Humor

• The problem – How to tell if a banana is senescent (old). • The solution – Apply fractal Fourier analysis to the banana spots. The computational method was jointly developed by the Department of Science and Food Technology, Universidad de Los Lagos, Chi ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Apr 13 2013 - 12:42pm

The Benefits Of Being Uninformative

Many may jump to the conclusion that ‘Uninformative Advertising’ simply provides a route by which a manufacturing corporation can ‘burn its money’ – but this may not always be the case, as explained in a recent paper from the Yale School of Management. Pr ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Apr 21 2013 - 12:05pm

The Attractiveness Of Beards, Dance-moves And Armpits

What makes adult human males attractive (to adult human females)? Of the many possible factors, at least three have been scientifically investigated, measured, and described by ‘Honest Signals’ researcher Dr. Nick Neave, of the School of Life Sciences, Dep ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Apr 24 2013 - 9:00am

Typical Male?

Typical Male? Just for fun: What else might Nicholas Cage be saying? There's plenty of scope here for your ideas. ...

Blog Post - Patrick Lockerby - Apr 24 2013 - 6:20pm

Doctors' Stethoscopes- Should They Hang To The Left Or Right?

Would one normally expect a health-professional’s stethoscope to hang more predominantly to their left, or their right? And if there is a bias, what conclusions may be drawn? In 2007, professor Emmanuel Stylianos Antonarakis MBBCh performed a cross-section ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Apr 26 2013 - 3:33pm

DAFT- Towards A New Disk Filing Approach

The Windows® NTFS disk filing system was first introduced in 1993, but despite its undoubted sophistication, not everyone is convinced that it is perfectly tuned for all possible eventualities. Prompting Dr. Fanglu Guo and Dr. Tzi-cker Chiueh from Symantec ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Apr 30 2013 - 10:30am

The Complex Physics Behind Ducks' Feet

What is the optimum stroke angle for a duck’s foot when paddling? Although a duck may already intuitively know the answer, the question has now been clarified for us humans as part of a recent research project undertaken at the prestigious California Inst ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - May 6 2013 - 11:12am

Prediction: 'Dark Genome' Popularity May Make 'Dark' The Top Science Media Cliche Of 2013

With the popularity of dark matter and dark energy as blanket terms for 'this is weird and we don't understand it but we are studying it, ain't science awesome?' in physics, it was only a matter of time before it caught on elsewhere. S ...

Article - Hank Campbell - May 3 2013 - 9:35am

Paddles At The Beachside

This is another of my poems for children of all ages. It is very fortunate for me that the grammar police have never been issued with tazers..... Paddles At The Beachside The rains is gone the sand are dry The sun is shone the bird is fly. The wavies flow ...

Blog Post - Patrick Lockerby - May 2 2013 - 3:08pm

Is Google On The Level?

Is Google On The Level? I have often complained about the way that Google search behaves. For instance, try looking up the capacitance of a lead-acid battery. Good luck with that- Google positively insists that you ought to want to search for capacity. ...

Blog Post - Patrick Lockerby - May 3 2013 - 12:39pm