelia Jenkins especially for the Human Dimensions of the Ocean Symposium at the University of Washington in 2012. This is an example of how art can be blended with science to express scientific concepts in novel ways.
The singer really pulls out all the stops starting about 45 seconds in. But I'm stumped about what scientific concepts the song is expressing. Is the singer trying to sound like a humpback whale?
Posted By: Alex - Wed Apr 10, 2024 -
Comments (0)
Category: Music, Oceans and Maritime Pursuits, Science
By 2531 everyone in Japan will be named Sato
Japanese demographics professor Hiroshi Yoshida has warned that by 2531 everyone in Japan will have the last name 'Sato'.Why? Because a) Sato is the most common last name in Japan, and b) Japanese law requires that married couples use the same last name. Because Japanese women almost always take their husband's name, this means that the surname 'Sato' is slowly crowding out all other names.
From the Guardian:
According to Yoshida’s calculations, the proportion of Japanese named Sato increased 1.0083 times from 2022 to 2023. Assuming the rate remains constant and there is no change to the law on surnames, around half of the Japanese population will have that name in 2446, rising to 100% in 2531.
The Think Name Project is promoting Professor Yoshida's research as a way to gain support for ending Japan's law requiring couples to have the same surname.
More info: spoon-tamago.com/
Posted By: Alex - Thu Apr 04, 2024 -
Comments (3)
Category: Odd Names, Predictions, Science, Asia
Beatniks Under the Microscope
Posted By: Paul - Wed Mar 27, 2024 -
Comments (0)
Category: Science, Bohemians, Beatniks, Hippies and Slackers, 1950s
Are we swallowing other universes?
An unusual cosmological hypothesis was recently published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. At least, it's an idea I haven't heard before.It suggests that our universe has been swallowing "baby universes," and that this eating habit is the cause of the observed accelerating rate of expansion of our universe.
The article, authored by researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute and the Tokyo Institute of Technology, quickly veers off into mathematics that's incomprehensible to me. But I can extract a few interesting ideas. For instance, what if the initial "Big Bang" of our universe was caused by us (when we were still a baby universe) being swallowed by a larger universe?
the fact that the universe has expanded from, say, a Planckian size to 10−5m in a very short time, invites the suggestion that this expansion was caused by a collision with a larger universe, i.e. that it was really our Universe which was absorbed in another "parent" universe.
And what would happen if, now that we're an adult universe, we collided with another adult universe? The researchers don't answer this question, but I'm guessing the outcome wouldn't be good.
While a continuous absorption of microscopic baby universes probably can be accommodated in a non-disruptive way in our Universe, it is less clear what happens if the "baby" universe is not small, since we have not suggested an actual mechanism for such absorption.
More info: "Is the present acceleration of the Universe caused by merging with other universes?"
Posted By: Alex - Wed Mar 06, 2024 -
Comments (3)
Category: Science, Spaceflight, Astronautics, and Astronomy, Weird Theory
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| Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1. Contact Us |