Beachcombing in Academia

“Converging evidence indicates that blirtatiousness
is unique in its ability to amplify people’s qualities, making these
qualities more readily observable to perceivers.”

A team from the School of Family and Consumer Sciences
at Eastern Illinois University have discovered a reliable method of
persuading people to eat up to 50% less pistachio nuts – just leave them
in their shells.

Some readers may well feel themselves in the dark when it comes to the usage of the interjection ‘oh’ in English and its translation in Catalan. Thus they could find a 2007 article published in the Catalan Journal of Linguistics, (Vol. 6, pp 117-136) of help. ‘The translation of oh in a corpus of dubbed sitcoms‘ is authored by  Dr. Anna Matamala,
who is a Professora titular d’universitat, at the Departament de
Traducció i d’Interpretació of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona,
Spain.

“The stereotype of women’s limited parking skills is deeply anchored
in modern culture.” But has rarely been scientifically investigated,
prompting Claudia Wolf, M.Sc. and Sebastian Ocklenburg M.Sc.
and colleagues at the Fakultät für Psychologie, Institut für Kognitive
Neurowissenschaft, Abteilung Biopsychologie, Ruhr-Universität Bochum,
Germany, to perform an experimental study.

“The modern drive towards mobility and wireless devices is motivating intensive research in energy harvesting technologies.” say two research fellows at Cranfield University in the UK, who are  currently examining the question – ‘Why not harvest energy from people’s knees?’

Before continuing, please bear in mind that :
“The
opinions or assertions contained herein are the private views of the
authors and are not to be construed as official or as reflecting the
views of the US Department of the Army, the US Department of Defense,
the Department of the Navy or naval services at large.”

There are currently a number of research teams worldwide working towards the implementation of bionic heads and faces which can attempt
to express human emotions, however “… most of them can not express
continuous changing expressions effectively, and they just express
limited pre-existing emotional state.” explain the developers of a new
Chinese Bionic Head.

“Previous studies of slithering have rested on the assumption that
snakes slither by pushing laterally against rocks and branches.” explain
a joint research team from the Applied Mathematics Laboratory, Courant
Institute of Mathematical Sciences, of New York University and the
Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Biology, at the Georgia
Institute of Technology.

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 Institute of Technology
(Caltech), in the US.
Research Scientist and Post Doctoral Scholar Dr. Daegyoum Kim performed the study along with professor Morteza Gharib. The team employed a range of experimental setups with mechanical
flappers, clappers and paddlers in tanks of fluid which was seeded with
silver-coated glass microspheres and illuminated by an Nd:YAG laser.

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 Research. Laboratories, Culver City, USA to develop their
DAFT disk operating system.

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-sectional questionnaire survey with 186 medical
doctors of all grades from the University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff.
The prevalent stethoscope-hang side (if there was one) was noted and
correlated with handedness, footedness, eyedness, earedness, hand
clasping, arm folding, and leg crossing of the subjects.

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, Department of Psychology, at Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.

Factor one: Facial hair (of the right length)
“A within-subjects design employed one condition (facial
hair) incorporating five levels (clean-shaven, light stubble, heavy
stubble, light beard and full beard).”