Improbable Research

Here are the top Tenn research studies for 2008. Each study was written or co-written by a researcher named Tenn. (The selections were made by the Annals of Improbable Research’s Top Tenn List Selection Committee.):

1. “Comparison of selected skin decontaminant products and regimens against VX in domestic swine,” S Bjarnason, J Mikler, I Hill, C Tenn, M Garrett, N Caddy and TW Sawyer, Human & Experimental Toxicology, Vol. 27, No. 3, 253-261 (2008).DOI: 10.1177/0960327108090269. [C. Tenn is at the Defence Research and Development Canada, in Medicine Hat, Alberta.

2. "Use of the BrainLAB ExacTrac X-Ray 6D System in Image-Guided Radiotherapy," Jian-Yue Jin, Fang-Fang Yin, Stephen E. Tenn, Paul M. Medin and Timothy D. Solberg, Medical Dosimetry, Volume 33, Issue 2, Summer 2008, Pages 124-134. Doi:10.1016/j.meddos.2008.02.005. [Stephen A. Tenn is at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles.]

3. “Image-guided radiosurgery for spinal tumors: methods, accuracy and patient intrafraction motion,” Nzhde Agazaryan, Steve E Tenn, Antonio A F Desalles and Michael T Selch, Physics in Biology and Medicine, vol. 53, 2008, pp. 1715-1727. Doi: 10.1088/0031-9155/53/6/015. [Steve A. Tenn, AKA "Stephen A. Tenn", is still at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles.]

The committee notes that Stephen ["Steve"] E. Tenn co-authored two thirds of this year’s top Tenn studies. Congratulations to Dr. Tenn!

I am not immune to the human failings that have beset others who sent you historic photos of Mel. I sorrowfully report that the photo you printed (AIR Vents 14:3) which I sent you which shows Mel during his visit to Notre Dame in 1909, with an inscription on the back signed by three Paris gendarmes who escorted Mel on that famous day, all three of whom are visible in the photograph, was authenticated by me in error. The pen marks, which I believed in good faith to have been emplaced by the senior gendarme, whom you can see here standing prominently on the bridge, were in fact not placed by him. I have circled what I believe to be the true location of Mel in the photo-graph; he is visible inside a window, to the left of the plaster bust of Napolean. A thousand apologies for my mistake. I am almost completely certain that this new marking is the correct one. I apologize also to the memory of Mel. Mel would forgive me, I hope, were he alive to see this mistake and my immediate, dutiful, enthusiastic, public correction of it.

Robert Couvert, Head Archivist
Notre Dame Scientific Club Archives, Paris France

(That’s an excerpt from the article “Air Vents,” published in AIR 14:4.)

“How Big Is a Hand?”, N.D. Rossiter, P. Chapman and I.A. Haywood, Burns, vol. 22, no. 3, May 1996, pp. 230–1 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0305-4179(95)00118-2). The authors, who are at Queen Elizabeth Military Hospital, Woolwich, London, UK, report:

Exactly what constitutes ‘the palm of the hand’ and how large an area this is, depends on whether you follow Advanced Trauma Life Support teaching, United Kingdom teaching, or use a ‘Lund and Browder chart’. A study was designed to measure the areas in question to find which was most accurate. The conclusions challenge standard teaching and show a sex difference. The area of the palm alone is 0.5 per cent BSA in males and 0.4 per cent BSA in females, whereas the area of the palm plus the palmar surface of the five digits is 0.8 per cent BSA in males and 0.7 per cent BSA in females.

(That’s an excerpt from the article “How Big, How Small,” published in AIR 14:5.)

The How Things Work web site offers its analysis (by Robert Lamb) of how the Ig Nobel Prizes work:

The best economics lessons, everyone except economists reminds us, can be found in the pages (or whatever) of great literature. The trick is to find them (in computer science terminology: to perform the searching and sorting properly). Here is one such lesson: how to get a job. It can be found in the short (about 30 minutes) film “Ray’s Male Heterosexual Dance Hall“, which you can see by clicking on the image below:

The Nov/Dec 2008 issue (vol. 14, no. 6) of the magazine (the Annals of Improbable Research) just went out. It’s the annual Ig Nobel Prize issue, with copious coverage and lots of photos of the new Ig Nobel Prize winners, the ceremony, the lectures, the mini-opera, and more. Click on the magazine cover (below) to:

• Subscribe to the paper version (nicest!), or
• Buy a hi-res PDF version (most digitally spiffy!), or
• Download a free low-res PDF version (cheesiest!)

Mel says it’s swell.