Improbable Research

Investigator Raluca Musaloiu-E. writes:

Here is a paper published in the 3rd Conference on Email and Anti-Spam CEAS 2006 July 27-28, 2006, Mountain View, California: “Sorry, I Forgot the Attachment: Email Attachment Prediction” by Mark Dredze, John Blitzer and Fernando Pereira from the Computer and Information Sciences Department at University of Pennsylvania.

I cite from their abstract:

“Everyone knows the missing attachment problem; a single missing attachment generates a wave of emails from all the recipients notifying the sender of the error. We present an attachment prediction system to aid email users in attachment management. We present a method by which an intelligent system can inform the user when an outgoing email is missing an attachment. Additionally, the system could activate an attachment recommendation system, whereby suggested attachments are offered once the system determines the user is likely to include an attachment. We present promising initial results and discuss implications of our work.”

Simon Gregory has joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists. He says:

I am currently researching the microbial ecology of constructed wetlands.

Simon Gregory, LFHCfS
Lab Technician
Aquaculture Wales Team
Department of Biological Sciences
University of Wales Swansea
Swansea, Wales, UK

(Click on the photo to see more detail.)

Bodo writes that the Hungarian people had such a high moral standard that there was no need to mention the possibility that some “unnatural” crimes existed.

So writes an anonymous bookseller at the firm Helen R. Kahn & Associates, in their Catalog 69, about the book Jurisprudentia Criminalis Secundum Praxim & Constitutiones Hungaricas in Partes Duas Divisa. Cujus Pars Prior, Jus & Processum Criminalem, Publica Delicta & Malefactores, Modumque Contra Eos Procedendi, in Genere; Pars Posterior, Crimina Publica & Privata, Eorumque Poenam & Modum Puniendi, in Specie, Exponit, by Mathia Bodo. The description also says:

This work covers criminal and civil law as it was defined in Hungary during the 18th century, and serves as a guide to prosecutors and lawmakers. Among the common laws listed there are those against torture, witchcraft and vampirism, as well as crimes “against nature.”

More than a century after Ivan Pavlov did his famous dog salivation experiment, comes an analogous experiment with cockroaches:

“Pavlov’s Cockroach: Classical Conditioning of Salivation in an Insect,” Hidehiro Watanabe, Makoto Mizunami, PLoS ONE 2(6): e529. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0000529. The authors, at the Graduate School of Life Sciences, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, report:

Secretion of saliva to aid swallowing and digestion is an important physiological function found in many vertebrates and invertebrates. Pavlov reported classical conditioning of salivation in dogs a century ago. Conditioning of salivation, however, has been so far reported only in dogs and humans, and its underlying neural mechanisms remain elusive because of the complexity of the mammalian brain. We previously reported that, in cockroaches Periplaneta americana, salivary neurons that control salivation exhibited increased responses to an odor after conditioning trials in which the odor was paired with sucrose solution. However, no direct evidence of conditioning of salivation was obtained. In this study, we investigated the effects of conditioning trials on the level of salivation. Untrained cockroaches exhibited salivary responses to sucrose solution applied to the mouth but not to peppermint or vanilla odor applied to an antenna. After differential conditioning trials in which an odor was paired with sucrose solution and another odor was presented without pairing with sucrose solution, sucrose-associated odor induced an increase in the level of salivation, but the odor presented alone did not. The conditioning effect lasted for one day after conditioning trials. This study demonstrates, for the first time, classical conditioning of salivation in species other than dogs and humans, thereby providing the first evidence of sophisticated neural control of autonomic function in insects.

(Thanks to investigator Katharine Sanderson for bringing it to our attention.)

A group called the Global Deception Research Team recently published a report called A World of Lies. It appears in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology.

The team is big. It has 91 members, spread all around the world. Their stated goal: “studying stereotypes about liars”.

They ask someone, “How can you tell when people are lying?”, then follow this up with 10 simple questions about liars. Here are the questions…

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