Mini-AIR

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

August 2023, issue number 2023-08. 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: Birds, Birds, Birds

03 Emotional Judges Judging

04 On September 14 — the 2023 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony Webcast

05 Limerick Challenge: Emotional Surgeons Cutting

06 Shut Up", in Japan (1968) Winner

07 MORE IMPROBABLE: Cat Coke, Stopping Leak, Denture Coffee

08 Emotional Stock Market Investors Crashing

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: Birds, Birds, Birds

The special BIRDS issue (vol. 29, no. 4) of the magazine is filled with stuff about formulas and recipes. The table of contents and selected articles are at:

https://improbable.com/annals-of-improbable-research-july-august-2023-vol-29-number-4/

The special GULLS, CROWS, PIGEONS, WOODPECKERS issue (vol. 29, no. 4) is in prep.

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/magazine-2/

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03 Emotional Judges Judging

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

"Emotional Judges and Unlucky Juveniles," Ozkan Eren and Naci Mocan, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, vol. 10, no. 3, July 2018, pp. 171-205. https://doi.org/10.1257/app.20160390 (Thanks to Scott Langill for bringing this to our attention.) The authors write:

"Employing the universe of juvenile court decisions in a U.S. state between 1996 and 2012, we analyze the effects of emotional shocks associated with unexpected outcomes of football games played by a prominent college team in the state. We find that unexpected losses increase sentence lengths assigned by judges during the week following the game. Unexpected wins, or losses that were expected to be close contests ex ante have no impact. The effects of these emotional shocks are asymmetrically borne by black defendants. The impact of upset losses on sentence lengths is larger for defendants if their cases are handled by judges who received their bachelor's degrees from the university with which the football team is affiliated. Different falsification tests and a number of auxiliary analyses demonstrate the robustness of the findings."

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04 On September 14 — the 2023 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony Webcast

THE CEREMONY WEBCAST: The 33rd First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony will happen entirely online, on Thursday evening, September 14, 2023, beginning at 6:00 pm (US eastern time).

Watch it on the ceremony webpage

https://improbable.com/ig/2023-ceremony

or on YouTube

* * *

RELATED EVENT: Two months later, on November 11, 2023, join us at the new MIT Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for a new event called "Ig Nobel Face-to-Face. Many of the new winners will gather to ask each other questions about their work. (This is a live event. It will not be livecast.) Tickets will go on sale soon at the museum's web site.

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05 Limerick Challenge: Emotional Surgeons Cutting

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

"Patient Mortality After Surgery on the Surgeon’s Birthday: Observational Study," Hirotaka Kato, Anupam B. Jena, and Yusuke Tsugawa, BMJ, vol. 371, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m4381

The authors explain:

"980,876 procedures performed by 47,489 surgeons were analyzed. 2064 (0.2%) of the procedures were performed on surgeons’ birthdays.....

Conclusions — Among Medicare beneficiaries who underwent common emergency surgeries, those who received surgery on the surgeon’s birthday experienced higher mortality compared with patients who underwent surgery on other days. These findings suggest that surgeons might be distracted by life events that are not directly related to work."

Submit your perfectly formed, delightfully enlightening limerick to:

EMOTIONAL SURGEONS CUTTING LIMERICK COMPETITION

c/o MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM

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06 Shut Up", in Japan (1968) Winner

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

"The Nature of Speech According to Japanese Proverbs," J.L. Fischer and Teigo Yoshida, Journal of American Folklore, vol. 81, 1968, pp. 34-43. https://doi.org/10.2307/537436

Winning limerickicist FAITH J. CORMIER writes:

"Shut up and shut up and shut up!

Shut up and shut up and shut up!"

To wise Japanese

The moral is, "Please,

Shut up and shut up and shut up!"

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

Each proverb that preaches on speech,

What wonderful wisdom they teach!

What the sayings are saying,

Too few are obeying.

"Shut the hell up!", they beseech.

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07 MORE IMPROBABLE: Cat Coke, Stopping Leak, Denture Coffee

Recent improbable research bits you may have missed...

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

* Coca-Cola in a Cat

* How a Leak Can Stop Itself

* If You Soak Your Dentures in Coffee…

*…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

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

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

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08 Emotional Stock Market Investors Crashing

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

"When the Market Drives You Crazy: Stock Market Returns and Fatal Car Accidents," Corrado Giulietti, Mirco Tonin, and Michael Vlassopoulos, Journal of Health Economics, vol. 70, 2020, article 102245. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2019.102245

The authors explain:

"This paper provides evidence that daily fluctuations in the stock market have important – and hitherto neglected – spillover effects on fatal car accidents. Using the universe of fatal car accidents in the United States from 1990 to 2015, we find that a one standard deviation reduction in daily stock market returns is associated with a 0.6% increase in fatal car accidents that happen after the stock market opening. A battery of falsification tests support a causal interpretation of this finding. Our results are consistent with immediate emotions stirred by a negative stock market performance influencing the number of fatal accidents, in particular among inexperienced investors."

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TREAT YOURSELF TO (MUCH) MORE IMPROBABLE STUFF.

SUBCRIBE TO THE (PDF) MAGAZINE!

https://improbable.com/magazine-2/

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20 SOME IMPROBABLE EVENTS

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

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

Catania, Italy — Sep 27, 2023

Perugia, Italy — Sep 29, 2023

Cambridge (MA) Science Festival — Sep 29, 2023

Berlin Science Festival, Germany — Nov 4, 2023

Ig Nobel Face-to-Face, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA — Nov 11, 2023

— Imperial College London, UK Nov 18, 2023

— OTHER EVENTS TBA

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

For details and additional events, see

https://improbable.com/upcoming-events/

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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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