Improbable Research

Robert Hancock has joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists. He says:

I love this kind of thing. And drink. And vitamin C.

Simon Scott, who nominated him, adds:

He’s expecting his first child in two weeks time, by his wife. This nomination will be his enduring legacy.

His current research involves the physiology, biochemistry and molecular biology of vitamin C accumulation in blackcurrant fruit, and the physiological, biochemical and molecular characterisation of tuberisation in potato.

Robert Hancock, LFHCfS
Research Leader
Invergowrie, Dundee
Scotland, United Kingdom

(Click on the photo to see more detail.)

Peanut butter inspires its own kind of logic. So one must conclude from watching Chuck Missler explain the relationship between peanut butter and something (it is difficult for a layperson or a scientist to determine what) he calls “evolution.” Missler’s video is about two minutes long.

Chuck says he is the former Branch Chief of the Department of Guided Missiles for the U.S. Air Force.

He helped inspire the authors of our study “The Effects of Peanut Butter on the Rotation of the Earth” (and its German-language version, “Der Einfluß von Erdnußbutter auf die Erdrotation“).

Chuck is redefining religion, science, and technology, setting a standard for others to emulate.

(Thanks to investigators Al Rollins and Gert Toner for bringing Mr. Missler to our attention.)

UPDATE: Investigator Arun Gridhar writes in support of Chuck Missler’s rival, Kirk Cameron. Cameron disdains the use of peanut butter in his proofs. Cameron is a banana man.

Parul Kamdar has joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists. She says [on June 5, 2007, updating the earlier version of her entry]:

I assist the law firm of King & Spalding LLP in preparing and prosecuting patent applications directed to lighting systems. I also have experience in preparing and prosecuting patent applications directed to drilling compositions and equipment, chemical processes, biotechnology, and other mechanical and chemical technologies. I have a background in chemical engineering and experience with carpet dye recycling, transdermal drug delivery using microfabricated needles, polymer chemistry and fabrication, adipose tissue engineering, and bioreactors.

Parul Kamdar, PhD, LFHCfS
Patent Agent
King & Spalding L.L.P.
Houston, Texas, USA

(Click on the photo to see more detail.)

Smokers make poorer workers
Smokers perform worse at work than non-smokers, finds a study of US navy female service members published in Tobacco Control.

Smokers were also more likely to have a less than honourable discharge, to be demoted, to desert, and to earn less than their non-smoking colleagues, the study showed.

So says a March 28, 2007 press release about the study. The press release does not directly identify the study, the issue in which is published, or any of the scientists associated with it.

The press release does, at the end, indirectly raise some good questions. Does smoking cause people to be bad workers? Does being a bad worker cause someone to smoke? Are both of those the case? Is neither?

PS. A letter published in 1999 in that same journal carries the headline:

The United States navy attracts young women who smoke

Hopes are safer than aspirations, as regards small insects keeping their proper place. Hopes do not by themselves cause an infestation, in the head of a human being, of gnats, midges, anthomid flies, Collembola and wasps parasitic upon the flies. Aspirations can, and sometimes do. This fact dawns on anyone who reads a report called Myiasis Resulting from the Use of the Aspirator Method in the Collection of Insects, published in the journal Science in June 1954.

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

Investigator Lorenzo Stievano writes:

This is the answer we needed to students that find chemistry not enough sexy! I would like you to notice the fine detail of the equilibrium double arrows: in chemistry, all equilibria are supposed to be dynamic.

The image is from the study

“{trans-1,4-Bis[(4-pyridyl)ethenyl]benzene}(2,2′-bipyridine)ruthenium(II) Complexes and Their Supramolecular Assemblies with -Cyclodextrin,” Sergio H. Toma, et al., Inorg. Chem., 43 (11), 3521 -3527, 2004. 10.1021/ic0352250 S0020-1669(03)05225-X.

(To see an enlargement and details, click on the image).

The March issue of mini-AIR just went out. It discusses Project Cork Rot, a professor-professor error, the Foot-Smell Registry, and the tiller vibration poet. It touches on each of the following topics: orifice demarcation; pythonic flicking; tough women where;  masked chinchilla tones; and other things.

(If you would like to have mini-AIR automatically sent to your email box every month, please subscribe to it. It’s free.)

We pass on the sad news that Stefek Zaba is dead.

Two weeks ago, on March 12, at the Ig Nobel show in Bristol, Stefek sang the role of Atom, the little atom who falls in love with a beautiful woman chemist, in the mini-opera “Atom & Eve.” His performance was filled with vim, gusto, and atomic cheer.

Stefek, an engineer, worked at Hewlett-Packard for twenty years, and was, from what we hear, a beloved “character” (a word colleagues used in telling us about Stefek) of the best sort. We met Stefek only for the performance, and for a brief chat afterwards. Stefek proposed, quite insistently, to write several articles for the Annals of Improbable Research. Now we will all have to do without.

Our sympathies go out to Stefek’s family and friends.

This photo was taken by Ig Nobel Prize winner Kees Moeliker, at the performance. Stefek’s co-stars, Vicki Broderick and Ian Henderson, are visible to the left. (Click on the photo to see an enlargement.)

Shocking documentary

Joshy Joseph’s Walking Dead deals with officially ‘dead’ men in Azamgarh district, Uttar Pradesh, who are desperately trying to prove that they are not dead but are alive. They are declared dead because their relatives and family members wanted to grab their land and this is the easiest way of achieving this….

Lal Behari contested in three Parliamentary elections, one against Rajiv Gandhi in Allahabad, one against V.P. Singh and the third against another Mritak Ramdas Yadav. For his long struggle in resurrecting himself from the ‘dead’, he won the parallel Noble Prize called the Ig Nobel Prize for Peace in 2003,” adds Joseph. Lal Behari does not add Mritak to his name anymore because his individual battle is over.

So says a March 23, 2007 Screen India report. The Statesman reviewed the film favorably. But, like the living dead, it has received little attention outside India.

Tanja Gabriele Klein has joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists. She says:

As you can see here, my hair is luxuriant and flowing indeed… I hold a Master’s degree in French literature and a diploma in psychology and am currently working on my Ph.D. thesis in aggression research. Other interests include the psychology of giftedness, (meta)memory, and Theory of Mind/autism.

As to my credentials as a scientist, an overview of my publications up to now can be found here.

Tanja Gabriele Klein, M.A., LFHCfS
Pedagogical Psychology
Justus Liebig University
Giessen, Germany

(Click on the photo to see more detail.)

Where can — where should — one go for after having sex with a dead deer or unsuccessful sex with a dead horse? To the Institute for Psychological and Sexual Health in Duluth, Minnesota, according to a March 21, 2007 Associated Press report:

Man gets probation for dead deer sex

“A 20-year-old man received probation after he was convicted of having sexual contact with a dead deer. The sentence also requires Bryan James Hathaway to be evaluated as a sex offender and treated at the Institute for Psychological and Sexual Health in Duluth, Minnesota.”

There seems to be some mystery about the Institute for Psychological and Sexual Health. A Google search turns up little trace of it other than a street address.

Celebrities have been asked to check their facts before lending support to scientific research.

So says a January 3, 2007 BBC report.

The celebrities are not being asked to check their facts at other times.

(Thanks to investigator T.C. Rashad for bringing this to our attention.)

Karen D. Alfrey has joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists. Michael Croft, who nominated her, says:

Karen is a lecturer at IUPUI, the palindromic university. She is a musician and a singer and once sang the national anthem at the opening of a horse-racing track. Professionally, she is interested in biological modelling mostly involving rats, or so it says on her perhaps-slightly-out-of-date Research Interests page. Her credentials (and some of her hair) are shown on her page at IUPUI.

Karen D. Alfrey, MSEE, PhD, LFHCfS
Lecturer, Biomedical Engineering Department
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Biology
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
Indianapolis, Indiana, USA

(Click on the photo to see more detail.)

Automated breath analysis, the police officer’s best tool for identifying drunk drivers, has another use. Three Greek chemists tell all in a report called Analysis of Expired Air of Fasting Male Monks at Mount Athos.

Published in a magazine few police officers read, the Journal of Chromatography B, the study comes up with a new reason to admire monks. From a scientist’s point of view, fasting monks are a reasonable substitute for “entrapped people under the ruins of a collapsed building after an earthquake”….

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

Investigator Jim Barfield writes:
“The Good Health Natural Foods Company produces some pretty good olive oil potato chips and have recently come up with Solea Polenta Corn Chips. The back of the bag states:

Polenta can be traced back to ancient Rome, where early civilizations toasted corn over a hot fire and then ground it into a coarse meal.

Versatile and nutritious, polenta has been cherished throughout the ages for its many health benefits and complex flavors.

“Considering that corn originated in central and south America, it seems rather improbable that it could have arrived in Rome before Columbus brought it back in 1493. Polenta was made from other grains for centuries, but in ancient Rome, it sure as hell was not made from corn.

“I emailed the company, asking them to prove me wrong, but, for some reason, they have not replied.”