Humor

Progress In Unconstrained Ear Recognition

“Ears are a particularly appealing approach to noncontact biometrics because they are relatively constant over a person’s life and are unaffected by expressions, unlike faces.” ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Sep 3 2012 - 3:27pm

Forget The Hair Of The Dog, Have A Bacon Sandwich?

Having recently graduated college, I can recall on more than one occasion waking up in the morning with a pounding headache, insatiable thirst, and intensely nauseous, regretting that one-cocktail-too-many (I'm sure most of you reading this can sympat ...

Article - Eve Hardy - Sep 21 2012 - 6:53am

The Taste Of A Trombone

“Our results raise important questions about our representation of tastes and flavors and could also lead to applications in the marketing of food products.”- say a research team who have been investigating possible associations between flavors and variou ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Sep 17 2012 - 11:24am

Falsetto (with Helium)

Does subglottal resonance have a significant influence on register transition when singing falsetto? To find out, investigators at the University of Iowa decided on an innovative approach – involving helium. Or, more accurately, Helox (a.k.a. Heliox) a mix ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Sep 24 2012 - 11:17am

Male Nipple Repositioning And The Golden Ratio

For aesthetic reasons, plastic surgeons are sometimes required to re-position male nipples – after dramatic weight-loss for example. In such a case they are presented, in effect, with a substantially blank canvas. But the presently accepted methods for ca ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Oct 1 2012 - 1:21am

The Functions Of "yeah" (when Creaky)

“Considerable work exists to describe the functions of yeah.” explain authors Chad D. Nilep and colleague Tamara Grivičić from the Department of Linguistics at the University of Colorado. And there has also been some academic research investigating the so ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Oct 8 2012 - 10:28am

Karaoke Anxiety- An Exploration

Is karaoke a passing fad? Kevin Brown PhD. Associate Professor of Theatre History, Theory, Criticism, Performance Studies, New Media, Non-Western Theatre, and Popular Culture at the University of Missouri, US. believes not. For his doctoral dissertation, h ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Oct 11 2012 - 10:43am

Investigating The Implications Of Sugar Pigs

A recent edition of  ‘M/C – A Journal of Media and Culture’ features one of the very few, perhaps the only, fully blind, peer-reviewed academic papers on sugar pigs. Author Toni Risson, at the University of Queensland, Australia, first defines sugar-piggin ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Oct 17 2012 - 10:06am

Lottery Tickets- To Swap, Or Not To Swap?

If you had just bought a lottery ticket, would you be willing to swap it? If you’re like most people, the answer would be an emphatic ‘ No ’. But why? Given that a properly-run lottery is an entirely random affair, mathematical theory dictates that your ch ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Oct 19 2012 - 12:42pm

In Search Of 'the Telepathy Center'

Some believe in the power of telepathy. Some believe in the power of fMRI. And putting the two together led a team of experimenters from the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, and the Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana, Vivek ...

Article - Martin Gardiner - Oct 24 2012 - 9:08pm