Improbable Research

Sometimes blond, sometimes blue University of Stockholm linguist Mikael Parkvall has just joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS).

Herman van Goubergen produced a downloadable, fold-togetherable origami gecko and fly on a wall. Here is a photo.

Howtoons are toons that tell how to do some particular thing — usually some spectacular technical kind of thing. One such thing can be seen in this AVI video of a little girl riding a hovercraft. The video was taken during the preparations for one of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremonies.

Here’s a quick quiz, which we offer free for teachers who like to stimulate thought. Use it to do that very thing with your students.

THE QUIZ QUESTION: Read the following explanation from a November 7, 2005 press release issued by Stanford University. How many different alternative explanations can you devise in sixty (60) seconds? Here is the "official" explanation:

GENDER DIFFERENCES ARE A LAUGHING MATTER, STANFORD BRAIN STUDY SHOWS

… After analyzing the data, the researchers found that men and women share
much of the same humor-response system; both use to a
similar degree the part of the brain responsible for semantic knowledge
and juxtaposition and the part involved in language processing. But they
also found that some brain regions were activated more in women. These
included the left prefrontal cortex, suggesting a greater emphasis on
language and executive processing in women, and the nucleus accumbens,
or NAcc, which is part of the mesolimbic reward center….

Drug companies, some of them, have discovered a pool of well-schooled, well-groomed, cheerful people to hire as sales representatives, according to a November 28 report by Stephanie Saul in The New York Times:

Anyone who has seen the parade of sales representatives through a
doctor’s waiting room has probably noticed that they are frequently
female and invariably good looking. Less recognized is the fact that a
good many are recruited from the cheerleading ranks.

Known for
their athleticism, postage-stamp skirts and persuasive enthusiasm,
cheerleaders have many qualities the drug industry looks for in its
sales force. Some keep their pompoms active, like Onya, a sculptured
former college cheerleader. On Sundays she works the sidelines for the
Washington Redskins. But weekdays find her urging gynecologists to
prescribe a treatment for vaginal yeast infection….

David Robert Leffler’s "A VEDIC APPROACH TO MILITARY DEFENSE: Reducing Collective Stress Through The Field Effects of Consciousness" is what might be termed a Theory of Pretty Much Everything.

Dr. Leffler is an impressively prolific writer.

Chemist Joanna Slusky of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA and Claudio Salim of Paris, France have just joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS).

Today we received a crank letter that sets the standard for how to write a good one. Like every science-related journal, the Annals of Improbable Research receives a sufficiency of crank letters. Some are good crank letters, others are not so good. This particular crank letter is seven pages long, and handwritten. Honoring the tradition of the genre, its middle portion is irrelevant.  Here is how this letter begins:

Gentlemen,
Attached idea came to me while thinking about how one might explain that the equation….

And here is how it ends:

Maybe you are interested in this subject too — maybe not.

Enjoy!
Anonymous

There was no address, either in the letter or on the envelope that contained it. That absence of contact information, combined with the explicit (and sufficient) signature of "Anonymous," is a mark of thoughtfulness and kindness on the part of the person who wrote the letter. We honor his or her anonymity, and hope other cranks will emulate it.

The annual Ig Nobel issue of the magazine is at the printer now. Here is an advance look at one of the articles — the photo-spread general introduction to the goings-on at the 2005 ceremony.

The magazine contains lots more photos, info, and what might best be described as "stuff." If you don’t often see the Annals of Improbable Research itself, we do hope you will subscribe, and maybe also give a gift subscription to a loved or hated one.

(NOTE: If you want your subscription to begin with this special Ig Nobel issue — just write that clearly on your order form!)

Everyone, or at least every news editor, loves an equation. Here is the latest entry in our thick file of equations that made the news. A November 25, 2005 BBC News single-equation-laden report begins:

‘Beer goggles’ effect explained

Scientists believe they have worked out a formula to calculate how "beer goggles" affect a drinker’s vision.

The drink-fuelled phenomenon is said to transform supposedly "ugly" people into beauties - until the morning after.

Researchers at Manchester University say while beauty is in the eye of the beer-holder, the amount of alcohol consumed is not the only factor….

It follows, at an almost-discreet distance, their August 18, 2002 equation-free report that begins:

‘Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder’

Beauty may be in the eye of the beer holder rather than the beholder, according to a new study by scientists.

Academics in Scotland have found proof of the so-called "beer goggles" effect, following a study involving 80 students.

The researchers wanted to measure the infamous phenomenon by which members of the opposite sex become more attractive more alcohol is consumed.

They found that men and women who have drunk a moderate amount of alcohol find the faces of the opposite sex 25% more attractive than their sober counterparts..

(Thanks to investigator Francesca Jackson for bringing this to our attention.)

The November 26, 2005 issue of BMJ describes a drug-free treatment for depression which, were one to judge solely by the lead sentence, sounds startlingly simple:

Dolphins can help alleviate symptoms of depression after two weeks of treatment.

That issue of BMJ includes a detailed study written the experimenters, Christian Antonioli and Michael A Reveley. The dolphin duo is  based at the University of Leicester Medical School.

[NOTE: This study appears to be another good candidate for the Gillinov standard.]

Today (the day after Thanksgiving) is the day for the annual Ig Nobel broadcast on National Public Radio’s "Science Friday with Ira Flatow" program. It’s a specially edited (down to an hour) recording of the 2005 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony.

Listen on an NPR station or on the web — for details consult the Science Friday web site.

If you’d like to read the words to the mini-opera "The Count of Infinity" (which was performed as part of the ceremony), then please do.

The random frog generator is, presumably, intended for people who wish to see randomly selected photographs of frogs.

Investigator Tina Helpern writes:

After reading about that study where two professors got some students to masturbate, I read an article in the November 2005 issue of Fast Company magazine about one of them — Dan Ariely. Fast Company says that Professor Ariely "is spending a year off from MIT figuring out how to quantify the value
of simplicity at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study."

"Once again, someone has build a better mousetrap, and obtained a patent (U.S. # 6,739,086) for it, this coming on the heels of his earlier (U.S. #5720126) mousetrap patent. This time the someone is Keith Lamb of Gruver, Texas. Details — including an engineering diagram and a photograph of the device, are reported by the November 21, 2003 issue of  The Amarillo Globe News:

Mousetrap requests overwhelm Gruver man
By GREG CUNNINGHAM
The Amarillo Globe-News

GRUVER - Maybe the world is going to beat a path to Keith Lamb’s door after all.

The 80-year old Gruver inventor and retired farmer has been inundated with phone calls since an article in Tuesday’s Amarillo Globe-News informed the area about his new, improved mousetrap.

"Boy, I’ll tell you what," Lamb said. "This has been a big shock to me. I’ve probably got 50 phone calls and probably sold another 30 traps, just like that."

Lamb said he got calls from as far away as Dallas and Austin asking about his new mousetrap….