Improbable Research

People say a “bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”, but try masturbating a two metre tall, 120 kilogram male ostrich with powerful legs and toenails and you’ve got a challenge on your hands.

Dr Irek Malecki, co-supervisor of the project, said the technique, which involved using a dummy female for collecting ostrich ejaculates, evolved out of animal behaviour observations, where captive reared birds become imprinted and perceived humans as “sexy” and worthy of their sexual display.

Researchers in the School of Animal Biology at The University of Western Australia (UWA) have achieved a world-first by developing animal and human-friendly methods for semen collection and artificial insemination in ostriches. [The photo shows Dr  Malecki "collecting semen from
a male emu, who is much gentler than a male ostrich, using an artificial cloaca."]

So says a May 15, 2008 Science Alert report.

The research builds, directly or indirectly on the Ig Nobel Prize winning study “Courtship Behaviour of Ostriches Towards Humans Under Farming Conditions in Britain.” Charles Paxton, co-author of that study, will discuss it and its implications as part of the Ig Nobel Cabaret at the Cheltenham Science Festival on Friday night, June 7.

(Thanks to investigator Nicole Bordes for bringing this to our attention.)

Tim Idzenga came up with the idea of using the sound produced by the urinary flow in the urethra as a measure of the urethral resistance. He performed the measurement by placing a microphone against the perineum, between the scrotum and anus. The frequency spectrum of the sound was found to correlate with the narrowing of the urethra. The degree of narrowing can therefore be determined from the recorded urinary sound.

A patent for this invention is being applied for in cooperation with the company IQ+ Medical BV.

So reports Science Daily on April 24, 2008. A 2005 study by Idzenga and colleagues tells of an early version of the work.

(Thanks to investigator Jilly Dybka for bringing this to our attention.)

“The Misremembrance of Wines Past: Verbal and Perceptual Expertise Differentially Mediate Verbal Overshadowing of Taste Memory,” Joseph M. Melcher and Jonathan W. Schooler, Journal of Memory and Language, vol. 35, no. 2, April 1996, pp. 231-45 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/jmla.1996.0013). The authors, who are at the University of Pittsburgh, report that:

When participants generate a detailed, memory-based description of complex nonverbal stimuli (e.g., faces) their recognition performance can be worse than nondescribing controls…. The present study explored this hypothesis by examining the impact of verbalization on the wine recognition of individuals of three categories of wine tasting expertise: Non-wine drinkers, untrained wine drinkers, and trained wine experts. Participants tasted a red wine, engaged in either verbalization or an unrelated verbal activity, and then attempted to identify the target wine from among three foils. As predicted, only the untrained wine drinkers showed impaired wine recognition following verbalization. The results are explained in terms of the differential development of perceptual and verbal skills in the course of becoming an expert.

(That’s an excerpt from the article “Soft Is Hard (Further evidence why the “soft” sciences are the hardest to do well),” Published in AIR 11:1)

With some modern exceptions (see “How to Write 85,000 Books,” elsewhere in this issue of the Annals of Improbable Research) every book has a human author.1 For whatever reasons, some of those books are published anonymously. The late nineteenth century saw a massive effort to identify and list all the anonymous books and other literature published in at least one language.

The result:

A Dictionary of the Anonymous and Pseudonymous Literature of Great Britain, Including the Work of Foreigners Written in, or Translated into the English Language, Samuel Halkett and John Laing, 1888, W. Paterson publishers, Edinburgh.

(That’s an excerpt from the article “Anonymity, in Bulk,” by Alice Shirrell Kaswell, published in AIR 14:2)

Not having purchased a full subscription to New England Journal of Medicine I haven’t access to the article “Amebiasis from the ‘Miraculous Water of Tlacote” [which you mentioned]. Nonetheless I’ve taken tlacote tablets for three years and have suffered no ill effects. In fact I’ve found it most helpful. Millions of people have availed themselves of the water, either in liquid or homeopathic form. Where is the evidence of a health issue precipitated by ingesting this water? I submit the case of Amebiasis cited above was from another water source. Thus I find the Improbable Research article [on the web site, written in 2001] fits well under the heading of “hot air.” A New Light is entering the World. Find out more at:http://www.share-international.org.

David E. Mynott II
Boston, MA

(That’s an excerpt from the article “Air Vents,” published in AIR 11:1)

Prof. Awais Rashid of the Computing Department at Lancaster University is looking for a Ph.D. student to help him in “rethinking the
 classical notions of abstraction in software engineering.”

He’s offering a position called “PhD Studentship - Divinity and Abstraction: A Theory of Software Engineering 
for Systems-of-Systems .” Closing date for applications: 15 May 2008. The project has five key phases. The first four are:

1. Study of debates on the nature of the holy trinity and the divinity of Jesus (e.g., between early church fathers, such as Irenaeus and Tertullian, and the authors of texts, such as those discovered at Nag Hammadi, that did not form part of the Nicene Creed) as well as the treatises on transubstantiation during the Reformation (e.g., the writings of John Wyclif) to understand how monotheistic theology has treated varying natures of divinity.

2. Contrasting the study in (1) with eastern religious philosophies, such as Hinduism, which are inherently founded on the multi-faceted nature of divinity.

3. Analysing the factors that bind the followers of a religion in a loosely coupled fashion across geographical and cultural boundaries and how the interpretations of divinity differ across these boundaries in both types of theologies.

4. Formulating a theory of abstraction for systems-of-systems by reconciling results of (1)-(3) with the existing classical technical notions of abstraction for software systems, especially roles, views and aspects all of which facilitate multi-faceted abstraction that goes beyond traditional module boundaries.

(Thanks to investigator Rémi Bastide for bringing this to our attention.)

Today’s lesson looks at the question: How many people, under what circumstances, is too many?

Many scientists point out that severe dangers arise when you have both: (1) an ever-increasing number of humans living on a planet of fixed size; and (2) an ever-increasing average consumption of food, fuel, metals and other resources.

Many non-scientists like to point out that (3) bigger is better, and smaller is scary.

An editorial in the May 4, 2008 Boston Globe makes the case for point #3:

THE United Nations Population Fund projected last week that Russia’s population will drop from 142 million today to 100 million in the next 40 to 50 years. The agency’s report praised recent government efforts to increase birth rates and extend lives. But not enough is being done to counter stark demographic forces: an impending decrease in the number of women of child-bearing age, poor healthcare, rampant vehicular and industrial accidents, widespread alcoholism, and social conditions that discourage family formation

These trends have disturbing implications, not just for Russia and its political leadership, but for the United States. No amount of windfall profits from oil and natural gas in the hands of Kremlin plutocrats can save Russia from a many-faceted decline.

Discuss.

“Hyperstotic Polyarthropathy in a Rabbit: Suspected Case of Chronic Hypervitaminosis A From a Diet of Carrots,” J.L. Frater, Australian Veterinary Journal, vol. 79, no. 9, 2001, pp. 608–11.

(Thanks to Wendy Cooper for bringing this to our attention.)

(That’s an excerpt from the article “May We Recommend“)

“Dolphin-Assisted Therapy: More Flawed Data and More Flawed Conclusions,” Anthrozoös, L. Marino and S. Lilienfeld, vol. 20, no. 3, 2007, pp. 239–49 (http://dx.doi.org/10.2752/089279307X224782).

(That’s an excerpt from the article “Improbable Research Review,” published in AIR 14:2.)

Can anyone help me identify the metal used in the nails used to make the ladder used by the bearded gentleman in the middle of this photograph? I have been puzzling at this for a long time now, and decided it’s time to ask for help.

Tommy (“Thomas”)

Tompkins Metallurgist,

retired Missoula,

Missouri, USA

(That’s an excerpt from the article “Exhalations from our readers,” published in AIR 14:2.)

“The Emotional Force of Swearwords and Taboo Words in the Speech of Multilinguals,” J.M. Dewaele, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, vol. 25, nos. 2–3, 2004, pp. 204–22 (http://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/62). (Thanks to Cathy Harris-Caldwell for bringing this to our attention.)

This paper investigates the perception of emotional force of swearwords and taboo words (S-T words) among 1039 multilinguals…. Participants who learned their language(s) in a naturalistic or partly naturalistic context gave higher ratings on emotional force of S-T words in that language than instructed language learners.

(That’s an excerpt from the article “How to Write 85,000 Books,” by Chris McManus, published in AIR 14:2.)

Here are a few of the more than 85,000 (or perhaps more than 200,000) books authored by Professor Philip M. Parker and his book-writing machine.

•The Official Patient’s Sourcebook on SPASMODIC DYSPHONIA •The Official Patient’s Sourcebook on DIARRHEA •FLATULENCE: A Bibliography, Medical Dictionary, and Annotated Research Guide to Internet References HALITOSIS: A Bibliography, Medical Dictionary, and Annotated Research Guide to Internet References

(That’s an excerpt from the article “May We Recommend: Parker Titles,” Published in AIR 14:2.)

“Reputation and the Legibility of Doctors’ Handwriting in Situ,” G.A. Cheeseman and N. Boon, Scottish Medical Journal, vol. 46, no. 3, June 2001, pp 79–80. The authors, at the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh, report:

Our study evaluates if doctors deserve their reputation and investigates how legibility is affected by the time taken to write. Sets of in-patient hospital notes were selected at random. The first written entry by a doctor and a nurse in the current admission were analysed. In addition to this, 10 doctors and 10 nurses, unaware of the true nature of the study, wrote out lists of words and the time taken to do the task was recorded. The doctors’ handwriting was significantly less legible and they wrote significantly quicker. However a small minority of the doctors was responsible for the majority of illegible words written by that group.

(That’s an excerpt from the article “Hard Looks at Doctors’ Handwriting,” published in AIR 14:2.)

“Stylizing Rigor; or, Why Mathematicians Write So Well,” Alex Csiszar, Configurations, vol. 11, no. 2, 2003, pp. 239–68. (http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/configurations/v011/11.2csiszar.html). The author explains that:

Before bothering about whether a mathematician is telling the truth, an audience needs to judge whether it is a truth worth listening to, and indeed, what worth is in the telling at all. Most mathematicians work with ideas that have no point of reference, not even via potential technological application, in most people’s lives. And the claims that mathematicians make are usually not intelligible to anyone but the expert in a particular subfield of mathematics…

(That’s an excerpt from the article “Writing Research Review (A breezy look at research on writing and reading),” published in AIR 14:2.)