Mini-AIR

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

October 2023, issue number 2023-10. ISSN 1076-500X.

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: Gulls and Fellow Flyers

03 Ontoecogenophyloconstraints

04 Ig Nobel Face-to-Face Event at the MIT MUSEUM (Nov 11)

05 Ig Nobel Show at Imperial College London (Nov 18)

06 LIMERICK CHALLENGE: Mastering the Use of Gobbledygook

07 Removing Cockroaches from the Auditory Canal Limerick Winners

08 MORE IMPROBABLE: Epiglottis, Nasal Hair, Levity Gravity

09 Gobbledygook in Psychiatric Writing

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: Gulls and Fellow Flyers

The special GULLS, CROWS, PIGEONS, WOODPECKERS issue (vol. 29, no. 5) of the magazine is gliding, flapping, chattering and pecking in public. The table of contents and selected articles are at:

improbable.com/annals-of-improbable-research-september-october-2023-vol-29-number-5/

The special Ig Nobel issue (vol. 29, no. 6) is in prep.

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

Tables of Contents: improbable.com/magazine-2/

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03 Ontoecogenophyloconstraints

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

"Ontoecogenophyloconstraints? The Chaos of Constraint Terminology," Janis Antonovics and Peter H. van Tienderen, Trends in Ecology and Evolution, vol. 6, no. 5, May 1991, pp. 166-168.

doi.org/10.1016/0169-5347(91)90059-7

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04 Ig Nobel Face-to-Face Event at the MIT MUSEUM (Nov 11)

We invite you to join us at a new event — Ig Nobel Face-to-Face. This is a companion to the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony that happened in September. Most of the new Ig Nobel Prize winners will be there. They will ask each other questions about their work. And you will get a chance to talk with them.

This will happen at the new MIT Museum building. It's a sort of joyous reunion for us — the very first Ig Nobel Prize ceremony happened in the old MIT Museum building in 1991.

Featuring:

· 2023 Literature Prize winners Chris Moulin and Akira O’Connor (studying the sensations people feel when they repeat a single word many, many, many, many, many, many, many times)

· 2023 Mechanical Engineering Prize winners Te Faye Yap, Zhen Liu, Anoop Rajappan, Trevor Shimokusu, and Daniel Preston (re-animating dead spiders to use as mechanical gripping tools)

· 2023 Public Health Prize winner Seung-min Park (inventing the Stanford Toilet, a device that uses a variety of technologies — including a urinalysis dipstick test strip, a computer vision system for defecation analysis, an anal-print sensor paired with an identification camera, and a telecommunications link — to monitor and quickly analyze the substances that humans excrete)

· 2023 Communication Prize winner Adolfo García (studying the mental activities of people who are expert at speaking backward)

· 2023 Medicine Prize winners Christine Pham and Natasha Mesinkovska (using cadavers to explore whether there is an equal number of hairs in each of a person’s two nostrils)

· 2023 Nutrition Prize winner Homei Miyashita (experiments to determine how electrified chopsticks and drinking straws can change the taste of food)

· 2023 Education Prize winners Katy Tam and Christian Chan (methodically studying the boredom of teachers and students)

· 2023 Physics Prize winners Bieito Fernández Castro and Miguel Gilcoto (measuring the extent to which ocean-water mixing is affected by the sexual activity of anchovies)

· Conversants Dany Adams, Melissa Franklin, Karen Hopkin, and Eric Maskin

WHAT: Ig Nobel Face-to-Face

WHERE: The (new!) MIT Museum building, 314 Main Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA (right next to the Kendall T station)

WHEN: Saturday, November 11, 2023, 7-9 pm.

TICKETS are now on sale at the MIT Museum web site. The space is intimate, the number of tickets is limited:

mitmuseum.mit.edu/programs/ig-nobel-face-to-face

[NOTE: This event will not be livestreamed. It will be video-recorded for eventual broadcast.]

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05 Ig Nobel Show at Imperial College London (Nov 18)

We invite you also to join us at Ig Nobel Show at Imperial College London.

This resumes the long series of annual Ig Nobel events there that was interrupted by the pandemic.

Featuring:

· 2023 Literature Prize winner Akira O’Connor (the sensations people feel when they repeat a single word many, many, many, many, many, many, many times)

· 2023 Physics Prize winners Bieito Fernández Castro, Marian Peña, Enrique Nogueira, Miguel Gilcoto, Esperanza Broullón, Antonio Comesaña, Damien Bouffard, Alberto C. Naveira Garabato, and Beatriz Mouriño-Carballido (measuring the extent to which ocean-water mixing is affected by the sexual activity of anchovies)

· 2023 Education Prize winner Wijnand van Tilburg (methodically studying the boredom of teachers and students)

· 2023 Chemistry & Geology Prize winner Jan Zalasiewicz (explaining why many scientists like to lick rocks)

· 2014 Ig Nobel Psychology Prize winner Minna Lyons and colleague Gayle Brewer (a newer study: Referee Height Influences Decision Making in British Football Leagues)

TICKETS: This is the first half of a special double-event day, together with BAHFest London. (The Ig Nobel event begins at 2:00 pm. BAHFest begins at 5:00 pm). TICKETS TICKETS TICKETS are on sale; there is the option to purchase tickets for both events, or for just one.]

WHAT: Ig Nobel Show

WHERE: Imperial College London, UK, in the Great Hall, in the Sherfield building, Exhibition Road

WHEN: Saturday, November 18, 2023, 2 pm.

TICKETS: This is the first half of a special double-event day, together with BAHFest London. (The Ig Nobel event begins at 2:00 pm. BAHFest begins at 5:00 pm). There is the option to purchase tickets for both events, or for just one:

eventbrite.co.uk/e/bahfest-ig-nobel-2023-tickets-713070271377

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06 LIMERICK CHALLENGE: Mastering the Use of Gobbledygook

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

"Mastering the Use of Gobbledygook: Studies on the Development of Expertise Through Exposure to Experienced Practitioners' Deliberation on Authentic Problems," Klas Karlgren, doctoral thesis, Stockholm University, 2003.

www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1072709&dswid=-4982

Submit your perfectly formed, delightfully enlightening limerick to:

MASTERING GOBBLEDYGOOK LIMERICK COMPETITION

c/o MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM

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07 Removing Cockroaches from the Auditory Canal Limerick Winners

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

"Removing Cockroaches from the Auditory Canal: Controlled Trial," K. O'Toole, P.M. Paris, R.D. Stewart, and R. Martinez, The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 312, no. 18, May 2, 1985, p. 1197.

doi.org/10.1056/NEJM198505023121824

PLEASE NOTE:

The "Removing Cockroaches from the Auditory Canal" link

in last month's mini-air was off by one digit.

Go, as people say, figure.

The link here is the correct version. At least we think it is.

Winning limerickicist JAMES H. MORRISSEY writes:

Oh, no! It’s the worst of all fears:

A cockroach is stuck in both ears.

There’ll be little pain

If we use lidocaine.

Both are gone—hurrah and three cheers!

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

I hear that there's no need to fear

When a cockroach has lodged in your ear.

Just wait for another

To lodge in the other.

Clear ways to clear earways are here!

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08 MORE IMPROBABLE: Epiglottis, Nasal Hair, Levity Gravity

Recent improbable research bits you may have missed...

BLOG: www.improbable.com :

· A New Era for Epiglottis Calculation

· Nasal Hair Follicles in Several Mammals

· Nature Physics Levity Gravity

· …and much more

WEEKLY COLUMN IN NEW SCIENTIST MAGAZINE:

newscientist.com/author/marc-abrahams/

LUXURIANT FLOWING HAIR CLUB FOR SCIENTISTS (LFHCfS):

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

PODCAST ARCHIVE:

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

FACEBOOK: facebook.com/improbableresearch

MASTODON: @MarcAbrahams@mstdn.science

INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/improbable_research/

PATREON: patreon.com/ImprobableResearch

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09 Gobbledygook in Psychiatric Writing

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

"Gobbledygook in Psychiatric Writing," L. Kanner, The American Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 108, no. 6, 1951, pp. 474-475.

doi.org/10.1176/ajp.108.6.474

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TREAT YOURSELF TO (MUCH) MORE IMPROBABLE STUFF.

SUBCRIBE TO THE (PDF) MAGAZINE!

improbable.com/magazine-2/

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20 SOME IMPROBABLE EVENTS

· 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

· Arisia, Boston, MA, USA — Jan 2024

· Vienna, Austria, — Jan 2024

· AAAS Annual Meeting, Denver, CO, USA — Feb 17, 2014

· U Aarhus, Denmark — Apr 4, 2024

— OTHER EVENTS TBA

[All live events in 2023-2024 are subject to pandemical constraints and adventures.]

For details and additional events, see: 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.

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

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32 — CONTACT INFO (*)

Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)

improbable.com

EDITORIAL: MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM

SUBSCRIPTION QUESTIONS: subscriptions AT improbable.com

Cambridge, MA, USA

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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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