When a person is hungry, what is a too-tempting food? This study, in addition to reporting a medical incident, begins to try to answer that question: “Each Worm to His Taste: Some Prefer to Eat Nettles – A Giant Gastric Phytobezoar,” Mahir Gachabayov, Abakar Abdullaev, Petr Mityushin, and Timur Gilyazov, Clinical Case Reports, vol. 4, […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has three segments. Here are bits of each of them: Mapping black holes — Richard Notley has been wondering down a dark path… and found enlightenment in remarks made by mathematician Roger Penrose (New Scientist, 19 November 2022) about the structure of the universe. He writes: “Roger […]
Here is the Ig Informal Lecture by the winners of the 2020 Ig Nobel Physics Prize. The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK. In the Ig Informal Lectures, some days after the ceremony, the new Ig Nobel Prize winners attempt to explain what they did, and why they did it. [In non-pandemic years, […]
What shape does an earthworm take if someone vibrates the worm? Arnaud Hemmerle alerts us to an experimental attempt to find out. Hemmerle says: A few words about this wonderful paper, which tackles a deep and puzzling question: what is the shape of a vibrated earthworm? Back in 2015, we published a paper entitled “Worm-like […]