2010 marked another year of offbeat science, inventions and business decisions. In many instances, we get the how and the what of these developments, but it’s the why we’re struggling to understand.

Like all serious things, the workplace, business and science are rife with strange and stupid things. In our second annual roundup of such things, we look back at some of 2010′s more offbeat developments and discoveries, which took place in offices, boardrooms, laboratories and beyond.

ODD AND UNEXPECTED INVENTIONS

1) Unwrapping Tube-Free TP — In November, Kimberly-Clark unveiled its tube-free line of toilet paper at Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club stores across the Northeast U.S., eliminating the cardboard frame on which the paper is traditionally wrapped. “No, the holes in the rolls aren’t perfectly round,” USA Today explained. “But they do fit over TP spindles and come with this promise: Even the last piece of toilet paper will be usable — without glue stuck on it.” Kimberly-Clark estimates that the 17 billion TP tubes produced annually in the U.S. alone generate 160 million lbs. of waste. The company expects the new line, released under the Scott Naturals brand, will save a significant amount of resources. It shouldn’t hurt production costs either.

2) All Aboard the Beef-Powered Train — Since spring 2010, Amtrak’s Heartland Flyer, a daily service between Oklahoma City and Fort Worth, Texas, has been running on 80 percent regular diesel and 20 percent beef-based biodiesel rather than the carbon-heavy diesel fuel on which Amtrak’s other trains (except the electric Acela Express) currently operate. Amtrak says that the cow tallow fuel (rendered cattle fat) reduces hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide emissions by 10 percent, cuts down on particulates by 15 percent and reduces sulfates by 20 percent compared with standard diesel. Popular Science noted that Amtrak’s one-year trial run draws upon a grant from the Federal Railroad Administration. At the April 2011 conclusion of the test, the impact of the biodiesel on valves and gaskets will be measured and Amtrak will collect locomotive exhaust emissions data for analysis.

3) Dining on Genetically Modified Salmon — A biotech company has created “the first genetically engineered animal for public consumption,” according to the American Council on Science and Health. AquaBounty spliced in a gene from Chinook salmon with DNA from an eel-like creature called an ocean pout. The result: AquAdvantage Atlantic salmon can grow twice as fast, making them easier to farm. “Scientists call it a ‘transgenic’ fish. The company that created it calls it ‘AquAdvantage.’ Consumer activists are calling it ‘Frankenfish,’” one news lede explained. But in 2010, despite a series of recent FDA panels finding that it does not pose a threat to human health, the company faced considerable heat from opponents who are wary of the genetically modified fish. “A government hearing on the salmon ended inconclusively, but barring any changes, the fish could be headed to market soon,” TIME Magazine said.

4) A Homemade Nuclear Reactor Grows in Brooklyn — In a “nondescript” warehouse on a “tree-lined” Brooklyn, NY, street in June, web developer Mark Suppes successfully built a functioning homemade nuclear reactor in his spare time. With hopes of solving the world energy crisis, the do-it-yourselfer reportedly became the 38th amateur physicist in the world to achieve nuclear fusion, according to BBC News. The procedure is legal and (allegedly) safe. In the fusion process, atomic nuclei are forced together at high pressure, forming larger nuclei and generating large amounts of energy. Because no nuclear material, such as uranium or plutonium, was involved, scientists say it posed no threat to neighbors and didn’t create pollution. Neighbors in Bed-Stuy, interviewed by the BBC, seemed relatively tolerant of the project.

5) Flying Car Cleared for Takeoff and Production — We’ve been waiting more than half a century for a flying car, and, in September, Massachusetts-based engineering firm Terrafugia Inc. moved forward with plans for low-volume production of its “roadable aircraft” Transition (i.e., flying car!) to begin as soon as late 2011. Transition features a cruising speed of 105 miles per hour and a range of approximately 490 miles. Its foldable wings allow it to travel on land at highway speeds. Marketed more as a plane that drives than a car that flies, although it is both, Transition completed its first successful flight in March 2009, following six months of road testing. In September, Terrafugia began setting up for low-volume production in a 19,000 sq. ft. facility in Woburn, Mass.

BIZARRE BUSINESS AND WILD WORKPLACES

6) Porky Parody and Trademark Law — In 2010, folks at the National Pork Board became upset that ThinkGeek was marketing its Canned Unicorn Meat using a slogan that slightly resembles theirs. In its 12-page cease-and-desist letter, written as if unicorn meat really exists, the quasi-governmental body of the U.S. government claimed the online retailer of all thinks geeky (and an annual producer of April Fool’s Day products) was infringing on the well-known “The Other White Meat” trademark. “It was never our intention to cause a national crisis and misguide American citizens regarding the differences between the pig and the unicorn,” Scott Kauffman, president and CEO of Geeknet, which owns ThinkGeek, said in a cheekily apologetic press release on the matter. “In fact, ThinkGeek’s canned unicorn meat is sparkly, a bit red and not approved by any government entity.”

Click image for larger view

7) Flight Attendant Becomes Folk Hero — How many working stiffs have wanted to say, “Take this job and shove it” and mean it? Last year, Steven Slater did just that, becoming something of a populist icon for many people. In August, when a flight from Pittsburgh to New York City had landed, the JetBlue flight attendant announced over the plane’s PA system that he was rudely knocked on the head with a piece of luggage by a passenger who then called him an obscenity, said he was quitting his job, deployed the evacuation slide, grabbed a beer from the beverage cart and exited the plane. JetBlue suspended the employee and later indicated that he was no longer on its payroll. Critics called it an act of reckless endangerment, while others wrote songs about him.

8) Late-Night TV Host Becomes Folk Hero — Despite having said that it would give him a year, NBC took just seven months before booting Conan O’Brien from his long-anticipated Tonight Show hosting gig to make way for Jay Leno, whose move to an earlier time slot failed. The resulting backlash and fan outcry was miserable for NBC’s network executives. For much of the public, the conflict highlighted how shortsighted, cynical and disloyal many employers are with their employees today. After legions of fans made their voices heard, O’Brien settled for a buyout and NBC was left with the Tonight Show, down in ratings for the past couple years, while O’Brien moved on to launch a new show on a separate channel. On TV, O’Brien serves as a constant reminder of how his former employer messed up not only with its employees, but also with its customers, the late-night viewers.

9) A Lesson in Rebranding — In October, leaders of one of the country’s largest clothing retailers, Gap Inc., decided it was time to redesign their iconic white-type-on-a-navy-square logo and stick the new logo on the corporate website without bothering to tell anyone about the redesign or why. Gap fans and branding experts alike were befuddled. Eventually, Gap announced the change and said it was part of the transition from “classic, American design” to “modern, sexy, cool.” Consumers didn’t like it. Ad Age explained: “Across the internet, detractors have been picking apart the new look, with the most common sentiment being that it looks like something a child created using a clip-art gallery.” Backlash erupted online, and less than a week after confirming the redesign was legit, Gap reverted to its classic logo. Of course, a brand is more than a logo, but as far as logos go, Gap’s is an icon. Rest in peace, crap Gap logo.

Click image for larger view

10) Year’s Worst String of Bad PR — BP Plc Chief Executive Tony Hayward displayed a curious lack of empathy, not to mention a propensity for public gaffes, while the Deepwater Horizon rig was spilling millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. In May, 32 days after the BP rig exploded and began gushing oil at great cost to the environment and the economy, BP Plc’s then-CEO moaned that he’d “like my life back” — after 11 people died in the drilling platform explosion that caused the spill. After further PR stumbles like taking time off to watch a yacht race, he was replaced.

WEIRD AND WACKY SCIENCE

11) If He Sounds Strong, He Probably Is — New research suggests that humans can accurately predict physical strength based on voice alone. In a study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B in June, researchers asked subjects to evaluate the upper-body strength of speakers from four distinct populations and language groups by listening to their voices. Even when unfamiliar with a speaker’s language, listeners could tell which men might be good in a physical fight. The men they judged as sounding stronger were in fact physically more formidable as measured by tests of hand grip, chest strength, shoulder strength and bicep circumference. Aaron Sell, lead author of the paper, told Discovery News that there are a few exceptions to the voice/strength connection; boxer Mike Tyson’s voice does not match well with his physical power, for instance, and there are other men who sound tough but may be scrawny. Nevertheless, such exceptions are few and far between, Sell said.

12) Good/Bad Dancing Science — In a 2010 study published in Biology Letters, researchers reportedly broke down the science behind good and bad dance moves. Evolutionary psychologist Nick Neave of Northumbria University and colleagues used advanced 3-D motion-capture technology to analyze the movements of 19 dancing men, creating computer-generated avatars. A group of women then rated the attractiveness of each of the dancers based on their movements. The researchers subsequently used “sophisticated mathematical techniques” to analyze the key features of the most attractive dancers’ movements. The most important factors to the women were not the arms or legs, but rather the speed and movement of the right knee, along with the size and variation in neck and back movements. Twitchy and repetitive moves went down terribly.

Good dance moves:

Bad dance moves:

13) Fido Physics — It’s a question that many dog owners have spent sleepless nights pondering: How fast should a wet dog rotate its body to dry its fur? We now have an answer thanks to the pioneering work of researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who filmed a number of dogs shaking their fur and used the images to measure the period of oscillation of the dogs’ skin. They then created a mathematical model of what’s going on, reasoning that the water is bound to the dog by surface tension between the liquid and the hair. When the dog shakes, centripetal forces pull the water away. So, for the water to be ejected from the fur, the centripetal force has to exceed the surface tension. They discovered that the smaller the animal, the faster it must shake to dry itself.

14) Invisible Sharks!!! — Because sharks aren’t scary enough, researchers at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium went and published a study on sharks capable of making themselves invisible to both prey and predators using light emitted from their bodies. Lead author Julien Claes explained to Discovery News that about 50 different shark species, or more than 10 percent of all known sharks, are luminous, meaning they can produce and emit light from their bodies. For the study, Claes and his team collected velvet belly lantern sharks, whose shimmer originates from light-emitting organs called photophores underneath their bodies. The researchers kept the sharks in dark water tanks, replicating conditions of their natural habitat. Immediately after being caught, most of the sharks produced a spontaneous and long-lasting luminescence, the spectrum of which closely matched that of the shark’s usual deepwater fjord home. Findings published in the Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology in May represent the first experimental tests of shark luminescence.

15) Results of Dive-Bombing the Moon — In 2009, NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) rocket blew up some of the moon in the name of science. In 2010, the journal Science published six papers about what scientists learned from the debris that was thrown into sunlight more than half a mile above the moon’s surface, including where to find water. One report explains how a scientific team led by Brown University produced the first detailed description of what lies below the surface at the moon’s poles. The soil and subsurface harbors water and an assortment of other compounds, including carbon dioxide, ammonia, free sodium and, surprisingly, silver.

Additional

Dumbest Moments in Business 2010
Fortune, Dec. 22, 2010

The 50 Best Inventions of 2010
TIME, Nov. 14, 2010

Business Blunders of the Year
BNET, Jan. 4, 2011

Top 10 Stories of 2010 Chosen by YOU!
Discovery News, December 2010