A growing body of scientific studies have examined the implications of finger length ratios. But until recently up to 50% of humanoid distal appendages may have been largely overlooked – for what of toe-length ratios?

Progress towards rectifying this digital imbalance has been made with a recent study from the Department of Psychology, Penn State University, Harrisburg, US. Professor Marissa Harrison has published one of the very few studies to investigate :

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 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)

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. 

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.”

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.