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The mini-Annals of Improbable Research ("mini-AIR")

February 2010, issue number 2010-02. ISSN 1076-500X.

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Monthly mini update/alert from the Annals of Improbable Research

This issue is at

<http://www.improbable.com/airchives/miniair/2010/mini2010-02.htm>

Archive at <http://improbable.com/airchives/miniair/>

Key words: improbable research, science humor, Ig Nobel, AIR, the

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2010-02-01 TABLE OF CONTENTS

2010-02-02 Imminent Events

2010-02-03 The Magazine: Beards. Bagels. Paper Planes

2010-02-04 Why the Inventor of Karaoke Won a Peace Prize

2010-02-05 Brassiere/facemask conversion video

2010-02-06 Ig Nobel Winners in San Diego Feb 19

2010-02-07 UK Tour in March

2010-02-08 RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT: The Baboons Come Down When?

2010-02-09 Four-Horodecki Entanglement Poet

2010-02-10 Elephant Origin Competition

2010-02-11 Improbable Research on Twitter

2010-02-12 MORE IMPROBABLE: Shoe Like a Face?

2010-02-13 MAY WE RECOMMEND: Flexible Dumbbell, Mitey Genes

2010-02-14 Improbable Research Events

2010-02-15 -- How to Subscribe to AIR (*)

2010-02-16 -- Our Address (*)

2010-02-17 -- Please Forward/Post This Issue! (*)

2010-02-18 -- How to Receive mini-AIR, etc. (*)

Items marked (*) are reprinted in every issue.

mini-AIR is

but a wee monthly *supplement*

to the bi-monthly magazine Annals of Improbable Research

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2010-02-02 Imminent Events

AAAS, San Diego Feb 19, 2010

See section 2010-02-06 below.

UK Tour Mar 11-21, 2010

<http://bit.ly/8lKeHd>

Complete events schedule: <http://bit.ly/6SGDcA>

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2010-02-03 The Magazine: Beards. Bagels. Paper Planes

The special Beards & Bagels & Paper Airplanes issue (volume 16,

number 1) of the magazine will emerge any day now from the

printer.

Highlights include:

<> "Time for a Shave? Does Facial Hair Interfere With

Visual Speech Intelligibility?"

<> "Beard Research Review"

<> "Paper Airplane Producers: Morning Types vs. Evening Types"

<> "Paper Airplane Research Review"

<> "Mathematically Correct Breakfast:

How to Slice a Bagel into Two Linked Halves"

And much more.

Read many back issues (including the recent Ig Nobel special

issue) online at: <http://www.improbable.com/magazine/>.

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2010-02-04 Why the Inventor of Karaoke Won a Peace Prize

Karaoke-triggered killings and fights remind us why Daisuke Inoue

was awarded the 2004 Ig Nobel peace prize. The citation lauded

him "for inventing karaoke, thereby providing an entirely new way

for people to learn to tolerate each other."

<http://bit.ly/9EWx00>

The deaths and fights? The New York Times reports:

"The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been

killed warbling 'My Way' in karaoke bars over the years in the

Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news

media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past

decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the 'My

Way Killings.'" <http://nyti.ms/bkAS3M>

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2010-02-05 Brassiere/facemask conversion video

Video of Dr. Elena Bodnar's Ig Nobel acceptance speech is now

online. Dr Bodnar invented a brassiere that, in an emergency, can

be quickly converted into a pair of protective face masks, one

for the brassiere wearer and one to be given to some needy

bystander. She demonstrated it at the ceremony, assisted by Nobel

laureates Wolfgang Ketterle, Orhan Pamuk, and Paul Krugman.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxf3HK21BWI>

Dr. Bodnar will demonstrate it again at the AAAS meeting in San

Diego (see section 2010-02-06 below), and on the Ig Nobel UK tour

in March (see section 2010-02-07 below).

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2010-02-06 Ig Nobel Winners in San Diego Feb 19

Ig Nobel Prize winners will descend on San Diego on February 19.

You are invited to join them.

Ig Nobel Prize winners:

Dr. Elena Bodnar (emergency bra/mask)

Dr. Donald Unger (60 years of knuckle-cracking)

Dorian Raymer (string inevitably tangles itself into knots)

Dr. Hagop Akiskal (romantic love is biochemically

indistinguishable from obsessive-compulsive disorder)

Dr. Deepak Chopra (physics as it applies to life, liberty,

and the pursuit of economic happiness) *

* NOTE: Dr. Chopra, the 1998 Ig Nobel Physics Prize winner, is

invited. But we do not yet know if he can join us.

Other Improbable Researchers:

Miriam Sach, Ph.D., will dance her dissertation

Dr. Beatrice Golomb will discuss objects she has

found in patients' rectums

WHEN: Friday night, Feb 19, starting at 8:00.

WHERE: San Diego Marriott Hotel and Marina, in the Seaview Room

This event (unlike most of the AAAS meeting) is open to the

public, free. Bring friends. Get there early. It always

overflows.

See the lineup at <http://improbable.com/improbable-research-shows/complete-schedule/>

twitter: #igAAAS10

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2010-02-07 UK Tour in March

Eighth annual tour for National Science & Engineering Week.

Shows in Oxford, Dundee, Portsmouth, Liverpool, London, Bristol.

Topics include: Bra/facemask, sword-swallowing, necrophiliac

ducks, lack of a girlfriend, eating plutonium, fruit bat

fellatio, feedback, Tycho Brahe's nose, and more.

Details: <http://improbable.com/improbable-research-shows/ig-uk-tour/>

twitter: #iguk10

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2010-02-08 RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT: The Baboons Come Down When?

This month's specially selected study is:

"What Time Do the Baboons Come Down From the Trees? An Estimation

Problem," Stephen S. Wagner and Stuart A. Altmann, Biometrics,

vol. 29, December 1973, pp. 623-35.

<http://www.jstor.org/pss/2529130>

(Thanks to Carl Metgar for bringing this to our attention.)

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2010-02-09 Four-Horodecki Entanglement Poet

The judges have chosen a winner in the Four-Horodecki

Entanglement Limerick Competition, which asked for a limerick to

honor the study "Quantum Entanglement," Ryszard Horodecki, Pawel

Horodecki, Michal Horodecki and Karol Horodecki, Reviews of

Modern Physics, vol. 81, no. 2, 2009, pp. 865-942.

<http://bit.ly/4ENWEo>

The winner is INVESTIGATOR NAN SWIFT, who wrote:

This theory, still quasi-newfangled,

Made some brilliant minds become mangled.

Horodeckies (united!)

Now seem to have righted

Some thoughts that were badly entangled.

Here's the offering from LIMERICK LAUREATE MARTIN EIGER:

The mathematical theory is good.

But in labs, we don't see what we should.

Why doesn't a quantum

Behave as we want 'em?

If we could detect it, it would.

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2010-02-10 Elephant Origin Competition

Elephants inspire this month's limerick competition. To enter,

compose an original limerick that illuminates the nature of this

report:

"A Simple and Inexpensive Molecular Method for Sexing and

Identification of the Forensic Samples of Elephant Origin," Sandeep K.

Gupta, Kumarasamy Thangaraj, Lalji Singh, Journal of Forensic Sciences,

vol. 51, no. 4, July 2006, pp. 805-7. <http://bit.ly/9oMIiO>

"The population of the Asian elephant is being dramatically reduced due

to poaching of the ivory from the male. As poaching occurs in remote

forests, it often takes weeks or longer for it to be discovered and it

is therefore often very difficult to determine the sex of the

decomposed body. Data suggest that in the recent past, over 2000 male

elephants have been poached in South India. We have developed a

technique based on molecular markers to determine that the carcass is

an elephant and that it is a male."

RULES: Please make sure that: (1) your rhymes actually do; and

(2) your poem is in classic, trills-off-the-tongue limerick form.

PRIZE: The winning poet will receive (if we manage to send it to

the correct address) a free, perhaps elephantine, high-res PDF

issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. Send entries (one

entry per entrant) to:

ELEPHANT ORIGIN LIMERICK COMPETITION

c/o <marca AT chem2.harvard.edu>

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2010-02-11 Improbable Research on Twitter

Moving glacially, we have finally begun making little tweet,

tweet sound on twitter. Follow us, as the saying goes, at

ImprobResearch

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2010-02-12 MORE IMPROBABLE: Shoe Like a Face?

BLOG <http://improbable.com/>

<> Memoirs of a stomach: written by himself

<> Dr. Nakamats Underwater

<> Screw-in Coffin

<> When Is a Shoe Like a Face?

And many more...

NEWSPAPER <http://improbable.com/category/newspaper-column>

<> Peter's pack of pecking poulets

<> The lazy bureaucrat problem

<> Keep that waist to yourself!

<> The face value of numbers

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2010-02-13 MAY WE RECOMMEND: Flexible Dumbbell, Mitey Genes

STOCHASTIC DRIFT OF A FLEXIBLE DUMBBELL

"Stochastic Stokes' Drift of a Flexible Dumbbell," Kalvis M.

Jansons, Fluid Dynamics Research, vol. 39, nos. 9-10, September-

October 2007, pp. 665-72. <http://bit.ly/9bcLjj> (Thanks to Tom

Gill for bringing this to our attention.) Section two of the

paper is titled "The stochastic dumbbell process."

THE DIRT ON MITEY GENES

"Diet-Dependent Female Choice for Males With 'Good Genes' in a

Soil Predatory Mite," I. Lesna and M.W. Sabelis, Nature, no.

6753, 1999, pp. 581-3. <http://bit.ly/ahEsC3> (Thanks to Tom

Hawkins for bringing this to our attention.)

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2010-02-14 Improbable Research Events

For details and additional events, see

<http://improbable.com/improbable-research-shows/complete-schedule>

AAAS, San Diego — Feb 19, 2010

UK Tour — Mar 2010

UKSG, Edinburgh — Apr 14, 2010

Edinburgh Science Festival — Apr 17, 2010

Ig Nobel Sweden/Denmark Tour — Apr 2010

Cambridge (MA) Science Festival — May 1, 2010

APS (Assn for Psych Science), Boston — May 2010

Ig Nobel Prize ceremony — Sep 30, 2010

Ig Informal Lectures — Oct 2, 2010

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2010-02-15 -- How to Subscribe to AIR (*)

The Annals of Improbable Research is a 6-issues-per-year

magazine. (It's bigger and better than the little bits of

overflow material you've been reading in this newsletter).

To subscribe to the paper-and-ink version, go to

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Send payment (US bank check, or international money order, or

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617-491-4437 FAX:617-661-0927 <air AT improbable.com>

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2010-02-16 -- 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: subscriptions AT improbable.com

Web Site: <http://www.improbable.com>

Blog: www.improbable.com

Twitter: ImprobResearch

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2010-02-17 -- Please Forward/Post This Issue! (*)

Please distribute copies of mini-AIR (or excerpts!) wherever

appropriate. The only limitations are: A) Please indicate that

the material comes from mini-AIR. B) You may NOT distribute mini-

AIR for commercial purposes.

------------- 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

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2010-02-18 -- How to Receive mini-AIR, etc. (*)

What you are reading right now is mini-AIR. Mini-AIR is a (free!)

tiny monthly *supplement* to the bi-monthly print magazine.

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