Stories by Scicurious

I have to say that the winners of this IgNobel won in my heart PURELY because of the costumes they wore to the ceremony. Yes. Costumes. (The best image I could find, from the South China Post coverage of the story, which you can read here, photo originally via Reuters) Because if you’re going to [...]

Today I’m taking a brief break from IgNobel writing (but worry not, there is MUCH more weird science to come!!), to talk about alternative careers outside of academia.

I don’t know about you, but onions make me MISERABLE. I love them, and I cook with them probably 5-6 days a week, but the chopping, oh the chopping.

*sings* There was a young student who swallowed a shrew. Didn’t even chew, just swallowed a shrew. It’s what scientists do. (based on this) This is one of those fantastic little snippets of science that leaves you in awe (if you can call it that) of the people who did the deeds.

…I don’t know, but whoever did it is under arrest. Presenting this year’s IgNobel Peace Prize! To the president of Belarus, Alexandar Lukashenko, for making it illegal to applaud in public.

Today we continue our coverage of the 2013 IgNobel Prizes with the Safety Engineering Prize! Sadly, the author of the patent for this prize has since passed on.

The 2013 IgNobel prizes were awarded last night in a ceremony that was typical of the IgNobel prizes, which is to say: hilarious, fun, and highly educational.

TONIGHT, the 2013 IgNobels Prizes were held in Saunders Theatre at Harvard University! Winners traveled at their own expense, and received the prize from the hands of…real Nobel Prize winners.

Welcome to the 2013 Ignobel Prize Livestream, the most entertaining scientific prize presentation, well…ever. The ceremony will be LIVE here from 6:00PM EDT to 7:30PM EDT (roughly).

It’s that time of year again, and Sci is current en route to the Ignobel Prizes, held every year at Harvard. It’s the best, and funniest, scientific award, for the great science that first makes you laugh…but then makes you THINK.

I’m over at Neurotic Physiology today, talking about the academic pipeline. I’m not a fan of it, and I’ve got a number of reasons why.

Effective treatments for drug addiction have been hard to come by. There’s behavioral interventions, methadone maintenance for heroin users, nicotine patches for smokers, antabuse for acoholics, but while all of these are effective in a minority of users, they aren’t effective in all.

The spontaneously…ejaculating dolphin. Because yes. They saw one. In the act of spontaneity, as it were. And if you’d like to see it, well, head over to Neurotic Physiology!

It’s food week here at SciAm! Make sure to check out all the posts! For my food week post, I’m going at it a little differently.

…if a good beard could block sun? Turns out, quite a bit. I’m at Neurotic Physiology today with some beard models and fake beards.

Please welcome this month’s Scicurious Guest Writer, Rory Fenton! As a child, I would close my eyes and think that everyone else was plunged into darkness too.

Optogenetics likes to light up debate. Optogenetics is a hot technique in neuroscience research right now, involving taking a light-activited gene (called a channel rhodopsin) targeted into a single neuron type, and inserting it into the genome of, say, a mouse (yes, we can do this now).

It’s something we feel we’ve always known: if you can’t sleep, you need to exercise more. Wear yourself out, make yourself good and tired, you’ll sleep like a baby!

We all know that stress can impact our lives, maybe cause us headaches or stomachaches or depression or insomnia. But have you ever worried that your stress might be affecting your…gonads?

Over at Neurotic Physiology, I’m talking about the brand new study on sugar in mice. It looked pretty toxic from some of the news coverage, but what does it mean?

There are lots of challenges when it comes to studying the brain, but one of the biggest is that it’s very hard to see. Aside from being, you know, inside your skull, the many electrical and chemical signals which the brain uses are impossible to see with the naked eye.

Sci is at Neurotic Physiology today talking about territory. Territory in humans. Specifically, beach territory. Who claims it? Who doesn’t?

…because I was blogging the whole time! I posted here on Sleep and weight gain, as well as Liking sugar and alcohol. And over at Neurotic Physiology, I posted a lot of good, bad, and weird!