Improbable Research

… asks Peter C. Sundt, BSc. in the latest issue (june 2010) of the journal Elevator World (page 114). Although the article is ‘subscribers only’, an earlier essay by the same author on broadly the same subject (with the same title) is available online here, via The Structural Engineer.

“Most agree that the Great Pyramid at Giza, the last remaining Wonder of the Ancient World, was an amazing job of construction. It’s a great pity, though, that the Egyptians left little or no records of how they did it.”

It is certain, however, that huge granite blocks were somehow moved into their final positions. Some scholars have suggested the use of giant stone-bearing sledges which were hauled up ramps -  perhaps not a very efficient method, but as Sundt points out -

“One might argue that cost and efficiency were of no concern to the pharaoh, and regardless of the waste in material and labor, a simple brute force ramp all the way to the top was the way to go.”

The Maperton Trust reports on its efforts to repel head lice using  the novel device pictured here:

The Head Lice Repelling Unit (HELRU) is a small device using the latest technology to repel head lice from infesting children and adults. It is in the form of a badge of the Unicorn and is pinned to the clothing of the individual…

One class of 28 children from a primary school of approximately 150 children were given HELRU to wear. In addition 9 more of school teachers asked and were given HELRU’s. From the records produced by the school it appears that the head lice were almost totally successfully repelled during the trial.

Lisa Wade chose these images — one you may find beautiful, the other disgusting — to illustrate a psychological notion. She writes: “Hair in the drain, like dirt in the house, is out-of-place.  It doesn’t belong there.  In both cases, our reaction is disgust.  Hair on the head, in contrast, is beautiful and becoming.”

What is it for? Researchers from the Poly-PEDAL Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, have been investigating.

“We show that a gecko’s tail functions as an emergency fifth leg to prevent falling during rapid climbing.”

explain authors Jusufi, A., D. I. Goldman, S. Revzen, and R. J. Full  in their 2008 paper Active tails enhance arboreal acrobatics in geckos (published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) vol. 105,  #11, pp. 4215-4219).
Discoveries were made by observing the behaviour of geckos which had been encouraged to ‘hover’ in a wind-tunnel. And slow-motion analysis of the resulting video footage (available here in .mov format) showed that -

Tammy Castle of James Madison University and Jenifer Lee of Texas A&M International University analyzed how prostitution is adapting to the Internet:

“Ordering sex in cyberspace: a content analysis of escort websites,” International Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1, 107-121 (2008). They report: “The purpose of this study was to uncover information about the escort agencies and escorts that utilize the internet for advertisement purposes. One of the goals of this research study was to describe the `typical’ escort website from the potential customer perspective and includes information on individual escorts, prices, payment options and reviews.”