This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Blood spatter on high — “Be prepared!” This enduring motto of the Scout movement will come to mind for many readers of a paper called “Bloodstain pattern dynamics in microgravity: Observations of a pilot study in the next frontier of forensic science”. Reader Sara Rosenbaum alerted Feedback to the explicitly stated first purpose of the research: “the investigation of eventual violent criminal acts that occur outside of Earth’s environment”. This is forensic sci ..read more

“I once performed an autopsy on a deceased pedestrian who had been wearing 23 layers of clothing. It took us longer to undress him than to perform the autopsy.” —from the book Risking Life for Death, by Ryan Blumenthal (Jonathan Ball Publishers, Johannesburg, 2023). Here is a brief video of the author describing a different kind of case — someone struck by lightning ..read more

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has five segments. Here are bits of each of them: Boxing: thinking outside — From time to time, the sport of boxing changes its rules. But for the most part, it still requires that each participant in a match be both human and alive. (Exceptions do occasionally pop up – kangaroos are the heavyweight exemplars.) Joseph Lee at Flinders University in Australia has explored a way to expand boxing’s rigid traditions. He outlines his thinking in a study in the journal Ethics and Philosophy called “Thinking outside t ..read more

Robert Gaskins, co-inventor or PowerPoint, highlights Doug Zongker‘s “Chicken Chicken Chicken” as one of his favorite ever PowerPoint presentations. This a videorecording of Doug Zongker’s talk in the Improbable Research session at the February 2008 AAAS meeting, in San Francisco ..read more

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Chasing the tale — Silvia Leonetti and colleagues in the Netherlands, Italy, Austria, the US and Denmark don’t quite explain why dogs wag their tails, but they do explain that it is hard to explain. In a paper called “Why do dogs wag their tails?” in Biology Letters, these dog-tail contemplators confront one, presumably easier, sub-question… Donald Duck dam jubilee — We are just a year away from the jubilee – the 50th anniversary! – of the publication of t ..read more

Coffee smell can be enhanced in reliability and intensity, suggests this study, by adding coffee smell from used coffee: “Improvement of Robusta coffee aroma by modulating flavor precursors in the green coffee bean with enzymatically treated spent coffee grounds: A circular approach,” Cyril Moccand, Aditya Daniel Manchala, Jean-Luc Sauvageat, Anthony Lima, Yvette Fleury Rey, and Arne Glabasnia, Food Research International, vol. 170, August 2023, article 112987. The authors explain: “Spent coffee grounds (SCG) are by-products obtained from the industrial process of instant coffee production or ..read more

The Ig Nobel EuroTour comes to Denmark this week, with 2 events: Tuesday, April 9, 2024, 7 pm — Aarhus University (and specially livestreamed to more than 300 theaters, libraries and other venues, some also offering dinner, throughout the kingdom of Denmark) Wednesday, April 10, 7 pm — Copenhagen University, as part of the Vin & Videnskap [wine and science] series All Ig Nobel EuroTour events are listed, with links and details, on our upcoming events page.     ..read more

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Paved with good tea — What to do with all the waste from preparing zillions of cups of tea? Researchers in Malaysia propose converting some of it into infrastructure.Mohammad Al Biajawi at University Malaysia Pahang Al-Sultan Abdullah and his team outline both the problem and their plan to attack it: “The annual consumption of a country’s population of hundreds of tons of black tea results in considerable numbers of discarded teabags. These huge quantities ..read more

Info and maybe advice for admirers of thorny-headed worms: “Hooking the Scientific Community on Thorny-Headed Worms: Interesting and Exciting Facts, Knowledge Gaps and Perspectives for Research Directions on Acanthocephala,” Marie-Jeanne Perrot-Minnot, Camille-Sophie Cozzarolo, Omar Amin, Daniel Barčák, Alexandre Bauer, Vlatka Filipović Marijić, Martín García-Varela, et al.,  Parasite, vol. 30 2023 ..read more

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Berate the refs — There is new evidence that it can pay to scream at referees in sports stadiums. That evidence appears in the study ‘Verbal aggressions against Major League Baseball umpires affect their decision making”… Your ice cream nozzle — Questions arise when things start growing on your nozzle – questions that grow less pressing if you diligently clean the nozzle after you use it to dispense a serving of ice cream. Because if you don’t clean a food ..read more