Improbable Research

Here are three ant crowding limericks, runners up in the Ant Crowding Competition Limerick Competition that was announced in mini-AIR 2007-06. The winning limerick — not amongst the trio shown here — will be announced in mini-AIR 2007-07. The competition asked for a limerick to honor the following study:

“Optimal Traffic Organization in Ants Under Crowded Conditions,” A. Dussutour, V. Fourcassié, D. Helbing and J.-L. Deneubourg, Nature, 2004, vol. 428, pp. 70–3.

The runners-up:

INVESTIGATOR DEBBIE HECHT:
The ants marched along two by two
From the hallway on into the loo
And though they were crowded
I’d like to know how did
They know how to do what they do.

INVESTIGATOR LEILA HDJ-CHIKH:
For ants that must travel to feed,
Their transit authority need
Is easily solved
By hormones evolved
To always avoid a stampede.

INVESTIGATOR MIGUEL PESSANHA PAIS:
When ants look for sugar they may
Find two paths that stand in the way.
They will make a choice,
Then feast and rejoice,
Though they’d have got there, anyway!

I’m far from home at my annual conference. Dr. Bane is here, and worse than ever before. While he didn’t crash the board meetings, he has serially violated the graduate students: he forces them to listen to his grand delusions about his role in the creation of the universe for hours at a time. The more senior members of the society have begun a watch, and when we see a student with him for more than a few minutes, we invent some important errand that the student must go on right away.

Today, near the end of a talk, Dr. Bane walked into the lecture hall and tried to squeeze into a crowded front row. He knocked one of our Academy members off his chair. He stepped on a student’s bag. He knocked over the table behind him, spilling water on everyone there.

Then. His. Pants. Fell. Off.

All the way down to the ankles. Biggest damn pair of tighty-whiteys I’ve ever seen. It took me at least an hour and a half to compose myself. Several people saw me running from the lecture hall in tears, and thought there’d been a death in my family.

You probably think I’m making this up. But I’m not.

So writes the Angry Professor.

I would like to nominate myself (in order to exercise my egolatry) to the IgNobel 2007 edition.

After playing with my new Wii video console for 10 hours I suffered from a tendinitis in my shoulder. I decided to report my personal case to the New England Journal of Medicine. Surprisely they published it! You can find the original article here:

Bonis J. Acute wiiitis. New England Journal of Medicine, 2007 Jun 7;356(23):2431-2.

where I coin a new disease “Wiiitis” and describe the treatment.

I think this is the article with a higher impact-factor / time-to-write of the history of science (toke 30 mins of research, discounting of course the 10 hours of intensive videoplay)

The “discover” got (not surprisely) the mass-media attention, being reported worldwide (including CNN).

Please consider my nomination to IgNobel. Maybe by winning the honorous prize I can bribe the japanese ninja that wears a Nintendo t-shirt and a katana and is waiting me every morning outside the hospital since I published the paper that says Nintendo Wii videogame is bad for health.

So says a note we received from Julio Bonis Sanz, MD.
[NOTE: a PDF of Dr. Bonis's complete NEJM article is on his web site.]

Hello to all of the members of the Fingerprint Society. My name is William Morris, I’m from Leicestershire Constabulary Fingerprint Bureau and I’m taking over from David Charlton as the editor of Fingerprint Whorld.

So writes William Morris about his ascension to the helm of the Fingerprint Society.

Biologists, as a group, are ignorant about Octopus Faith. Here is a capsule description of Octopus Faith:

Octopus Faith® is a faith that is too big for the box. It’s a faith that calls you to the deep things of God, keeps you connected to your Oxygen Line, and assures you can handle the underwater pressure. Whether it’s a two hour special event, one day or weekend retreat, your women will enjoy this Christian, creative, fun, and biblically-based journey to explore the . . . . . . . .

8 Tentacles of Octopus Faith®:

1. Praise: Do You Know Who God Is?
2. Pearls: Do You Know Who You Are?
3. Prayer: An Octopus Conversation
4. Pressure: How to Survive the Underwater Pressure
5. Power: Wrestling with an Enemy
6. Play: The Joy of Octopus Faith®
7. Passion: Longing for Octopus Faith®
8. Pass It On: Lead Someone Else into the Deep

(Thanks to investigator Jessica Girard for bringing this to our attention.)

Investigator Roderick D.K. Watt alerts us to a newly published study about the interaction of Viagra and dim lighting. The study is:

“The Effect of Sildenafil Citrate (Viagra®) on Visual Sensitivity,” Andrew Stockman, Lindsay T. Sharpe, Adnan Tufail, Philip D. Kell, Caterina Ripamonti and Glen Jeffery, Journal of Vision, vol. 7, no. 8, 2007, pp. 1–15. The investigators, at University College London and other institutions in the same city, explain:

“Although Viagra might… be expected to impair visual performance, reports of deficits following its ingestion have so far been largely inconclusive or anecdotal…. We measured temporal acuity (critical fusion frequency) and modulation sensitivity in four subjects before and after the ingestion of a 100-mg dose of Viagra under conditions chosen to isolate the responses of either their short-wavelength-sensitive (S-) cone photoreceptors or their long- and middle-wavelength-sensitive (L- and M-) cones.”

Investigator Watt comments:

The dose of 100 milligrams is more than adequate to get the conventional physiological response, so how did they ignore it as they sat looking at flashing lights? Note also the heroism of the experimenters, who in the grand tradition experimented on themselves… And what did they do when they got home, after a long day’s experimenting in the lab? I think we need a little more methodological clarification. As for the phrase that “AT and GJ were comparatively naive at the start of the experiment” …. Well!

Considering the effects themselves, does the modification of the time response mean that really things don’t actually last longer, they just seem to? Likewise with the improvement in visual persistence mentioned in the discussion… And what about that line at the end, about effects outside the laboratory “under conditions of reduced visibility” — no problem, as I guess few people would dream of taking Viagra and then having low levels of illumination of, say, one candle-power?

One new approach to teaching mathematics downplays the importance of exact or even approximate numbers. These are said to be less important than understanding broad patterns. A distinguished authority figure apparently agrees:

Global warming is taking place… And the fact is there is probably little to worry about. The increased temperatures will almost certainly be reversed eventually, although how long this will take is unknown.

So writes James Farquhar, in a letter in the May 28 issue of Chemistry and Industry.

Mr. Farquhar identifies himself as: former environment manager at Albright & Wilson and the Tenneco Corporation, Texas; chairman of the CBI Thames Area Environment committee; member of the UK Dept of the Environment Advisory committee; and consultant to the EC.

The question: “Where is Dr. Lips-Wiersma?” writes Investigator Tenley T. Jake in a note we received yesterday, specifying that by Dr. Lips-Wiersma she means the co-author of the study “Furthering Management and Spirituality Education through the Use of Paradox (published in the Journal of Management Education, vol. 28, no. 1, 2004, pp. 119-33.)

The answer: Dr. Lips-Wiersma is at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Many economists say economics is a science. Many others say it’s an art. Still others don’t like to discuss the matter. A fourth group of economists made an instructional music video that bears this description: “Columbia Business School’s Dean Glenn Hubbard sings about wanting Alan Greenspan’s job that went instead to New Fed Chair Ben Bernanke.”

Based on an earlier video by non-economists called “The Police,” it is probably perplexing to non-economists who do not know who Glenn Hubbard, Alan Greenspan (himself a musician) or Ben Bernanke are.

(Thanks to investigators Chorma Hill and Frankie Davies-Toppan for bringing this to our attention.)

THEORY: It sounds like a great idea to hire a psychopath as long as they’re ambitious and will leave for another job after a couple of years.

SUGGESTIVE EVIDENCE: This June 14, 2007 report in the Tasmania Mercury (which we referred to two days ago):

“Psychopaths are very comfortable in successful corporations because they are actually rewarded for their behaviour.

“In business you are encouraged to make money for the company and if you appear to be doing whatever it takes to make money, you are often promoted.

“They are seen as rising employees who are full of energy and creativity.”

But behind the facade, such workers were “ego-centric, grandiose, pathological liars with a lack of conscience, remorse and guilt”, Dr Clarke said.

Do fish suffer from exposure to Uriah Heep?

A Finnish researcher is to study fish in an aquarium while a rock group performs nearby, to see if the sound causes any ill-effects or distress.

Bands including aging rockers Uriah Heep will perform on Friday night to about 3,000 fans in a tent just a couple of dozen metres away from the aquarium.

“I will be looking for any abnormal behavior or activity,” said researcher Mikko Erkinaro.

The 500,000-liter tank is home to salmon, trout, pike and perch and other species common in Finland’s brackish coastal waters.

“It could be quite nasty to arrange such an aquarium and a performance venue (so close),” Erkinaro said, “especially when the (band) is a bit old-fashioned.”

So says a July 20, 2007 Reuters report.

(Thanks to investigator Mike Hoyt for bringing this to our attention.)

President Bush will undergo a routine colonoscopy Saturday, and will transfer power to Vice President Dick Cheney during the procedure, expected to take about two and a half hours, the chief White House spokesman said.

So says a July 20, 2007 CNN report. Colonoscopy enthusiasts will recall our pocket history of colonoscopy booms, which begins:

Here is a brief guide to some unfortunate explosions of a particular type. The details sit quietly in back issues of medical journals. Only occasionally does anyone come to see them. The visitor is, in most cases, either a doctor in sudden need of information or a scholar in search of violent titillation.

BOOM (Italy, 1952) - Unusual Complication in Electrosurgery: Explosion of Gases in the Cecum During Operation of Cecal Fistula, by G Pezzuoli and C Ghiringhelli (published in L’Ospedale Maggiore, September 1952).

BOOM (Spain, 1964) - Pneumatic Explosion of the Cecum in Patients with Carcinoma of the Colon, by N Antonelli and E Borenstein (in Prensa Médica Argentina, October 1964)….

Dr Clarke, who has penned two books about workplace psychopaths and will speak at the state government-sponsored Queensland Safety Show in Brisbane next week, today said up to three percent of the Australian population was psychopathic.

“I would say that in every major company there would be at least one,” Dr Clarke said.

“Psychopaths are very comfortable in successful corporations because they are actually rewarded for their behaviour.”

So says a June 14, 2007 report in the Tasmania Mercury.

But beware! John Clarke, expert on psychopaths, should not be confused with John Clark, actor, celebrity divorcee (who then remarried), and connoisseur of certain kinds of psychopaths.

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

The Bible tells of frogs that fall from the sky. Biologists, on the other hand, tell of lizards that fall from trees.

The biologists - William Schlesinger, Johannes Knops and Thomas Nash - recount in great detail how they discovered an unsuspected truth about lizards. Their study Lizardfall in a California Oak Woodland, published in the journal Ecology, is a blow to the reputation of a species once admired for its surefootedness. It’s the story of the reptiles’ ungraceful fall into the abyss - in this case a plastic bucket - and of the detectives who documented it.

Western fence lizards spend a lot of time in trees, walking up and down the branches. But, when running after insects or away from predators, say Schlesinger, Knops and Nash, they frequently lose their grip….

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