October 2006 Archives

Importing the Indian all-electric Reva car from Britain to sell in Australia isn't easy because you have to crash the first 20.

The 2006 Ig Nobel for mathematics goes to Australia for photography and blinking.

There are some wonderfully suggestive photos with believably mundane explanations on the US Air Foce website. I love that the things that looked like martian spacecraft, really were martian spacecraft!
 Air Force News Special Report Roswell Report: Case Closed:

  Alderson Laboratories anthropomorphic dummies of the type dropped from balloons.

The aeroshell of a NASA Voyager-Mars space probe just prior to launch.

Following a supersonic test flight in 1972, a Viking space probe awaits recovery at White Sands Missile Range.

Tomatoes may prevent asthma attacks, except when they cause them.

References:
Occupational Asthma in Tomato Growers following an Outbreak of the Fungus Verticillium albo-atrum in the Crop
Occupational asthma in greenhouse tomato growing
f25 Tomato allergens
The role of foods in asthma
Grass pollen allergens cross-react with food allergy proteins in tomato, lettuce, onion, celery, corn and sometimes carrots.
Nomato
Tomatoes Are Evil

I have a riddle for you, how can something NOT be true, be widely believed, and yet NOT be a myth? The widely distributed belief that a duck's quack doesn't echo has its basis in reality, and yet it isn't true.

Things aren't always what they seem. The duck tape of the sitting duck disproving quackery can be found at the University of Salford Acoustic, Auditory and Video department website www.acoustics.salford.ac.uk
"Its a Fact, Deal With That" was written and performed by Sam Greenward.

What is it that reduces stress and anxiety, and makes you sexier? What helps your heart, and makes you slimmer? Dr Brody has discovered the strange connection between vitamin C and sexual behaviour. Ian Woolf pops a vitamin pill and investigates. Followed by discussion with Tilly Boleyn and Catherine Beehag from Diffusion about what you can blame on the vitamin C.

Nitric Oxide is like a bouncer on our doors of perception.

A new mint oil inspired lotion may help people who suffer chronic pain.

Professor Anthony D'Amato has written a research paper showing a suggestive correlation between the dramatic decrease in the incidence of rape in the USA and the increase in the availability of erotic materials in his paper "Porn up, Rape Down".