Category: Odds and Ends

Alternative facts are spreading like a virus across society. Now it seems they have even infected science – at least the quantum realm. This may seem counter intuitive. The scientific method is after all founded on the reliable notions of observation, measurement and repeatability. A fact, as established by a measurement, should be objective, such that all observers can agree with it. But in a paper recently published in Science Advances, we show that, in the micro-world of atoms and particles that is governed by the strange rules of quantum…

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ShareTweetPin I’m fearful that we forget about our boys. That may be a convicting statement to lead with, but it’s something that concerns me, and I bet it might worry you too. I scroll my Facebook newsfeed and scour the internet for an abundance of minutes a day including those very minutes I am expected to and should be present. Article after article is about our daughters and how dire it is for us to raise them to be strong, self-sufficient, and capable. How crucial it is that they are…

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A new medical case report tells the story of how a teenager “degloved” his penis and ripped open his scrotum after suffering a freak accident on his bicycle. As reported in BMJ Case Reports, the 14-year-old boy was cycling one-handed at walking pace along pavement while holding a drink when he collided with a parked car. Somehow, the handlebars ended up impaling his groin. He was rushed to A&E at John Radcliffe Hospital in the British city of Oxford, where doctors found a large gash extending across his groin, the…

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Sharks famously replenish their toothy grins with a conveyer belt of gnashers, but it seems they’re not alone. Majungasaurus, a predatory dinosaur that lived in Madagascar 70 million years ago, could replace its teeth just as fast, growing a new tooth in each socket roughly every two months. Reporting their findings in the journal PLOS ONE, a team from Adelphi University and Ohio University examined tiny growth lines, the tooth equivalent of tree rings, in fossil dinosaur teeth. They also scanned fossilized jaws to catch a glimpse of any unerupted…

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From cannibalistic tardigrades to snoozing skeleton shrimp, the winners of the Nikon Small World In Motion Competition have been announced, offering a fascinating glimpse into the rarely seen world of the oh-so-very-small. Now in its ninth year, the Nikon Small World in Motion is the video component of the long-standing Nikon Small World still-photography competition, whose winners were announced back in October. The video arm of the competition was added in 2011 in response to new technology that opened up the field to recording movies or time-lapse photography through a microscopic lens. The…

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