mini-Annals of Improbable Research ("mini-AIR")
June 2024, issue number 2024-06. 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: Non-Newtonian Physics
03 Cooperative Transit — Crazy Ants Deal with Legos
04 Ig Nobel Tickets Will Go On Sale in August
05 The Search for the New Miss Sweetie Poo
06 LIMERICK CHALLENGE: Cooperative Crazy Ants with Lego
07 Onion, Garlic, Milk Limerick Winner
08 MORE IMPROBABLE: Sleep, Phlegm-Thrower, Sew
09 Cooperative Reasoning —Condoms
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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: Non-Newtonian Physics
The special NON-NEWTONIAN PHYSICS issue (vol. 30, no. 4) of the magazine continues to enchant every ant and nearly every aunt who reads it. The table of contents and selected articles are at:
improbable.com/annals-of-improbable-research-july-august-2024-vol-30-number-4/
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 Cooperative Transit — Crazy Ants Deal with Legos
This month's quasi-haphazardly selected research report of the month (QHSRROTM) is:
"Human Sperm Cooperate to Transit Highly Viscous Regions on the Competitive Pathway to Fertilization," Sa Xiao, Jason Riordon, Alex Lagunov, Mahta Ghaffarzadeh, Thomas Hannam, Reza Nosrati, and David Sinton, Communications Biology, vol. 6, article 495, 2023.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-023-04875-2
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04 Ig Nobel Tickets Will Go On Sale in August
TICKETS: Tickets for the 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony will go on sale in early August. They will be available through the improbable.com web site.
After four pandemic-years in which the ceremony happened only online, this will resume the tradition of doing it with everyone together in a big room with an audience. We are producing the ceremony in collaboration with the MIT Press.
WHEN/WHERE: This year's ceremony will happen in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at MIT, in room 10-250, on Thursday, September 12, 2024, at 6 pm. It will be webcast live.
==> BE AWARE THAT THE NUMBER OF TICKETS IS MUCH SMALLER THAN IN PREVIOUS YEARS. That's because MIT 10-250 has only about 1/3 the seating capacity of the ceremony's long-traditional home, Harvard's Sanders Theatre.
Some history: This is in a sense a return home. The first four Ig Nobel Prize ceremonies happened at MIT (in 1991-4). In 1995 the ceremony moved to Harvard. INfo about past ceremonies is in the Ig archives at improbable.com/ig/archive/
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05 The Search for the New Miss Sweetie Poo
We are looking for a new Miss Sweetie Poo, for this year’s Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. Miss SP is our time enforcer — she helps the speakers keep their speeches brief and delightful. If you know of a good candidate for the role, please email us (MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM).
Qualifications:
1. must be a tough-minded, cute 8-year-old girl who has astounding depths of social wisdom
2. must have ice water in her veins
3. must be in the Boston area
GLIMPSES OF SWEETIES PAST: For the 25th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony in 2015 we prepared this video highlight reel:
youtube.com/watch?v=xAnVNXaa5oA
and at that ceremony, most of the past Miss Sweetie Poos returned to join forces with that year's new Miss Sweetie Poo. Here's video of that moment:
youtu.be/MqVCl2VoZqU?si=aRnEXpkCQUmA9d9a&t=705
BUT: NOTE that not everyone approves of Miss Sweetie Poo. In 2018 Annmarie Throckmorton sent a note of disapproval, which you might enjoy reading:
improbable.com/2018/09/14/a-whinny-pooh-poohing-the-ig-nobel-prizes/
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06 LIMERICK CHALLENGE: Cooperative Crazy Ants with Lego
This month's RESEARCH LIMERICK challenge — Devise a pleasing limerick that encapsulates this study:
"Collective Strategy for Obstacle Navigation During Cooperative Transport by Ants," Helen F. McCreery, Zachary A. Dix, Michael D. Breed, Radhika Nagpal, Journal of Experimental Biology, vol. 219, 2016, pp. 3366-3375. (Thanks to Anne Madden for bringing this to our attention.) doi.org/10.1242/jeb.143818 The authors, at the University of Colorado and Harvard University, report:
"We blocked cooperative transport groups of Paratrechina longicornis [better known as "crazy ants"] with obstacles of varying complexity, analyzing groups' trajectories to infer what kind of strategy the ants employed.... We found that transport groups use a stochastic strategy that leads to efficient navigation around simple obstacles, and still succeeds at difficult obstacles. All obstacles were constructed out of Lego and coated on the inside with Insect-a-Slip to prevent groups climbing over them."
Submit your perfectly formed, delightfully enlightening limerick to:
CRAZY ANTS LEGOS CONDOMS LIMERICK COMPETITION
c/o MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM
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07 Onion, Garlic, Milk Limerick Winner
The judges have chosen a winner in last month's Competition, which asked for a limerick to explain this study:
"Inhalation the Chief Factor in Onion or Garlic Contamination Of Milk," Margaret B. MacDonald and M. Jacob, Science, vol. 68, no. 1771, 1928, pp. 568-569.
cabdirect.org/cabdirect/abstract/19282700011
Winning limerickicist BALSAMA SCHOOLCRAFT writes:
Yes, onion will alter the taste
of milk, which will then go to waste.
And garlic? Oh yes, garlic will
Make milk taste a little like swill.
The remedy? Maybe toothpaste.
This month's take from our LIMERICK LAUREATE, MARTIN EIGER:
To cows the world over, beware!
There's danger that lurks in the air.
Eat grass, eat some kale,
But please don't inhale.
There's onion and garlic out there.
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08 MORE IMPROBABLE: Sleep, Phlegm-Thrower, Sew
Recent improbable research bits you may have missed...
BLOG: www.improbable.com:
• Large Variations in Sleepiness Related to Time of Day
• Phlegm Thrower
• What's New in Sewing?
• …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 Cooperative Reasoning —Condoms
This month's Other Haphazardly-Selected Research Report (OQHSRROTM) of the month is:
"The Theory of Reasoned Action and Cooperative Behaviour: It Takes Two to Use a Condom," Y. Kashima, C. Gallois and M. McCamish, British Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 32, no. 3, September 1993, pp. 227-39. (Thanks to Raffaella Rumiati and Sylvie Coyaud for bringing this to our attention.)
doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8309.1993.tb00997.x
The authors explain:
"The applicability of the Theories of Reasoned Action and Planned Behaviour to the cooperative behaviour of condom use were examined. Seventy-one male and 78 female students, all sexually active unmarried heterosexuals aged 17 to 21 years, gave information about their intentions for the next sexual encounter.... After their next sexual encounter, they completed a questionnaire on their actual condom use. Results indicated that when behavioural conditions including the availability of a condom and an agreement with the partner to use it were satisfied, intention interacted with past behaviour to predict actual behaviour."
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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
· Worldcon, Glasgow, Scotland — Aug 1, 2024
· 34TH FIRST ANNUAL IG NOBEL PRIZE CEREMONY, MIT — Sep 12, 2024
· Ig Nobel Face-to-Face, MIT — Sep 14, 2024
· AAAS Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, USA — Feb 2025
· 2025 Ig Nobel EuroTour — Spring 2025
· Balticon, Baltimore, USA — May 23-26, 2025
OTHER EVENTS TBA
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
(c) copyright 2024, Improbable Research
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