The word ‘Nerd’ is thought to have originated in the US in the early 1950s – but it took three full decades before a comprehensive academic paper describing ‘Nerdism’ appeared. As the authors of the…

What does “Uh(m)” mean?Professional linguists from a selection of highly respected international academic institutions have pondered the question in some detail over the years, but now a new paper…

It is believed that the first mustache transplants were performed by the late trichological pioneer Dr. Okuda in 1930’s Japan. Since then, considerable progress has been made – some of which is…

“A complete theory of icicle shape, including tip growth, self-similarity and the ripple instability, is currently lacking.” Prompting professor Stephen W. Morris and Antony Szu-Han Chen from the…

… asks Peter C. Sundt, BSc. in the June 2010) of the journal Elevator World (page 114). Although the article is ‘subscribers only’, an earlier essay by the same author on broadly the same subject (…

How might real dogs react to robotic dogs?  The Sony Corporation has been investigating. Researchers at its Computer Science Laboratory in Paris, which “… engages in fundamental research in…

Is ‘a pair’ big enough to be called ‘a group’? The tricky subject of dyads has recently been causing considerable professorial debate in the journal ‘Small Group Research’. (Note: the word ‘dyad ‘ is…

“…what happens if a person who prefers to kiss with the head turned to the right attempts to kiss a person who prefers to kiss with the head turned to the left.“? This potentially awkward social…

A small parasitic crustacean blood feeder that infests certain fish that inhabit the coral reefs of the shallow eastern Caribbean is the absolute perfect species to name for a pleasant Jamaican…

Although boredom very rarely escapes the notice of those suffering from it, constructing a purely technical instrument for reliably recognising boredom in humans is currently rated as a non-trivial…