Humor

The scholarly journal Parallax (vol. 16, no.3, 2010) is a special edition on the subject of ‘YES!’. Gary Peters, who is Professor of Critical and Cultural Theory at York St. John University, UK, is guest-editor for the issue, and is also author of one of the key papers 'Yes, No, Don't know' The full-text article costs US$43.00 for non-subscribers to download, but a work-in-progress overview along the theme of ”Yes’, ‘No’, ‘Don’t Know” can be read here free of charge. It describes how one fruitful approach in an analysis of the affirmative grammatical particle ‘Yes’ might be to examine…

The first scientific study to employ real-time magnetic resonance imaging  (RT) MRI to obtain midsagittal vocal tract sequential image data from a total of 5 soprano singers was published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, November 2010 (Express Letters pp. EL335-EL341) Click the framegrab at right to view (and hear) the resulting video (.avi format) Erik Bresch and Shrikanth Narayanan from the University of Southern California asked the singers to perform a two octave musical scale (hitting the notes as best they could considering the constraints of having their…

A study in BMJ's Christmas issue, which spares no effort in its annual attempt to see who in science media rewrites press releases without even reading them, has determined why Rudolph, the famous extra reindeer of Santa we will not show here due to little desire to pay royalties, has a red nose. Rudolph's nose is red because it is richly supplied with red blood cells which help to protect it from freezing and to regulate brain temperature. This superior "nasal microcirculation" is essential for pulling Santa Claus's sleigh under extreme temperatures, says the BMJ study. Tiny blood cells (…

Dogs can sniff out Clostridium difficile, the infective agent that is responsible for many of the dreaded "hospital acquired infections", in stool samples and even in the air surrounding patients in hospital with a very high degree of accuracy, finds a study in the Christmas issue published on bmj.com today. Yes, dogs can smell a superbug infection in poop. Can you smell a rat at BMJ this Christmas? The findings, they write in one of this year's spoofs, support previous studies of dogs detecting various types of cancer and could have great potential for screening hospital wards to help…

Opinions of the tooth fairy as kind and giving may need to be revised following "mounting reports of less child-friendly activity", according to a paper published in the BMJ's Christmas edition which is sure to fool mainstream media editors who are used to scare journalism and miracle vegetable of the week stories and may want to mix it up a little.  Researchers from across London, they write, have become concerned following misdemeanors of the mythical character and a worrying trend in malpractice. One boy in particular became extremely distressed because the tooth fairy "had put a…

It has been said that a fully developed mathematical formula is one of the shortest possible ways to describe a physical phenomenon. Some phenomena, however, are so complex that their mathematical description can be dauntingly large. Take for example the formula to describe the aerial motion of a boomerang.  Link: Down Under Saddle Supply Despite its complexity, it has been single-handedly analysed by Alexander S. Kuleshov, at the Department of Mechanics and Mathematics, of  Московского государственного университета. “Formulation of aerodynamic forces and moments is based on the…

A recent article pointed out a radical conclusion published in the British Medical Journal that reducing dietary fat intake could lead to weight loss and reduced BMI. Obviously such radical results will need to be verified and peer-reviewed, but it is expected that additional studies will show that increased sleep will make you feel less tired.  Exercise will tend to promote fitness, and eating will make you feel less hungry. Ain't science grand! =============================Published by IBO (Institute of the Bloody Obvious)

For badminton players: “The centre piece of the game is no doubt a shuttlecock which is made of either natural feathers or synthetic rubber with an open conical shape.” But perhaps some are left wondering which is best from an aerodynamic point of view – a feathered ‘bird’ or a rubber one? “Although a series of studies on aerodynamic behaviour of spherical and ellipsoidal balls have been reported in the open literature, scant information is available in the public domain about the aerodynamic behaviour of badminton shuttlecocks.” This lamentable lacuna in the literature has lately…

 Mayan priests began their ceremonies to mark the end of the current era in the Mayan long-count calendar yesterday and it involved incense and rituals...but they were stuck doing it at a park in Mexico City. It seems their patronizing, European-descended overlords are not taking any chances with rumors of an end to the world and so true-believing Mayas have been barred by authorities from performing rituals at their ancestral temples. The  Mayan long-count calendar measures time in Baktuns of 394 years. 13 is considered a sacred number to them and an unlucky number to us and the…

Does one’s skull vibrate when chewing biscuits?  The answer is yes, up to a point – that’s according to a recentl experimental study performed by the Department of Oral-Maxillofacial Surgery, Prosthodontics and Special Dental Care Oral Physiology Group, at the University Medical Center Utrecht, The Netherlands, along with the Department of Prosthetic Dentistry, Faculty of Dentistry, Lutheran University of Brazil, Porto Alegre, Brazil. Researcher Andries van der Bilt and colleagues used an inertial measurement system to quantify skull vibrations in volunteers who were eating three…