Smile
Can you measure humour? Yes, say mathematicians at the University of Alberta. Nonsense words seem to be funnier the lower their entropy, which means the more unpredictable they are. This emerged from a study among students, who cracked up at words like snunkoople or quingle and barely smiled at octeste or heashes. The students got credits for participating. Now that’s a laugh.
Q
American researchers at North State University have made a new material: Q carbon. It’s harder than diamond, it’s magnetic and it lights up if you apply energy. So far they can only produce it in extremely thin layers. But the diamond industry should can gird its loins. Q diamonds are a man’s best friend.
Bl
ue
All blue-eyed people are descended from the same ancestor. Who lived six to ten thousand years ago, concluded Danish researchers after studying ‘blue-eyed DNA’ from all around the world. They’ve all got a mutation at exactly the same place in their DNA, which ensures that they do not make much melanin and are therefore blue-eyed. Where that ancestor lived is not known.