Health
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Background: Ramen noodles in a cup (Fig. 1) are a popular so-called “instant” meal, beloved by graduate students, programmers, and a wide variety of individuals who lack culinary pretentions. The Issue: Despite being called “instant” noodles, these noodles actually require a non-zero amount of time to eat! Part of this is due to the fact…
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Background: When people go out to restaurants in groups, it can be hard for a waiter to keep their order straight: there might be a dozen people at a table, all with slightly-different (yet easily confused) orders. The Issue: Normally, it’s easy to fix a dish that was given to the wrong person—just swap it…
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The Issue: Some people would like to drink less, but they have a hard time sticking to a small number of drinks. If only there were some sort of overcomplicated technical solution to this problem! Proposal: This “shrinking wine glass” (Figure 1) could be a solution to excessive drinking. Such a glass consists of two…
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Background: Staircases are surprisingly perilous. Most people have, at some point, attempted to step up onto a “phantom” additional top step or been surprised to encounter the ground floor a step early (Figure 1). Some commercial buildings indicate the very top and bottom of a flight of stairs with a raised pattern. However, this is…
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Background: When people travel long distances, it’s not uncommon for them to get some kind of illness upon arriving. But it seems like the locals are rarely sick at the same frequency. Why is that? Beats me! But maybe it’s because the immune systems of the local residents are already “tuned” for local conditions. Let’s…
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Background: A type of fish called the clownfish can live within the stinging tentacles of an anemone (Figure 1). Thanks to an ancient non-aggression pact, the tentacles don’t sting the clownfish. However, they do sting other animals! This is perhaps nature’s first multi-species automated home security system. Proposal: This all-natural system can be adapted to…
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The Issue: Climbing the world’s tallest mountain peaks can be hazardous for several reasons: a person could be blown off the mountain by gale-force winds, get frozen, or die due to insufficient oxygen in the low-atmospheric-pressure “death zone”—and this is before even considering the danger from disease, avalanches, other humans, and high-altitude cryptids such as…
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Background: For the vast majority of human history, a top survival concern was obtaining food. The Issue: It easy to become fat, and difficult to lose weight: “overabundance of food” is an unusual situation that was not frequently encountered in evolutionary history. However, it’s unclear how (in modern society) a person could replicate the food-acquisition…
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Background: Some restaurants serve beers in “flights”: a “sampler pack” of several small servings of a variety of different beers (Figure 1). The Issue: Strangely, very few foods are available in this format, with a few common exceptions: sliders (tiny hamburgers), charcuterie-style meats, cheese platters, and the nebulously-defined “appetizer platter.” Proposal: More foods should be…
WorstPlans: updated every Monday since July 2014! 