mini-Annals of Improbable Research ("mini-AIR")
April 2024, issue number 2024-04. 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: Ants, Ants, Ants
03 Entwined: Rats, Us
04 After the Banana-Filled Ig Nobel EuroTour
05 LIMERICK CHALLENGE: Rat Kings in Estonia
06 Elementary Personalities Limerick Winner
07 MORE IMPROBABLE: Coffee Smell, Too-Clothed Autopsy, Chicken
08 Squirrel Tails Tied in Knots
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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: Ants, Ants, Ants
The special ANTS issue (vol. 30, no. 2) of the magazine continues to enchant every ant who reads it. The table of contents and selected articles are at: improbable.com/annals-of-improbable-research-march-april-2024-vol-30-number-2/
The next issue, a special ANTS & AUNTS issue, 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 Entwined: Rats, Us
This month's quasi-haphazardly selected research report of the month (QHSRROTM) is:
"Interspecies Politics and the Global Rat: Ecology, Extermination, Experiment," Rafi Youatt, Review of International Studies, vol. 49, no. 2, 2023, pp. 241-257. doi.org/10.1017/S0260210522000201
The author explains:
"The article concludes by arguing that the rat, as interspecies figure of politics and as living creature, allows us to understand important dynamics around the generation of disposable life, political difference, and conditions of coexistence, in ways that are critical to the entwined politics of life on the planet."
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04 After the Banana-Filled Ig Nobel EuroTour
Thank you to the Ig Nobel Prize winners, the organizers, the audience members, the reporters, the bananas, and everyone else who helped make the 2024 Ig Nobel EuroTour — the first since before the Covid pandemic — such a happy thing.
Ig Nobel Prize winners told and showed all (or at least much) about their prize-winning work. Each has done something that makes people LAUGH, then THINK.
The tour visited several cities in GERMANY, DENMARK, SWITZERLAND, ITALY (Berlin, Aarhus, Copenhagen, Lausanne, Rome; and also a live TV appearance in Milan, which you can see in a recording here: youtube.com/watch?v=tZ0zTM2S4-Q ).
The show at EPFL in Lausanne was webcast live. You can see a videorecording here: youtube.com/watch?v=n2ZaxKbYA20
The video recordings show how bananas figured into the proceedings.
It appears that next year's (2025) Ig Nobel EuroTour will visit each of those places again, with a new mix of Ig Nobel Prize winners, and will visit additional places. If your institution would like to host an Ig Nobel show in 2025, please get in touch with us (MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM)!
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05 LIMERICK CHALLENGE: Rat Kings in Estonia
This month's RESEARCH LIMERICK challenge — Devise a pleasing limerick that encapsulates this study:
"Rat Kings in Estonia," Andrei Miljutin, Proceedings of the Estonian Academy of Sciences. Biology. Ecology, vol. 56, no. 1, 2007, article 77œ81. citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=31dffe4152fb5c5846bf9c31872fb300d2be4939
The author reports:
"On 16 January 2005 farmer Rein Kıiv discovered a huddle of squeaking rats on the sandy floor of his shed in Saru village, Mıniste parish, Vıru county, Estonia.... After that a cluster of 16 rats were excavated from the frozen sand. Their tails were tangled in a knot that contained frozen sand.... On 10 March the rat king of Saru was transported to the Natural History (Zoological) Museum at the University of Tartu, where it was preserved in alcohol and is exhibited to visitors. It consists of 13 adult black rats (Rattus rattus Linnaeus, 1758): 7 males and 6 females (Fig. 1). One specimen of the original 16 was thrown away by the finder and two were taken away by some predator, probably a polecat. Of these two, only one tail remains in the knot."
Submit your perfectly formed, delightfully enlightening limerick to:
RAT KINGS LIMERICK COMPETITION
c/o MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM
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06 Elementary Personalities Limerick Winner
The judges have chosen a winner in last month's Competition, which asked for a limerick to explain this pair of studies:
"Personalities of the Elements," Sidney J. French, Scientific American, vol. 158, no. 6, 1938, pp. 340-342. jstor.org/stable/24955362
Winning limerickicist R. BURPEE BOHAKER writes:
"Elementary, Watson," he said,
"personality's all in your head.
Your compounded whimsey
'bout atoms is flimsy.
It's something a chemist might dread."
This month's take from our LIMERICK LAUREATE, MARTIN EIGER:
The author provides explanation
Of each element's manifestation.
That's what he's done,
But what if there's one
That begrudges personification?
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07 MORE IMPROBABLE: Coffee Smell, Too-Clothed Autopsy, Chicken
Recent improbable research bits you may have missed...
BLOG: www.improbable.com:
• Coffee-Smell-Enhanced Coffee Smell
• Unexpected 23-Fold Depths of an Autopsy
• PowerPoint Co-Inventor’s Appreciation of Chicken Chicken Chicken
• …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/
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PATREON: patreon.com/ImprobableResearch
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08 Squirrel Tails Tied in Knots
This month's Other Haphazardly-Selected Research Report (OQHSRROTM) of the month is:
bluejayjournal.ca/index.php/bluejay/article/download/5991/5980
"Squirrel Tails Tied in Knots," G. Hoium, G., Blue Jay, vol. 62, no. 3, 2004. The author reports:
"... the three anxious gentlemen on the line asked me to come over right away to a nearby seniors complex to solve a squirrel problem. A mass of squirrels with their tails tied together had been spotted, and the pensioners had been watching the octopus-like, grey furry formation moving erratically around the back lawn and parking area."
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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
· 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, MIT — Sep 12, 2024
· Ig Nobel Face-to-Face, MIT — Sep 14, 2024
· 2025 Ig Nobel EuroTour — Spring 2025
· Balticon, Baltimore, USA — May 23-26, 2025
OTHER EVENTS TBA
[All live events 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.
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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
(c) copyright 2024, Improbable Research
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