One look at Heckler & Koch's G11, there is just something weird about its design. You might think that it is a rifle that comes from a sci-fi film but its design may hold something that would make it even more potent or deadlier than anything that came out during that time.

A typical firearm uses brass cases to hold the propellent, which are then topped by the bullet. While a dependable design, and one still in use today, this brass case adds weight to an already overburdened soldier.

But the late 1960s, German designers from Heckler & Koch tried another approach. Producing a working prototype in 1974, the G11 was Germany’s attempt to combine advanced caseless ammunition with a brilliantly engineered weapon system that could increase the average infantryman’s accuracy.

West Germany would test the weapons system, as would the U.S. Army in the 1980s. In another timeline, the G11 could have been the next-generation replacement for the M16.

(Image credit: Matt Moss/Michael Stillwell)

Trying to make correlations appear among data where there is none should be considered intellectual dishonesty but as is the case, this has been happening as mainstream practice in the highest levels of academia. Only recently are statisticians cracking down on these misconducts.

Playing with data to meet the significance thresholds required for publication — known as p-hacking — is an actual thing in academia. In fact, for decades, it’s been mainstream practice, partly due to researchers’ lack of understanding of common statistical methods.

But in recent years, many academics have gone through a methodological awakening, taking a second look at their own work, in part due to heightened concern and attention over p-hacking.

Perhaps the most high-profile recent case of mining and massaging of data was that of food scientist Brian Wansink, who eventually resigned from Cornell University after being found to have committed scientific misconduct.

(Image credit: PhotoMIX-Company/Pixabay)

The American penal system has the largest prison population in the world. That could be saying something about the way law enforcement and the criminal justice system works in the US.

But to get the big picture of the composition of prison populations, the Prison Policy Initiate has collated data and presented them here.

Why does the US have the largest prison population? Who usually gets locked up in jail and why? You may be able to find the answers to these questions when you connect the dots and analyze the data.

(Image credit: Prison Policy Initiative)

A staple in much of Asian cuisine is rice. We can't live without it. Especially in East and Southeast Asia, rice is a sacred part of our dishes.

Now, Korea has a pretty interesting little-known history with white rice. And it has something to do with the Japanese occupation of the tiny peninsula in the early 1900s.

(Image credit: Bobbi Lin/Food52)

Certain sounds may trigger some negative reactions from us but for people with a condition called misophonia, seemingly ordinary sounds like chewing or coughing can be extremely uncomfortable or disturbing.

Misophonia is characterized by intense emotion like rage or fear in response to highly specific sounds, particularly ordinary sounds that other people make. The cause is unknown.

Recently, a study was conducted to assess how misophonia works.

The team looked at 20 adults with misophonia and 22 without it. They had the participants rate the unpleasantness of different sounds, including common trigger sounds like eating and breathing, universally disliked sounds like nails on a chalkboard, and neutral sounds like footsteps or a bird chirping.

The results of the test showed that both groups had similar reactions to both neutral and negative sounds. But people with misophonia rated eating and breathing as highly disturbing.

(Image credit: Meredith Rizzo/NPR)

Humans and animals both share the ability to perceive sound and music but our experience with music may be different from that of other animals.

What differentiates the human experience of music to that of, say, songbirds or dogs? There are various aspects of music that contribute to our perception and enjoyment of it which may differ from animals.

This article explores how our human musicality may have evolved or have been wired differently such that it becomes a whole other level of experience from that of animals'.

(Image credit: Papafox/Pixabay)

In preparation for the age of space commercialization, HP is leading the pack by sending a trailblazing commercial off-the-shelf server into space.

It was supposedly scheduled to return in 2018 but their ride home, a Russian capsule, wasn't able to pick them up because of a launch abort. Now, Spaceborne Computer sits stranded in space waiting to get back to Earth, hopefully in spring.

(Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)

You may have asked the same question yourself when you visited your local museum exhibiting Egyptian art, artifacts, and statues. Why are the Egyptian statues' noses broken?

Edward Bleiberg was oft asked this question when he first started in his job as a curator at the Brooklyn Museum. It's a curious observation, one that may be attributed to wear and tear or damage over time.

But as he investigated into the matter, he found that a pattern emerged among all the statues and reliefs that had been damaged or vandalized, to be more precise.

Bleiberg’s research is now the basis of the poignant exhibition “Striking Power: Iconoclasm in Ancient Egypt.”

A selection of objects from the Brooklyn Museum’s collection will travel to the Pulitzer Arts Foundation later this month under the co-direction of the latter’s associate curator, Stephanie Weissberg.

Pairing damaged statues and reliefs dating from the 25th century B.C.E. to the 1st century C.E. with intact counterparts, the show testifies to ancient Egyptian artifacts’ political and religious functions—and the entrenched culture of iconoclasm that led to their mutilation.

(Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)

China is still the most populous country in the world but India is right on its heels and may one day surpass China.

Over the course of history, various cities in the world have accommodated large populations. But it might come as a surprise what the most populous city is today.

Here, you will see which cities in the world have had the largest populations since 1500.

(Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Putting the first people on the moon was a very big achievement for NASA and it was widely celebrated the world over.

However, NASA was not alone in bringing them to the moon. Various companies collaborated with them in the effort and they did not miss on the opportunity to promote their products and services in the aftermath.

Here are some examples of the press kits collected by David Meerman Scott which has been made available online for free download.

(Image credit: Fisher/David Meerman Scott/Kottke)

One diet plan may work for some but each person may need to use different methods and approaches if they want to stay fit and healthy.

Though it is quite a popular notion that having a strict count on your calories would help you lose weight, it may be difficult to precisely count all the calories you intake every day.

Each body processes calories differently. Even for a single individual, the time of day that you eat matters. The more we probe, the more we realise that tallying calories will do little to help us control our weight or even maintain a healthy diet: the beguiling simplicity of counting calories in and calories out is dangerously flawed.

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When it's time to say goodbye to your beloved pet, you might be tempted to just dig a hole in your backyard and lay them there to rest. But this poses certain risks to other pets and the environment.

Most pets are put to sleep with an extremely concentrated anaesthetic agent, which results in a very peaceful death (hence the term euthanasia, which means “good death”).

However this drug, pentobarbital, persists in the buried body of the pet for up to a year. Any animal scavenging on the remains will be poisoned by the euthanasia solution.

(Image credit: Matt Nelson/Unsplash)

Lighthouses are usually built near the sea as its light would guide ships toward the docks. But through some circumstances, the lighthouse on top of Bidston Hill was built further inland and is the most inland lighthouse in the world.

The first pair of lighthouses went up in 1763 to guide ships through the shallow sandbanks on the mouth of the estuaries of River Dee and River Mersey as they approached the Port of Liverpool.

When one of the lower light collapsed a few years later, it was replaced by a new lighthouse further inland on Bidston Hill, almost four kilometers from the sea. The upper light at Leasowe then became the lower light.

These two light are also located 3.7 kilometers apart, making them the furthest apart of any pair of leading lights in the world.

(Image credit: Shaun Dickinson/Flickr)

You may notice that different languages have various sounds used more frequently than others and that could be caused by a variety of factors involving the human anatomy.

There are certain evolutionary features that came about by advancements in technology that paved the way for these sounds to be assimilated in one's speech and way of living.

Though linguists are divided in this regard, some researchers believe that because of processed foods, fricative sounds like "f" and "v" found their way into our lives.

(Image credit: Anna Sastre/Unsplash)

Can humans detect the Earth's weak magnetic field much like some animals, protists, and bacteria? A group of researchers seemed to have found concrete evidence that the human magnetic sense indeed exists.

In our new study, we asked 34 participants simply to sit in our testing chamber while we directly recorded electrical activity in their brains with electroencephalography (EEG).

Our modified Faraday cage included a set of 3-axis coils that let us create controlled magnetic fields of high uniformity via electric current we ran through its wires.

In the experiment, the researchers silently shifted the magnetic field and observed the EEG data. It showed that there were some magnetic field rotations which triggered brain responses.

(Image credit: Jaypee/Wikimedia Commons)