Small Wonders: Jan. 28, 2011

In this week’s edition: city size and happiness, pollution-detecting clothing, and the science behind the boiling-water-into-snow trick.

* Swimming in shark-infested waters? 1. Why? 2. Don’t wear a yellow swimsuit.

* “How Much Pain is Our Kid Feeling? Well, How Much Can We Afford?”

* Using Google to graph the popularity of scientific terms through the years.

Popularity of the term "Oedipus complex" from 1920 to today

* Are shrinking cities necessarily unhappy cities?

* From ScienceOnline 2011: thoughts on blogging as a woman.

* Why did the wildlife cross the newly designed bridge over the road?

* A gym that makes you pay when you skip working out.

* John Rennie will lead the revolution. (His semi-hypothetical challenge: Refrain from writing about new peer-reviewed papers until 6 months after they’ve been published.)

* If a hipster wears this pollution-detecting t-shirt, is it ironic?

* Thanks to the NRA, we have very little research on gun violence.

* TED is launching a series of short, e-book singles.

* Did you see the video where boiling water turns to snow? Here’s the science behind it.

* What is retraction for anyway?

Image: Big Think/David Berreby

The Small Wonders: Jan. 28, 2011 by Wonderland, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.