Improbable Research

Doughnuts fuelled Steve Penfold’s rise to a professorship….

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

There are many ways to peel an egg. It is analogous, in that way at least, to skinning a cat.

The hydraulic method is satisfying, as demonstrated in a quick video.

Another video, made by a different person, shows a more traditional way to peel an egg quickly. Yet another video, done by this same entity, shows how to peel a raw egg.

(Thanks to investigators Fred and Moxie Frederickson for bringing at least one of these videos to our attention.)

A major advantage of this approach over the more traditional survey based news stories, is that the results tend to be not only dramatic and newsworthy but also visually exciting, giving the project a far greater chance of obtaining television coverage….

If you would be like to discover how we could help provide the *science* behind your next set of headlines telephone Dr David Lewis.

So write Dr. Lewis and his associates at The Mind Lab.

Indisputably, they get results. Here is an April 14, 2007 report from the Kazakhstan news purveyor Kazinform:

Dr Lewis said: “There is no doubt that chocolate beats kissing hands down when it comes to providing a long-lasting body and brain buzz.

“A buzz that, in many cases, lasted four times as long as the most passionate kiss.”

(Thanks to investigator Brenda Ulrich for bringing this to our attention.)

More than meets the tongue
The color of a drink can fool the taste buds into thinking it is sweeter

Does orange juice taste sweeter if it’s a brighter orange? A new study in the March issue of the Journal of Consumer Research finds that the color of a drink can influence how we think it tastes. In fact, the researchers found that color was more of an influence on how taste was perceived than quality or price information.

So says a February 12, 2007 press release issued by the University of Chicago Press, which published the study by JoAndrea Hoegg and Joseph W. Alba.

Who would have thought that doing too well on a test could get you in trouble?

Certainly not Tony Williams. After passing a new online test on ethics required of all state employees, the tenured professor in the English department at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale received a notice from his university ethics officer and from the state inspector general that he was not in compliance with state ethics regulations, a failure that state officials said could result in punishment that included dismissal. The reason? He had completed the test too quickly.

So says a January 23, 2007 Chronicle of Higher Education article. The Bureaucracy Club takes note.

(Thanks to investigator Donald Frazier for bringing this to our attention.)

Investigator Tim Churches writes:

You might be interested in the devilishly cute (but happy) heart logo of the newly launched open access journal, BioPsychoSocial Medicine.

It appears that this journal is an offshoot of the official organ of the Japanese Society of Psychosomatic Medicine, which according to its President is “an interdisciplinary academic society consisting mainly of physicians, gynecologists, psychiatrists, pediatricians, dermatologists, dentists, researchers of basic medical science, and psychologists.”

That society has its own web site, the home page of which features a similar but longer-tailed devilishly cute heart logo, and a canon.

Øystein and Meg recreate, in a short video, a (theoretical) incident handled by a medieval help desk.

(Thanks to investigator John Hoyland for bringing this to our attention.)

“Researchers have given little consideration to vomiting in non-human primates.” Quite so. A new report called Vomiting in Wild Bonnet Macaques points that out, and tries to remedy the deficiency.

Elizabeth Johnson, Eric Hill and Matthew Cooper published their study in the International Journal of Primatology. Johnson is at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, Georgia. Hill is at Arizona State University, and Cooper at Georgia State University.

They start with a fond look back at the work of earlier experts. The consensus view, they say, is that vomiting “is a theoretically complex behaviour that to date lacks a comprehensive explanation”.

Johnson, Hill and Cooper spent time with macaques, carefully noting when each individual animal vomited and whether it then reingested (for that is the technical term) whatever came up….

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

Digging into the life of the spot-billed duck in Japan (see my previous blog entry), I found a true ‘first’ of peculiar behaviour in this species, as published by the researchers Tetsuo Shimada, Kazuyuki Kuwabara, Saori Yamakoshi, Tomomi Shichi in Journal of Ethology 20(2), September 2002. Apparently, ducklings not only have to fear ferocious carp. Kuwabara and his colleagues write that:

“The first observations of infanticide by a precocial avian species, Spot-billed Duck (Anas poecilorhyncha), were recorded on a small pond at Yatsu tidal flat, central Japan, from May to June 2000, where six families of conspecific and one Gadwall A. strepera family, respectively, occupied territories. A female Spot-billed Duck with 11 ducklings attacked ducklings of all the other families killing eight conspecifics and three of the Gadwall.”

High breeding density (15.0 families/ha) may have increased the aggression of the mother duck, according to the authors.

Some students believe that economics lessons are necessarily dull. Here is a fairly exciting lesson about income and expenses.

The lesson was prepared by Newt Gingrich. Mr. Gingrich is a former college professor. He often stresses the importance of not going broke (his technical phrase for this is “fiscal responsibility“). The lesson is contained, implicitly, in an April 8, 2007 report in the Burlington [Vermont] Free Press:

There was a certain irony in the recent demise of the College Republicans at the University of Vermont…. When the club invited Gingrich to speak at Ira Allen Chapel on Oct. 6, 2005, he settled for an undisclosed honorarium that was apparently higher than the College Republicans could afford….

One point everyone agrees on is that there was nothing ideological about shutting down the Republican club. It was strictly a money thing.

The fee for Gingrich, a former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, was never revealed — the College Republicans said from the beginning that his contract was confidential, and Gingrich, through his press spokesman, will not say how much it was — but an educated guess is possible.

In 2005-06, the College Republicans budgeted $25,000 for speakers, according to Maggie Doran, who works in the Student Government Association’s front office. Gingrich, who rose to national prominence in Congress during the 1990s, was the only speaker the club brought in during that academic year. The UVM President’s Office contributed $2,000 toward Gingrich’s fee, as did the Student Life Office. The sum of all those funds, plus the $7,000 from the loan, comes to $38,000.

Teachers can use this as the basis for a lesson about basic concepts: income, expenses, profit and loss.

(Of course, there are many other ways to teach this lesson.)

Do men have ovaries? No. But a new study describes an ovary syndrome in men. The study is:

“Polycystic ovary syndrome in men: Stein-Leventhal syndrome revisited,” Razelle Kurzrock and Philip R Cohen, Medical Hypotheses, vol. 68, no. 3, 2007, pp. 480-3.

Engineers and administrators sometimes express contempt for administrators. However, three administrators have uncovered a dangerous engineering flaw in a new automobile — and they risked their lives to do it. The case is described in an April 7, 2007 report (with a photo) in The Detroit News:

Credit Ford Motor Co. CEO Alan Mulally with saving the leader of the free world from self-immolation.

Mulally told journalists at the New York auto show that he intervened to prevent President Bush from plugging an electrical cord into the hydrogen tank of Ford’s hydrogen-electric plug-in hybrid at the White House last week.

Photos of the critical moment imply that the discovery should be credited to US Vice President Dick Cheney, as well as to US President Bush and Ford CEO Mulally.

BACKGROUND: The common complaint, from engineers and scientists, is that too many administrators lack real knowledge about, or skills related to, the technology they oversee and champion. This new case should clarify the situation.

UPDATE: Investigator Lois Rogers writes about the value of experience: “Please note that President Bush refueled a hydrogen powered minivan on May 25, 2005. He has more experience with hydrogen fuels than most people.”

UPDATE: Several days later, administrator Mulally said that his claim was not accurate, that it was merely a case of joking, that administrator Bush did not almost, by accident, reveal a possible design flaw in the apparatus.

Blind gunmen are a big step closer to realizing their dream. Soon they may be able, legally, to “fly solo” with guns and lasers, at least in Texas. An April 5, 2007 report in the San Antonio Express says:

Blind hunter Stanley McGowen has relied on two things to help him “see” the turkeys and deer he stalks — the eyesight of his longtime hunting partner and a scope that lets his friend help him aim. House Bill 308, which the House sent to the Senate on Thursday, makes hunting easier for legally blind hunters like McGowen by allowing them to use laser sight devices, which are currently forbidden for hunting in Texas.

This killer app is a milestone in the long march to personal freedom for blind people who like to fire both guns and lasers — and do it when out all by themselves. It’s all thanks to Texas state Representative Edmund Kuempel, the big gun behind the potential new law. The news reports do not specify whether Representative Keumpel hopes to some day himself be a blind hunter.

Yes, it’s an exciting time to be a blind hunter in Texas. And soon, it may be an exciting time for anyone who goes wandering in the woods (or elsewhere).

Remarkable duck behaviour always has my full attention. When a video, taken in Japan, titled ‘baby duck feed the carp’ was posted on YouTube, I studied it carefully. That’s because there is no previous report of any duck engaged in feeding fish (in contrast to reports of  ducks feeding on fish — although that is doubted sometimes).

The duckling featuring in the short video is a so-called spotbill Anas poecilorhyncha (probably of the East-Asian subspecies zonorhyncha). My interpretation of the video differs from the general consensus. The duckling is eating some kind of dry food, maybe even specially prepared food for carps, placed on a small tray just above the surface of a pond, maybe even the site where the carps are usually fed. The duckling and its feeding table is surrounded by a dozen carps Cyprinus carpio, of the ornamental domesticated variety, called koi. Between nibbles of dry food the duckling is simply sipping water — and not feeding the carps. They are trying to get some leftovers.

Sorry Mujin Am (22), known as Ohsako. It’s a nice video, but it’s not ‘The first case of spotbilled duck Anas poecilorhynchos feeding carp Cyprinus carpio‘.

Please note: carps do feed on ducklings.

[Editor's note, in case you didn't follow the very first link: Kees Moeliker is the Ig Nobel Prize-winning author of the study "The First Case of Homosexual Necrophilia in the Mallard Anas platyrhynchos (Aves: Anatidae)" C.W. Moeliker, Deinsea, vol. 8, 2001, pp. 243-7.]

Joan of Arc’s relics exposed as forgery

…Odour analysis is a new technique for palaeopathology, but Charlier says that he hit on the idea after being struck by the variety of odours of other historical corpses. Delacourte and Duriez sniffed the relics and nine other samples of bone and hair from Charlier’s lab without being told what the samples were. They were also not allowed to confer. Both smelled hints of ‘burnt plaster’ and ‘vanilla’ in the samples from the relics.

The plaster smell was consistent with the fact that Joan of Arc was burnt on a plaster stake, not a wooden one, to make the whole macabre spectacle last longer. But vanilla is inconsistent with cremation. “Vanillin is produced during decomposition of a body,” says Charlier. “You would find it in a mummy, but not in someone who was burnt.”

So says an April 4, 2007 article in Nature. The Associated Press has a photo of Dr. Charlier holding some of the remains in a test tube.

Dr. Charlier’s research bears great, little, or no relationship to either of the following.

(1) The study “Helping Behavior Commitments in the Presence of Odors: Vanilla, Lavender, and No Odor,” by Mary Beth Grimes of Georgia Southern University.

(2) The smell jars of the Stasi:

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, many astounding revelations came to light about the Stasi, the East German secret police. One of the more bizarre activities the Stasi was found to have engaged in was the collection of Geruchsproben — smell samples — for the benefit of the East German smell hounds. The odors, collected during interrogations using a perforated metal “smell sample chair” or by breaking into people’s homes and stealing their dirty underwear, were stored in small glass jars. Many of the remaining East German smell jars are on display at the Stasi Museum in Berlin.

(Thanks to investigator Katherine Gleason for bringing Dr. Charlier to our attention. Thanks to Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society for bringing the Stasi jars to our attention.)