CLASSICAL GAS --
SCIENTIFIC GOSSIP
Contains 100% gossip from concentrate
Assassination Bureau
Former London School of Economics Professor Richard Handy is writing another book about his controversial Theory of Organizational Pruning. Handy has kept a low public profile in the decade since he lost his academic position and completed a prison sentence. Handy's new book will describe a recent set of experiments that he claims to have carried out to test his theory.
The Theory of Organizational Pruning holds that, in most large organizations, only the people at the very bottom and very top levels perform useful work. The Theory recommends that everyone in the middle levels be assassinated.
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Cat Work Nixed
We have learned that politics were indeed the reason why funding was cancelled for all ongoing research on Anti-Feminist Behavior in Cats.
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The Talk Trigger
Why do some children learn to speak much earlier than others? The answer may lie in the children's exposure to viruses. Researchers have long theorized that language acquisition begins only after the brain receives a signal that "turns on" its cognitive processing machinery. But until now the search to identify this signal has been laced with frustration.
Brady Karynn, a child psychologist at Gary University Medical Center found evidence that the signal is provided by a virus. Karynn theorizes that viral exposure might be the key to other developmental puzzles, as well. "We knew that exposure to certain viruses or bacteria can trigger illnesses in people with an underlying genetic susceptibility. By analogy, it seemed possible that
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Shoelace Theory Still Untied
Why do 20% of third-year medical students compulsively chew their shoelaces? The answer to this tantalyzing mystery still eludes scientists.
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When Whirls Collide
When a vortex combines with another vortex, the motion can be quite complex. Yu Bizi of the University of Tienjin is planning a full scale experiment to test his calculations of what happens when two tornadoes arise in close proximity to each other.
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Whorls of Difference
A Russian scientist used his lengthy political imprisonment to discover a way to perform complex mathematical calculations using the whorls on the fingertips. Nikoli Guvanov is a microbiologist whose political views earned him 23 years of internal exile in Kyzyl, Tuva.
Guvanov found that portions of his fingerprints - and those of most other people - are arranged logarithmically. He showed that finger whorls can be used to perform numerical approximations in much the same manner as a slide rule.
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All Aboard the Supercollider
The United States Superconducting Supercollider (SSC) project -- shut down almost a decade ago when it was deemed to be too expensive -- has come up with a novel way to solve its funding problems. The giant particle accellerator, now lying partially built underground in Texas, would be completed and would become a dual-use facility.
Part of the SSC track would do double duty, also functioning as a segment of a "bullet train" system that will provide high speed (approximately 200 m.p.h.) passenger travel between Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and other major cities in Texas. A failsafe shutdown mechanism will ensure that the particle accelerator does not accidentally switch on while passengers are riding the rails.
© Copyright 2002 Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)
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