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The mini-Annals of Improbable Research
("mini-AIR")
Issue number 2007-10
October 2007
ISSN 1076-500X
Key words: improbable research, science humor, Ig Nobel,
AIR, the
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A free newsletter of tidbits too tiny to fit in
Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)
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2007-10-01 TABLE OF CONTENTS
2007-10-02 Imminent Events
2007-10-03 What's New in the Magazine
2007-10-04 Announcing the 2007 Ig Nobel Prize Winners
2007-10-05 Nominations for '08
2007-10-06 Perched Chicken Poet Triumph
2007-10-07 More About Those Hens
2007-10-08 Proof Less Strange Competition
2007-10-09 Cheerful Search for a Crab Louse
2007-10-10 RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT: Smart Thugs Thieve
2007-10-11 BLOGLIGHTS: Data, a Rhino, and a Happy Man
2007-10-12 MAY WE RECOMMEND: Chewing, Running, Rubber
Duck
2007-10-13 Improbable Research Events
2007-10-14 -- How to Subscribe to AIR (*)
2007-10-15 -- Our Address (*)
2007-10-16 -- Please Forward/Post This Issue! (*)
2007-10-17 -- How to Receive mini-AIR, etc. (*)
Items
marked (*) are reprinted in every issue.
mini-AIR
is
a
free monthly *e-supplement* to the print magazine
Annals
of Improbable Research
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2007-10-02 Imminent Events
GENOA SCIENCE FESTIVAL - Fri, Oct. 26. See
Featuring four Ig Nobel Prize winners and LFHCfS
man-of-the-year
(and rock star) Dr. Piero Paravadino.
<http://www.festivalscienza.it/it/programma/evento.php?id=463>
IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON - Mon, Nov. 26. See
<http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/gseps/news
and events/>
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2007-10-03 What's New in the Magazine
The September/October issue (vol. 13, no. 5) of the
Annals of
Improbable Research is the special Meaning of the Finger
issue.
Highlights include:
<> "The Meaning of the Finger" by Stephen
Drew and Alice Shirrell
Kaswell. Comparative-finger-length researchers have
discovered
evidence that measuring a person's finger lengths tells
all sorts
of things about the person's personality, behavior,
abilities and
limitations. This is a survey of the most outstanding of
those
discoveries.
<> "Improbable Research Review," compiled
by Dirk Manley.
Improbable theories, experiments, and conclusions.
TOPICS
INCLUDE: Asymmetry of Kissing; No Close Second; Paprika
on Armpit
Effect in Cowbirds; Kinetics of Cemetery Organization in
Ants;
Epic Meeting.
<> "Boys Will Be Boys," compiled by
Katherine Lee. Research by
and for adolescent males of all ages and sexes. TOPICS
INCLUDE:
Race for a Little Definition, Naming the Vestibule; Sweet
Orchidometer; Something New, Not Under the Sun.
The table of contents is online at <http://tinyurl.com/2msfwr>
To subscribe (6 paper issues per year) go to
<http://improbable.com/subscribe>
or see info at bottom of this newsletter.
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2007-10-04 Announcing the 2007 Ig Nobel Prize Winners
The 2007 Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded on Thursday night,
October
4, at the 17th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, at
Harvard's
Sanders Theatre. Here are the winners.
NOTE: For details see
<http://www.improbable.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html>
NOTE: A video recording of the ceremony is, or very soon
will be,
viewable at <http://improbable.com/ig/2007/webcast/>.
MEDICINE: Brian Witcombe of Gloucester, UK, and Dan Meyer
of
Antioch, Tennessee, USA, for their penetrating medical
report
"Sword Swallowing and Its Side Effects."
WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Brian Witcombe and Dan Meyer
PHYSICS: L. Mahadevan of Harvard University, USA, and
Enrique
Cerda Villablanca of Universidad de Santiago de Chile,
for
studying how sheets become wrinkled.
WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan,
and
Enrique Cerda Villablanca's sister Mariela.
BIOLOGY: Prof. Dr. Johanna E.M.H. van Bronswijk of
Eindhoven
University of Technology, The Netherlands, for doing a
census of
all the mites, insects, spiders, pseudoscorpions,
crustaceans,
bacteria, algae, ferns and fungi with whom we share our
beds each
night.
WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Dr. Johanna E.M.H. van
Bronswijk
CHEMISTRY: Mayu Yamamoto of the International Medical
Center of
Japan, for developing a way to extract vanillin --
vanilla
fragrance and flavoring -- from cow dung.
WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Mayu Yamamoto
PRESS NOTE: Toscanini's Ice Cream, the finest ice cream
shop in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, created a new ice cream flavor
in honor
of Mayu Yamamoto, and introduced it at the Ig Nobel
ceremony. The
flavor is called "Yum-a-Moto Vanilla Twist."
LINGUISTICS: Juan Manuel Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and
Nœria
Sebasti‡n-GallŽs, of Universitat de Barcelona, for
showing that
rats sometimes cannot tell the difference between a
person
speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch
backwards.
WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: The winners could not travel
to the
ceremony, so they instead delivered their acceptance
speech via
recorded video.
LITERATURE: Glenda Browne of Blaxland, Blue Mountains,
Australia,
for her study of the word "the" -- and of the
many ways it causes
problems for anyone who tries to put things into
alphabetical
order.
WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Glenda Browne
PEACE: The Air Force Wright Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio,
USA, for
instigating research & development on a chemical
weapon -- the
so-called "gay bomb" -- that will make enemy
soldiers become
sexually irresistible to each other.
NUTRITION: Brian Wansink of Cornell University, for
exploring the
seemingly boundless appetites of human beings, by feeding
them
with a self-refilling, bottomless bowl of soup.
WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Brian Wansink.
ECONOMICS: Kuo Cheng Hsieh, of Taichung, Taiwan, for
patenting a
device, in the year 2001, that catches bank robbers by
dropping a
net over them.
NOTE: The Ig Nobel Board of Governors attempted
repeatedly to
find Mr. Hsieh, but he seemed to have vanished
mysteriously.
But... Mr. Hsieh reportedly has seen a news account of
the Ig
Nobel ceremony, and contacted the news agency. We hope to
be in
touch with him soon.]
AVIATION: Patricia V. Agostino, Santiago A. Plano and
Diego A.
Golombek of Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Argentina,
for their
discovery that Viagra aids jetlag recovery in hamsters.
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2007-10-05 Nominations for '08
The Ig Nobel Board of Governors welcomes nominations for
the 2008
Ig Nobel Prizes.
The 2008 ceremony will be held on Thursday evening,
October 2,
2008, at Sanders Theatre, Harvard University.
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2007-10-06 Perched Chicken Poet Triumph
The judges have declared a winner for last month's
Perched
Chicken Competition Competition, which asked for a limerick
to
honor the study "Ability of Laying Hens to Jump
Between Perches:
Individual Variation and the Effects of Perch Separation
and
Motivation on Behaviour." The winner is:
INVESTIGATOR Deborah Hecht:
For maximum hop motivation
In chickens, check perch separation.
Some
hens won't pooh-pooh
Roosts that others eschew.
Yes, 'roost-ers' show hop variation.
Several of the more pleasing runner-up limericks are
posted in
our blog.
And here is the assessment from Limerick Laureate MARTIN
EIGER:
What the authors are basically saying
Is hens of the type that are laying,
When
placed on a perch
Might
stay put, or might lurch.
Some are jumping, while others are staying.
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2007-10-07 More About Those Hens
Some of the people who wrote hen limericks apparently did
not
read the study. They deprived themselves of reading the
following
items about those hens:
<> Head movements were more frequent in birds which
jumped, at
the shorter distance, in motivated (hungry) birds and in
the
morning rather than the afternoon.
<> Birds called more at the greater distance and
this was
interpreted as indicative of frustration.
<> Subjective scores for activity were lower when
perches were
separated by the greater distance and when birds were
satiated
(less motivated) rather than hungry.
<> Agitated head movements and stepping activity
thus occurred
mainly when birds were motivated and on the point of
jumping
whereas calling was associated with an apparent inability
or
unwillingness to jump
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2007-10-08 Proof Less Strange Competition
A Proof Less Strange is the subject of this month's
limerick
competition. To enter, compose an original limerick that
illuminates the nature of this report:
"A
Less Strange Version of Milnor's Proof of
Brouwer's
Fixed-Point Theorem," C.A. Rogers,
American
Mathematical Monthly, vol. 87, no. 7,
August/September
1980, pp. 525-7.
RULES: Please make sure your rhymes actually do, and that
your
poem is in classic, trips-off-the-tongue limerick form.
PRIZE: The winning poet will receive a (if we manage to
send it
to the correct address) a free, possibly strange issue of
the
Annals of Improbable Research. Send entries (one entry
per
entrant) to:
PROOF
LESS STRANGE LIMERICK COMPETITION
c/o
<marca AT chem2.harvard.edu>
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2007-10-09 Cheerful Search for a Crab Louse
"The Rotterdam Natural History Museum has appealed
for somebody —
anybody — to give it a single crab louse for its
collection, amid
fears they may be dying out. The donor's anonymity, said
curator
Kees Moeliker, is guaranteed."
So says an October 19, 2007 Associated Press report. Kees
Moeliker is the 2003 Ig Nobel Biology Prize winner (for
his
discovery of homosexual necrophilia in mallard ducks),
and also
now is the Annals of Improbable Research's European
Bureau Chief.
Our European Bureau is located in the Rotterdam Natural
History
Museum.
For details and links, see <http://tinyurl.com/3xxy49>.
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2007-10-10 RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT: Smart Thugs Thieve
Each month we select for your special attention a
research report
that seems particularly worth a close read. This month's
pick:
"Developmental Trajectories of Male Physical
Violence and Theft:
Relations to Neurocognitive Performance," E.D.
Barker, J.R.
Seguin, H.R. White, M.E. Bates, E. Lacourse, R.
Carbonneau, and
R.E. Tremblay, Archives of General Psychiatry, vol. 64,
no. 5,
May 2007, pp. 592-9. (Thanks to Chris Tromblay for
bringing this
to our attention.) The authors, at the Universite de
Montreal,
report that:
"Executive function and verbal IQ performance were
negatively
related to high frequency of physical violence but
positively
related to high frequency of theft."
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2007-10-11 BLOGLIGHTS: Data, a Rhino, and a Happy Man
Here are some recent topics in our blog:
<> An Eden for data enthusiasts
<> Mecca from orbit: The physics manual
<> Interdisciplinary collaboration at the Ig Nobel
party
<> Yet another rectal explosion
<> Letter from a happy man
and some from the newspaper column in The Guardian:
<> The rhinoceros and you
<> Where There's Smoke, There's Health
<> An Ig Nobel hero: Mites in his ear
<> Rock, scissors, monkey
...
and others
Read
the blog
every
day at <http://www.improbable.com>
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2007-10-12 MAY WE RECOMMEND: Chewing, Running, Rubber
Duck
CEREBRAL CHEWING IN CHILDREN
"Relationship Between Mastication and Intelligence
in Children,"
[article in Japanese], M. Funakoshi, S. Kawamura, H.
Nakajima, H.
Fujiwara, and T. Nishikawa, Gifu Shika Gakkai Zasshi,
vol. 14, no
1, June 1987, pp. 17-29.
WITH HASTE, UP, IN REVERSE
"Running Backward Uphill: Its Biomechanics and
Clinical
Application," P. Apor, J. Dubecz, and T. Horbobagyi,
Proceedings
of the Fifth Meeting of the European Society of
Biomechanics,
Berlin, Germany, 1986.
IS DEMOCRATIC TOLERATION A RUBBER DUCK?
"Is Democratic Toleration a Rubber Duck?" Glen
Newey, Res
Publica, vol. 7, no. 3, October 2001, pp. 315-36. The author is
at Strathclyde University.
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2007-10-13 Improbable Research Events
For details and additional events, see
<http://improbable.com/improbable-research-shows/complete-schedule>
FESTIVAL DELLA SCIENZA, GENOA, ITALY -- OCT 26, 2007
NPR "SCIENCE FRIDAY" IG NOBEL BROADCAST -- NOV 23, 2007
IMPERIAL COLLEGE, LONDON --
NOV 26, 2007
AAAS ANNUAL MEETING, BOSTON -- FEB 15, 2008
IG NOBEL UK TOUR --
MAR, 2008
DFG ANNUAL ASSEMBLY, BERLIN, GERMANY -- JUL 1, 2008
IG NOBEL PRIZE CEREMONY --
OCT 2, 2008
IG INFORMAL LECTURES --
OCT 4, 2008
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2007-10-14 -- How to Subscribe to AIR (*)
The Annals of Improbable Research is a paper magazine.
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FAX:617-661-0927 <air AT improbable.com>
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2007-10-15 -- Our Address (*)
Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)
PO Box 380853, Cambridge, MA 02238 USA
617-491-4437 FAX:617-661-0927
EDITORIAL: marca AT chem2.harvard.edu
SUBSCRIPTIONS: air AT improbable.com
WEB SITE: <http://www.improbable.com>
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2007-10-16 -- Please Forward/Post This Issue! (*)
Please distribute copies of mini-AIR (or excerpts!)
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mini-AIRheads -------------
EDITOR: Marc Abrahams
MINI-PROOFREADER AND PICKER OF NITS (before we introduce
the last
few at the last moment): Wendy Mattson
COMMUTATIVE EDITOR: Stanley Eigen
ASSOCIATIVE EDITOR: Mark Dionne
PSYCHOLOGY EDITOR: Robin Abrahams
CO-CONSPIRATORS: Alice Shirrell Kaswell, Gary Dryfoos,
Ernest
Ersatz, S. Drew
MAITRE DE COMPUTATION: Jerry Lotto
AUTHORITY FIGURES: Nobel Laureates Dudley Herschbach,
Sheldon
Glashow, William Lipscomb, Richard Roberts
(c) copyright 2007, Annals of Improbable Research
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2007-10-17 -- How to Receive mini-AIR, etc. (*)
What you are reading right now is mini-AIR. Mini-AIR is a
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