Improbable Research

Only recently did people learn how much pressure it takes to rouse a sleeping penguin. G?rard Dewasmes and Fr?d?ric Telliez, of l’Universit? de Picardie Jules Verne in Amiens, lay claim to the discovery.

Dewasmes and Telliez went to the Antarctic, where they tiptoed up to nearly a dozen dozing King penguins. Their study, published in the Journal of Sleep Research, is an eye-opener for anyone who dreams of becoming expert in the fine details of bird arousal.

Very few scientists had even ventured to prod penguins, measuring how much or little pain or noise would induce a rise-and-shine response. Dewasmes and Telliez sought a subtler kind of knowledge, and took a gingerly approach….

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

My feet stink. I have over the past 43 years conducted a series of experiments to establish that this is true, and to delineate the limits within which it is true. I would place a test subject in close proximity to my feet, and observe their consequent behavior. I have done this with more than 4300 test subjects. These include: rats; cats; mice; dormice; ferrets; sheep; bees; ants; gnats; dingos; a llama; pigeons; ducks; geese; cows; aphids; shrews; a salmon. hedgehogs; foxes; ermine; earthworms; and human beings. All test subjects, with certain exceptions that I will detail in a separate letter, displayed aversive behavior. In layman?s terms: they fled.

Would you be interested in publishing a formal account of my experiments if I were to write it up? (I enclose a photograph of the American Civil War Rear Admiral Andrew H. Foote, whose name and?more to the point?whose own lengthy personal discovery of the power of smelly feet I have adopted as a mildly jocund inspiration. The photograph does not show Admiral Foote?s foot, an omission which I am sure I do not need to explain to you.)

Thomas P. D?Arcy, MD

Clive, Cumbria, UK

(That?s an excerpt from the article ?Air Vents (Exhalations from our readers),? published in AIR 14:1.)

Science journalists at the just-concluded AAAS annual meeting were notably unimpressed by things that others might consider big news. A colleague tells us what happened at a press conference about the dire state of skipjack and bluefin tuna:

An Italian-born expert pointed out that in the Mediterranean the Mafia - the real Mafia, he said, not some lobby group - had taken control of the trade and were routinely threatening tuna conservation researchers. The startling news that European ichthyologists had been warned they would sleep with the fishes aroused not a flicker on interest. A reporter put his hand up and asked if there was any new science in all this.

Peter Hurd, Seeker of Hockey Players and Depressed Men

Peter Hurd is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Alberta. He is a prolific finger-length researcher. A March 3, 2005 press release from the university says:

Hurd is conducting ongoing research in this area, including a study that involves measuring hockey players? finger lengths and crossreferencing the results with each player?s penalty minutes.

That?s an excerpt from the article ?Finger Celebrities,? published in AIR 13:5.

The web site for the American Cranberry Company contains some hackle-raising punctuation. The frequent use of quotation marks may imply that all is not as it appears. Here is an excerpt:

2. How are cranberries grown? Cranberries are grown in “bogs.” A bog is an area of wet, spongy ground with soil made up of decaying vegetative matter. For cranberries, you also need very sandy, acidic soil. The bogs are traditionally surrounded by “dams” to aid irrigation, flooding and harvesting.

3. How do cranberries grow?

Cranberries grow on “vines” that travel along the ground, called “runners” and with shoots, called “uprights.” The vines get very thick in the bogs and “choke” almost all other plants so that the bogs are almost all cranberry vines. The vines produce a “bud set” where the actual berry is produced.

(Thanks to investigator Karen Hopkin for bringing this to our attention.)