mini-Annals of Improbable Research ("mini-AIR")
March 2024, issue number 2024-03. ISSN 1076-500X.
improbable.com/publications/newsletter-mini-air/
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Research that makes people LAUGH, then THINK.
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01 TABLE OF CONTENTS
02 IN THE MAGAZINE ITSELF: Ants
03 Personality — Physics and Chemistry
04 The 2024 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony Returns to Traditional Form
05 Return of the Ig Nobel EuroTour — April 2024
06 LIMERICK CHALLENGE: Elementary Personalities
07 Time on Time (and Space) Limerick Winner
08 MORE IMPROBABLE: Ant sounds, Frans de Waal, Jeopardy
09 Protein Personalities
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20 SOME IMPROBABLE EVENTS
30 — Subscribe to the Actual Magazine! (*)
31 — How to start or stop receiving this little newsletter (*)
32 — Contact Info (*)
33 — Standard Gobbledegook (*)
Items marked (*) are reprinted in every issue.
What you are reading at the moment (mini-AIR) is overflow detritus
from the magazine Annals of Improbable Research (AIR).
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02 IN THE MAGAZINE ITSELF: Ants
The special ANTS issue (vol. 30, no. 2) of the magazine has been sent to subscribers. The table of contents and selected articles are at: improbable.com/annals-of-improbable-research-march-april-2024-vol-30-number-2/
SUBSCRIBE to the MAGAZINE, or get BACK ISSUES (there are more than 150 of them!): gumroad.com/improbable
Tables of Contents: improbable.com/magazine-2/
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03 Personality — Physics and Chemistry
This month's quasi-haphazardly selected research report of the month (QHSRROTM) is:
"The Physics and Chemistry of Personality," Robert R. McCrae, Theory and Psychology, vol. 19, no. 5, 2009, pp. 670-687.
doi.org/10.1177/0959354309341928
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04 The 2024 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony Returns to Traditional Form
After four pandemic-hobbled years in which the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony happened as a purely on-line event, we are returning to the grand tradition: a gala event with everybody (including an audience) in a big room.
The 34TH FIRST ANNUAL IG NOBEL PRIZE CEREMONY will happen on THURSDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 12, 2024, at MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology). It will also be webcast live.
We will announce details, including ticket info, during the coming months.
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05 Return of the Ig Nobel EuroTour — April 2024
The Ig Nobel EuroTour, which was entirely interrupted by the pandemic, is making a triumphant (or whatever) return from hibernation.
Ig Nobel Prize winners galore will tell and show all (or at least much) about their prize-winning work. each has done something that makes people LAUGH, then THINK.
WHEN: April 2024
WHERE: GERMANY, DENMARK, SWITZERLAND, ITALY (Berlin, Aarhus, Copenhagen, Lausanne, Rome). The show at EPFL in Lausanne will also be webcast live.
DETAILS are on our events page: improbable.com/upcoming-events/
These are the Ig Nobel Prize winners who will appear in one or more of the events:
ELISKA PROCHAZKOVA and MARISKA KRET — seeking and finding evidence that when new romantic partners meet for the first time, and feel attracted to each other, their heart rates synchronize
KEES MOELIKER — discovery of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck
JONATHAN WILLIAMS — chemically analyzing the air inside movie theaters, to test whether the odors produced by an audience reliably indicate the levels of violence, sex, antisocial behavior, drug use, and bad language in the movie the audience is watching
SUSANNE SCHÖTZ — purring, chirping, chattering, trilling, tweedling, murmuring, meowing, moaning, squeaking, hissing, yowling, howling, growling, and other modes of cat–human communication
CHRIS MOULIN — studying the sensations people feel when they repeat a single word many, many, many, many, many, many, many times
DAMIEN BOUFFARD — measuring the extent to which ocean-water mixing is affected by the sexual activity of anchovies
MINNA LYONS — amassing evidence that people who habitually stay up late are, on average, more self-admiring, more manipulative, and more psychopathic than people who habitually arise early in the morning
CHRIS MCMANUS — scrotal asymmetry in man and in ancient sculpture
ILARIA BUFALARI — many identical twins cannot tell themselves apart visually
SILVANO GALLUS — evidence that pizza might protect against illness and death, if the pizza is made and eaten in Italy
ALESSANDRO PLUCHINO, ANDREA RAPISARDA, and ALESSIO EMANUELE BIONDO — why success most often goes not to the most talented people, but instead to the luckiest
DONATELLA MARAZZITI — biochemically, romantic love may be indistinguishable from having severe obsessive-compulsive disorder
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06 LIMERICK CHALLENGE: Elementary Personalities
This month's RESEARCH LIMERICK challenge — Devise a pleasing limerick that encapsulates this study:
"Personalities of the Elements," Sidney J. French, Scientific American, vol. 158, no. 6, 1938, pp. 340-342.
jstor.org/stable/24955362
Submit your perfectly formed, delightfully enlightening limerick to:
ELEMENTARY PERSONALITIES LIMERICK COMPETITION
c/o MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM
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07 Time on Time (and Space) Limerick Winner
The judges have chosen a winner in last month's Competition, which asked for a limerick to explain this pair of studies:
"Analysis of Space and Time Structures in Two-Phase Flow Using Capacitance Sensors," R.W. Time, Thesis (Dr. Scient.), Hoegskolesenteret i Rogaland, Stavanger, Norway, 1993. osti.gov/etdeweb/biblio/10142754
Winning limerickicist JUDITH G. YURK writes:
Time on time and space?
Do time and space embrace?
Which is over? Which under?
I really must wonder:
How do time and space interface?
This month's take from our LIMERICK LAUREATE, MARTIN EIGER:
Gases go, fluids flow and winds blow,
And in this dissertation, they show
How the data they chewed
Leads us all to conclude
That sensors can sense where they go.
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08 MORE IMPROBABLE: Ant sounds, Frans de Waal, Jeopardy
Recent improbable research bits you may have missed...
BLOG: www.improbable.com:
• For aesthetes who enjoy ant eating sounds
• Ig Nobel Prize winner Frans de Waal has died
• Igs figure again in the Jeopardy TV game show
• …and much more
WEEKLY COLUMN IN NEW SCIENTIST MAGAZINE:
newscientist.com/author/marc-abrahams/
LUXURIANT FLOWING HAIR CLUB FOR SCIENTISTS (LFHCfS):
www.improbable.com/category/lfhcfs-hair-club/
PODCAST ARCHIVE:
www.improbable.com/category/the-weekly-improbable-research-podcast/
FACEBOOK: facebook.com/improbableresearch
MASTODON: @MarcAbrahams@mstdn.science
INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/improbable_research/
PATREON: patreon.com/ImprobableResearch
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09 Protein Personalities
This month's Other Haphazardly-Selected Research Report (OQHSRROTM) of the month is:
"Dynamic Personalities of Proteins," Katherine Henzler-Wildman and Dorothee Kern, Nature, vol. 450, no. 7172, 2007, pp. 964-972.
doi.org/10.1038/nature0652
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TREAT YOURSELF TO (MUCH) MORE IMPROBABLE STUFF.
SUBCRIBE TO THE (PDF) MAGAZINE!
improbable.com/magazine-2/
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20 SOME IMPROBABLE EVENTS
· 2024 IG NOBEL EURO-TOUR:
· Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany — Apr 3, 2024
· Freie Universität Berlin, - Germany — Apr 4, 2024
· Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, Berlin, Germany — Apr 4 and Apr 5, 2024
· U Aarhus, Denmark — Apr 9, 2024
· U Copenhagen, Denmark — Apr 10, 2024
· EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland — Apr 16 2024
· Rome Science Festival, Italy — April 19, 20, 21, 2024
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· 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, MIT — Sep 12, 2024
· Ig Nobel Face-to-Face — Date TBA
· Balticon, Baltimore, USA — May 23-26, 2025
OTHER EVENTS TBA
[All live events are subject to pandemical constraints and adventures.]
For details and additional events, see: improbable.com/upcoming-events/
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30 — Subscribe to the Actual Magazine! (*)
The Annals of Improbable Research is a 6-issues-per-year magazine,
in PDF form. It's packed with research that makes people laugh, then think.
improbable.com/publications/magazine
SUBSCRIPTIONS ($25, for six issues)
BACK ISSUES ($5 each)
(mini-AIR, the thing you are reading at this moment, is but a tiny, free-floating appendix to the actual magazine.)
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31 — How to start or stop receiving this newsletter (*)
This newsletter, Mini-AIR, is just a (free!) tiny monthly *supplement* to the big, bold six-times-a-year magazine Annals of Improbable Research.
To SUBSCRIBE or UNSUBSCRIBE to mini-AIR, see the links at the end of this email.
ARCHIVES: improbable.com/publications/newsletter-mini-air/
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32 — CONTACT INFO (*)
Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)
improbable.com
EDITORIAL: MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM
SUBSCRIPTION QUESTIONS: subscriptions AT improbable.com
Cambridge, MA, USA
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33 — Standard Gobbledegook (*)
EDITOR: Marc Abrahams
CO-CONSPIRATORS: Kees Moeliker, Alice Shirrell Kaswell, Gary Dryfoos, Nan Swift, Stephen Drew
PROOFREADER: Ambient Happenstance
AUTHORITY FIGURES: Nobel Laureates Dudley Herschbach, Sheldon Glashow, Richard Roberts
Key words: improbable research, science humor, Ig Nobel, AIR, the
(c) copyright 2024, Improbable Research
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