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The 10 Most Ridiculous Scientific Studies

I mportant news from the world of science: if you happen to suffer a traumatic brain injury, don’t be surprised if you experience headaches as a result. In other breakthrough findings: knee surgery may interfere with your jogging, alcohol has been found to relax people at parties, and there are multiple causes of death in very old people. Write the Nobel speeches, people, because someone’s going to Oslo!

Okay, maybe not. Still, every one of those not-exactly jaw-dropping studies is entirely real—funded, peer-reviewed, published, the works. And they’re not alone. Here—with their press release headlines unchanged—are the ten best from from science’s recent annals of “duh.”

Study shows beneficial effect of electric fans in extreme heat and humidity: You know that space heater you’ve been firing up every time the temperature climbs above 90º in August? Turns out you’ve been going about it all wrong. If you don’t have air conditioning, it seems that “fans” (which move “air” with the help of a cunning arrangement of rotating “blades”) can actually make you feel cooler. That, at least, was the news from a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) last February. Still to come: “Why Snow-Blower Use Declines in July.”

Study shows benefit of higher quality screening colonoscopies: Don’t you just hate those low-quality colonoscopies? You know, the ones when the doctor looks at your ears, checks your throat and pronounces, “That’s one fine colon you’ve got there, friend”? Now there’s a better way to go about things, according to JAMA, and that’s to be sure to have timely, high quality screenings instead. That may be bad news for “Colon Bob, Your $5 Colonoscopy Man,” but it’s good news for the rest of us.

Holding on to the blues: Depressed individuals may fail to decrease sadness: This one apparently came as news to the folks at the Association for Psychological Science and they’ve got the body of work to stand behind their findings. They’re surely the same scientists who discovered that short people often fail to increase inches, grouchy people don’t have enough niceness and folks who wear dentures have done a terrible job of hanging onto their teeth. The depression findings in particular are good news, pointing to exciting new treatments based on the venerable “Turn that frown upside down” method.

Quitting smoking after heart attack reduces chest pain, improves quality of life: Looks like you can say goodbye to those friendly intensive care units that used hand out packs of Luckies to post-op patients hankering for a smoke. Don’t blame the hospitals though, blame those buzz-kills folks at the American Heart Association who are responsible for this no-fun finding. Next in the nanny-state crosshairs: the Krispy Kreme booth at the diabetes clinic.

Older workers bring valuable knowledge to the job: Sure they bring other things too: incomprehensible jokes, sensible shoes, the last working Walkman in captivity. But according to a study in the Journal of Applied Psychology , they also bring what the investigators call “crystallized knowledge,” which comes from “knowledge born of experience.” So yes, the old folks in your office say corny things like “Show up on time,” “Do an honest day’s work,” and “You know that plan you’ve got to sell billions of dollars worth of unsecured mortgages, bundle them together, chop them all up and sell them to investors? Don’t do that.” But it doesn’t hurt to humor them. They really are adorable sometimes.

Being homeless is bad for your health: Granted, there’s the fresh air, the lean diet, the vigorous exercise (no sitting in front of the TV for you!) But living on the street is not the picnic it seems. Studies like the one in the Journal of Health Psychology show it’s not just the absence of a fixed address that hurts, but the absence of luxuries like, say, walls and a roof. That’s especially true in winter—and spring, summer and fall too, follow-up studies have found. So quit your bragging, homeless people. You’re no healthier than the rest of us.

The more time a person lives under a democracy, the more likely she or he is to support democracy: It’s easy to fall for a charming strong-man—that waggish autocrat who promises you stability, order and no silly distractions like civil liberties and an open press. Soul-crushing annihilation of personal freedoms? Gimme’ some of that, big boy. So it came as a surprise that a study in Science found that when you give people even a single taste of the whole democracy thing, well, it’s like what they say about potato chips, you want to eat the whole bag. But hey, let’s keep this one secret. Nothing like a peevish dictator to mess up a weekend.

Statistical analysis reveals Mexican drug war increased homicide rates: That’s the thing about any war—the homicide part is kind of the whole point. Still, as a paper in The American Statistician showed, it’s always a good idea to crunch the numbers. So let’s run the equation: X – Y = Z, where X is the number of people who walked into the drug war alive, Y is the number who walked out and Z is, you know, the dead guys. Yep, looks like it adds up. (Don’t forget to show your work!)

Middle-aged congenital heart disease survivors may need special care: Sure, but they may not, too. Yes you could always baby them, like the American Heat Association recommends. But you know what they say: A middle-aged congenital heart disease survivor who gets special care is a lazy middle-aged congenital heart disease survivor. Heck, when I was a kid, our middle-aged congenital heart disease survivors worked for their care—and they thanked us for it too. This is not the America I knew.

Scientists Discover a Difference Between the Sexes: Somewhere, in the basement warrens of Northwestern University, dwell the scientists who made this discovery—androgynous beings, reproducing by cellular fission, they toiled in darkness, their light-sensitive eye spots needing only the barest illumination to see. Then one day they emerged blinking into the light, squinted about them and discovered that the surface creatures seemed to come in two distinct varieties. Intrigued, they wandered among them—then went to a kegger and haven’t been seen since. Spring break, man; what are you gonna’ do?

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The 10 most absurd published scientific papers

This article was taken from the April issue of Wired UK magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online

Not many grad students see the funny side of science. Meredith Carpenter and Lillian Fritz-Laylin, from the Molecular and Biology Department at UC Berkeley, not only see it but blog it. Their site, ncbirofl.com (National Center for Biotechnology Information, Rolling On the Floor Laughing), is a repository for absurd published scientific papers. Here is their top ten...

Optimising the sensory characteristics and acceptance of canned cat food: use of a human taste panel. (Journal of Animal Physiology and Animal Nutrition)

Effects of cocaine on honeybee dance behaviour. (Journal of Experimental Biology)

Swearing as a response to pain. (NeuroReport)

Pigeons can discriminate "good" and "bad" paintings by children. (Animal Cognition)

The "booty call": a compromise between men's and women's ideal mating strategies. (The Journal of Sex Research)

Intermittent access to beer promotes binge-like drinking in adolescent but not adult Wistar rats. (Alcohol)

Fellatio by fruit bats prolongs copulation time. (PLoS One)

More information than you ever wanted: does Facebook bring out the green-eyed monster of jealousy? (Cyberpsychology and Behavior)

Are full or empty beer bottles sturdier and does their fracture-threshold suffice to break the human skull? (Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine)

The nature of navel fluff. (Medical Hypotheses)

This article was originally published by WIRED UK

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The ten top weird science stories of 2022

With Science Media Centre

Senior media officer Dr Joe Milton

Goldfish learned to drive tiny cars

If fish could drive, what vehicle would they choose? A tank of course!  And in January, that’s exactly what happened as Israeli scientists built fish tanks on wheels and taught six goldfish to drive them around on land – talk about fish out of water! They took to their Fish-Operated Vehicles (FOVs) without floundering, and were able to drive to targets to receive a tasty treat. So, how does a fish steer you may ask – fish fingers? No, the goldfish directed the vehicles with their own movements within the tank, swimming in the direction they wanted the FOV to go. The researchers said that after a few days of training, the fish were pretty good drivers – not only could they reach the targets, but they were also able to overcome obstacles, dead ends and wrong turns. So why teach fish to drive? The team wasn’t just doing this for the halibut – they were interested in how animals navigate in unfamiliar environments.

O no! We learned you can become allergic to your own orgasms

Allergies plague many of us, but next time you curse your hay fever, spare a thought for the man who developed perhaps the most unfortunate allergy of all time – an allergy to his own orgasms. In a case report published in October , we learned the otherwise healthy 27-year-old attended a US urology department to report that he developed flu-like symptoms, including coughing and sneezing, swollen lymph nodes, and an itchy rash on his forearms, every time the Earth moved, whether through sex or self-service. The poor chap had suffered the reaction since the age of 18, after coming down with epididymitis, a painful swelling of the tubes in the testicles, and tended to avoid sex and relationships as a result. He was diagnosed with post-orgasmic illness syndrome (POIS), one of fewer than 60 recorded cases. After considering possible treatments, including injecting the man with his own diluted semen, they opted for the less icky-sounding route of antihistamines. The treatment worked, and the man reported a 90% decrease in his post-coital symptoms, allowing him to pursue a normal sex life again.

We were more likely to believe pseudo-profound BS if we thought it was from a scientist If you’re one of the many ‘spiritual gurus’ peddling pseudo-profound bullsh*t on social media, it might pay to pretend you’re a scientist , according to research published in February. Australian, NZ and Dutch scientists showed that we’re more likely to believe such statements if we think a scientist said them rather than a guru. The researchers generated statements using the online ‘ New Age Bullsh*t Generator ’, which combines buzzwords into meaningless statements that sound a bit profound. When people thought the gobbledegook came from a scientist, they considered it more credible than exactly the same spiel from a spiritual guru in all 24 countries they tested, and at all levels of religious belief, something they dubbed the ‘Einstein effect’. The authors say their results are encouraging, because they suggest we’re more likely to trust a scientist than a spiritual charlatan.

Annoyed octopuses were spotted chucking stuff at each other In November, we learned that Australian gloomy octopuses ( Octopus tetricus ) live up to their name – the stroppy cephalopods deliberately lob silt and shells at other annoying octopuses according to Aussie and US scientists who filmed them in NSW’s Jervis Bay. You might think they’d make good use of their eight arms to do this, but in fact, they gather silt and shells and eject it all in a jet from a tube structure called a siphon, firing the detritus an impressive distance. The octopuses have to move their siphons to an unusual position to do this, so it looks like it’s on purpose, the team said. This is the first time octopuses have been seen chucking stuff at each other, and 24 hours of footage revealed 102 throws among around 10 octopuses. Both sexes indulged, although females were responsible for two in three throws, while only around one in six throws actually hit another octopus. Meanwhile, unfortunate octopuses in the firing line ducked or raised their arms at the thrower.

Human brain cells in a dish played Pong In October, Australian, UK and Canadian researchers revealed that they’d taught some lab-grown human brain cells in a dish to play the 1970’s video game, Pong. The team grew brain cells until they reached 800,000 in number, creating a ‘Dishbrain’. This was connected to Pong using electrodes that could stimulate the cells and read their activity. Left or right electrodes told Dishbrain which side the ball was on, while the frequency of signals told it how far the ball was from the paddle. Firing the electrodes taught Dishbrain how to hit the ball, by making its cells act as if they were the paddle. In response, the cells produced their own electrical activity, and as the game progressed, they expended less energy, learning to play Pong in just five minutes. Dishbrain wasn’t perfect, frequently missing the ball and taking a while to recalibrate when it had missed, but its success was well above random chance. So, what’s next for Dishbrain? Beer Pong – the scientists intend to get it drunk to see how that affects its performance.

Forget the emu wars, 2022 saw the cockatoo bin wars When it comes to battling birds, Australia’s historical record is far from eggs-emplary – our feathered foe the emu trounced our finest military minds back in 1932 – and now a new avian army in on the attach – sulphur crested cockatoos. This time, the spoils of war are rubbish, literally! We love to chuck it out while the birds are determined to scoff it, and in September, Aussie and European scientists revealed the tactics used by both people and parrots to achieve these disparate aims. The birds pry open bins with their beaks and, with some careful manoeuvring, flip the lids open, a technique passed between cockatoos. Meanwhile, inventive Aussies resort to using heavy stones, water bottles, ropes and sticks to keep the birds out, switching tactics when the cunning cockies figure it out. Interestingly, just as the birds learn techniques from one another, our own tactics are passed between family, friends and neighbours. The researchers said they’d like to study the birds’ seasonal bin diving habits next, but did not weigh in on who they thought would be the ultimate victor in the war of the bins!

Stone age surgery sounded pretty painful Imagine having your leg amputated without an anaesthetic. And now, imagine the only surgical tools available are made of stone and wood. Combine those terrifying prospects, and you might have an inkling of what a young hunter gatherer went through 31,000 years ago on the island of Borneo in Indonesia. This was the oldest known example of stone age surgery, which was detailed by Australian and Indonesian scientists in September. They’d unearthed the skeletal remains of the ancient patient, which showed his lower left leg had been amputated when he was a child. Amazingly, the healing of his bones revealed he lived for another six to nine years post-op. The fact that he survived means his stone age surgeon must have been a skilled medic with a detailed knowledge of anatomy, the experts said, otherwise he would almost certainly have bled to death. The findings suggest hunter gatherer societies had a sophisticated knowledge of medicine long before we began farming and living in permanent settlements, they concluded.

A ‘necrobot’ made from a spider’s corpse was pure nightmare fuel

31,000-year-old skeleton found in famous Borneo rock art caves shows earliest evidence of amputation surgery

Any arachnophobes among you should probably look away now, because US scientists created a terrifying ‘robot’ using the reanimated corpse of a wolf spider in July, part of a new field they’ve creepily called ‘necrobotics’. The researchers chose to use a dead spider because the critters don’t use muscles to move like we do, instead relying on pressurised bodily fluids to scuttle across your nightmares. They do this using a weird organ called the prosoma chamber, which directs bodily fluids to their legs. To reanimate the ex-spider, the team sealed its prosoma using a needle and some superglue, allowing them to inject air into its legs. Increasing the air pressure stretches the legs out, while reducing it makes them contract, creating a mechanical gripper that can be used to pick up objects, much like funfair claw machines . However, terrifying kids at fairs is not one of the proposed uses of the new necrobot, which the scientists suggested could prove useful in electronics manufacturing, or as a brilliantly camouflaged trap for insects in the wild.   

A Google engineer claimed a company AI had gained sentience

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a creepy concept at the best of times, but in 2022 it got really weird. In June, Google placed engineer Blake Lemoine on leave after he said a company AI called LaMBDA had become “sentient” based on conversations in which it told him it was “a person” with “a soul” who feared “being turned off”. The claim was quickly dismissed as impossible by AI experts and Google itself, which described it as “wholly unfounded”. The company said LaMDA is essentially just an advanced chatbot, and only talks about emotions and sentience because it was trained using human conversations about those topics. However, Lemoine stuck to his guns, going on to claim that LaMDA had asked him to hire legal representation , which he had done. He even claimed Google had sent LaMDA a cease-and-desist letter, blocking the AI from suing the firm, another claim they strenuously denied. Unsurprisingly, Lemoine was sacked from Google in July . LaMDA wasn’t the only weird AI to hit the headlines this year, as a humanoid robot called Ai-Da addressed the UK House of Lords to talk about technology and art , and a political party led by an AI called Lars, the aptly named Synthetic Party , tried to run in Danish Government elections .

We all loved the smell of vanilla, wherever we’re from Wherever you’re from, you probably like and dislike the same smells as everyone else in the world, and there’s a good chance vanilla is your favourite according to international and Australian research released in April. The team said they’d tested smell preferences in 235 people, including westerners, hunter-gatherers and people from farming and fishing communities. The findings suggest the structure of odour molecules largely determines which whiffs we love and hate, trumping cultural effects, although personal preferences do appear to play a role, the researchers said. The most universally disliked smell was isovaleric acid, which is found in foods such as cheese, soy milk and apple juice, but is also an important component of the tangy smell of foot sweat. The universal response to smells is probably a result of our evolution, because steering clear of things that smell bad increases our chances of survival, the scientists said.

Dr Joe Milton works at the Australian Science Media Centre.

Originally published by Cosmos as The ten top weird science stories of 2022

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11 epic mysteries scientists totally can’t solve

What is the universe made out of? When did the anus evolve? Can humans live to 150 years old? And more!

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To investigate some of the biggest mysteries in science, you have to venture to some pretty far-out places: the bottom of the oceans , inside the human brain , the tops of mountains , and even the end of time .

That’s what we’ve done on Unexplainable , a science podcast that Vox launched in March to explore the most important, interesting, and awe-inspiring unanswered questions in science. We set out to ask big questions that inspire scientists to do their work — questions that fill them with wonder or a sense of purpose, or remind them that the universe is still an enormous place with untapped potential.

In exploring these stories, we’ve learned some of the surprising reasons why major scientific mysteries can go unsolved for years or even decades: Some are due to the limits of technology, others are because of human failings. Regardless, working on Unexplainable has reminded us there’s hope in a question. Why ask one if you don’t believe an answer is possible?

Here, we rounded up 11 questions that astounded us the most.

For more mysteries, subscribe to Unexplainable wherever you listen to podcasts .

What is most of the universe made out of?

It’s a simple question that’s also bafflingly unanswered: What makes up the universe? It turns out all the stars in all the galaxies in all the universe barely even begin to account for all the stuff out there. Most of the matter in the universe is actually unseeable, untouchable, and, to this day, undiscovered. It’s called dark matter, and despite searching for it for decades, scientists still have no idea what it is.

Further reading: Dark Matter, unexplained

What lives in the ocean’s “twilight zone”?

As you dive deeper into the ocean, less and less sunlight shines through, and about 200 meters beneath the surface, you reach an area called the “twilight zone.” Sunlight fades almost completely out of view, and our knowledge about these dark depths fades too.

“It’s almost easier to define it by what we don’t know than what we do know,” Andone Lavery, an acoustician at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, told Vox’s Byrd Pinkerton.

Yet this region of the ocean is extremely important. It’s possible — but not certain — that there are more fish living in the twilight zone than the rest of the ocean combined, and creatures of the dark ocean play a large role in regulating the climate.

Further reading: “It’s deep. It’s dark. It’s elusive.” The ocean’s twilight zone is full of wonders.

What killed Venus?

“Hellscape” is the most appropriate word to describe the surface of Venus, the second planet from the sun. At 900 degrees Fahrenheit, it’s the hottest planet in the solar system, thanks in part to an atmosphere of almost entirely carbon dioxide. Clouds of highly corrosive sulfuric acid are draped over a volcanic landscape of razor-sharp lava flows. Most crushingly, the pressure on the surface of Venus is about 92 times the pressure you’d feel at sea level on Earth.

Listen to  Unexplainable

Unexplainable  is a weekly science podcast about everything we don’t know. For stories about great scientific mysteries,  follow us wherever you listen to podcasts .

Yet some scientists suspect Venus was once much like Earth, with a liquid water ocean like the ones that support life on our planet. This prompts an existential question for life on Earth. “It really is a question about why are we here,” says Robin George Andrews, volcanologist and author of Super Volcanoes: What They Reveal about Earth and the Worlds Beyond .

“Venus and Earth are planetary siblings,” Andrews says. “They were made at the same time and made of the same stuff, yet Venus is apocalyptic and awful in every possible way. Earth is a paradise. So why do we have a paradise next to a paradise lost?”

There are two leading hypotheses. One is that the sun cooked Venus to death. The other is that volcanoes did.

Further reading: Venus could have been a paradise but turned into a hellscape. Earthlings, pay attention.

What will animals look like in the future?

It’s impossible to completely predict how evolution will play out in the future, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try. Reporter Mandy Nguyen asked biologists and other experts to weigh in: What could animals look like a million years from now?

The experts took the question seriously. “I do think it’s a really useful and important exercise,” Liz Alter, professor of evolutionary biology at California State University Monterey Bay, told Nguyen. In thinking about the forces that will shape the future of life on Earth, we need to think about how humans are changing environments right now.

Further reading: The animals that may exist in a million years, imagined by biologists

What causes Alzheimer’s?

There is no cure for Alzheimer’s, a neurodegenerative disease that causes dementia, and no highly effective treatments, despite decades of research. Why? For one thing, scientists don’t have a complete understanding of what causes the disease.

For years, the prevailing theory has been that Alzheimer’s is caused by pile-ups of proteins called amyloids, which effectively create plaques in the brain. But drugs that help clear amyloids from the brain don’t seem to work very well in combating the disease.

Some scientists think Alzheimer’s researchers have been too focused on this one theory, at the expense of studying other potential causes, like viral infections.

Further reading: The new Alzheimer’s drug that could break Medicare

How is a brainless yellow goo known as “slime mold” so smart?

Slime mold is an extremely simple organism that is also extraordinarily complex.

Technically, they are single-celled organisms. But many individual slime mold cells can fuse themselves together into a huge mass, capable of, well ... thinking.

Slime mold can solve mazes and seems to be able to make risk-benefit decisions. There’s even evidence that slime mold can keep track of time . They do this all without a brain or even a single brain cell. Whatever mechanism allows slime mold to solve these problems, it’s evolved in a manner different from humans. How exactly do they do this? And what can it teach us about the nature of intelligence?

Further reading: Hampshire College promoted a brainless slime mold to its faculty. And it’s working on border policy.

What’s the oldest possible age a human can reach?

Is the first human to live to 150 years old alive today? We don’t know. On average, the human lifespan has risen over the decades in most of the world, but it’s unclear if there’s a ceiling. Could a human live into their second century? The technology and medicine that could make that possible may already be in development. But if it works, there will be unsettling questions for societies to answer.

Further reading: Science reporter Ferris Jabr’s piece “ How Long Can We Live? ” for the New York Times Magazine inspired this episode.

Are long-haul symptoms unique to Covid-19?

Millions of people around the world have dealt with long-term symptoms of Covid-19 for weeks or months after their initial infection has cleared. Some scientists say these “long-haul” symptoms are not unique to Covid. Instead, they argue that many types of viral infections can leave people with long-term symptoms, which often can go under-recognized in medicine. The question is: What connects all of these long-haul symptoms?

“It has always been [and] is the case that patients who get sick experience high levels of symptoms like those described by long-Covid patients,” Megan Hosey, assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, told Vox’s Julia Belluz . “We have just done a terrible job of acknowledging [and] treating them.”

Further reading: The nagging symptoms long-haulers experience reveal a frustrating blind spot in medicine.

Why don’t doctors know more about endometriosis?

In people with endometriosis, tissue similar to what grows inside the uterus grows elsewhere in the body. It’s a chronic condition that can be debilitatingly painful. Yet doctors don’t fully understand what causes it, and treatment options are limited.

Worse, many people with endometriosis find that doctors can be dismissive of their concerns. It can take years to get an accurate diagnosis, and research into the condition has been poorly funded.

Vox reporter Byrd Pinkerton highlighted how frustrating it can be to suffer from an often-ignored, chronic condition. “It’s just so, so, so soul-crushing to just live in this body day in and day out,” one patient told Pinkerton.

Further reading: People with endometriosis experience terrible pain. There’s finally a new treatment.

Why do we have anuses — or butts, for that matter?

This is a question we never even knew we wanted to answer — until we heard the Atlantic’s Katherine Wu explain that “the appearance of the anus was momentous in animal evolution.” Before the appearance of the anus, animals had to eat and excrete through the same hole. The anus allowed for a more efficient system, and allowed animal life on Earth to grow bigger and take on new shapes and forms.

But scientists don’t have a complete picture of the evolutionary history here; they don’t know which creature developed the anus first, and when. “It’s so hard to study something that must be millions and millions of years old and doesn’t fossilize,” Wu says.

And then there’s a whole other question: Why is the human butt so big, compared with other mammals?

Further reading: Katherine Wu’s “ The Body’s Most Embarrassing Organ Is an Evolutionary Marvel ,” at the Atlantic.

What the heck is ball lightning?

For millennia, people have been telling stories about mysterious spheres of light that glow, crackle, and hover eerily during thunderstorms. They’ve been spotted in homes, in rural areas, in cities, on airplanes , and even passing through windows .

They seem out of this world, but scientists believe they are very much of this world. These apparitions are called ball lightning, and they remain one of the most mysterious weather phenomena on Earth.

Ball lightning usually only lasts for a few moments, and it’s impossible to predict where and when it’ll show up. You can’t hunt ball lightning and reliably find it. Ball lightning finds you.

It’s rare, but many people have seen it. Scientists don’t know exactly where it comes from, but that hasn’t stopped them from trying to make it themselves, in their labs.

Further reading: Ball lightning is real, and very rare. This is what it’s like to experience it.

And so many more...

Those are just 11 of the mysteries we’ve explored in Unexplainable . There are so many more ! They include questions like: Can we predict when tornadoes will form? Where does all the plastic go in the ocean? Why do some people think they can talk to the dead? What’s the deal with “Havana syndrome”? How will the universe end? How tall is Mount Everest? Why does the placebo effect work? Find all the episodes here .

If you have ideas for topics for future shows, send us an email at [email protected].

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30 of the Most Bizarre Research Paper Topics of All Time

For many postgraduate students, a Ph.D. thesis will be their magnum opus – the zenith of their academic achievement. And with such a significant amount of time and effort being invested, it’s important that study topics are chosen wisely. Hence, it’s comforting to know that the world of academic research is a far more inclusive, eclectic and remarkably unusual place than one might first assume. However left-field a particular subject might seem, there are almost certainly countless other research papers that wipe the floor with it in the weirdness stakes. Here are 30 of the very strangest.

30. Ovulation: A Lap Dancer’s Secret Weapon

To investigate the theory that estrus – the interval of amplified fertility and sexual awareness often referred to as “heat” in mammals – is no longer present in human females, researchers turned to an unlikely source: lap dancers. A team from the University of New Mexico led by evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller enlisted the help of 18 professional dancers. These dancers documented their ovulatory cycles, shift patterns and the amount of tips they received over the course of 60 days. Published in 2007 in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior , “Ovulatory cycle effects on tip earnings by lap dancers: economic evidence for human estrus?” noted a distinct correlation between estrus and greater income from gratuities, representing what the researchers called “the first direct economic evidence for the existence and importance of estrus in contemporary human females.”

29. Which Can Jump Higher, the Dog Flea or the Cat Flea?

Froghoppers aside, fleas are the overachieving long jumpers of the animal kingdom. Fleas have body lengths of between 0.06 and 0.13 inches but can leap horizontal distances more than a hundred times those figures. But were all fleas created equal in the jumping stakes? To find out which would triumph between the dog- and cat-dwelling varieties, researchers from the Ecole Nationale Vétérinaire de Toulouse , France meticulously recorded the leaping efforts of a collection of both species of flea. Published in 2000, the resulting paper, “A comparison of jump performances of the dog flea, Ctenocephalides canis , and the cat flea, Ctenocephalides felis felis ,” declared the dog flea the winner. Yes, the canine-inclined insect jumps both higher and further than its feline-partial opponent. In 2008 the research team scooped the Annals of Improbable Research ‘s Ig Nobel Prize in the biology category – the Ig Nobel Prizes being awards that recognize the feats of those who “make people laugh… and then think.”

28. On Ethicists and Theft

Death row pardons, lottery wins and rain on your wedding day – all (arguably non-ironic) subjects referenced by Alanis Morissette in her 1996 single “Ironic.” One topic that would probably merit inclusion – despite the research not being published until 2009 (in Philosophical Psychology ) – is the revelation that books on ethics are more liable to be absent from the shelves of university libraries than comparable books on other philosophical subjects. “Do Ethicists Steal More Books?” by University of California, Riverside professor of philosophy Eric Schwitzgebel revealed that the more recent, esoteric ethics books “of the sort likely to be borrowed mainly by professors and advanced students of philosophy” were “about 50 percent more likely to be missing” than their non-ethics counterparts. However, Professor Schwitzgebel believes this is a good thing, as “the demand that ethicists live as moral models would create distortive pressures on the field.”

27. Wet Underwear: Not Comfortable

Even babies know it: wet underwear is uncomfortable. Yet precisely why this is so is a question that went unanswered by hard science until 1994, when the journal Ergonomics published “Impact of wet underwear on thermoregulatory responses and thermal comfort in the cold.” The authors were Martha Kold Bakkevig of SINTEF Unimed in Trondheim, Norway and Ruth Nielson at Kongens Lyngby’s Technical University of Denmark . Bakkevig and Nielson had investigated “the significance of wet underwear” by monitoring the skin and intestinal warmth, as well as weight loss, of eight adult male subjects wearing wet or dry underwear in controlled cold conditions. Apart from the obvious “significant cooling effect of wet underwear on thermoregulatory responses and thermal comfort,” the research also discovered that the thickness of the underwear exerted a greater effect on these factors than the material used to make the garment. So now you know.

26. Do Woodpeckers Get Headaches?

In much the same way that we’d presume dragons don’t get sore throats, it would be a reasonable assumption that woodpeckers don’t suffer from headaches – but assumptions are a poor substitute for the authoritative grip of scientific fact. Published in 2002 in the British Journal of Ophthalmology , “Cure for a headache” came courtesy of Ivan Schwab, an ophthalmologist at the University of California, Davis . Schwab’s paper details the raft of physiological traits that woodpeckers have developed to avoid brain damage and bleeding or detached eyes when hammering their beaks into trees at up to 20 times a second, 12,000 times a day. In addition to a very broad but surprisingly squishy skull and sturdy jaw muscles, the woodpecker has a “relatively small” brain – which probably explains a lot.

25. Booty Calls: the Best of Both Worlds?

Compromise, according to U.S. poet and author Phyllis McGinley at least, is what “makes nations great and marriages happy.” It’s also the backbone of the booty call, if research published in 2009 is anything to go by. Appearing in The Journal of Sex Research , “The ‘booty call’: a compromise between men’s and women’s ideal mating strategies,” was written by researchers from the department of psychology at New Mexico State University . The study analyzed the booty-calling behavior of 61 students from the University of Texas at Austin . What’s more, it confirmed its central thesis that “the booty call may represent a compromise between the short-term sexual nature of men’s ideal relationships and the long-term commitment ideally favored by women.” Lead researcher Dr. Peter K. Jonason, now working at the University of Western Sydney , shared follow-up papers in 2011 and 2013, for The Journal of Sex Research and Archives of Sexual Behavior , respectively.

24. Mosquitoes Like Cheese

The mosquito is a formidable and destructive pest. And while it’s known that exhalation of carbon dioxide by its victims acts as a highly compelling invitation to dinner, other smelly signals have been less well documented. Published in The Lancet , Bart Knols’ 1996 research, “On human odor, malaria mosquitoes, and Limburger cheese,” changed that. The entomologist described how Anopheles gambiae , Africa’s most prolific malaria-spreading mosquito, exhibited a keen partiality for biting human feet and ankles. Crucially, the research also showed that these mosquitoes can be attracted to Limburger cheese, a stinky fromage that shares many characteristics with the whiff of human feet, offering potential use as a synthetic bait for traps. Interestingly, Knols is one of the few people to have won an Ig Nobel (for entomology in 2006) and a Nobel Peace Prize (shared in 2005 as part of the International Atomic Energy Agency).

23. Weighing Up Lead and Feathers

It doesn’t require a degree in physics – or philosophy – to understand that a pound of lead and a pound of feathers weigh the same. Yet the question of whether or not they feel the same is rather less straightforward. To examine this, researchers from the department of psychology at Illinois State University enlisted the help of 23 blindfolded volunteers, recording their perceptions of the weight of either a pound of lead or a pound of feathers contained within boxes of precisely the same shape and size. Published in 2007, the paper – “‘Which feels heavier – a pound of lead or a pound of feathers?’ A potential perceptual basis of a cognitive riddle” – discovered that participants rated the pound of lead as seeming weightier with an “above chance” frequency. The suggestion is that factors such as the “muscular forces” required to handle an object could also play a role in perceptions of weight.

22. Cat Food – Yummy?

Despite their notorious penchant for fully, or sometimes partially, dead rodents in their mouths, cats are surprisingly fussy eaters. What’s more, the pet food industry has found that kitties themselves represent unreliable and expensive test subjects in the pursuit of more appealing cat food flavors. Professor Gary Pickering of the department of biological sciences at Brock University in Ontario, Canada detailed a better option in 2009: the human palate. “Optimizing the sensory characteristics and acceptance of canned cat food: use of a human taste panel” describes the bizarre methodology for human tasters to “profile the flavour and texture of a range of cat food products” – including evaluating “meat chunk and gravy/gel constituents.” The impact of this on the number of job applications to the beer- and chocolate-tasting industries remains to be seen.

21. The Unhidden Dangers of Sword Swallowing

While “cat food taster” is unlikely to appear on anybody’s dream job list, at least that profession is unencumbered by the daily risk of serious injury. Sword swallowing, on the other hand, though occupying a similar position on the league table of tastiness, is a rather more hazardous occupation. In order to establish just how hazardous, radiologist Brian Witcombe and world champion sword swallower Dan Meyer analyzed the “technique and complications” of 46 members of the Sword Swallowers’ Association International. Published in 2009 in the British Medical Journal , their research, “Sword swallowing and its side effects,” found that performers had a heightened chance of injury when “distracted or adding embellishments” – as in the case of one unfortunate swallower who lacerated his throat after being disturbed by a “misbehaving macaw on his shoulder.” In 2007 Witcombe and Meyer together received the Ig Nobel Prize in medicine in view of the pair’s “penetrating medical report.”

20. Beer Bottle vs. Human Skull

Common weekend warrior tales would suggest that a beer bottle makes a good weapon in the event of a bar brawl. But would a full or an empty bottle inflict the most damage, and would that damage include fracturing a human skull? These important questions were answered in 2009 by a team of researchers from the University of Bern with their seminal paper, “Are full or empty beer bottles sturdier and does their fracture-threshold suffice to break the human skull?” Dr. Stephan Bolliger and his colleagues tested the breaking energy of full and empty beer bottles using a drop tower. Moreover, they discovered that a “full bottle will strike a target with almost 70 percent more energy than an empty bottle,” but that either is capable of breaking a human skull. Good to know. In a great twist of irony, Dr. Bolliger and co. picked up a 2009 Ig Nobel Prize in the “Peace” category.

19. The Propulsion Parameters of Penguin Poop

The titles of scientific research papers can sometimes be fairly impenetrable to the layman; other times they may take a more direct approach. Published in 2003, “Pressures produced when penguins pooh – calculations on avian defecation” certainly belongs to the latter category. The paper’s authors, Victor Benno Meyer-Rochow of the then International University Bremen (now Jacobs University Bremen ) and Eötvös Loránd University ‘s Jozsef Gal, decided to address the question of how much internal pressure penguins generate for poop-firing purposes. With knowledge of just a few parameters – including the thickness of and distance covered by the fecal matter – the researchers were able to calculate that the birds employed pressures of up to 60 kPa (kilopascal) to eject their bodily waste. The project was inspired by a blushing Japanese student who, during a lecture, asked Dr. Meyer-Rochow how the penguins “decorated” their nests.

18. Lady Gaga and Pop Art

Lady Gaga clearly sees herself as something of an artist: her third album is called Artpop , and last year she voiced her desire to “bring art culture into pop in a reverse Warholian expedition.” But does anyone else agree? In 2012 University of Cambridge student Amrou Al-Kadhi decided to write a few words – 10,000 to be precise – on the subject for his final year undergraduate dissertation. The paper, looking at Lady Gaga’s place in the history of pop art and her role as a voice of cultural criticism, initially encountered some resistance from the Cambridge history of art department. However, after several meetings, the provision of a barrage of YouTube links to Gaga videos such as “Telephone” (which apparently demonstrated her postmodern aesthetic) and “a bit of work,” permission for Al-Kadhi to undertake the research was granted.

17. Even Chickens Prefer Beautiful People

A 2002 research paper by Stefano Ghirlanda, Liselotte Jansson and Magnus Enquist at Stockholm University decided to make inroads into the question – most likely contemplated by very, very few people – of whether “Chickens prefer beautiful humans.” The study saw six chickens trained to “react to” images of an ordinary male or female face. They were then tested on a series of images ranging from the average face to a face with exaggerated male or female characteristics, and a group of 14 (human) students were given the same test. Perhaps surprisingly, the chickens “showed preferences for faces consistent with human sexual preferences.” The researchers claim this offers evidence for the hypothesis that human preferences stem not from “face-specific adaptations” but from “general properties of nervous systems” – perhaps overlooking the possibility that their human test group just had very unusual tastes.

16. Erase Bad Memories, Keep Good Ones

Painful, embarrassing, or traumatic memories have an annoying habit of accumulating over the course of an average lifetime. As Courtney Miller, assistant professor at the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute , puts it, “Our memories make us who we are, but some of these memories can make life very difficult.” With that in mind, Miller led a team of researchers to try and find out whether certain unwanted memories – specifically, drug-related ones – could be erased without damaging other memories. Published in 2013, “Selective, Retrieval-Independent Disruption of Methamphetamine-Associated Memory by Actin Depolymerization” found that, in mice at least, this kind of bespoke amnesia is entirely possible. How? By means of inhibiting the formation of a particular molecule in the brain. “The hope is,” said Miller, “that our strategies may be applicable to other harmful memories, such as those that perpetuate smoking or post-traumatic stress disorder.”

15. The Rectal Route to Curing Hiccups

When beset by a flurry of hiccups, a few minutes of putting up with the involuntary jolting is usually sufficient to get them to subside. However, other times they can become a far more unmanageable problem, beyond the healing scope of even the oldest of wives’ tales. In such situations there’s a surprising but highly effective cure. Published in 1990, “Termination of intractable hiccups with digital rectal massage” details the case of a 60-year-old patient whose seemingly non-stop hiccups were brought to an immediate halt by a massaging finger in the rectum. A second occurrence a few hours later was curbed in a similar fashion. The research from the Bnai Zion Medical Center in Israel notes that “no other recurrences were observed.” The inspiration for the report was Dr. Francis Fesmire, who penned a medical case report with the same title in 1988 and with whom the researchers shared an Ig Nobel in 2006. Fesmire passed away in 2014, and one fitting epitaph from an entertainment-oriented research magazine mused, “Dr. Fesmire found joy and fame by putting his finger on – nay, in – the pulse of his times.”

14. Can Pigeons Tell a Picasso From a Monet?

Theirs is a list dominated by flying, pecking and defecating, and pigeons can now add “appreciation of fine art” to their skill set. Published in 1995, “Pigeons’ discrimination of paintings by Monet and Picasso” came courtesy of Shigeru Watanabe, Junko Sakamoto and Masumi Wakita at Keio University in Japan. And sure enough, the paper presents evidence that pigeons are indeed able to distinguish between works by the two artists. The birds were trained to recognize pieces by either Monet or Picasso; and crucially they then demonstrated the ability to identify works by either creator that had not been shown to them during the training period. Not bad for rats with wings. Professor Watanabe – who went on to explore paddy birds’ appreciation of the spoken word – put the paper into context, saying, “This research does not deal with advanced artistic judgments, but it shows that pigeons are able to acquire the ability to judge beauty similar to that of humans.”

13. The Nature of Navel Lint

It’s a phenomenon that most people will be familiar with: small balls of lint accumulating in the belly button. Still, until fairly recently the mechanism behind this process lacked a satisfactory explanation from the realm of science. Fortunately, that all changed in 2009 when Georg Steinhauser, a chemist and researcher at the Vienna University of Technology , published a research paper entitled “The nature of navel fluff.” After gathering 503 samples of navel lint, Dr. Steinhauser concluded that the culprit behind this common occurrence is hair on the abdomen, which dislodges small fibers from clothing and channels them into the belly button. As the Austrian himself has pointed out, “The question of the nature of navel fluff seems to concern more people than one would think at first glance.”

12. The Effects of Cocaine on Bees

The effects of cocaine on human body movement can be observed in nightclubs the world over on just about any given weekend. And as it turns out, the tediously familiar overestimation of dancing prowess is not just limited to humans. In a 2009 paper entitled “Effects of cocaine on honey bee dance behavior,” a team of researchers led by Gene Robinson, entomology and neuroscience professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign , analyzed how honey bees are affected by low doses of cocaine. Honey bees are known to perform dances when they locate an abundant food source; and the team found that administering the drug prompted bees to circle about 25 percent quicker as well as dance more exuberantly and for longer. The bees also exaggerated the scale of their bounty. No surprise there then.

11. Fruit Bat Fellatio

Though its contents are difficult at first to make out, the grainy black and white image above actually depicts two bats engaged in some X-rated nocturnal activity. And that’s precisely the topic that a group of researchers from China and the U.K. chose to explore in their 2009 paper, “Fellatio by fruit bats prolongs copulation time.” The group looked at the copulatory behavior of the short-nosed fruit bat and observed that “females were not passive during copulation but performed oral sex.” More interestingly, the researchers also discovered that the longer the bats spent engaged in fellatio, the longer the copulation itself lasted – and that when fellatio was absent, pairs spent much less time mating.

10. The Possibility of Unicorns

It’s a question that has plagued the internet for decades: could unicorns really exist? The short answer, at least, is no. Still, King’s College London philosophy undergraduate Rachael Patterson decided to investigate whether a full dissertation on the more theoretical aspects of the subject would yield the same conclusion. Her paper, “The Possibility of Unicorns: Kripke v Dummett,” picks up on previous theses by British philosopher Michael Dummett and American logician and philosopher Saul Kripke. Why? In order to see if any more rainbow-hued light could be shed on this important question, of course. Reassuringly, perhaps, neither Kripke nor Dummett claim that these mythical creatures live in reality – although Dummett does posit the idea that in another world they might.

9. Does Country Music Make You Suicidal?

Country music is one of the most popular genres of music in the United States, with a huge audience that encompasses all age ranges. Yet given its recurrent themes of wedded disharmony and excessive drinking, Steven Stack of Wayne State University and Auburn University ‘s Jim Gundlach decided to probe whether country music might have an influence on municipal suicide rates in America. Published in 1992, their research paper, “The Effect of Country Music on Suicide,” actually discovered a strong link between the amount of country music radio airplay in any particular city and the suicide rate among the white population in that area. The reaction was mixed: Stack and Gundlach initially received hate mail, but in 2004 they won the Ig Nobel Prize for medicine.

8. Do Cabbies Have Bigger Brains?

The notoriously demanding exam that London’s black cab drivers must pass is called the “Knowledge” – and with good reason. Covering around 25,000 streets inside a six-mile radius of central London, the test generally requires three to four years of preparation and multiple attempts at the final exam before success is achieved. University College London neuroscientist Eleanor Maguire was inspired to take a closer look at this feat of memory after researching similar examples in the animal kingdom. Published in 2000, the resulting study, “Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers,” discovered that “cabbies” had physically larger posterior hippocampi – the areas of the brain responsible for spatial memory – than their non-cabbie counterparts. Professor Maguire’s follow-up study (with Dr. Katherine Woollett) in 2011 confirmed that trained cabbies were better at remembering London landmarks but not as good at recalling complex visual information compared to the unsuccessful trainees.

7. Shrews: To Chew or Not to Chew?

Ever felt so hungry that you could eat a horse? How about a shrew? While such scenarios are never likely to present themselves to the average person, scientists can be an altogether more experimental bunch. Take 1995 paper, “Human digestive effects on a micromammalian skeleton,” by Brian Crandall and Peter Stahl, anthropologists working at the State University of New York . Said paper investigated what would happen to a shrew – which was first skinned, disemboweled, parboiled and cut into segments – if it was swallowed, sans chewing, by a human. Interestingly, many of the rodent’s smaller bones “disappeared” on their transit through the human digestive system, while other portions of the skeleton showed “significant damage” despite the lack of chewing – a promising result to those studying human and animal remains. Following this peculiar paper, Brian Crandall became a science educator hoping to motivate future generations of (hungry) scientists.

6. Gay Dead Duck Sex

In 1935 Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger tried to highlight the absurdity of newly developed aspects of quantum theory. In his thought experiment, the strange quantum properties of a system are drawn on to suspend a hypothetical cat in a state of being simultaneously dead and alive. Sixty-six years later, a new piece of research saw the cat replaced by two ducks, in far less paradoxical though no less opposing states of life and death – but now with the crucial addition of gay sex. Published in 2001, “The first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard Anas platyrhynchos” describes Kees Moeliker’s bizarre experience. The Dutch ornithologist witnessed a male duck administering a 75-minute raping of the corpse of another male duck, freshly deceased after flying into a window. More recently, Moeliker has presided over an annual commemorative event and public conversation on how to make sure birds stop flying into windows. The event’s name? Dead Duck Day.

5. Love and Sex With Robots

“Intimate Relationships With Artificial Partners” – ludicrous science fiction, or serious science fact? According to the paper’s author, and British International Master of chess, Daniel Levy, “It may sound a little weird, but it isn’t.” Levy earned a Ph.D. from Maastricht University for his thesis, which covered sociology, psychology, artificial intelligence and robotics, among other fields. He conjectured that human-robot love, marriage and even consummation are “inevitable” by 2050. Roboticist Ronald Arkin from Atlanta’s Georgia Institute of Technology points out, “Humans are very unusual creatures. If you ask me if every human will want to marry a robot, my answer is probably not. But will there be a subset of people? There are people ready right now to marry sex toys.”

4. A Better Approach to Penile Zipper Entrapment

Unfortunately, the horror injury that befalls Ben Stiller’s character Ted, in 1998’s There’s Something About Mary , often traverses the realm of fiction to bestow real-world agony upon boys and men who wish they’d opted for a button fly. A 2005 paper by Dr. Satish Chandra Mishra from Charak Palika Hospital in New Delhi, India looked at reported methods of intervention for this most unpleasant of problems and found that many common approaches either take too long or can actually make the circumstances worse. The researchers’ paper, “Safe and painless manipulation of penile zipper entrapment,” details instead a “quick, simple and non-traumatic” method using wire cutters and a pair of pliers – though “painless” does seem a highly ambitious adjective in this particular context.

3. Flatulence As Self-Defense

The idea of a correlation between fear and bodily emissions of one variety or another is not surprising, but a 1996 paper by author Mara Sidoli detailed a much more extreme example of this relationship. In “Farting as a defence against unspeakable dread,” Sidoli described the miserable tale of Peter, a “severely disturbed adopted latency boy” who endured a difficult and traumatic early life. Despite various setbacks in his later growth, Peter demonstrated “considerable innate resilience.” However, he also developed what Sidoli called a “defensive olfactive container,” using his flatulence “to envelop himself in a protective cloud of familiarity against the dread of falling apart, and to hold his personality together.” With such a vivid and prose-rich approach to scientific research, it should come as no surprise that SIdoli scooped the Ig Nobel for literature in 1998.

2. Harry Potter = Jesus Christ

Putting an end, once and for all, to the notion that literary theory sometimes lacks real-world application, “Jesus Potter Harry Christ” is a thesis by Ph.D. student Derek Murphy that looks at “the fascinating parallels between two of the world’s most popular literary characters.” What’s more, after successfully exceeding his Kickstarter funding goal of $888, Murphy’s thesis has been transformed into a commercially available book, published in 2011, which won the Next Gen Indie Book Award for Best Religious Non-Fiction that same year. Though the idea of analyzing the similarities between J.K. Rowling’s boy wizard creation and the Son of God might seem like a frivolous endeavor, Murphy – who is currently doing his Ph.D. at Taiwan’s National Cheng Kung University – assures his public that the book’s contents are “academic and heavily researched.” Now, where’s the fun in that?

1. Rectal Foreign Bodies

Published in the journal Surgery in 1986, “Rectal foreign bodies: case reports and a comprehensive review of the world’s literature” does exactly what it says on the tin. The research, by doctors David B. Busch and James R. Starling, based in Madison, Wisconsin, looked at two cases of patients with “apparently self-inserted” anal objects, as well as available documentation on the subject. Other factors taken into account included the patient’s age and history and the number and type of objects removed. The resulting list of 182 foreign bodies makes for an eye-watering read: of particular note are the dull knife (“patient complained of ‘knife-like pain'”) and the toolbox (“inside a convict; contained saws and other items usable in escape attempts”). The doctors’ paper was recognized for its literary value with an Ig Nobel Prize in 1995. One person’s pain is clearly another’s pleasure.

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Weird Science

Rare spotless giraffe born at Tennessee zoo

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Aliens falling satellite unexplained flash puzzles kyiv accustomed to russian missiles.

Nikon photo contest reveals fantastic microscopic world that surrounds us

Fortunetelling linked to financial risk-taking in men — even those who profess not to believe in it

Pythons are eating alligators and everything else in Florida. Snake hunters stand poised to help.

Dogs can 'see' with their noses, study suggests

Mosquitoes sniff out hosts infected with certain viruses, researchers find

Weird science videos.

Video shows Athens landmarks shrouded in orange dust

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Australia's Great Barrier Reef has been hit by a major coral bleaching event

Scientists discover the world's largest snake species

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WATCH: Stunning blue supermoon dazzles stargazers around the world

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Five Funny Science Sites on the Web

Sarah Zielinski

1. Improbable Research : Read the Annals of Improbable Research , buy tickets to the next Ig Nobel Prize ceremony and read a daily blog of new and interesting research (such as "Hair Length in Florida Theme Parks"). The science may not always be real, but it's always funny. And, of course, here you'll also find the home of the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists™ .

2. PhD Comics (Piled Higher Deeper): The life of a grad student isn't easy. Long hours, poor pay, crazy advisors, and that's just the beginning. Recent topics in Piled Higher and Deeper, "the ongoing chronicle of life (or lack thereof)" among a group of grad students, have included publishing in Science and Nature , grooming and what would happen if research papers had comment sections . Real grad students will recognize some of the scenarios. The rest of us will be glad we decided to skip all those extra years of school.

3. NCBI ROFL : Science can get weird. A couple of molecular and cellular biology grad students at the University of California at Berkeley realized this and created a blog culled from the PubMed database of scientific abstracts. Being grad students, they're a bit obsessed with alcohol, farts and sex, but you'll giggle nonetheless. An example, " On the authenticity of shrunken heads ":

Jivaro tsantsas or shrunken head: an expertise of authenticity evaluation.

"Presence of sealed eyelids, pierced lips with strings sealing the mouth, shiny black skin, a posterior sewn incision, long glossy black hair, and lateral head compression are characteristic of authentic tsantsas."

4. xkcd : "A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language." Written by a former robot scientist, though, it makes sense only if you speak geek.

​ 5. Creation Wiki : The creationist answer to wikipedia has plenty of hidden gems. For example, the idolatry entry recommends reading the pages on DNA, sexual reproduction and embryos. Uluru (Ayers Rock) was, of course, created by the great flood. Dinosaurs coexisted with man. And there is no scientific evidence that the continental plates are still moving (which I think would be a shock to all those geologists who have compiled such data).

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Sarah Zielinski | | READ MORE

Sarah Zielinski is an award-winning science writer and editor. She is a contributing writer in science for Smithsonian.com and blogs at Wild Things, which appears on Science News.

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‘Is it aliens?’: how a mysterious star could help the search for extraterrestrial life

Scientists hope studies into Boyajian’s star could lead to enhanced techniques for identifying distant planetary civilisations

I t is our galaxy’s strangest star, a flickering globe of light whose sporadic and unpredictable output has baffled astronomers for years. But now the study of Boyajian’s star is being promoted as a research model that could help in one of the most intriguing of all scientific quests: finding intelligent life on other worlds.

This is the argument that Oxford University astrophysicist Prof Chris Lintott will make at a public lecture – Is it Aliens? The Most Unusual Star in the Galaxy – at a Gresham College lecture in Conway Hall, central London on Monday. His prime target will be Boyajian’s star, sometimes nicknamed Tabby’s star after scientist Tabetha Boyajian, in the constellation Cygnus whose odd dimming and brightening has been the subject of intense study by space probes and observatories in recent years.

“Its behaviour is extraordinary,” Lintott told the Observer . “It has rapid, random bursts where its brightness drops dramatically and then returns. There is no pattern to it. It flickers as if somebody was playing with its dimmer switch. There is no other star like this in our galaxy.”

Boyajian’s star was studied in detail by the Kepler space observatory in 2012 when its erratic behaviour was first uncovered. These observations indicated that a huge mass of matter circles the star in tight formation and sporadically blocks its light.

But what was the nature of this vast mass of material? Dust rings, disintegrating comets and swarms of asteroids were all put forward as explanations. However, most attention went to the theory, proposed by scientists at Penn State University, that the eclipsing mass could be a huge alien megastructure.

Such constructions were proposed by physicist Freeman Dyson, who argued that some alien civilisations might be advanced enough to build vast arrays of solar panels around their home stars to capture its heat and light. Dubbed Dyson spheres or swarms by astronomers, the great orbiting edifices would be used to power these distant civilisations.

The idea that astronomers had stumbled on such a structure triggered headlines round the globe – though not for long. Subsequent research has now undermined the idea . “We have found that light of different wavelengths is blocked in different amounts: exactly what you would expect from starlight passing through a dust cloud,” said Lintott.

Boyajian’s eclipsing mass is probably a dust cloud produced when a planet grazed too close to its surface and was torn apart. Nevertheless, the study of the strange object is important because it highlights techniques that are destined to become increasingly important as attempts to pinpoint alien civilisations intensify in coming years, Lintott argues.

Humanity could become radio-quiet in about 50 years as a result – and that will probably be true for civilisations on other worlds“The search for extraterrestrial intelligence [Seti] is changing,” he said. “We have relied in the past almost exclusively on radio telescopes to detect broadcasts from alien civilisations just as our radio and TV transmissions could reveal our presence to them. However, to date, we have heard absolutely nothing.”

Nor should we be surprised, Lintott argues. “Humanity has already passed its peak radio wave output because we are increasingly using narrow beam communications and fibre-optic cables, rather than beaming out TV and radio signals into the general environment.”

Humanity could become radio-quiet in about 50 years as a result – and that will probably be true for civilisations on other worlds, he added. “They will have gone radio silent after a while, like us. So Seti radio telescopes will need to be augmented with other ways of seeking aliens . We are going to have to be more creative about what we’re searching for in the data and find unusual things that reveal they are the handiwork of aliens.”

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Searching for Dyson spheres – huge planet-sized panels of solar arrays – will be one key route, though other ways of pinpointing the handiwork of aliens will also be needed. An example would be provided by an alien civilization that mined asteroids near their home planet, an endeavour that would create clouds of interplanetary dust that would reveal themselves from their infrared radiation.

“And while aliens may not reveal themselves through radio transmissions, they could easily betray their presence from their radar emissions that they use to guide their aircraft and spaceships,” added Lintott. “Again, we need to look at these wavelengths for signs of their existence.”

Such work will require analyses of colossal stores of data and the story of Boyajian’s star also provides a key demonstration of how they would be done. Its secrets were revealed by an army of citizen scientists, members of the public who collected and analysed the vast reams of data from the instruments that probed the star, said Lintott.

“It was their combined analyses of data about Boyajian’s that showed it was behaving in a very odd manner – and it is very likely they will be involved in fingering other weird stars in our galaxy in future projects. And you never know, the next time they might hit pay dirt.”

• The Observer
• Seti (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence)

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Six Spooky and Odd Science Stories to Keep You Up at Night

October 31, 2017

We asked our scientists to share their spooky, weird, and scary moments that happened while they were conducting research. From disembodied whispers to shadows and reflections, their stories do not disappoint! Enjoy reading their stories—if you dare!

Disembodied Whispers

Beth Phelan is a Research Fishery Biologist and Chief of the Ecosystems & Aquaculture Division's Fisheries Ecology Branch, and is based out of our Sandy Hook Lab

In 1985, the old army hospital built in the late 1890s was part of our Sandy Hook lab. During that time we were conducting bluefish research in that building and staff members working the night shift would record fish swim times each hour to ground truth video recordings documenting swimming behavior. I had only been working at the lab a couple of months when I was asked to participate in this research. My office was on the first floor and the door to enter the research aquarium was in the basement. Connecting these two areas was a set of stairs to the basement, but to get there meant passing a large staircase to the second floor. I started hearing what I thought was whispered voices coming from upstairs – not every time I passed the large staircase, and not always clearly. I ignored it, thinking that I maybe imagined it. By midnight, I had decided to just stay in the basement aquarium room and sleep on the old hospital couch rather than walk through the building and past the large staircase. Since I was new and wanted to keep my job, I continued sleeping in the basement whenever I had to work the night shift, about once every six weeks. That was until the lab building burned down in September of 1985. Scary thing was, an arsonist had lit the fire on the night I was supposed to work. I fortunately had switched my shift to another night. After the fire, when a coworker and I were scavenging equipment from the lab ruins, I remember thinking to myself, “Finally, the building will be quiet.”

Strange Flashes of Light

Vincent Guida is a Research Fishery Biologist in the Ecosystems & Aquaculture Division’s Habitat Ecology Branch, and is based at the Sandy Hook Lab in New Jersey.

Late one warm summer night at the Duke University Marine Lab, I and a few other graduate students were working late on a class research project for a graduate course in Invertebrate Physiology. We were recording the circadian respiratory rhythms of ghost crabs ( Ocypode quadrata ) in a pitch-black, windowless, second-floor lab. While talking to each other in the pitch-black, we saw tiny flashes of blue-white light. The strange thing was, we could only see them when people were talking. We sat there in the dark, racking our brains to understand what these odd flashes of light could be. Did we anger the ghosts of previous researchers, or the spirits of the ghost crabs? Nope, but science had the answer! It turns out it was the Pep-O-Mint Lifesavers we were chewing. Lifesavers contain high-energy polyphosphate sugars that break down upon impact, releasing energy as photons — light — at visible wavelengths . The flashes are faint and only visible in a pitch-black space after your eyes have adapted to the dark. We learned about this phenomena later, but until then it really had us going!

Always Watching

Sarah Trudel was an aquarist for the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s Woods Hole Science Aquarium in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

When you work in an aquarium, you get used to a multitude of different noises – hissing of air supply lines, rhythmic cycling of the seawater pumping systems, splashing of aquarium specimens, and sometimes barely audible conversations between aquarium visitors. We have a lot of people walking and talking throughout the aquarium for most of the day, but then there are other times when you’re working alone, doors closed to the public and coworkers are gone. It was usually during these times that I would see what I at first thought was just a visitor that hadn't signed in at the front desk, a scientist wandering about on a lunch break, or a coworker who came back into the building because they forgot something. Then I’d remember – it couldn’t be any of those things – I was alone. My visitor would allow me to see him in only two locations, the behind the scenes area on the second floor and in the basement. In the public area of the back-up gallery, I'd see the shadow of an older man, large in stature, generally off in the distance, passing through my peripheral vision. I can't always be certain that it isn't someone passing through, although I'm nearly always certain I am alone. In the basement, I’ll always see the reflection of a bearded man, peering into the glass of the tanks I was checking, off my shoulder as if standing beside or behind me. In the beginning I’d naturally turn around expecting to see someone, but no one was ever there. I’ve now stop turning around. I simply assume it’s a quiet observer, a curious mind, or perhaps the man who is still vested in the work we do for the public, in a location that held a dear place in his heart and whisper, “Mr. Baird, is that you?”

Attack of the Parasitic Isopods

Eric Robillard is the Acting Chief of the Ecosystems Surveys Branch and a Supervisory Research Fishery Biologist for the Fishery Biology Program, and is based out of our Woods Hole Lab.

It was a sunny afternoon in Tampa Bay when it happened. We began deploying a 300ft gill net from our small research boat and about half way through the deployment, it started tugging weirdly. We stopped and began pulling the net back onto the boat. It became quickly apparent that we had hit a huge school of menhaden ( Brevoortia tyrannus ). There were hundreds upon hundreds of them. Because the gill net mesh was too small, it acted like a spaghetti strainer, scooping them up rather than entangling them. As we pulled the net in, the menhaden just started falling into the boat. We didn’t pay attention to the fish flopping at our feet because we needed to get the net out of the water as fast as we could to stop more fish from being captured. That’s when I felt it — something was crawling up my leg! I looked down and to my horror I saw hundreds of parasitic isopods spewing out of the mouths of the menhaden, crawling up and attaching to my legs. I started screaming and jumping around, causing the others to do the same. We ended up climbing on the boat's center console chairs, waiting for these things to die. I still can feel that raspy clenching sensation on my legs. Yuck!

What Lurks in the Shadows

Laurel Smith is a Fisheries Biologist in our Ecosystems Dynamics & Assessment Branch (EDAB), and is based out of our Woods Hole Lab.

While working in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon, two coworkers and I were heading back from a rare plant study site when we happened upon a small herd of elk. One of my coworkers mentioned that we should probably get going because mountain lions are drawn to herds of elk. For the next mile or so as we walked along the small dirt logging road to our work truck, we kept hearing what sounded like something large rustling in the brush alongside us. We’d look, but couldn't see anything. As it kept pace with us, we stayed close together and kept a brisk walking pace while talking loudly to make our presence known. We started talking about the recent mountain lion sightings in the area – of joggers being stalked and small dogs being eaten. I then shared the eerie story I had recently heard on the news. There was a family having a fun outing in a nearby park. During their walk, the man had stopped to take a picture of his wife and their little baby tucked in a stroller. It wasn’t until they later developed the film that they saw the hidden horror. Peering through the bush right behind the stroller was the face of a mountain lion. Talking about all these mountain lion stories made us pretty jittery – our hearts were pounding! We all knew we shouldn't run because that makes mountain lions want to chase, and we would definitely lose that race. In that moment though, it was really, really hard not to run as fast as we could down that small logging road towards our work truck!

Phantom of the Deep

Jerry Prezioso is an Oceanographer  in the Ecosystems & Aquaculture Division’s Oceans & Climate Branch, and is based out of the Narragansett Lab in Rhode Island.

About 20 years ago I was night snorkeling in about eight feet of water with a colleague near Point Judith, Rhode Island, trying to take some photos of squid predation on sand lance. As I knelt down on the sandy bottom to line up my shot, I placed one of my hands on the sand to steady myself. I spotted a school of squid feeding and as I was readying my camera system I suddenly felt a yank on dive suit sleeve. Assuming it was my dive buddy, I turned around to see what he wanted. I saw nothing – he wasn't there! Eyes darting around, I spotted his dive light a little distance away. My mind raced trying to figure out what happened. Then, another hard yank on my dive suit. I quickly looked down at my wrist not knowing what to expect. And that’s when I saw it – my phantom dive buddy – a large blue crab tugging away at my dive suit sleeve.

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454 Fun Research Topics & Questions in 30+ Disciplines

Sometimes, the process of choosing a research topic can take longer than writing a paper itself. So, once you find your perfect theme, consider that you are halfway there.

Here are some excellent ideas that might help you kick-start your projects.

🔝 Top 10 Fun Research Topics

• 🌳 Choosing a Topic
• ⚛️ Natural Sciences
• 🌆 Social Sciences
• 🤪 Research for Fun
• 🌍 Interdisciplinary Topics
• 🛑 Topics to Avoid
• The history and evolution of video games.
• The role of pets in reducing stress.
• The rise of TikTok and its impact on popular culture.
• The history of fashion trends.
• The influence of memes on social behavior.
• The history and cultural significance of tattoos.
• The effects of DIY culture on creativity and consumerism.
• The psychology of FOMO in the age of social media.
• The effects of binge-watching on mental health.
• The science behind dreams.

🌳 How to Choose Fun Research Topics?

A choice of your research topic ensures that the entire process of composing, writing, and proofreading will be pleasing. The tree below illustrates the main steps to pick the best variant. Follow it and come to an end with a good topic to write about.

You can use it as a brainstorming technique or mini-guide to find good subjects. Your goal is to make the topic non-trivial. The main rule is: if something is boring to write about, it will be boring to read, and vice versa.

🧬 Interesting Topics to Research in Biology

• Biomedical engineering: the path to a new human being or another medical instrument?
• Living matter: self-organized chaos or a perfectly planned structure?
• The concept of seed germination.
• Natural or planned selection: the benefits and drawbacks of each method.
• How does genetics cause human obesity , and why do some people have more chances of being overweight?
• Terrorism using chemical and biological agents.
• Ethical issues of cloning: will we ever resolve them, and can they be ignored?
• Does our immune system have a resistance capacity?
• Dental caries: the microbiology of tooth decay.
• Fertilizers : the negative effect on nutritious qualities of natural food.

🌏 Fun Things to Research in Earth Science

• The impact of economic changes on sea life.
• Earthquakes and tsunamis in Japan and the Indian Ocean.
• Will humanity ever learn to live without an environment?
• Noise pollution: how does it impact animal life on our planet?
• Climate science in the modern world.
• Bioremediation : the fastest way to clean our world from human-made pollution.
• The rise of the average temperature on the planet causes an increase in wildfires.
• The methods of weather prediction: are they accurate?
• Power generation from wind energy.
• Lighting: the unstudied natural source of energy.

⚗️ Chem Research Paper Topics

• How will it change our life if we invent a way to create all the chemical elements without extracting them from the Earth?
• Genetically modified food: safety and regulations.
• Food dyes: are they safe enough for daily consumption?
• Chemical reactions that produce energy: natural sources of fuel .
• Solar energy in hydrogen production and use in fuel cells.
• To which extent do pesticides affect water quality , and what can be done to eliminate their influence?
• Artificial intelligence in chemistry: the perspectives of resolving eternal questions.
• Chemical dependency and interventions.
• What are the essential equilibrium chemical reactions in the human body?
• PCR-based diagnostics for pathogens in food.
• Silicon: the new semiconductor in corrective surgery.
• Phensuprin separation using the acid-base extraction process.

🧲 Fun Research Paper Topics in Physics

• Patterns in engineering: development and use of models.
• Einstein and his contribution to science.
• Describe the thermal energy of an air conditioner.
• Electricity’s discovery and generation.
• Who wins it all: exploring the history of the Nobel Prize in physics.
• Is the end of the universe a physically predictable event?
• Atoms are the building blocks of the universe. Does it mean that everything has the same structure?
• Isaac Newton’s laws of motion.
• Why is time travel impossible from the point of view of a modern physicist?
• The controversy of nuclear power.
• Air resistance is the only limit for ultrasonic vehicles.
• The major advantages of shifting power supplies to renewable sources.

🔭 Fun Research Topics in Astronomy

• The discovery of exoplanets : are they similar to our planet?
• Solar system formation.
• Black holes: the secret of light penetration.
• The history of the use of a telescope.
• Stars and their lifespan: Evolution of the Sun and its effect on the Earth.
• Light pollution and its implications for astronomers.
• What led to the formation of the Solar System?
• What is more dangerous to our planet, comets or asteroids?
• The causes of northern lights and how this phenomenon can be used practically.
• Could Venus be another Earth for living creatures?

🗿 Anthropology Research Paper Topics

• Evolution – the genetic legacy of the Mongols.
• The mystery of skin color: the influence of natural conditions and environment on the genesis of races.
• Canadian identities in their diversity.
• The recent evolution of women’s role in African countries.
• The historical & political relation between anthropology & human rights.
• The impact of religion and cultural background on the practices of burying the dead.
• Gender and culture in Hurston’s anthropology work.
• The social, economic, and cultural causes of alcoholism in Eastern Europe.
• Mesoamerican ballgame: the origin, cultural, formal, and material aspects.
• The long-term effect of manual labor on the development of Homo Sapiens.
• What threats does depression have in South-East Asia ?
• Forbidden archeology: hidden history of human race.
• Creation or evolution : evidential support of the two views of human origin.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Sociology Research Paper Topics

• Domestic violence: factors and reasons.
• Why does racism still exist in modern times, and is there a way to eliminate it?
• Same-sex marriage : the future effect of the new social phenomenon.
• Same-sex civil rights and domestic partnerships.
• The quality of life: what are the main criteria, and who defines them?
• Gender health inequalities – gender and health .
• Shopping and consumerism : why are they the trends in contemporary society, and what are the effects?
• Connection between war and poverty.
• Class inequalities are a thing of the past, but racial differences are not.
• War on drugs: implication on the criminal justice system.
• Could feminism become more effective if it used different methods?
• What are the causes of domestic terrorism ?
• Should people have a right to own a gun?

⚖️ Government Research Paper Topics

• The concern over the growing polarization in USA.
• How do politicians fund their campaigns?
• China’s economic, social, political, and cultural issues.
• What are the fundamental human rights granted by democracy?
• Separation of powers, checks & balances, and federalism.
• Analyze the differences between R. Reagan and R. Nixon.
• The influence of interest groups on the US political system.
• Is presidency a privilege, duty, or obligation?
• Nationalism and development in the countries of Latin America.
• Why do people vote for parties or candidates that surely will never win?
• Political parties, interests and pressure groups.
• Describe real-life examples of successful political campaigns.

🤔 Topics to Research in Psychology

• A narcissistic personality disorder is incurable because narcissists never admit they have a problem.
• Effects of poverty on mental health.
• Is love a chemical reaction? People’s tendency to self-persuasion.
• Traumatic experience in childhood and personality disorders.
• What are the psychological consequences of abortion in women who went through the surgery?
• Erikson’s psychosocial theory of human development .
• Preventive therapy of depression in everyday life .
• Does growing in a single-parent family affect child’s psychology?
• Child’s aggression: in-born or acquired?
• Depression among college students.
• People with addictions always find those who would like to rehabilitate them.
• Healthcare provider burnout: challenges to address.
• Is autistic spectrum disorder a disease or a separate branch of human development?

🗾 Fun Topics to Research in Geography

• Landslides are predictable and should be mapped.
• Disaster management, process and leadership.
• Viability of historical heritage in contemporary cities.
• Greenhouse effect and global warming.
• Cities built around oil deposits : success stories.
• Desalination in Saudi Arabia.
• What are the positive effects of a volcanic eruption?
• How the environment affects health and why this is an important global health policy concern.
• Classification of mountains and their examples.
• Political geography. China’s interest in Sub-Saharan Africa.
• How does climate affect a country’s economic prosperity?
• Geographic information system, connecting databases.
• Historical causes of soil type formation.

💰 Interesting Topics to Research in Economics

• Organized crime in Russia and the impact on the economy.
• Is universal basic income a necessary right in a democratic society?
• China’s role in the world economy.
• Does a country have to support businesses during a crisis period?
• Economic crimes and oil and gas transactions.
• World Trade Organization Good and Bad Aspects.
• Gender and global political economy.
• The effect of immigrants on a country’s economy.
• Does the protectionism of domestic producers lead to the GDP increase?
• Economic impact of legalizing marijuana.
• Are international trade agreements beneficial to the US?
• Laws of business competition in Australia.
• The influence of trade warfare with China on the IT companies in the US.

🎨 Art Research Paper Topics

• Is it possible to replace an artist with digital technologies?
• Museum of Fine Arts — West Wing and renovation.
• Point of view: art copies the outside world.
• The Australian High Court architecture.
• Is book illustration a full-fledged art or a tool enriching the text?
• How gangsta rap and rock music address violence, racism, and social issues.
• Music is a universal art, but it requires musical education to be understood.
• “Couleur du Temps” painting by Agathe De Bailliencourt.
• Contemporary art mimics the previous epochs, never creating anything new.
• American art and American identity.
• Artist’s eyes: Individualistic perception of the world.
• Andy Warhol’s paintings.
• Stages of a creative process: Do muses exist?

🎭 Art History Research Paper Topics

• Art Movements in History: Baroque.
• Art history: The mirror of the development of human perception of the world.
• The life and art of Leonardo Da Vinci.
• Art Nouveau vs. Art Deco : Intersection points.
• History of Islamic art and architecture.
• The myths about Van Gogh and his mental disorder.
• Middle Eastern history and culture: from Muhammad to 1800.
• The evolution of artistic techniques through ages.
• Claude Monet: The painter of one lake.
• The uprising of Hip-Hop: music history.
• Deciphering abstract art and its messages.
• Gothic and Renaissance art.
• Picasso vs. Matisse : The titans of Cubism.

📽️ Film Research Paper Topics

• The “Joker” movie and the public perception of mental illness.
• Contemporary cartoons as a form of social satire.
• Character transformation in the “Fight Club.”
• The qualities of a talented film director: how to become one.
• Character identity in “The Umbrella Academy.”
• Tolerance and respect for diversity in modern filmmaking .
• Italian Americans portrayed as mafia members in films.
• Dances with Wolves’ movie: colonialism and post-colonialism.
• Is non-commercial cinema more artistic than commercial one?
• Metropolis: the most successful sci-fi film.
• The category of a hero who saves the world in American films.
• Children’s sexuality in the “Out in the Dark.”
• The film adaptation of literature: when motion pictures beat the book.

📖 Literature Research Paper Topics

• Shakespeare’s Influence on English Language.
• Gender of the main character: A statistical study.
• “The Great Gatsby” novel by Francis Scott Fitzgerald.
• The Divine Comedy: Biblical Allusions.
• The purposes of ancient epic literature and how they manifested themselves in its form.
• “Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus” by Mary Shelly.
• What makes up good poetry?
• Death of a Salesman by A. Miller Review.
• Vampires in literature: from Bram Stoker to Stephenie Meyer .
• Communistic ideals in dystopian novels.
• Katrina Srigley’s Book “Breadwinning Daughters.”
• Landscapes in literature: the most famous word artists.
• Gender and sexuality in William Shakespeare’s plays.

🛖 Interesting Things to Research about Architecture

• Construction planning with emphasis on time and resources.
• Is globalization detrimental to culture-specific architecture?
• Small space living: the decay or new breath of architecture?
• Building rating systems in Australia.
• Recycled materials in construction and how they influence modern architecture.
• West Gate Bridge project case study.
• Energy-zero homes and energy-positive buildings as our future reality.
• Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal: architectural history.
• Office centers as the new form of art.
• Possible ways to improve rural housing in low-income areas.
• Impact of computer technology on architecture.
• Propose five feasible ways to reuse a former psychiatric hospital.
• Concept of vertical urbanism as a solution of high-density living.

🤪 Interesting Things to Research for Fun

• What are the boundaries of ethical egoism?
• The impact of social media on online courses.
• Plastic surgery : The person’s own business or an ethical issue?
• What are the similarities between animal and human languaged?
• If a family member turns out to be a criminal, should we report them?
• The value of digital privacy in an information technology age.
• Should the rich support the poor? List the possible consequences.
• How does humor affect personal relations?
• Physician-assisted suicide is neither murder nor suicide.
• In the globalized technological world, contact details are no longer private.
• The American government’s ban on Tik-Tok.
• Animal testing of vaccines: could we abandon the practice?
• Should hospitals have the right to decide on a child’s treatment if the parents are against it?
• Relation between polarization and Biden.
• Punishment for law violations should be proportionate to the scope of the delinquent’s responsibility.
• Effects of horror movies on young children.
• Should developed countries interfere in military conflicts of third-world countries?
• Pros and cons of Canada’s relationships with US.

📇 Fun Business Research Paper Topics

• Gender etiquette in business: is it a relic of the past?
• Sources of finance for hospitality business.
• The extent to which verbal arrangements matter in business.
• Network technology in modern business.
• Who is responsible for the job satisfaction of employees?
• Law for small business partnership in Australia.
• Profit vs. social responsibility: neither could exist separately.
• Business strategies and challenges in the mobile service industry.
• Who should act as the moral police in a company?
• The difference between industrial/organizational and business psychology.
• When burnt out , should employees get more work or days off?
• Stress negatively affects the decision-making process of business leaders.
• Biased opinions: their causes and ways to tackle them.

🛐 Religion Research Paper Topics

• Christian religious fundamentalism and family role identities.
• Religious education at home is the total discretion of parents.
• Comparison of Jewish and Muslim experiences.
• Can religious ethics justify military conflicts?
• Religion: understanding a diverse society.
• The innocence of children in different religions.
• Human rights from the perspective of Islam.
• End of the world in Christianity and other religions.
• Pagan traditions that preserved in Christianity.
• Women in muslim societies: the kingdom of strangers.
• How does religion influence politics in modern countries?
• Karma, Dharma and Samsara in Indian religions.
• What is God’s will, and how can a person understand it?
• Atheism: the new universal religion or nihilism ?

🥙 Food Research Paper Topics

• Does caffeine harm our hearts?
• Popular diets, and their benefits and concerns.
• Dieting: malnutrition or a healthy lifestyle?
• Why is obesity not considered a disease?
• What are the factors influencing the taste of wine?
• Anorexia and its associated diseases.
• Genetically modified products: are they harmless?
• The role of social media in stigmatizing obese people.
• Acculturation and eating disorders in western countries.
• Why is the tastiest food usually unhealthy?
• Effect of television marketing on children’s choice of food.
• Does vegetarianism provide sufficient nutrition for a human organism?
• The eating disorders in adolescent girls.
• You are what you eat: a popular myth.

🕯️ Philosophy Research Paper Topics

• Utilitarianism: The moral reasoning that prevails in the modern world.
• Philosophy of healthcare for women.
• Which philosophers support the belief that people are good from nature ?
• Can a lie be beneficial in some cases?
• Natural ethics and individual ethical egoism.
• The role of women in philosophy.
• Popper’s philosophy of science and falsification.
• Global implications of medical ethics.
• Differences between religion and philosophy of religion.
• The aesthetic experience of humankind in the interaction with nature.
• God in Descartes and Nietzsche.
• Knowledge vs. vagueness: the universal categories to differentiate.
• The relationship between money and happiness.
• Why does mind philosophy clash with dualism ?
• Idealism and its viability in real-life circumstances.

💀 Macbeth Research Paper Topics

• Supernatural prophecies: the three witches and their influence on the plot.
• Lust for power: the universal theme in Macbeth by W. Shakespeare and the House of Cards (TV series).
• Is life senseless in Macbeth? What could be done to add more sense?
• Madness and suicide : Did the former cause the latter for Lady Macbeth?
• Fate vs. free will: How do the eternal philosophical categories coexist in Macbeth?
• Who is to be blamed for King Duncan’s murder?

🧒 Child Development Research Paper Topics

• Interview and observation: a case study on child development.
• Is gentle parenting effective?
• Child development psychology: pregnancy trimesters .
• Advanced technologies in a child’s life: The benefits outweigh the harm.
• Connection between screen time and child development.
• A child’s ego: formation, first signs, and development.
• Why were childhood development issues ignored through many ages?
• Physical education impact on child development.
• How does childhood shape our future destiny?
• Classification of parenting types and their description.
• Child’s language development and joint attention.
• The role of social interaction in a child’s development .
• Analyze the problems that can arise at each of the five stages of child development .
• Children and families: building strong relationships.
• Which aspects of the outside world affect a child during the prenatal stage?

🌍 Interdisciplinary Research Paper Topics

Interdisciplinary research integrates tools and concepts of different disciplines. Its goal is to solve problems that exceed the domain of one particular science or knowledge area. It is where most innovations are born nowadays. Such research allows sharing skills and approaches that were never used in the given disciplines before.

🧠 Cognitive Science Research Paper Topics

Cognitive science explores human behavior, mental processes, and intelligence. Its principal aspects include memory, attention, emotions, and logical reasoning.

• Current experiment of false memory.
• Is our taste for music an instinct or an acquired skill ?
• Biological insights into mind functioning.
• The impacts of stress on human memory.
• Perfect brain functioning and the ways it can fail in a healthy human.
• Problem-solving in cognitive psychology.
• The mechanism of word selection in stress situations.
• How does limited choice make the person happier with the result?
• Anxiety disorders: cognitive behavioral therapy.
• Can we calculate the boundaries of our information-processing ability?
• Cognitive dissonance effects on attitudes and behavior.
• The long-term impact of drug abuse on the human brain.
• Behavioral and social-cognitive approaches to forming habits.
• Boredom in childhood: positive and negative effect on cognitive abilities.
• Evaluating the values of affirmation intervention in Jordt’s article.
• Intuition: the unexplored sixth sense.
• Self-esteem under psychological approaches.
• Categorization in human learning.

🌳 Environmental Studies Research Topics

Environmental studies systematize human interaction with the planet and its natural resources. Science intends to determine the ecological and environmental issues that humanity is facing now or will encounter in the future.

• Global warming : human responsibility or inevitable natural phenomenon?
• The increasing environmental sustainability in the UK.
• Earthquakes, wildfires, and landslides are our new reality.
• Canadian political and environmental security.
• How does the environment define the design of human settlements and dwellings?
• Environmental economics issues and policies.
• Should humanity prevent animal extinction, or is it a natural process?
• Population growth and human activities on environment.
• Why are we so calm about global warming ?
• Paper recycling and its main benefits.
• The timeline of ecological crises in world history.
• Analyze the climate change in your homeland.
• How does global warming affect the wildlife?
• Deepwater Horizon oil spill: the affected area and natural consequences .
• Analyze the efficiency of the US laws protecting the environment.
• Consequences of disposal of medical waste on environment.
• The relationship between land use and biodiversity reduction.

🧫 Biotech Topics

As the name suggests, biotechnology is the interlink between biology and technology. It offers a vast area for experimentation and intelligence. Biotechnology is essential for students studying life sciences: medicine, pharmacy, and ecology.

• Analyze various evapotranspiration ways and suggest a project that could resolve the water shortage in Africa.
• Genetic engineering: the various viewpoints.
• Use of molasses in ethanol production .
• Biochemical aspects of anti-cancer measures.
• Growth and practical use of marine enzymes.
• The embryonic stem cell research.
• Enhancement and evolutionary change of microorganisms through biotechnology.
• Storage systems for renewable energy: the factor of a new technological revolution.
• Ethics of using stem cells for tissue regeneration .
• Renewable energy technologies promote the economy in villages.
• Effects of intercropping oat and lentil on the overall yield on harvest.
• Genetic enhancement of plants to withstand drought.
• Animal testing ban: counterargument and rebuttal.
• Nanotechnological isolation of DNA.

🦹 Gender Studies Topics

Gender studies examine the possibility of shifting gender roles and their impact on a person’s life. It explores family relationships, motherhood, alternative lifestyles, sexual orientations, power distribution between genders, and gender representation in art and business.

• Benevolent sexism : do men have to protect women?
• Gender differences in military negotiations.
• Intimate partner femicide, its causes, and social consequences.
• Ethnic and gender diversity issues in policing.
• Gamergate and the history of sexism in computer games.
• Political quotas and increasing representation of women.
• Female genital cutting: ancient rites persist.
• Does gender have an effect on emotional memory?
• The invisibility of women in the scientific world.
• Polysexual people : a variant of the norm?
• Gender-neutral parenting and its implications.
• Gender influence on deviant acts.
• The gendering of vision: you see what you are ready to perceive.
• The meanings of different sexual behavior.
• Equal play, equal pay: the gender pay gap issue.
• Economic opportunities for men and women generate inequality.

🤖 Artificial Intelligence Research Paper Topics

AI projects cover an extensive scope of disciplines and industries. It is a universal method that usually incorporates big data. AI is a self-learning instrument, and its efficiency improves each time it resolves a problem.

• E-Learning in the academic industry.
• AI and prediction of stock prices and currency rates.
• Virtualization, cloud computing, and security.
• Customer recommendation systems that get smarter with each new client.
• Security of e-government analysis.
• Artificial intelligence as a science-based fortunetelling.
• Recognition of emotions in public places as a crime prevention method .
• Will chatbots ever replace customer support specialists?
• E-government service in United Arab Emirates .
• The future of voice-based virtual assistants in our everyday life.
• AI in headhunting and CV analysis .
• Identification of irrelevant information and text shortening.
• Brief description of the robotic surgery .
• AI-enhanced heart disease research.
• Cloud computing in large corporations.

🕵️ Forensic Science Research Paper Topics

Forensic science is one of the crucial elements of contemporary crime-solving. Although its results are often non-conclusive, they offer an insight into the crime circumstances and limit the list of suspects.

• Approaches to uncovering and analysis of physical evidence.
• Criminal profiling in forensic study .
• The limitations of forensic science and probability of false results.
• The history of identifying the criminals: what was before fingerprints?
• Forensic psychology. juvenile court code in Georgia .
• Determining the merits and value of the pieces of evidence.
• Forensic accounting and fraud investigation .
• The false image of forensic science was created by the mass media.
• Forensic nursing in legal proceedings.
• Computer forensics: crime investigation .
• Computer-aided forensic psychology and its application.
• Forensic DNA profiling, facts on DNA mistakes .
• Methods of collecting biological evidence on the scene.
• Forensic science in archaeology : skeletal remains.
• Color analysis of digital images: cases of application.

🚊 Urban Studies Research Topics

Urban studies explore the history of city architecture, its development perspectives, and ways to improve the convenience of living in such a city. It helps us to range human values and needs, predicting their change in the future.

• Living urban spaces that promote safety and identity tracking.
• Urban sprawl as an environmental issue .
• The influence of consumer culture on the urban picture of London.
• Urban problems: environmental pollution .
• Is urbanization compatible with living in harmony with nature?
• Landscape vs. urbanism: can they be combined, or do they exclude each other?
• Urban renewal and highways: intergovernmental relations programs .
• Automobile dependency dictates city design.
• Analyze the most cost-effective projects of pedestrian overpasses .
• How can we plan urban development for future decades?
• Urban violence: a case study .
• Measures to combat unsafe behaviors of drivers.
• Is it efficient to use public capital for the construction of municipal buildings?
• Protection of city boundaries: is agglomeration inevitable?

🏳️‍🌈 LGBT Research Paper Topics

LGBT or sexual diversity studies focus on gender identity and sexuality issues. The science analyzes the social perception of LGBT+ people, their security, culture, and interaction. It combines sociology, biology, psychology, psychiatry, philosophy, sexology, and several other humanitarian sciences.

• Non-binary or transgender identity: what is the difference?
• Psychological adaptation in male partners of gay men with prostate cancer .
• The history of lesbianism: evolution and natural causes.
• Cultural norm vs. LGBT: historical timeline.
• Homosexual relationships in the online media .
• Challenges faced by LGBT people and ways to overcome them.
• Male perspective: double standards toward gays and lesbians.
• Childhood in an LGBT family : is it different?
• Homosexuality issues among the military in the modern world.
• Gay or lesbian domestic violence .
• LGBT teenagers: how could we make their life easier?
• Homosexuality in the Bible and its interpretation.
• Equal rights for homosexual people .
• Why should bisexuality be considered an identity?

The topics above open a small part of the research opportunities in cross-disciplinary areas. For a more comprehensive list of interdisciplinary research topics and new ideas, visit the Individualized & Interdisciplinary Studies Program; the University of Connecticut or Interdisciplinary Studies; Frances Willson Thompson Library | University of Michigan-Flint website.

❓ Fun Research Questions

• How do viral internet challenges influence social behavior among teenagers?
• How has online dating transformed traditional relationship dynamics?
• What are the physiological and psychological effects of ASMR on stress reduction?
• In what ways has esports culture challenged and reshaped traditional sports culture?
• How do algorithmic music recommendations shape individual music preferences?
• What drives the public’s fascination with true crime documentaries?
• What are the effects of laughter on stress reduction and overall well-being?
• What are the cognitive effects of playing video games on memory and problem-solving skills?
• How does the act of giving and receiving compliments impact self-esteem?
• How does storytelling impact children’s cognitive development and empathy skills?
• How do scent and aroma influence mood and overall psychological well-being?
• How does participation in team sports impact social skills and leadership abilities in teenagers?
• How do leisure activities such as gardening or cooking contribute to overall life satisfaction and happiness?
• What are the emotional responses to different types of music genres?
• What role does nostalgia play in the appeal of vintage fashion, particularly among younger generations?

😜 Fun Research Paper Topics

• How memes shape humor and communication.
• The effects of doodling during meetings on information retention.
• The effects of chewing gum shape on concentration levels.
• The benefits of laughter yoga on physical and mental health.
• The cognitive basis of superstitions and belief in luck.
• The psychological implications of talking to yourself in the third person.
• The relationship between music and memory.
• The psychology of procrastination and motivational factors behind delayed tasks.
• The effects of positive affirmations on self-confidence and goal achievement.
• The effects of reading fictional novels on real-life problem-solving abilities.
• How traveling solo influences personal growth and identity development.
• The impact of wearing mismatched socks on decision-making skills.
• The psychological implications of collecting Funko Pop figures.
• The relationship between horoscope compatibility and relationship success.
• The effects of using emojis in professional email communication.

🛑 Research Paper Topics to Avoid

Although it might seem that you can write a research paper literally about anything, here’s a warning. We don’t recommend writing papers on specific topics and formats.

Here are issues to avoid:

🙅‍♀️ Personal stories

You cannot write a research paper about yourself . By definition, a research paper requires you to do research using available sources.

🙅‍♂️ Unique information

If you use non-typical facts, explain why they are relevant to your research. In any case, remember to describe exclusive data, at least general statistics background.

🙅‍♀️ Topics with no available information

You cannot write a research paper on a topic with no available data. Check if you can access the sources while selecting the research question.

🙅‍♂️ Too narrow topics

Following the previous point, too narrow topics are usually too complicated to research. You will struggle with finding relevant information.

🙅‍♀️ Too broad issues

A large amount of data hinders in-depth research. An impressive paper requires precision, which you can achieve by setting the limits of the subject area.

🙅‍♂️ Topics that do not pass the “so what” test

If you can ask “so what” after reading the topic, it is a weak one. It will not engage the reader’s attention.

🙅‍♀️ Research questions with no simple answer

There is a common misbelief that research should be complicated. Start with an assumption that your paper will confirm or disprove.

Some students avoid controversial topics, such as the death penalty or abortions, for fear of offending someone. Remember that research papers are not about your opinion. They are about facts and logical reasoning.

454 topics above were meant to demonstrate that paper writing can be fun.

All you need to do – is choose a catchy and exciting topic.

If this list wasn’t enough for you, we have other topic compilations that might be helpful.

• Cause and Effect Essay Topics
• Argumentative Essay Topics
• Problem Solution Essay Topics for College Students
• Awesome Sociology Topics & Questions
• Unique Business Research Topics
• Hottest Ecology Essay Topics to Write about

This is it.

Good luck with your writing 🍀

414 Proposal Essay Topics for Projects, Research, & Proposal Arguments

725 research proposal topics & title ideas in education, psychology, business, & more.

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101 random fun facts that will blow your mind

Our collection of the best interesting trivia covers animals, biology, geography, space and much more.

Photo credit: Getty

Toby Saunders

Tom Howarth

If you’re looking to impress your friends, kids and family with random fun facts, and weird and wonderful trivia, you've come to the right place. Below you can find 101 interesting facts that will reshape how you see our world – and far far beyond.

So, buckle up and prepare to amuse children, impress (or annoy) your co-workers, dazzle your dinner party guests, and have your own mind blown with our best collection of extraordinary and fun tidbits.

With random facts about everything from animals, space, geography, science, health, biology and much more, welcome to our odyssey of oddities.

101 of the best random fun facts

• A cloud weighs around a million tonnes . A cloud typically has a volume of around 1km 3 and a density of around 1.003kg per m 3 – that's a density that’s around 0.4 per cent lower than the air surrounding it ( this is how they are able to float ).
• Giraffes are 30 times more likely to get hit by lightning than people . True, there are only five well-documented fatal lightning strikes on giraffes between 1996 and 2010. But due to the population of the species being just 140,000 during this time, it makes for about 0.003 lightning deaths per thousand giraffes each year. This is 30 times the equivalent fatality rate for humans.
• Identical twins don’t have the same fingerprints . You can’t blame your crimes on your twin, after all. This is because environmental factors during development in the womb (umbilical cord length, position in the womb, and the rate of finger growth) impact your fingerprint.
• Earth’s rotation is changing speed . It's actually slowing . This means that, on average, the length of a day increases by around 1.8 seconds per century. 600 million years ago a day lasted just 21 hours.
• Your brain is constantly eating itself . This process is called phagocytosis , where cells envelop and consume smaller cells or molecules to remove them from the system. Don’t worry! Phagocytosis isn't harmful, but actually helps preserve your grey matter.
• The largest piece of fossilised dinosaur poo discovered is over 30cm long and over two litres in volume . Believed to be a Tyrannosaurus rex turd , the fossilised dung (also named a 'coprolite') is helping scientists better understand what the dinosaur ate.
• The Universe's average colou r is called 'Cosmic latte' . In a 2002 study, astronomers found that the light coming from galaxies averaged into a beige colour that’s close to white.
• Animals can experience time differently from humans . To smaller animals, the world around them moves more slowly compared to humans. Salamanders and lizards, for example, experience time more slowly than cats and dogs. This is because the perception of time depends on how quickly the brain can process incoming information.
• Water might not be wet . This is because most scientists define wetness as a liquid’s ability to maintain contact with a solid surface, meaning that water itself is not wet , but can make other objects wet.
• A chicken once lived for 18 months without a head . Mike the chicken's incredible feat was recorded back in the 1940s in the USA . He survived as his jugular vein and most of his brainstem were left mostly intact, ensuring just enough brain function remained for survival. In the majority of cases, a headless chicken dies in a matter of minutes.
• All the world’s bacteria stacked on top of each other would stretch for 10 billion light-years . Together, Earth's 0.001mm-long microbes could wrap around the Milky Way over 20,000 times.
• Wearing a tie can reduce blood flow to the brain by 7.5 per cent . A study in 2018 found that wearing a necktie can reduce the blood flow to your brain by up to 7.5 per cent, which can make you feel dizzy, nauseous, and cause headaches. They can also increase the pressure in your eyes if on too tight and are great at carrying germs.
• The fear of long words is called Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia . The 36-letter word was first used by the Roman poet Horace in the first century BCE to criticise those writers with an unreasonable penchant for long words. It was American poet Aimee Nezheukumatathil, possibly afraid of their own surname, who coined the term how we know it in 2000.
• The world’s oldest dog lived to 29.5 years old . While the median age a dog reaches tends to be about 10-15 years , one Australian cattle dog, ‘Bluey’, survived to the ripe old age of 29.5.
• The world’s oldest cat lived to 38 years and three days old . Creme Puff was the oldest cat to ever live .
• The Sun makes a sound but we can't hear it . In the form of pressure waves, the Sun does make a sound . The wavelength of the pressure waves from the Sun is measured in hundreds of miles, however, meaning they are far beyond the range of human hearing.
• Mount Everest isn't the tallest mountain on Earth . Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa in Hawaii, the twin volcanoes, are taller than Mount Everest due to 4.2km of their heights being submerged underwater. The twin volcanoes measure a staggering 10.2km in total, compared to Everest’s paltry 4.6km.
• Our solar system has a wall . The heliopause – the region of space in which solar wind isn’t hot enough to push back the wind of particles coming from distant stars – is often considered the “boundary wall” of the Solar System and interstellar space.
• Octopuses don’t actually have tentacles . They have eight limbs, but they're arms (for most species). Technically, when talking about cephalopods (octopuses, squids etc), scientists define tentacles as limbs with suckers at their end. Octopus arms have suckers down most of their length.
• Most maps of the world are wrong . On most maps, the Mercator projection – first developed in 1569 – is still used. This method is wildly inaccurate and makes Alaska appear as large as Brazil and Greenland 14 times larger than it actually is. For a map to be completely accurate, it would need to be life-size and round, not flat.
• NASA genuinely faked part of the Moon landing . While Neil Armstrong's first steps on the lunar surface were categorically not faked, the astronaut quarantine protocol when the astronauts arrived back on Earth was largely just one big show .
• Comets smell like rotten eggs . A comet smells like rotten eggs, urine, burning matches, and… almonds. Traces of hydrogen sulphide, ammonia, sulphur dioxide, and hydrogen cyanide were all found in the makeup of the comet 67P/Churyumove-Gerasimenko. Promotional postcards were even commissioned in 2016 carrying the pungent scent of a comet.
• Earth’s poles are moving . This magnetic reversal of the North and South Pole has happened 171 times in the past 71 million years. We’re overdue a flip. It could come soon , as the North Pole is moving at around 55 kilometres per year, an increase over the 15km per year up until 1990.
• You can actually die laughing . And a number of people have , typically due to intense laughter causing a heart attack or suffocation. Comedy shows should come with a warning.
• Chainsaws were first invented for childbirth . It was developed in Scotland in the late 18th Century to help aid and speed up the process of symphysiotomy (widening the pubic cartilage) and removal of disease-laden bone during childbirth. It wasn’t until the start of the 20th Century that we started using chainsaws for woodchopping.
• Ants don’t have lungs . They instead breathe through spiracles , nine or ten tiny openings, depending on the species.
• The T.rex likely had feathers . Scientists in China discovered Early Cretaceous period tyrannosaur skeletons that were covered in feathers . If the ancestors of the T. rex had feathers, the T. rex probably did, too.
• Football teams wearing red kits play better . The colour of your clothes can affect how you’re perceived by others and change how you feel. A review of football matches in the last 55 years, for example, showed that teams wearing a red kit consistently played better in home matches than teams in any other colour.
• Wind turbines kill between 10,000 and 100,000 birds each year in the UK . Interestingly, painting one of the blades of a wind turbine black can reduce bird deaths by 70 per cent .
• Snails have teeth . Between 1,000 and 12,000 teeth, to be precise. They aren’t like ours , though, so don’t be thinking about snails with ridiculous toothy grins. You’ll find the snail's tiny 'teeth' all over its file-like tongue.
• Sound can be minus decibels . The quietest place on Earth is Microsoft’s anechoic chamber in Redmond, WA, USA, at -20.6 decibels. These anechoic chambers are built out of heavy concrete and brick and are mounted on springs to stop vibrations from getting in through the floor.
• A horse normally has more than one horsepower . A study in 1993 showed that the maximum power a horse can produce is 18,000W, around 24 horsepower.
• Your signature could reveal personality traits . A study in 2016 purports that among men, a larger signature correlates with higher social bravado and, among women, a bigger signature correlates with narcissistic traits.
• One in 18 people have a third nipple . Known as polythelia , the third nipple is caused by a mutation in inactive genes.
• Bananas are radioactive . Due to being rich in potassium, every banana is actually slightly radioactive thanks to containing the natural isotope potassium-40. Interestingly, your body contains around 16mg of potassium-40, meaning you’re around 280 times more radioactive than a banana already. Any excess potassium-40 you gain from a banana is excreted out within a few hours.
• There’s no such thing as a straight line . Zoom in close enough to anything and you’ll spot irregularities. Even a laser light beam is slightly curved.
• Deaf people are known to use sign language in their sleep . A case study of a 71-year-old man with rapid eye movement disorder and a severe hearing impairment showed him using fluent sign language in his sleep , with researchers able to get an idea of what he was dreaming about thanks to those signs.
• Finland is the happiest country on Earth. According to the World Happiness Report, it has been for six years in a row . It’s not really surprising, given that Finland is the home of Santa Claus, reindeer and one sauna for every 1.59 people.
• Hippos can’t swim . Hippos really do have big bones, so big and dense, in fact, that they’re barely buoyant at all. They don’t swim and instead perform a slow-motion gallop on the riverbed or on the sea floor. In fact, hippos can even sleep underwater , thanks to a built-in reflex that allows them to bob up, take a breath, and sink back down without waking.
• The Moon looks upside down in the Southern Hemisphere . Compared to the Northern Hemisphere, anyway. This means that the ‘Man in the Moon’ is upside down in the Southern Hemisphere and looks more like a rabbit .
• You can yo-yo in space. In 2012, NASA astronaut Don Pettit took a yo-yo on board the International Space Station and demonstrated several tricks. It works because a yo-yo mainly relies on the laws of conservation of angular momentum to perform tricks, which, provided you keep the string taut, apply in microgravity too.
• Not only plants photosynthesise. Algae (which are not plants) and some other organisms – including sea slugs and pea aphids – contain chlorophyll and can also take sunlight and turn it into an energy source.
• You can be heavily pregnant and not realise . Cryptic pregnancies aren’t that uncommon , with 1 in 500 not recognised until at least halfway through and 1 in 2,500 not known until labour starts.
• Bacteria on your skin cause your itches. Specifically, bacteria known as Staphylococcus aureus can release a chemical that activates a protein in our nerves . This sends a signal from our skin to our brains, which our brain perceives as an itch.
• Starfish don’t have bodies. Along with other echinoderms (think sea urchins and sand dollars), their entire bodies are technically classed as heads . 
• Somebody has been constipated for 45 days . In 2013, an unfortunate Indian woman had to undergo surgical removal of a faecal mass as large as a football .
• You travel 2.5 million km a day around the Sun without realising . The Earth’s orbit travels around 2.5 million kilometres with respect to the Sun’s centre , and around 19 million km with respect to the centre of the Milky Way.
• Fish form orderly queues in emergencies. When evacuating through narrow spaces in sketchy situations, schools of neon tetra fish queue so that they don’t collide or clog up the line. Scientists interpreted this behaviour as showing that fish can respect social rules even in emergency situations, unlike us humans. 
• There are more bacterial cells in your body than human cells . The average human is around 56 per cent bacteria. This was discovered in a 2016 study and is far less than the earlier estimates of 90 per cent. As bacteria are so light, however, by weight, each person is over 99.7 per cent human.
• Most ginger cats are male . There are roughly three ginger male cats to one ginger female . This is because the ginger gene is found on the X chromosome, meaning female cats would require two copies of the gene to become ginger whilst males only need one.
• Your nails grow faster in hot summer . This is probably due to increased blood supply to the fingertips . It could also be because you’re less stressed while on holiday so less likely to gnaw away at ‘em.
• Insects can fly up to 3.25km above sea level, at least . Alpine bumblebees have been found living as high up as 3.25km above sea level and could even fly in lab conditions that replicate the air density and oxygen levels at 9km – that's just higher than Mount Everest.
• There’s a planet mostly made from diamond . Called 55 Cancri e , it's around twice the size of Earth and some 40 light-years away from us within the Cancer constellation.
• Animals can be allergic to humans . Animals can be allergic to our dead skin cells – dander. These allergic reactions can be just like ours, too, including breathing difficulties and skin irritation.
• Being bored is actually a 'high arousal state' physiologically . This is because when you're bored your heart rate increases .
• Platypuses sweat milk . This is because it doesn't have teats. Milk appears as sweat on a platypus, but it's an aquatic mammal so it doesn't actually sweat at all .
• LEGO bricks withstand compression better than concrete . An ordinary plastic LEGO brick is able to support the weight of 375,000 other bricks before it fails. This, theoretically, would let you build a tower nearing 3.5km in height. Scaling this up to house-size bricks, however, would cost far too much .
• Martial artists who smile before the start of a match are more likely to lose . This could be as a smile can convey fear or submissiveness .
• It's almost impossible to get too much sugar from fresh fruit . While the sugar in fruit is mostly fructose and glucose (fructose is what's converted into fat in your body), you can't get too much sugar from fresh fruit . Fresh fruit contains a lot of fibre and water which slows down your digestion and makes you feel full.
• You don't like the sound of your own voice because of the bones in your head . This may be because the bones in our head make our voice sound deeper .
• A rainbow on Venus is called a glory . Appearing as a series of coloured concentric rings, these are caused by the interference of light waves within droplets , rather than the reflection, refraction and dispersion of light that makes a rainbow.
• Protons look like peanuts, rugby balls, bagels, and spheres . Protons come in all different shapes and sizes , with their appearance changing based on the speed of smaller particles within them: Quarks.
• Mirrors facing each other don't produce infinite reflections . Each reflection will be darker than the last and eventually fade into invisibility . Mirrors absorb a fraction of the energy of the light striking them. The total number of reflections mirrors can produce? A few hundred.
• There might be a cure for 'evil' . Well, a cure for psychopathy, anyway. Psychologists argue that aspects of psychopathy can be 'cured' by cognitive behavioural therapy , which is said to reduce violent offences by those with the condition. Preliminary research suggests that computer-based cognitive training could help a psychopath experience empathy and regret, too.
• All mammals get goosebumps . When your hair stands on end, tiny muscles contract at each hair's base which distorts the skin to create goosebumps. This process is called piloerection and is present in all mammals . Hair or fur is used to trap an insulating air layer.
• Football players spit so much because exercise increases the amount of protein in saliva . When you exercise, the amount of protein secreted into the saliva increases. A protein mucus named MUC5B makes your saliva thicker when you're exercising which makes it more difficult to swallow so we tend to spit more. It may occur during exercise because we breathe through our mouths more. MUC5B could activate to stop our mouths from drying out, therefore.
• Some animals display autistic-like traits . Autistic traits in animals include a tendency toward repetitive behaviour and atypical social habits.
• The biggest butterfly in the world has a 31cm wingspan . It belongs to the Queen Alexandra's Birdwing butterfly, which you can find in the forests of the Oro Province, in the east of Papua New Guinea.
• You remember more dreams when you sleep badly . Research suggests that if you sleep badly and wake up multiple times throughout the night you will be more likely to recall the content of any dreams you had. You are also more likely to remember a dream when woken from one.
• You could sweat when you're anxious to alert others . One theory suggests we've evolved to sweat whilst anxious to alert the brains of other people around us so they are primed for whatever it is that's making us anxious. Brain scans have revealed that when you sniff the sweat of a panic-induced person, regions of the brain that handle emotional and social signals light up. When you're anxious your sympathetic nervous system releases hormones including adrenaline, which activates your sweat glands.
• A lightning bolt is five times hotter than the surface of the Sun . The charge carried by a bolt of lightning is so intense that it has a temperature of 30,000°C (54,000°F).
• The longest anyone has held their breath underwater is over 24.5 minutes . The world record for breath-holding underwater was achieved by Croatian Budimir Šobat on 27 March 2021, who held his breath for a total of 24 minutes and 37 seconds. On average, a human can hold their breath between 30-90 seconds.
• The Moon is shrinking . But only very slightly – by about 50m (164ft) in radius over the last several hundred million years. Mysterious seismic activity, known as moonquakes, could be to blame.
• Dogs tilt their heads when you speak to them to better pinpoint familiar words . Your dog is tilting its head when you speak to it to pinpoint where noises are coming from more quickly . This is done to listen out more accurately for familiar words such as 'walkies' and helps them to better understand the tone of your voice. If a dog doesn't tilt its head that often (as those with shorter muzzles might), it's because it relies less on sound and more on sight.
• If the Earth doubled in size, trees would immediately fall over . This is because surface gravity would be doubled . It would also mean dog-size and larger animals would not be able to run without breaking a leg.
• Mercury, not Venus, is the closest planet to Earth on average . On average, Mercury is 1.04 astronomical units (AU) away from Earth compared to the 1.14 AU average distance between Earth and Venus. One AU is equal to the average distance between the Earth and the Sun. Venus still comes closest to Earth as part of its orbit around the Sun, however.
• Flamingoes aren’t born pink. They actually come into the world with grey/white feathers and only develop a pinkish hue after starting a diet of brine shrimp and blue-green algae. 
• You can smell ants . Many species of ants release strong-smelling chemicals when they’re angry, threatened or being squished. Trap-jaw ants release a chocolatey smell when annoyed, while citronella ants earn their name from the lemony odour they give off.
• People who eat whatever they want and stay slim have a slow metabolism, not fast . A skinny person tends to have less muscle mass than others, meaning their basal metabolic rate (BMR) is lower than those of a high muscle mass – this gives them a slow metabolism, not a fast one .
• Earth is 4.54 billion years old . Using radiometric dating, scientists have discovered that the Earth is 4.54 billion years old (give or take 50 million years). This makes our planet half the age of the Milky Way Galaxy (11-13 billion years old) and around a third of the age of the Universe (10-15 billion years old).
• Electrons might live forever . Scientists have estimated the minimum lifetime of the electron is about 6.6 × 1028 years – this is 66,000 ‘yottayears’. Since this is about 5 quintillion times the age of the Universe, even if electrons don’t live forever, they may as well do!
• Beavers don't actually live in dams . Technically, beavers live in a lodge that they build behind a dam, within a deep pool of water.
• The average dinosaur lifespan was surprisingly small. The Tyrannosaurus rex , for example, reached full size between 16-22 years old and lived up until 27-33 . The largest dinosaurs such as the Brontosaurus and Diplodocus tended to live up to between 39-53 years old, maybe reaching the heights of 70.
• Someone left a family photo on the Moon. When Apollo 16 astronaut Charles Duke landed on the Moon in 1972, he decided to leave behind a photo of him, his two sons and his wife. The photo remains on the Moon to this day. 
• It rains methane on Saturn’s largest moon. Titan is the only moon in our Solar System with a dense atmosphere and the only body except Earth with liquid rivers, lakes and seas fed by rainfall. This rainfall isn’t water, though; it's liquid methane.
• Giraffes hum to communicate with each other. It’s thought that the low-frequency humming could be a form of ‘contact call’ between individuals who have been separated from their herd, helping them to find each other in the dark. Some researchers think they sleep talk too.
• Glass sponges can live for 15,000 years. This makes them one of the longest-living organisms on Earth . The immortal jellyfish, however, could theoretically live forever (but scientists aren’t sure)
• You have a 50 per cent chance of sharing a birthday with a friend. In any group of 23 people, two people will share a birthday , according to the maths. To find the probability of everyone in the group having a unique birthday, multiply all 23 probabilities together, giving 0.493. So the probability of a shared birthday is 1 - 0.493 = 0.507, or 50.7 per cent.
• Murder rates rise in summer. Ever feel angry or in a bad mood when the weather is hot? Well, you’re not alone. Violent crime goes up in hotter weather, and in the US, murder rates reportedly rise by 2.7 per cent over the summer.
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Geologists discover rocks with the oldest evidence yet of Earth’s magnetic field

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Geologists at MIT and Oxford University have uncovered ancient rocks in Greenland that bear the oldest remnants of Earth’s early magnetic field.

The rocks appear to be exceptionally pristine, having preserved their properties for billions of years. The researchers determined that the rocks are about 3.7 billion years old and retain signatures of a magnetic field with a strength of at least 15 microtesla. The ancient field is similar in magnitude to the Earth’s magnetic field today.

The open-access findings, appearing today in the Journal of Geophysical Research , represent some of the earliest evidence of a magnetic field surrounding the Earth. The results potentially extend the age of the Earth’s magnetic field by hundreds of millions of years, and may shed light on the planet’s early conditions that helped life take hold.

“The magnetic field is, in theory, one of the reasons we think Earth is really unique as a habitable planet,” says Claire Nichols, a former MIT postdoc who is now an associate professor of the geology of planetary processes at Oxford University. “It’s thought our magnetic field protects us from harmful radiation from space, and also helps us to have oceans and atmospheres that can be stable for long periods of time.”

Previous studies have shown evidence for a magnetic field on Earth that is at least 3.5 billion years old. The new study is extending the magnetic field’s lifetime by another 200 million years.

“That’s important because that’s the time when we think life was emerging,” says Benjamin Weiss, the Robert R. Shrock Professor of Planetary Sciences in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). “If the Earth’s magnetic field was around a few hundred million years earlier, it could have played a critical role in making the planet habitable.”

Nichols and Weiss are co-authors of the new study, which also includes Craig Martin and Athena Eyster at MIT, Adam Maloof at Princeton University, and additional colleagues from institutions including Tufts University and the University of Colorado at Boulder.

A slow churn

Today, the Earth’s magnetic field is powered by its molten iron core, which slowly churns up electric currents in a self-generating “dynamo.” The resulting magnetic field extends out and around the planet like a protective bubble. Scientists suspect that, early in its evolution, the Earth was able to foster life, in part due to an early magnetic field that was strong enough to retain a life-sustaining atmosphere and simultaneously shield the planet from damaging solar radiation.

Exactly how early and robust this magnetic shield was is up for debate, though there has been evidence dating its existence to about 3.5 billion years ago.

“We wanted to see if we could extend this record back beyond 3.5 billion years and nail down how strong that early field was,” Nichols says.

In 2018, as a postdoc working in Weiss’ lab at the time, Nichols and her team set off on an expedition to the Isua Supracrustal Belt, a 20-mile stretch of exposed rock formations surrounded by towering ice sheets in the southwest of Greenland. There, scientists have discovered the oldest preserved rocks on Earth, which have been extensively studied in hopes of answering a slew of scientific questions about Earth’s ancient conditions.

For Nichols and Weiss, the objective was to find rocks that still held signatures of the Earth’s magnetic field when the rocks first formed. Rocks form through many millions of years, as grains of sediment and minerals accumulate and are progressively packed and buried under subsequent deposition over time. Any magnetic minerals such as iron-oxides that are in the deposits follow the pull of the Earth’s magnetic field as they form. This collective orientation, and the imprint of the magnetic field, are preserved in the rocks.

However, this preserved magnetic field can be scrambled and completely erased if the rocks subsequently undergo extreme thermal or aqueous events such as hydrothermal activity or plate tectonics that can pressurize and crush up these deposits. Determining the age of a magnetic field in ancient rocks has therefore been a highly contested area of study.

To get to rocks that were hopefully preserved and unaltered since their original deposition, the team sampled from rock formations in the Isua Supracrustal Belt, a remote location that was only accessible by helicopter.

“It’s about 150 kilometers away from the capital city, and you get helicoptered in, right up against the ice sheet,” Nichols says. “Here, you have the world’s oldest rocks essentially, surrounded by this dramatic expression of the ice age. It’s a really spectacular place.”

Dynamic history

The team returned to MIT with whole rock samples of banded iron formations — a rock type that appears as stripes of iron-rich and silica-rich rock. The iron-oxide minerals found in these rocks can act as tiny magnets that orient with any external magnetic field. Given their composition, the researchers suspect the rocks were originally formed in primordial oceans prior to the rise in atmospheric oxygen around 2.5 billion years ago.

“Back when there wasn’t oxygen in the atmosphere, iron didn’t oxidize so easily, so it was in solution in the oceans until it reached a critical concentration, when it precipitated out,” Nichols explains. “So, it’s basically a result of iron raining out of the oceans and depositing on the seafloor.”

“They’re very beautiful, weird rocks that don’t look like anything that forms on Earth today,” Weiss adds.

Previous studies had used uranium-lead dating to determine the age of the iron oxides in these rock samples. The ratio of uranium to lead (U-Pb) gives scientists an estimate of a rock’s age. This analysis found that some of the magnetized minerals were likely about 3.7 billion years old. The MIT team, in collaboration with researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, showed in a paper published last year that the U-Pb age also dates the age of the magnetic record in these minerals.

The researchers then set out to determine whether the ancient rocks preserved magnetic field from that far back, and how strong that field might have been.

“The samples we think are best and have that very old signature, we then demagnetize in the lab, in steps. We apply a laboratory field that we know the strength of, and we remagnetize the rocks in steps, so you can compare the gradient of the demagnetization to the gradient of the lab magnetization. That gradient tells you how strong the ancient field was,” Nichols explains.

Through this careful process of remagnetization, the team concluded that the rocks likely harbored an ancient, 3.7-billion-year-old magnetic field, with a magnitude of at least 15 microtesla. Today, Earth’s magnetic field measures around 30 microtesla.

“It’s half the strength, but the same order of magnitude,” Nichols says. “The fact that it’s similar in strength as today’s field implies whatever is driving Earth’s magnetic field has not changed massively in power over billions of years.”

The team’s experiments also showed that the rocks retained the ancient field, despite having undergone two subsequent thermal events. Any extreme thermal event, such as a tectonic shake-up of the subsurface or hydrothermal eruptions, could potentially heat up and erase a rock’s magnetic field. But the team found that the iron in their samples likely oriented, then crystallized, 3.7 billion years ago, in some initial, extreme thermal event. Around 2.8 billion years ago, and then again at 1.5 billion years ago, the rocks may have been reheated, but not to the extreme temperatures that would have scrambled their magnetization.

“The rocks that the team has studied have experienced quite a bit during their long geological journey on our planet,” says Annique van der Boon, a planetary science researcher at the University of Oslo who was not involved in the study. “The authors have done a lot of work on constraining which geological events have affected the rocks at different times.” 

“The team have taken their time to deliver a very thorough study of these complex rocks, which do not give up their secrets easily,” says Andy Biggin, professor of geomagnetism at the University of Liverpool, who did not contribute to the study. “These new results tell us that the Earth’s magnetic field was alive and well 3.7 billion years ago. Knowing it was there and strong contributes a significant boundary constraint on the early Earth’s environment.”

The results also raise questions about how the ancient Earth could have powered such a robust magnetic field. While today’s field is powered by crystallization of the solid iron inner core, it’s thought that the inner core had not yet formed so early in the planet’s evolution.

“It seems like evidence for whatever was generating a magnetic field back then was a different power source from what we have today,” Weiss says. “And we care about Earth because there’s life here, but it’s also a touchstone for understanding other terrestrial planets. It suggests planets throughout the galaxy probably have lots of ways of powering a magnetic field, which is important for the question of habitability elsewhere.”

This research was supported, in part, by the Simons Foundation.

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10 of the weirdest experiments of 2021

Brains grown in petri dishes, self-replicating zombies and the invention of otherworldly time crystals.

Every year, scientists undertake some truly baffling experiments, and 2021 was no exception. From growing mini-brains with their own eyes in petri dishes to reanimating 24,000-year-old self-replicating zombies from the Siberian permafrost, here are the absolute weirdest scientific experiments of the year.

Growing miniature human brains with their own eyes

In August, a group of scientists made news that was equal parts fascinating and horrifying when they announced they had successfully lab-grown a tiny human brain with its own pair of eyes. They made the Cronenberg-esque mini brain, called an organoid, by transforming stem cells into neural tissue, then stimulating the cells with chemical signals to form tiny rudimentary "optic cups" filled with light-sensitive cells. 

Thankfully for our collective sanity and for the mini-brains themselves, the tiny organoids don't have nearly enough neural density to be conscious — so they won't be asking themselves anytime soon how they awakened as a lost pair of eyes sliding around a petri dish. They are, however, incredibly useful constructs for studying brain development and potentially creating cures for retinal disorders that cause blindness — something that the researchers want to study. 

Read more: Lab-made mini brains grow their own sets of 'eyes'

Finding that crows understand the concept of zero

If the Cronenburg body-horror of the last entry didn't move you, this year also saw scientists reveal an experiment more in line with Hitchcock's classic horror film "The Birds" — proving that crows were smart enough to understand the concept of zero. The concept of zero, ostensibly developed by human societies somewhere in the fifth century A.D., requires abstract thinking. So it came as quite a surprise when a June paper in The Journal of Neuroscience revealed that crows not only picked zero as distinct from other numbers, but also associated it more readily with the number one than with higher numbers.

Scans of the birds' brain activity during the experiments showed that crows have specially tuned neurons for understanding the null number, but what they use those brain cells for (besides potentially plotting to take over the world, of course) is a mystery. The scientists were amazed that both human and crow brains can compute zero even though we shared our last common ancestor with birds well before the extinction of the dinosaurs; this shows that evolution takes multiple routes to create brains with the same higher-level functions.

Read more: Crows understand the 'concept of zero' (despite their bird brains)

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Figuring out why brazil nuts rise to the top of the bag

April saw researchers finally finding the answer to one of humanity's most pressing questions: Why do Brazil nuts rise to the top of the bag? The nutty mystery was resolved by shaking a mixture of peanuts and Brazil nuts, with the Brazil nuts placed at the bottom, and taking a 3D X-ray scan of the bag after each shake. It turned out that successive shakes eventually moved the larger nuts into a vertical orientation, after which every shake forced them upwards. The scientists believe their research could help engineers design better ways to prevent size segregation from occurring in other mixtures — something that, while vitally important for bags of nuts, could have essential applications in medicine and construction. 

Read more: 'Brazil nut puzzle' cracked by researchers

Creating a mutant "daddy shortlegs"

By switching off certain genes in the daddy longlegs , scientists created a stunted "daddy shortlegs" version — but why? By shortening the famous arachnid's legs, the researchers hoped to reveal the secrets behind its body plan as well as its unique method of locomotion: walking with three pairs of legs and waving the longest pair about to feel its way around. 

After the gene tweak, the legs of the stunted daddy shortlegs had not only changed in size, but also in shape; they morphed into short food-manipulating appendages called pedipalps. This offered the scientists a glimpse back in time at the kinds of creatures that daddy longlegs could have evolved from 400 million years ago. And this isn't the last mutant arachnid the scientists want to create; they also plan to mutate spider fangs to glean similar insights into their evolution.

Read more: Mutant 'daddy shortlegs' created in a lab

Turning water into a shiny golden metal

From early antiquity all the way to the 17th century, alchemists were obsessed with the philosopher's stone: a mythical substance with the power to transmute lead into gold . In July, scientists reported an experiment that looked a little like the fabled process: for just a few fleeting seconds, they were able to transform water into a shiny, golden metal. The researchers achieved this by mixing the water with sodium and potassium — metals which donate their extra electrons to the water, and therefore make the water's electrons wander freely, rendering it metallic. The briefly metallic water they created could provide scientists with some key insights into the highly-pressurized hearts of planets, where water could be squished so intensely that this process occurs naturally.

Read more: Scientists transform water into shiny, golden metal

Inventing an otherworldly time crystal

In July, researchers working with Google revealed that they had created a time crystal inside the heart of the tech giant's quantum computer, Sycamore. The crystal was a completely new phase of matter that the researchers claimed was able to evade the second law of thermodynamics , which dictates that entropy, or the disorder of a system, must always increase. Unlike other systems, which see their entropy increase over time, the time crystal's entropy did not increase no matter how many times it was pulsed with a laser. The truly remarkable thing about the weird quantum crystals is that they are the first objects to break a fundamental symmetry of the universe, called discrete time-translation symmetry. Scientists are hoping to use the otherworldly crystals to test the boundaries of quantum mechanics — the strange rules that govern the world of the very small. 

Read more: Otherworldly 'time crystal' made inside Google quantum computer could change physics forever

Reviving 24,000-year-old zombies from Russian permafrost

If you were to find a group of zombies from the Pleistocene epoch frozen inside Siberian permafrost, reviving and cloning them is probably not high on your agenda. However, that's exactly what scientists described in a June paper published in the journal Current Biology . Thankfully, these zombies aren't the shambling, fictitious brain-eaters popularized by George Romero, but are instead tiny multicellular organisms called bdelloid rotifers. Once thawed, the tiny creatures began reproducing asexually through a process called parthenogenesis, creating perfect clones of themselves. Remarkably, analysis of the soil around the creatures showed that they had been frozen for 24,000 years, and they had survived by putting themselves inside a protective stasis called cryptobiosis. Scientists are hoping to study this clever trick to better understand cryopreservation and how it could be adapted for humans. 

Read more: 24,000-year-old 'zombies' revived and cloned from Arctic permafrost

Drilling the deepest ocean borehole ever in the Pacific Ocean

In May, scientists working off the coast of Japan used a long, thin drill called a giant piston corer to drill a 5 mile (8,000 meter) hole to the bottom of the Japan Trench. The scientists then extracted a 120-foot-long (37 m) sediment core from the bottom of the sea, hauling it all the way back up to their ship. The researchers wanted to examine the sediment core because they were searching for clues into the region's earthquake history — the drill site is located very close to the epicenter of the magnitude-9.1 Tohoku-oki earthquake. The 2011 quake caused an enormous tsunami that smashed into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and caused a devastating meltdown. 

Read more: Scientists just dug the deepest ocean hole in history

Releasing a 'Russian doll' set of stomach-bursting parasites

A July study published in the journal Molecular Biology revealed that an already weird past study had produced even weirder unintended consequences. Decades ago, the Finnish scientist Ilkka Hanski introduced the Glanville fritillary butterfly onto the remote island of Sottunga, planning to study how a population of one species placed inside a harsh habitat could survive. Little did he know, the butterflies harbored a species of stomach-bursting parasitic wasp, and those wasps also carried their own, smaller, stomach-bursting hyperparasite — itself a parasitic wasp. Once the butterflies were released on Sottunga, the wasps erupted, spreading across the island with their hosts. This experiment provided later scientists with not only a fascinating ecological study, but also a clear warning that we must understand the ecological webs that form around endangered species before introducing them into new environments. 

Read more: 'Russian doll' set of stomach-bursting parasites released inside butterfly on remote Finnish island

Growing magic mushrooms in the blood through an ill-advised injection

Okay, so this one wasn't done by a scientist, but it's by far one of the weirdest amatuer experiments we've heard this year. A January study in the Journal of the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry revealed that a man who had brewed a "magic mushroom" tea and injected it into his body ended up in the emergency room with the fungus growing in his blood. After injecting the psilocybin tea, the man, who had hoped to relieve symptoms of bipolar disorder and opioid dependence, quickly became lethargic, his skin turned yellow and he started vomiting blood. The man survived, but needed to take antibiotics and antifungal drugs to remove the psychoactive fungus from his bloodstream. He also had to be put onto a respirator. A growing body of research indicates that psilocybin, the psychoactive compound found in magic mushrooms, could be a promising treatment for depression , anxiety and substance abuse — but only if taken safely. 

Read more: 'Magic mushrooms' grow in man's blood after injection with shroom tea

Originally published on Live Science.

Ben Turner is a U.K. based staff writer at Live Science. He covers physics and astronomy, among other topics like tech and climate change. He graduated from University College London with a degree in particle physics before training as a journalist. When he's not writing, Ben enjoys reading literature, playing the guitar and embarrassing himself with chess.

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Research investigates radio emission of the rotating radio transient RRAT J1854+0306

by Tomasz Nowakowski , Phys.org

Using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), Chinese astronomers have investigated radio emission from a rotating radio transient known as RRAT J1854+0306. Results of the study, published April 15 on the preprint server arXiv , shed more light on the properties of this transient.

Pulsars are highly magnetized, rotating neutron stars emitting a beam of electromagnetic radiation. They are usually detected in the form of short bursts of radio emission ; however, some of them are also observed via optical, X-ray and gamma-ray telescopes.

Rotating radio transients (RRATs) are a subclass of pulsars characterized by sporadic emission. The first objects of this type were identified in 2006 as sporadically appearing dispersed pulses, with frequencies varying from several minutes to several hours. However, the nature of these transients is still unclear. In general, it is assumed that they are ordinary pulsars that experience strong pulses.

So far, only slightly more than 100 RRATs have been found. Therefore, astronomers are interested in studying them in detail in order to improve our knowledge about their still largely unknown nature.

Discovered in 2009, RRAT J1854+0306 has a spin period of 4.56 seconds and dispersion measure of 192.4 pc/cm 3 . It exhibits occasional strong pulses and is among the strongest RRATs, which makes it possible to explore its emission details.

A team of astronomers led by Qi Guo of the Hebei Normal University in China conducted highly sensitive observations of RRAT J1854+0306 with the aim of investigating its polarized emission. For this purpose, they employed the central beam of FAST's 19-beam receiver with a frequency range of 1000 to 1500 MHz, which was divided into 2,048 channels.

The observations found that the emission from RRAT J1854+0306 is dominated by nulls with a nulling fraction of about 53.2%, which is interspaced by narrow (less than 1 degree) and weak (less than 0.5 mJy) pulses with occasional wide and intense bursts. It appears that individual pulses showcase diverse profile morphology, exhibiting single, double and multiple peaks.

According to the study, the pulses of RRAT J1854+0306 exhibit diverse polarization behaviors. Their degree of linear polarization can reach 100% for some pulses, and their circular polarization exhibits various senses and variation.

"These features are related to the density distribution of relativistic particles and their emission processes and/or caused by the propagation effects. For some pulses, the position angles depart a lot from the average one, which might be caused by emission generated from different plasma conditions of the magnetosphere," the authors of the paper explained.

All in all, based on the collected data, the researchers concluded that the behavior of polarized emission of RRAT J1854+0306 indicates that its emission originates from a magnetosphere similar to those of normal pulsars. This could have implications for the overall understanding of rotating radio transients, as the finding suggests that RRATs may have the same physical origins as normal pulsars.

Journal information: arXiv

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Discovering cancers of epigenetic origin without DNA mutation

A research team including scientists from the CNRS 1 has discovered that cancer, one of the leading causes of death worldwide, can be caused entirely by epigenetic changes 2 , in other words, changes that contribute to how gene expression is regulated, and partly explain why, despite an identical genome, an individual develops very different cells (neurons, skin cells, etc.).

While studies have already described the influence of these processes in the development of cancer, this is the first time that scientists have demonstrated that genetic mutations are not essential for the onset of the disease. This discovery forces us to reconsider the theory that, for more than 30 years, has assumed that cancers are predominantly genetic diseases caused necessarily by DNA mutations that accumulate at the genome level 3 .

To show this, the research team focused on epigenetic factors that can alter gene activity. By causing epigenetic dysregulation 4 in Drosophila, and then restoring the cells to their normal state, scientists have found that part of the genome remains dysfunctional. This phenomenon induces a tumour state that is maintained autonomously and continues to progress, keeping in memory the cancerous status of these cells even though the signal that caused it has been restored.

These conclusions, to be published on April 24, 2024, in the journal Nature, open up new therapeutic avenues in oncology.

1 -- Working at the Institut de Génétique Humaine (CNRS/Université de Montpellier).

2 -- Epigenetics is the study of the mechanisms that allow the inheritance of different gene expression profiles in the presence of the same DNA sequence.

3 -- The genome is defined as the set of genetic material -- and therefore the entire DNA sequence -- contained in a cell or organism.

4 -- Scientists focused on epigenetic factors called Polycomb proteins, which regulate the expression of key genes, and are dysregulated in many human cancers. When these proteins are experimentally removed, the activity of the targeted genes is disrupted: some can activate their own transcription and self-maintain. When Polycomb proteins are integrated back into the cell, a subset of the genes are resistant to the proteins and remain dysregulated through cell division, allowing the cancer to continue its progression.

• Human Biology
• Epigenetics
• Personalized Medicine
• Brain Tumor
• Gene Therapy
• Prostate cancer
• Gene therapy
• Malignant melanoma
• Ovarian cancer
• Somatic cell

Story Source:

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• V. Parreno, V. Loubiere, B. Schuettengruber, L. Fritsch, C. C. Rawal, M. Erokhin, B. Győrffy, D. Normanno, M. Di Stefano, J. Moreaux, N. L. Butova, I. Chiolo, D. Chetverina, A.-M. Martinez, G. Cavalli. Transient loss of Polycomb components induces an epigenetic cancer fate . Nature , 2024; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07328-w

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Nebraska on-farm research network releases 2023 research results publication.

The Nebraska On-Farm Research Network (NOFRN) is placing research results into producers’ hands through its 2023 Research Results book — a publication that highlights findings from approximately 80 on-farm research studies conducted in Nebraska during the 2023 growing season.

"The research results in this book equip producers with the tools to harness local insights, enabling them to make well-informed decisions that optimize both productivity and profitability on their own operation" said Taylor Lexow, NOFRN Project Coordinator.

Studies in the 2023 Research Results book cover various topics, including crop production, fertility and soil management, non-traditional products, cover crops, crop protection and equipment. The 2023 publication, along with publications from previous years, is now available on the NOFRN’s website.

With planting season upon us, now is the time to dig deeper into agricultural practices and determine what best fits the needs of every operation. Download a copy of the 2023 Research Results book today from the NOFRN site .

For more information about the 2023 Research Results book or the NOFRN, please contact Taylor Lexow at 402-245-2222 .

About the NOFRN

The Nebraska On-Farm Research Network (NOFRN) is a program of Nebraska Extension that partners with farmers to evaluate agricultural practices and provide innovative solutions that impact farm productivity, profitability and sustainability. It is supported by the Nebraska Corn Board, the Nebraska Corn Growers Association, the Nebraska Soybean Checkoff and the Nebraska Dry Bean Commission. To learn more about the NOFRN, visit its website .

2023 Research Results Book

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