Improbable Research

Josep-Lluís Marzo-Lázaro is a member of the Grup de Broadband Comunications.

His photograph indicates that he is especially well suited to work in broadband. See the photo here.

The company is named Analtech. Their slogan, displayed on their web site, is “Welcome to Analtech. The logical choice.”

We would be interested in hearing from a professional logician who can supply a formal mathematical proof of this.

A fear is (apparently) laid to rest: Does using chopsticks cause disease? The answer is in this report:

“Use of chopsticks for eating and Helicobacter pylori infection,” W. K. Leung., J. Y. Sung., T. K. W. Ling., K. L. K. Siu and A. F. B. Cheng, Dig Dis Sci 44, 1999, pp. 1173-6.

See co-author Siu’s resume here.

Archaeologists know that the ground they examine can be literally rather shifty. The reasons for this can be disturbing, beastly and even childish….

So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian. Read it here.

Tornado Fighters is here to be a protection against tornados

So says their web site, which is here.

(Thanks to Tom Gill for bringing this to our attention.)

J.J. Schmitz, R.A. Pribush, R.P. Walson, Chemistry Department, Butler University, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA, “A Forensic-Chemical Analysis of Duct Tape”

Such was the most-publicized presentation at the SCANNING 2004 Conference, which was held on April 28, 2004. For bare details, see here.

The July/August 2004 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research includes an all-purpose press release. We have put it online:

“A Template for Scientific Press Releases and Science News Articles,” by Scott A. Sandford, Jason P. Dworkin and Max P. Bernstein.

Investigator Genevieve Reynolds sends in support for the notion that, sometimes, death stinks. See here.

Shopping trolleys are a window, however small, to our inner being….

So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian. It describes the latest research from 2003 Ig Nobel Literature Prize winner John Trinkaus. Read the column here.

The world’s vast collection of research journals contain many reports about positive results that turn out, later, to be simply not so. A small number of journals work hard to publish results that are, from the beginning, apparently not so. Here are two such journals.

The Journal of Negative Results website is here.

The Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis website is here. (Thanks to investigator Angela Close for bringing it to our attention.)

Here is an experiment that needs doing. Obtain a cat and a computer. Install PawSense (the Ig Nobel Prize-winning software that detects when a cat is using your keyboard, and locks out the keyboard), and then go to what is billed as “the world’s first website for cats,” which you can find here.

Last year’s press release about Miss Autogena’s sound mirror can be read here.

Technical details can be seen here.

A not-entirely-related picture of someone breathing into a tube can be seen here.

The winner of the TESTIS-OVARY LIMERICK COMPETITION were announced in mini-AIR 2004-08. The winner in some sense explored the research report:

The ERK MAP Kinase Cascade Mediates Tail Swelling and a Protective Response to Rectal Infection in C. elegans,” Hannah R. Nicholas and Jonathan Hodgkin, Current Biology, vol. 14, 2004, pp. 1256-61. The authors report that:

“Among the known pathogens of C. elegans is the bacterium Microbacterium nematophilum, which adheres to the nematode rectum and postanal cuticle, inducing swelling of the underlying hypodermal tissue and causing mild constipation. We find that on infection by M. nematophilum, an extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase cascade mediates tail swelling and protects C. elegans from severe constipation, which would otherwise arrest development and cause sterility.”

Here some runners up:

INVESTIGATOR VERONICA MICHAELSEN:
This abstract denies all androgyny
While debating gonadal homogeny.
All differences aside,
One truth must abide:
You need both to generate progeny.

INVESTIGATOR STUART BARROW:
Short gives us words to the wise
for beasts of each shape and each size.
It now seems so clear:
The Mitochondria
Are why humans dangle their Ys.

INVESTIGATOR ELENA LONERGAN:
If the testis and ovary thwart
Your attempts to examine and sort;
And you find you’re confused
About how they are used,
Simply speak to the wise R.V. Short.

INVESTIGATOR HEATHER HEWITT:
A researcher called R.V. Short
Wrote this breakthrough gonad report.
The differences? Note ‘em:
One’s found in a scrotum,
The other is further up norte.

INVESTIGATOR SCOTT DE BRESTIAN:
Ovarium testisque sunt
Dissimilis et differunt.
Ad inguenem ictus?
Mulier est invictus!
At viri nimis sentiunt.

Vincent Dethier loved flies with a fervour that is rare. He distilled this love into a book called To Know a Fly….

So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian. Read it here.

Mark this date: 16 September 2004, 4:00 pm. Larry Martin and I are doing a public lecture in the Center for East Asian Studies Wine and Cheese series (no, I am not making this up), at the Ecumenical Christian Ministries building, on Godzilla.

So writes investigator J.E. Simmons. He is not making it up. Read details here.