Mini-AIR

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

March 2023, issue number 2023-03. ISSN 1076-500X.

https://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: Lots About Water

03 Rock Wrens Railroad Distances

04 Ig Nobel Face-to-Face at Stanford University

05 Limerick Challenge: McNugget Monoid Factorization Distances

06 Large Puff Balls Winner

07 MORE IMPROBABLE: Nuts, Chicken, Failure

08 People's Arms Personal Space Distances

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: Lots About Water

If your idea of a good time is ideas, read the special WATER issue (vol. 29, no. 2) of the magazine. The table of contents and selected articles are at:

https://improbable.com/publications/magazine/annals-of-improbable-research-mar-apr-2023-vol-29-number-2/

SUBSCRIBE to the MAGAZINE, or get BACK ISSUES (there are more than 150 of them!): https://gumroad.com/improbable

Tables of Contents: https://improbable.com/publications/magazine/

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03 Vagrant Rock Wrens Railroad Distances

This month's quasi-haphazardly selected research report of the month (QHSRROTM) is:

"Rock Wren Transport in Railroad Boxcars," Nathanial Warning, The Southwestern Naturalist, vol. 61, no. 3, 2016, pp. 203-209. (Thanks to Tom Gill for bringing this to our attention.)

https://doi.org/10.1894/0038-4909-61.3.203

The author, at the City of Longmont [Colorado] Natural Resources Department, reports:

"In 1956, and again in 1988, breeding pairs of rock wrens (Salpinctes obsoletus) were observed in Churchill, Manitoba, beyond their previously known breeding extent. It has been suggested that these and other vagrant rock wrens might have been accidentally transported in railroad boxcars. Alternative explanations include: 1) that rock wrens are prone to vagrancy during migration and dispersal, and 2) that the species is expanding its range via hydrographic or human-made corridors. I compiled northern and eastern vagrancy records from May 1898 through November 2015 for rock wrens and four other bird species with similar ranges. I calculated the distance of each sighting to the nearest railway and hydrographic features, compared these distances among species, and identified vagrant clusters."

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04 Ig Nobel Face-to-Face at Stanford University

We're going to try a little experiment, a slightly new form of event, in which Ig Nobel Prize winners and/or other improbable researchers get to ask each other questions about their work. And you, the audience, gets to ask them, too!

This event will feature with Marc Abrahams and several eminent persons — Genie Scott, Alvin Roth, Dakota McCoy, and Seung-min Park.

It will happen at Stanford University, on Wednesday, March 22, at 1:00 pm, in Rotunda E241 (Chem-H + Wu Tsai Building). This event is organized by Stanford Data Science. It's open to the public, free. Please join us!

INFO:

https://datascience.stanford.edu/events/center-health/ig-nobel-prize-face-face

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05 Limerick Challenge: McNugget Monoid Factorization Distances

This month's RESEARCH LIMERICK challenge — Devise a pleasing limerick that encapsulates this study:

"Distances Between Factorizations in the Chicken McNugget Monoid," Scott Chapman, Pedro Garcia-Sanchez, Christopher O'Neill, arXiv 1912.04494v1, 2019. (Thanks to Mason Porter for bringing this to our attention.)

https://doi.org/10.1080/07468342.2021.1909953

The authors explain:

"We use the Chicken McNugget Monoid to demonstrate various factorization properties related to relations and chains of factorizations. We study in depth the catenary and tame degrees of this monoid….

So what is the Chicken McNugget Monoid? We briefly review some background material which can be found in greater detail in [17]. Chicken McNuggets were originally sold in packages of size 6, 9, or 20 pieces, and the question of how many Chicken McNuggets can be bought without breaking apart a package became a popular recreational mathematics question. More specifically…"

Submit your perfectly formed, delightfully enlightening limerick to:

MCNUGGET MONOID LIMERICK COMPETITION

c/o MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM

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06 Large Puff Balls Winner

The judges have chosen a winner in last month's Competition, which asked for a limerick to explain this study:

"Large Puff Balls," W.A. Sanford, Nature, vol. 62, no. 1612, 1900, p. 496. https://doi.org/10.1038/062496b0

Winning limerickicist R. BURPEE BOHAKER writes:

This puffball, he's quick to advise

(And just as I now summarize),

Is bigger than some.

But mostly, ho hum,

The difference is only in size.

This month's take from our LIMERICK LAUREATE, MARTIN EIGER:

Most important, of all things among us,

Is the search for the largest known fungus.

My daughter, to me,

Didn't matter, till she

Found, among us, a fungus humongous.

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07 MORE IMPROBABLE: Nuts, Chicken, Failure

Recent improbable research bits you may have missed...

BLOG: https://www.improbable.com :

* Nuts

* Chicken, Chicken, Chicken

* A Prospect of Success by Purposely Failing the 97th Time

*…and much more

WEEKLY COLUMN IN NEW SCIENTIST MAGAZINE:

https://www.newscientist.com/author/marc-abrahams/

LUXURIANT FLOWING HAIR CLUB FOR SCIENTISTS (LFHCfS):

https://www.improbable.com/category/lfhcfs-hair-club/

PODCAST:

https://www.improbable.com/category/the-weekly-improbable-research-podcast/

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/improbableresearch

MASTODON: @MarcAbrahams@mstdn.science

TWITTER: @ImprobResearch, @MarcAbrahams, #IgNobel

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/improbable_research/

PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/ImprobableResearch

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08 People's Arms Personal Space Distances

This month's Other Haphazardly-Selected Research Report (OQHSRROTM) of the month is:

"Proxemics Revisited: Similar Effects of Arms Length on Men's and Women's Personal Distances' Universal," Nicola Bruno and Michela Muzzolini, Journal of Psychology, vol. 1, no. 2, 2013, pp. 46-52.

https://doi.org/10.13189/ujp.2013.010204

"In same-sex interactions, personal distance was modulated by arms length, independently of sex. The longer the arms of the participant, the larger the distance in both men and women.... In different-sex interactions, however, personal distance was modulated by the similarity of participant and confederate arm length. Both men and women participants kept at closer distances when their arms were more similar to their confederate's arms, and at longer distances when they were more different."

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TREAT YOURSELF TO (MUCH) MORE IMPROBABLE STUFF.

SUBCRIBE TO THE (PDF) MAGAZINE!

https://improbable.com/publications/magazine/

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20 SOME IMPROBABLE EVENTS

AAAS Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, US —Mar 5, 2023

Stanford U, California, USA — Mar 22, 2023

Quark Matter Conference, Houston, TX, USA — Sep 8, 2023

33rd First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony —Sep 14, 2023

[All live events in 2023 are subject to pandemical constraints and adventures.]

For details and additional events, see

https://www.improbable.com/improbable-research-shows/complete-schedule/

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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.

https://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: https://improbable.com/publications/newsletter-mini-air/

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32 — CONTACT INFO (*)

Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)

https://improbable.com

EDITORIAL: MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM

SUBSCRIPTION QUESTIONS: subscriptions AT improbable.com

Cambridge, MA, USA

Twitter: @ImprobResearch

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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

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