Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
Scientists working to advance the frontier of knowledge frequently also need to invent their tools along the way. Sometimes these are interesting little hacks to get a job done. Recently some researchers found ancestors of moths and butterflies older than any previously known by analyzing tiny scales found alongside ancient pollen. They needed a tool to manipulate these scales: separating them from surrounding debris, transferring them to microscope slides. The special tool was a needle tipped with a single human nostril hair.
As ancient insects were the published paper's focus, their use of nose hair tipped needle was only given a brief mention in the "Materials and Methods" section. Interviews by press quoted researchers' claim that nose hair has the right mechanical properties for the job, without further details. Not even a picture of the tool itself. What properties of insect scales made them a good match with the properties of nose hair? Was there a comprehensive evaluation of multiple types of hair for the task? Would we regret asking these questions?
Source: https://hackaday.com/2018/01/21/ancient-insect-scales-analyzed-with-help-of-nose-hair/
(Score: 3, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday January 23 2018, @09:25PM (1 child)
I remember reading about the work of Dr. van de Schootbrugge maybe a week and a half ago (before Dems shut down our government). Amazing that he found these TINY scales from 200 MILLION years ago. So inspiring, I'm going to save my nose hairs for him!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 24 2018, @01:12AM
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=18/01/12/1549229 [soylentnews.org]