Improbable Research

Ig Nobel Prize winner Jim Gundlach, co-author of the study “The Effects of Country Music on Suicide,” in Upper Oddington, England, during the 2008 Ig Nobel Tour of the UK. The tour is part of the UK’s National Science Week.

Photo: Carol Gundlach.

(That’s an excerpt from AIR 14:4. A glorious large version of the photo appears on the magazine’s back cover.)

On his way to the Ig Nobel prize ceremony, 2003 biology prize winner Kees Moeliker will stop over in New York for a public talk in the Museum of Sex. Tuesday, September 30th at 1 and 4 pm, he will take part in a gallery chat in the exhibition ‘The Sex Lives of Animals‘. MoS curator Sarah Jacobs (see photo) will introduce the philosophy of the exhibit and Kees Moeliker will elaborate on homosexual necrophilia, in the mallard duck and other animals.

The tale of the duck that won Moeliker his Ig Nobel prize in 2003 is part of the exhibition now featuring in the Museum of Sex. The duck has his own little wall: the wall of the mallard.

The Museum of Sex is at 233 Fifth Avenue, New York. With a ticket to the museum (18+ only) the gallery chat is free of charge.

The sturgeon the man is holding in the photograph sent in by Dr. Grossi (AIR Vents 13:6) is a juvenile of either Acipenser fulvescens, the lake sturgeon, or Acipenser oxyrhynchus, the Atlantic sturgeon. (I am leaning toward the latter.) I am fairly certain of this identification based on the color of the scutes relative to the skin, shape of the snout, and relative position of the dorsal and anal fins. I cannot tell you much about the identification of the man. He appears to be wearing a cap with an “R” embroidered on it; this resembles very much the logo for Rutgers University. This man may be a fan of the Rutgers Scarlet Knights sports teams, and he is therefore probably from New Jersey, like most fans of that school. The range of the Atlantic sturgeon happens to include New Jersey. The U.S. Dept. of State may be looking for information on this man because sturgeon fishing is prohibited in New Jersey. Unfortunately the street sign in the background of the photograph is obscured by the tail of the fish and the lettering on the side of the trailer is obscured by the man’s waders. Good luck with the remainder of your investigation.

Prosanta Chakrabarty, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow Department of Ichthyology
American Museum of Natural History
New York, NY

(That’s an excerpt from the article “Air Vents,” Published in AIR 14:3.)

A court in Mumbai, India has achieved, indeed far surpassed, the decades-long dream of “going paperless” — of eliminating paper and paperwork, replacing it with electronic technology. According to a July 21st, 2008 report in the Times of India:

MUMBAI: The state police can now bank on a forensic tool to achieve speedy convictions. For the first time in Maharashtra, life sentences were meted out to the accused based on the findings of Brain Electrical Oscillation Signature (BEOS) profiling. Reports of these tests, conducted at the state forensic lab in Kalina, were held admissible in sessions courts in two brutal cases of murder….

During BEOS profiling, an accused is asked not to give answers verbally; experiential knowledge is retrieved from his brain. Experiential knowledge is acquired only through participation in an event, leading the person to have an experience of that activity. The technique detects and differentiates whether the accused was actually involved in committing a crime or only learnt of it. It helps in the reconstruction of events.

“BEOS involves the application of electro-encephalogram. Electrodes are attached to different parts of the brain to detect electrical activation in the brain. The accused is asked to wear a cap with 32 electrodes, of which two are placed on each earlobe and rest on various parts of the brain. Probes (short questions) are recorded in a computer and presented to an accused. He is asked to sit with eyes closed and listen to the probes,” director of the state forensic lab, Rukmani Krishnamurthy, told TOI.

This may also have the side effect of reducing the cost of future legal proceedings.

Nearly every scientific test of this technology (and of nearly all lie-detector technology) has found it to be unreliable. Having now decided that the scientific community is simply wrong about the tests being wrong, the court can now eliminate the time and expense that would come from asking scientists to testify, about anything, in future court cases of any kind. Court cases can be conducted automatically, more or less, leading to just decidions, more or less.

Fish lures often have evocative names. So do rock bands. Can you discern or detect which of the following names belongs to a fish lure and which to a rock band?

(You may find hints by consulting the published philosophical literature on the question “What’s in a name?” And you may not.)

The answers appear on page 30 of this issue of the Annals of Improbable Research.

1. Aqua
2. Betty’s Fish Bag
3. Blind Melon
4. Blotto
5. Bobberstop
6. Bomber A-salt
7. Boo Jig
8. Booyah Flair Hair Jigs
9. Boy Howdy
10. Bright Blue Gorilla
11. Buckethead
12. Bulk Tube
13. Buzz’n Frog
14. Canadian Grizzly
15. Cannon Bear
16. Crazy Evelyn
17. Crazy Frog
18. Crazy Shad
19. Crickhopper Popper
20. Deacon Blue
21. Devil’s Horse
22. Dexy’s Midnight Runners
23. Eve 6
24. Fat A
25. Hocus Locust
26. Hula Popper
27. King Missile
28. Lazy Ike
29. Level 42
30. Monster Magnet
31. Pond Magic Buzz
32. Rebel Jawbreaker
33. Red Neck Girlfriend
34. Ripplin’ Red Fin
35. Silverchair
36. Sputterbuzz
37. Superspot
38. T Pau
39. Wally Demon
40. Wally Diver
41. Wee-R Family
42. Wiggle O
43. Wooly Beavertail
44. Xz2 Zell Pop
45. Zara Spook

(That’s an excerpt from the article “Cooties and the Consumer,” by Dany Adams, published in AIR 14:4.)