Improbable Research

Might Yi-Chuan not have understood that I meant her to alphabetize my books, not library books? I scanned the shelves. They made no sense. I cleaned my glasses. ?These books are totally unordered!? I finally exclaimed to Hui-wen.

She figured it out and offered, ?No, they are ordered — by title!? While I know fifty percent of the authors of my books, for the titles I know at most some key words. But worse, my books were also ordered right-to-left. Even worse, titles like ?A Natural History of Rape? sometimes followed ?Artful Scribbles.? ?The Society of Mind? kept company with ?The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.? I would have to not only know the book?s title, but whether the first word was ?A? or ?The.? But if the jacket artist had not made ?A? or ?The? prominent, the book might still be filed under the first content word.

(That?s an excerpt from the article ?A The Problem with My Books,? By Catherine Caldwell-Harris, published in AIR 14:1.)

Two kaleidoscopic looks at last week’s Ig Nobel Tour of the UK appear in the March 18, 2008 issue of The Guardian.

Kees Moeliker’s tour diary (excerpted) begins:

With scientific accuracy Dan Meyer warms up the audience: “First I have to deal with my gag reflex, then flip my epiglottis, put my pharynx and gullet in one line and nudge my heart a little to the left.” Then he slowly lowers a 50cm steel sword down his throat. It is not the kind of thing you expect to happen in the Great Hall of the Sherfield Building of Imperial College….

Also, a podcast gives sound bites from several of the touring Ig winners, as well as an all-star science-journalist panel’s appreciation of the personalities.

Investigator William J. Maloney writes:

I came across this calculator to help the math challenged: http://dutyrefund.com/pdc-1.htm

You type in a number, then type in a percentage. Then the calculator calculates that percentage of the number.

It’s quite a time-saver. They call it a “drawback calculator.”

?Do Women with Urinary Incontinence Really Know Where All the Toilets Are?: The Toilet Paper,? Annette Kuhn, Kathleen Vits, Peter Kuhn and Ash Monga, European Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Reproductive Biology, vol. 129, no. 1, November 2006, pp. 65?8 ( http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejogrb.2005.11.004).

(Thanks to Domenico Pecorari for bringing this to our attention.)

The authors, who are variously at Princess Anne Hospital, Southampton, United Kingdom and at Universit?tsfrauenklinik in Bern, Switzerland and at Effingerszentrum, Bern, report that: Women with overactive bladder are more likely to exhibit precautionary voiding prior to leaving home and have significantly more detailed knowledge about toilets in their neighbourhood.

(That?s an excerpt from the article ?Icky Cutesy Research Review,? published in AIR 14:1.)

“Third-Order Optical Nonlinearity in Guinness Stout,” F.Z. Henari and W. Blau, Photonic Science News, vol. 3, 1998, pp. 10?3.

(Thanks to Mauricio Alvarez-Manilla for bringing this to our attention.)

(That?s an excerpt from the article “May We Recommend ? Items that merit a trip to the library,” published in AIR 14:1.)