What’s snood with you? A Thanksgiving turkey surprise.

I had no intention of doing another “holiday post” so soon after our Halloween post, but there’s been surprising interest in one of our YouTube videos. Last year we came up with a CT-scan-based animation of a turkey head which showed the blood vessels; we then tagged the end with “Happy Thanksgiving from the Witmer Lab,” and put it up on our YouTube channel. It got a polite response from friends, racking up, ahem, just 266 views. Without giving it much thought, this year on the day before Thanksgiving I posted the YouTube vid to my Facebook wall and to the WitmerLab Facebook page. What a difference a year makes. In the succeeding four days, the video got over 6300 views, a 23-fold increase over the previous 365 days!

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Heidi Montag, Frankenstein, and WitmerLab computers: a little nip/tuck…better than new

Some things (and people) have had so much work done on them, so many parts replaced, that they become unrecognizable as their former selves. Frankenstein’s monster, reality show star Heidi Montag, comedian Joan Rivers, and my old Stratocaster come to mind…as do computers in the WitmerLab. The latest was a venerable old lab computer that went under the knife recently for not just a face lift, but a tummy tuck, lip job, nose job, chin implant, butt implant, all kinds of augmentation, and a vajazzling to make Jennifer Love Hewitt proud. We thought we’d offer you a front-row seat.

It ain't Hollywood, but WitmerLab computers routinely go under the knife to be given new life (like Frankenstein) or to be made more current, trendy, and hopefully more desirable (like Heidi...she hopes). Here's witmer10, very alive and smokin' hot after highly successful surgery.

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Exploiting dinosaurs—embracing public outreach as a mission of a research lab. Part 2: How WitmerLab does outreach

In Part 1 of this series, we explored why a research lab should take time away from their normal scholarly activities to engage the public. This post, Part 2, will look at the mechanisms the WitmerLab has used to share our research findings and approaches beyond the specialist scientific community. We participate in four basic, often-overlapping arenas: the web, the science news media, broadcast media, and in-person engagements.

Television documentaries provide wide exposure for our research. Filming at O'Bleness Memorial Hospital, Athens, OH, with Heather Rockhold (right) for an upcoming Discovery Channel documentary with Philip Currie (center). Photo by Joy Miller Upton (OBMH).

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