The word “dude”, cheese, and baldness all turn up in this week’s Improbable Research podcast.
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This week, Marc Abrahams tells about:
- Hey dude. (Kiesling, Scott F. (2004). ‘Dude.’ American Speech 79 (3): 281–305. Supplementary material about “Dude”. Featuring dramatic readings by Sue Wellington.) Here’s the trailer from the film Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which plays a large role in the study ‘Dude’:
- Cheddar and mozzarella physics. (Charalambides, M. N., J. G. Williams, and S. Chakrabarti (1995). ‘A Study of the Influence of Ageing on the Mechanical Properties of Cheddar Cheese.’ Journal of Materials Science 30: 3959–67. / Ak, M. Mehmet, and Sundaram Gunasekaran (1996). ‘Dynamic Rheological Properties of Mozzarella Cheese During Refrigerated Storage.’ Journal of Food Science 61 (3): 566–69. / Lee, Siew Kim, Skelte Anema, and Henning Klostermeyer (2004). ‘The Influence of Moisture Content on the Rheological Properties of Processed Cheese Spreads.’ International Journal of Food Science & Technology 39 (7): 763–71. Featuring dramatic readings by Jean Berko Gleason.)
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Boys Will Be Boys research. (“Dung Lung: A Report of Toxic Exposure to Liquid Manure,” Lida N. Osbern and Robert O. Crapo, Annals of Internal Medicine, vol. 95, no. 33, September 1981, pp. 312–4. / “A Preliminary Report on the Use of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging with Simultaneous Urodynamics to Record Brain Activity During Micturition,” Jan Krhut, Jaroslav Tintera, Petr Holý, Roman Zachoval, and Peter Zvara, Journal of Urology, vol.188, no. 2, 2012, pp. 474–9. / “Magnetic Spheres as Foreign Body into the Bladder,” Tulio M. Graziottin, Daniel de Freitas G. Soares, Carlos T. Da Ros, Paulo R. Sogari, Cláudio Telöken, and Paulo Roberto Laste, Journal of Sexual Medicine, vol. 10, no. 10, October 2013, pp. 2590–2. Featuring dramatic readings by Andrew Berry.)
- Why people go bald (maybe). (Yáñez Soler, Armando José (2004). ‘Cultural Evolution as a Possible Triggering or Causative Factor of Common Baldness.’ Medical Hypotheses 62 (6): 980–85. / Scarmeas, G. Levy, M.-X. Tang, J. Manly, and Y. Stern (2001). ‘Influence of leisure activity on the incidence of Alzheimer’s Disease.’ Neurology 57: 2236–42. Featuring dramatic readings by Jean Berko Gleason.)
- A golden mean in your mouth. (Levin, E. I. (1978). ‘Dental Esthetics and the Golden Proportion.’ Journal of Prosthetic Dentistry, 40 (3): 244–52. Featuring dramatic readings by Jean Berko Gleason.)
The mysterious John Schedler perhaps did the sound engineering this week.
The Improbable Research podcast is all about research that makes people LAUGH, then THINK — real research, about anything and everything, from everywhere —research that may be good or bad, important or trivial, valuable or worthless. CBS distributes it, both on the new CBS Play.it web site, and on iTunes (and soon, also on Spotify).