The longest courtroom oath, the Okajima/Fujinami navel lint removal invention, global BOOM (from colonoscopies), the year of lint, preference mapping of cheese sticks, periodic leg movements during sleep in Japan; and some dirty, rotten, and dammed [sic] imperfections all turn up in this week’s Improbable Research podcast.
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This week, Marc Abrahams tells about:
- The longest oath. (Burmah and the Burmese, Kenneth R.H. Mackenzie, Geo. Routledge & Co., London, 1853. Featuring a dramatic reading by Robin Abrahams.)
- The Okajima/Fujinami navel lint removal invention. (“Body recessed portion cleaning agent,” patent application (US #2007/0041923) filed by Takao Okajima and Susumu Fujinami. Featuring dramatic readings by Chris Cotsapas.)
- Global BOOM. (“Unusual Complication in Electrosurgery: Explosion of Gases in the Cecum During Operation of Cecal Fistula” [article in Italian], G. Pezzuoli and C. Ghiringhelli, L’Ospedale Maggiore, vol. 40, no. 9, September 1952, pp. 443-6. / “Pneumatic Explosion of the Cecum in Patients with Carcinoma of the Colon” [article in Spanish], N. Antonelli and E. Borenstein, Prensa Medica Argentina, vol. 51, October 23, 1964, pp. 999-1002. / “Intestinal Gas Explosion As a Rare Cause of Traumatic Colon Perforation” [article in German], F.J. Stucker and H. Molzberger, Chirurg, vol. 45, no. 8, August 1974, pp. 373-5. / “Explosions of Colonic Gas,” B.H. Rogers, New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 291, no. 20, November 1974, p. 1089. / “Intestinal Explosion During the Use of Diathermy” [article in Danish], N.J. Olsen and V. Berg, Ugeskrift for Laeger, vol. 140, no. 31, July 1978, pp. 1890-1. / “Gas Explosion During Diathermy Colotomy,” N. Shinagawa, et al., British Journal of Surgery, vol. 72, no. 4, April 1985, p. 306. / “Diathermy-Induced Gas Explosion in the Intestinal Tract” [article in Hebrew], E. Gross, et al., Harefuah, vol. 123, nos. 1-2, July 1992, pp. 12-3. / “Gas Explosion During Colonic Surgery,” J.H. De Wilt, et al., Journal of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, vol. 41, no. 6, December 1996, p. 419. / “Intestinal Gas Explosion During Operation: A Case Report,” [article in French], G. Bouhours, et al., Annales Françaises d’Anesthesie et de Reanimation, vol. 22, no. 4, April 2003, pp. 366-8. / “Colonic Gas Explosion — Is a Fire Extinguisher Necessary?” J.H. Bond and M.D. Levitt, Gastroenterology, vol. 77, no. 6, December 1979, pp. 1349-50. / “Unusual Blast Colonic Injury Due to a Fall,” E.O. Fashakin and P.A. Ajayi, Tropical Gastroenterology, vol. 12, no. 2, April-June 1991, pp. 83-6. Featuring dramatic readings by Daniel Rosenberg.)
- The year of lint. (“The Nature of Navel Fluff,” Georg Steinhauser, Medical Hypotheses, 72, no. 6 (2009): 623-625. / “Lint in the Belly Button,” Mamoru Kikuchi and Kenji Yano, Journal of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery, vol. 62, no. 2, February 2009, pp. 282–3. Featuring dramatic readings by Chris Cotsapas.)
- Improbable Research Review. (“Application of Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS) to the Preference Mapping of Cheese Sticks,” R. Xiong and J.F. Meullenet, Journal of Food Science, vol. 69, no. 4, 2004, pp. SNQ131-9. / “Periodic Leg Movements During Sleep in Japanese Community-Dwelling Adults Based on the Assessments of Their Bed Partners,” Y. Doi, Y. Inoue, M. Minowa, M. Uchiyama, and M. Okawa, Journal of Epidemiology, vol. 13 no. 5, September 2003, pp. 259-65. / “Methodological Imperfections and the Formalization of Scientific Activity,” George Svetlichy, International Journal of Theoretical Physics, vol. 26, no. 3, 1987, pp. 221-38. Featuring dramatic readings by Daniel Rosenberg.) Here’s video of industrial cheese sticks production:
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 Spotify).