Improbable Research

The January issue of mini-AIR just went out. It’s stuffed full of new professor-professors, and touches on each of the following topics: Pasta Optimization Project; Professor-Professor Quintet; Melvin Melvin search;  Tongue-shaped food; The Metrically Perfect Professor; Exhibitionists’ Progress Competition; Brain/Cocaine and Vicious Walks.(If you would like to have mini-AIR automatically sent to your email box every month, please subscribe to it. It’s free.)

Criminal gangs in Italy have found a lucrative new way of earning money - hijacking lorries containing wheels of Parmesan cheese….

To counter the thefts, producers and the Italian farmers’ union, Coldiretti, are experimenting with microchips hidden in the crusts of the cheese, which means they are more easily identifiable.

So says a December 6, 2006 Observer report.

(Thanks to investigator Mary O’Grady for bringing this to our attention.)

Vertical Integration is a business concept: combining processes, factories, or even entire companies that together constitute different stages of the manufacturing/marketing/sales process for a particular industry. Season Shot, Inc., a perhaps apocryphal company in Bloomington, Minnesota, combines some industrial elements that, traditionally, were separate. Their industry: hunting and cooking. As they explain:

Season Shot is made of tightly packed seasoning bound by a fully biodegradable food product. The seasoning is actually injected into the bird on impact seasoning the meat from the inside out. When the bird is cooked the seasoning pellets melt into the meat spreading the flavor to the entire bird.

(Thanks to investigator R. Henry Jonas for bringing this to our attention.)

Investigator Martha Parkinson writes:

Dear improbable.com owner,

As we both have an interest in helping women, I am writing to you about establishing a potential linking relationship between our two web sites.

As you publish a lot of bra related material at improbable.com, I wondered if you would be interested in exchanging links with my web site www.my-bra.com.

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Please let me know if you’d like to exchange links. As you know, exchanging links helps us all become more easily found in the search engines.

Best wishes,

Martha Parkinson
www.my-bra.com

Haggis, which is native to Scotland, can be bred and raised on a farm, if an article in the January 2007 issue of The Veterinary Record is correct. Investigator Pat Grant alerts us to the published study by haggis specialists at the University of Glasgow Veterinary School:

“Applications of Ultrasonography in the Reproductive Management of Dux magnus gentis venteris saginati,” A.M. King, L. Cromarty, C. Paterson, and J.S. Boyd, Veterinary Record, vol., no. 160, January 2007, pp. 94-6. The authors explain, more or less, that:

Dux magnus gentis venteris saginati is considered to be a Scottish delicacy; however, depleting wild stocks have resulted in attempts to farm them. Selective breeding has been successful in modifying behaviour, increasing body length, reducing hair coat and improving fank (litter) size. However, there are still significant problems associated with the terrain in which they are farmed. This article describes the use of ultrasonography in the reproductive management of this species and the introduction of new genetic material in an attempt to address these problems, with the aim of improving welfare and productivity.

Investigator David Deitsch writes:

Sure, Stan Wagon’s squared bicycle is cool.

But it cannot touch the scientific value of body-suited babes and hunks riding the Hyperbike.

How do diviners divine? How do they achieve such dependable results? Barbara Tedlock, distinguished professor of anthropology at the State University of New York at Buffalo, analysed the mystery. Her crystallised thoughts appear in a new study in the journal Anthropology of Consciousness.

Tedlock explains why other anthropologists were unwilling or unable to build what she has built - a “theory of practice for divination”….

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

Bias Seen in Bias Studies

“The ‘Faculty Bias’ Studies: Science or Propaganda,” takes eight of the recent studies on faculty politics and judges them by five general tests of social science research. Today’s study finds that the eight all come up short in adhering to research standards. The new study was sponsored by the American Federation of Teachers [AFT] and the work was conducted by John B. Lee, an education researcher…

Two of the authors whose work is criticized by the AFT took issue with the conclusions, and questioned whether the organization could fairly look at these issues.

***
So says a January 22, 2007 Chronicle of Higher Education article.

(Thanks to investigator Kristine Danowski for bringing this to our attention.)

The journal Injury alerts us to another new health menace of high-heeled shoes:

“Heely Injuries: A New Epidemic Warranting a Government Health Warning!” B. Lenehan, O. Callender, A. McIntyre, S. Boran, D. Moore, E. Fogarta and F. Dowling, Injury, January 17, 2007 [Epublication ahead of print publication]. The authors, who are at variously at the National Children’s Hospital, Tallaght, Dublin and at Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin, Dublin, Ireland, explain:

Heelys, the new craze gripping the nation, were first introduced to Ireland in 2005 having been available in the United States since 2000. Designed as “the only shoe with a removable wheel in the sole” and initially marketed among rollerbladers and skateboarders they have been adopted by children as contemporary footwear.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: From April to June 2006, all patients presenting to trauma orthopaedic services at our institutions with injuries sustained while wearing Heelys were included in this study. RESULTS: Thirty-nine patients are included in this study. The mean age was 9.1 years (range 7-13, median 9 years). Of the 39 patients referred to the orthopaedic service, 8 required admissions to hospital. One patient admitted following a head injury, required craniotomy and evacuation of an extradural haematoma.

CONCLUSION: The significance of the injuries encountered demonstrates the potentially devastating results from the use of Heelys. The public perception of safety is incorrect and manufacturers rightly recommend strongly the use of safety gear.

Boy’s voice ‘kills 400 chickens’

BEIJING, China (Reuters) — Hundreds of chickens have been found dead in east China — and a court has ruled that the cause of death was the screaming of a four-year-old boy who in turn had been scared by a barking dog, state media reported on Wednesday….

A villager was quoted as saying the little boy bent over the henhouse window, screaming for a long time, after being scared by the dog….

A court ruled the boy’s screaming was “the only unexpected abnormal sound” and that 443 chickens trampled each other to death in fear.

The boy’s father was ordered to pay 1,800 yuan ($230) in compensation to the owner of the chickens.

So says a January 24, 2007 Reuters report. Should further forensic analysis be desired, insight can be drawn from a masterful report by Graham B. Scott of Harper Adams University College:

“Effects of Short-Term Whole Body Vibration on Animals with Particular Reference to Poultry,” Graham B. Scott, World’s Poultry Science Journal, vol. 50, no. 1, March 1994, pp. 25-38.

(Thanks to investigator Mark Schreiber for alerting us to the court case.)

Stan Wagon built a bicycle that has square wheels. It gives a wonderfully smooth ride over appropriate terrain.

(Thanks to investigator Danny Lichtblau for bringing this to our attention.)

Investigator Stephen Black writes:

From the November 2006 issue of Smithsonian Magazine in which the psychologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh describes the abilities of one of her language-learning bonobos, Kanzi:

“Once, Savage-Rumbaugh says, on an outing in a forest by the Georgia State University laboratory where he was raised, Kanzi touched the symbols for ‘marshmallow’ and ‘fire.’ Given matches and marshmallows, Kanzi snapped twigs for a fire, lit them with the matches and toasted the marshmallows on a stick.”

Not so impressive. He didn’t know a single campfire song.

Suggestions for potential Ig Nobel Prize winners come from many sources. Here’s one from a January 23, 2007 editorial in the Manila Times:

EDITORIAL
Questions for Karen Hughes

MANY Filipinos look forward to meeting Karen Hughes, the US State Department undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, because this is her first visit to Manila, because they have many questions to ask her and because she heads an interesting but little-known office in America’s oldest Cabinet department. …

Our interest is in the plan [to develop] a system that would allow Washington, D.C., to monitor negative news about the United States or its leaders in newspapers, radio and television stations overseas….

Developing and carrying out a system of monitoring foreign opinion that costs millions and that creates a new bureaucracy sounds like an Ig Nobel invention.

Scientists looking at mice may have discovered why certain people are hairier than others in what could provide clues as to the reason some men go bald prematurely.

So says an August 30, 2006 Medical News Today article about Dr. Denis Headon (of Manchester University) and his work.

(Thanks to investigator Jane Kohner for bringing this to our attention.)

It is primarily designed to be read by scientists involved in the search for gravitational radiation who are curious about the outsider who spends so much time spying on them. I try to explain who I am and what I am doing.

So says Harry Collins about his pet project. (Daniel Davies and others have a thing or two to say about the project.)

(Thanks to investigator Mark Dionne for bringing this to our attention.)