Improbable Research

Our analysis is, at least to our knowledge, the one with the largest data set (in terms of completed lunar cycles) to date for the problem under investigation. Using methods of spectral analysis we found overwhelming evidence for the hypothesis that there is no association of the lunar cycle and the number of births.

So write Oliver Kuss and Anja Kuehn in a study called “Lunar Cycle and the Number of Births: A Spectral Analysis of 4.071.669 Births from South-Western Germany.” The doctors are both at the University of Halle-Wittenberg. Their paper has been submitted for publication. The preliminary version can be read at Dr. Kuss’s web site.

(Thanks to investigator Kai Jung for bringing this to our attention.)

?John duPont is looking for artists to illustrate a new bird book. If you know of any interested parties please send a sample of your work and resume to ?. ?

This announcement, posted on eBEAC, the electronic Bulletin for European Avian Curators, made me think.

John E duPont? The multimillionaire (heir to the DuPont chemical fortune), the trained ornithologist who discovered and officially named a more than a dozen new (sub)species of birds, collector of stamps, birds and shells, founder of the Delaware Museum of Natural History? Doesn?t he suffer from paranoid schizophrenia and isn?t he in prison after murdering an Olympic wrestler in 1996?
Reportedly, yes. But now, after getting bored of wrestlers, he apparently has regained his interest in birds again. Rumour goes that duPont will reward his bird illustrators generously.

Someone has applied music to the video of Pacific University biologist David Scholnick’s shrimp-on-a-treadmill.

Treadmills should, of course, be used with caution, as injuries have been known to occur.

(Thanks to investigator Reiko Allen for bringing this to our attention.)

Investigator Jennifer Grant alerts us to a potentially new branch of scientific inquiry: what-if research. A May 18, 2007 Associated Press report gives details:

Carson’s official biography says he is “current or past President of the Lincoln Group of the District of Columbia, a member of the Board of Trustees of the United States Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, the Abraham Lincoln Institute, the Lincoln Forum and the Lincoln Group of Illinois.”

Siegfried Hustedt is often overcome with dread when he is forced to use other people’s toilets…. The experimental physicist works for Procter & Gamble’s research center in Schwalbach, Germany, near Frankfurt, where together with his fellow researchers, he is developing the toilet paper of the future.

So says an April 23 report in Der Spiegel.

Dr. Hustedt is perhaps best known for U.S. Patent #D450460, “Surface pattern for a soft, flexible disposable wipe.”

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