Swans on Tea

Bionic bra: Victoria’s circuit
An attempt to harness, as it were, the kinetic energy stored in the ones that bounce.
It turns out that the physics of breast motion has been studied closely for the last two decades by a gamut of researchers – most of them women.
Formally, perhaps.
Lawson explains that breasts move on three different axes: [...]

THE ITCH by Atul Gawande from the New Yorker
Fascinating article, albeit with occasionally disturbing imagery, on itching and phantom pain.
Now various phenomena became clear. Itch, it turns out, is indeed inseparable from the desire to scratch. It can be triggered chemically (by the saliva injected when a mosquito bites, say) or mechanically (from the mosquito’s [...]

I was out sick a few days last week (you may have noticed a fever-induced tinge to my ramblings) and was reassured today (back at work) to find out that others had been ill last week as well. Being sick when all around you are well raises the question of what, exactly, is wrong [...]

I stumbled across a dead body couple of posts over at Quantum Moxie on the thermodynamics of post-mortem cooling of a body: Mistakes were made . . . and the followup, Post-mortem body cooling in variable environments.
[T]he standard post-mortem body cooling method used to estimate time of death (TOD) does not take into [...]

A doctor tells a man, “You’re fat. Lose some weight.”
The man says, “I want a second opinion.”
“OK, you’re ugly, too.”
According to the International Journal of Obesity, we’re fat because we’re stuffing our faces, and not so much because we’re sitting on our duffs (Ha! Speak for yourself. I’m a double-threat.)
(from the journal)
Conclusion: As [...]

Why is striking woo so easy on the internet?
My knee has been bothering me, and the knee brace I have used in the past (which AFAICT stabilizes against some lateral movement) wasn’t helping me. The problem appears to be consistent with patellar tendinitis, aka jumper’s knee (and yes, mister fancy-pants word-check software, thatisthe correct [...]

The physics of weight loss is quite simple. It’s the first law of thermodynamics: Energy is conserved. Our body stores energy as fat, which has mass and thus weight, when we’re in the presence of gravity, as I assume we all are. Burning more calories as you consume results in an [...]

Or, the myth of “working up a good sweat”
On occasion my “private” workouts get interrupted by someone with the audacity to want to use the exercise room at the same time I do. That’s no biggie. But what bugs me is when the offendor will turn on the heat, or turn off the [...]