Improbable Research

“Are Women Really More Talkative Than Men?”, Matthias R. Mehl, Simine Vazire, Nairán Ramírez-Esparza, Richard B. Slatcher and James W. Pennebaker, Science, vol. 317, no. 5834, 2007, p. 82
(http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1139940).
The authors, who are variously at the University of Arizona, at Washington University and at the University of Texas, report that:

Women are generally assumed to be more talkative than men. Data were analyzed from 396 participants who wore a voice recorder that sampled ambient sounds for several days. Participants’ daily word use was extrapolated from the number of recorded words. Women and men both spoke about 16,000 words per day.

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

Frequently, the UCE [Under Cover Employee]’s feeling of alienation results from the distorted perceptions associated with highly stressful situations, although, sometimes, a factual basis exists. Fellow employees may resent UCEs because they get special attention. Co-workers observe what appears to be UCEs’ living the good life: staying out all night, wearing expensive or exotic clothes and jewelry, spending large amounts of someone else’s money, driving great cars or motorcycles, and seemingly working fewer hours than everyone else.

So says the study “Managing Undercover Stress—The Supervisor’s Role,” by Stephen R. Band, Ph.D., and Donald C. Sheehan, M.A., P.M.C., Law Enforcement Bulletin, February 1999. The issue features numerous photographs, mostly of men, about half of whom are mustachioed. It includes photographs of Stephen R. Band and Donald C. Sheehan, neither of whom is shown with a mustache.

“Grain Configuration of One Worm After Individual Compressed,” Chen Jian, Zhao Jin-ping, Zhang Jing-yu and Huang Gui-rong, paper presented at the Carbon 2007 Conference, July 2007 in Seattle.
(Thanks to Claus Friedrich for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at Sichuan University of Science and Engineering in ZiGong, China, report:

The surface photograph of one individual compressed expanded graphite worm was investigated by Metalloscope, obtaining an image like the metal metallurgical structure. Boundaries between particles was reconstructed and mean grain size was analyzed.

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

U.S. patent #7255627 was granted to Elena N. Bodnar of Hinsdale, Illinois, and Raphael C. Lee and Sandra Marijan of Chicago on August 14, 2007 for an “Garment device convertible to one or more facemasks.” Their intent, they say, is “to provide a garment which is operable to be converted into a facemask” and “to increase accessibility to facemasks.” This is:

“a garment device which converts into one or more facemasks. In one embodiment, the garment device is a bra or a brassiere garment. The bra has two cups…. The inner portions of the cups are disconnectable, and the outer portions of the cups are disconnectable. As such, the bra is separable into two halves. Each halve is securable to a user’s face to form a facemask….”

(That’s an excerpt from the article “Improbable Medical Review,” published in AIR 14:3.)

Patent application US2007170798 is for a “Device of levitation of an item over an optimized base by means of permanent magnets. The equilibrium is stable along one or two axes by means of these permanent magnets, and along the one or two others by means of a combination of electromagnets of near zero consumption at equilibrium.” Click on the video to see it in action. The invention is reminiscent of the frog-levitating apparatus and theory by Geim and Berry honored with the 2000 Ig Nobel Prize in physics.

Thanks to investigator Manaz Ganji, who works with Janick Simeray, the inventor, for bringing this to our attention.)