Mid-air collision
To learn whether air taxi passengers need worry about collisions with birds, a crash programme in Germany did some tests.
What with the complexity and danger of having actual air taxis have congress with actual birds, perfection was out of reach. So the experimenters made do, dropping artificial 鈥渂ird projectiles鈥� onto a metal plate rigged to measure the impact force.
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Aditya Devta and Isabel Metz at the German Aerospace Center and Sophie Armanini at the Technical University of Munich describe these violent encounters in a . (Thanks to reader Mason Porter for alerting us to it.)
This work was, of necessity, a rough step towards reliably answering the big question.
It encountered difficulties, starting with 鈥渋nconsistencies and lack of repeatability due to human involvement as the bird projectiles were dropped manually by hand鈥�. Future efforts, the report says, 鈥渨ill eliminate the human involvement [so as to] increase accuracy in force measurements and repeatability鈥�.
Mid-track collision
Speaking of birds-and-air-taxis-ish experiments, have you heard the one about the moose and the bullet train? Yong Peng and his colleagues at Central South University in China have begun to examine what might happen when these heavyweights meet at high speed, in the paper 鈥溾��.
The question involves more than the initial, simple impact. The scientists mention two not-unlikely complications: 鈥淎 moose lying on a track after a crash may increase the risk of train derailment鈥� and 鈥渁 moose thrown into the air during a collision may also hit and damage the pantograph, which prevents a train from running鈥�.
The investigation so far has been done with finite-element mathematical simulations and some not-very-heavyweight experiments. The experiments used fresh beef 鈥� beef from cows, not moose 鈥� muscle tissue and a kind of stress-strain testing machine known as a 鈥渟plit-Hopkinson pressure bar鈥�.
The scientists report that, essentially, the impact force 鈥渄epends on the contact area between the train and the moose鈥�.
As to those complications: 鈥淭he moose would be pushed away by the V-shaped locomotive and would not cause a derailment, and the height of the moose thrown into the air cannot reach the height of the pantograph, which would prevent damage to the pantograph of a bullet train.鈥�
The study suggests that bigger things are approaching: 鈥渙nly the scenario of a train impacting a moose across a track at a speed of 110 km/h was simulated, which cannot fully reflect the risks of train-moose collisions. Thus, more speeds and postures are needed to enhance our study, which is ongoing.鈥�
Feeling saucy
Slowly, sweetly, new sauce insights pour in from readers. These pertain to the off-label usage of ketchup and other sticky foodstuffs to make electrocardiogram (ECG) electrodes work well (Feedback, 25 May).
Brian Reffin Smith adds a musical note: 鈥淵ou don鈥檛 need human skin to test whether electrodes work better with ketchup than with official gel. I have a device which applies a low voltage to plant leaves (or anything else) and then translates the varying current into MIDI signals, sent to a computer or synthesiser to trigger sounds鈥� Anyway, statistically insignificant but anecdotally and culinarily interesting tests reveal that a reduced salt ketchup applied between ECG electrodes and a chilli plant鈥檚 leaf produced a quite high E, whilst the proper gel on a neighbouring leaf played G. I thought this might help, but now I don鈥檛 think so.鈥�
Dave Hardy contributes a practicality claim: 鈥淢y GP in the early 1970s said that the gel was ridiculously expensive, but strawberry jam worked just as well. I don鈥檛 know if he鈥檇 experimented with different options or just used what he had to hand. (This was in the Falkland Islands.)鈥�
Star deaths stars
It鈥檚 surprising how few people are hailed as being a 鈥渃elebrity pathologist鈥�, isn鈥檛 it? The Associated Press brings of the death of one of them: 鈥淒r. Cyril Wecht, celebrity pathologist who argued more than 1 shooter killed JFK, dies at 93鈥�.
One of the first celebrity pathologists, Bernard Spilsbury (1877-1947), helped establish London鈥檚 reputation as the go-to place for entertainingly clever murder mystery investigations.
The Royal College of Physicians , postmortemly, that Spilsbury鈥檚 career was quite theatrical: 鈥淭he famous Crippen trial, on which he worked with [William] Wilcox to show that the murder was due to hyoscine hydrobromide, brought him the first blaze of publicity which he deplored in every succeeding trial at which he appeared, and this was undoubtedly why he assumed an austere and frigid manner to all but his intimate friends.鈥�
Spilsbury鈥檚 manner was nothing to sniff at. One aspect of postmortem work 鈥� the dreadful stink of decaying dead bodies 鈥� deters sensitive people from entering the profession. Spilsbury wasn鈥檛 a sensitive person in that respect. His peers marvelled at what an politely said was a 鈥渄efective sense of smell鈥�.
Marc Abrahams created the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony and聽co-founded聽the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Earlier, he worked on unusual ways to use computers. His website is聽
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