mini-Annals of Improbable Research ("mini-AIR")
June 2025, issue number 2025-06. 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: Questions / Digestion or Indigestion
03 Marimba Musician's Body Movements
04 COMING: Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony & Related Events
05 LIMERICK CHALLENGE: Gum Chewing, Beanbag, Sung La-La
06 Booing Winner
07 MORE IMPROBABLE: Simulated Ducks, Colossal Carbuncles, etc.
08 Subglottal Pressure in Six Professional Country Singers
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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: Questions / Digestion or Indigestion
The special QUESTIONS issue (vol. 31, no. 3) of the magazine is full of — some might mouth the words "bursting with" — questions. The TOC and several articles are online at
improbable.com/annals-of-improbable-research-may-june-2025-vol-31-number-3/
The next issue, (vol. 31, no. 4), a special issue on DIGESTION OR INDIGESTION, will be going out to subscribers soon.
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 Marimba Musician's Body Movements
This month's quasi-haphazardly selected research report of the month (QHSRROTM) is:
"Expressiveness of Musician's Body Movements in Performances on Marimba," Sofia Dahl and Anders Friberg, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 2915, 2004, pp. 479-486.
vbn.aau.dk/ws/portalfiles/portal/65339176/DahlFriberg_GW03proc.pdf
The authors, at Aalborg University, Denmark, explain:
"To explore to what extent emotional intentions can be conveyed through musicians' movements, video recordings were made of a marimba player performing the same piece with the intentions Happy, Sad, Angry and Fearful. 20 subjects were presented video clips, without sound, and asked to rate both the perceived emotional content as well as the movement qualities.... The observers' ratings for the intended emotions confirmed that the intentions Happiness, Sadness and Anger were well communicated, while Fear was not."
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04 COMING: Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony & Related Events
The 35th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony will happen on THURSDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 18, at Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts. Ten new Ig Nobel Prizes will be awarded for things that make people LAUGH, then THINK.
TICKETS WILL GO ON SALE IN JULY. The ceremony also will be livecast. Details TBA.
A related event, Ig Nobel Face-to-Face, will happen on SATURDAY AFTERNOON, SEPTEMBER 20, 2025, at the MIT Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. The new Ig Nobel Prize winners ask each other questions about their work. Details TBA.
Then in OCTOBER AND NOVEMBER, 2025, Ig Nobel Face-to-Face events will happen in Japan, the UK, and other countries. Details TBA.
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05 LIMERICK CHALLENGE: Gum Chewing, Beanbag, Sung La-La
This month's RESEARCH LIMERICK challenge — Devise a pleasing limerick that encapsulates this study:
"The Singing Voice is Special: Persistence of Superior Memory for Vocal Melodies Despite Vocal-Motor Distractions," Michael W. Weiss, Anne-Marie Bissonnette, and Isabelle Peretz, Cognition, vol. 213, 2021, article 104514. doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104514
The authors, at the University of Montreal, Canada, explain:
"Vocal melodies sung without lyrics (la la) are remembered better than instrumental melodies. What causes the advantage? One possibility is that vocal music elicits subvocal imitation, which could promote enhanced motor representations of a melody. If this motor interpretation is correct, distracting the motor system during encoding should reduce the memory advantage for vocal over piano melodies. In Experiment 1, participants carried out movements of the mouth (i.e., chew gum) or hand (i.e., squeeze a beanbag) while listening to 24 unfamiliar folk melodies (half vocal, half piano). In a subsequent memory test, they rated the same melodies and 24 timbre-matched foils from '1–Definitely New' to '7–Definitely Old'. There was a memory advantage for vocal over piano melodies with no effect of group and no interaction."
Send your perfictly formed, perfectly pleasing limerick to:
CHEWING/BEANBAG-LaLa LIMERICK COMPETITION
c/o MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM
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06 Booing Winner
The judges have chosen a winner in last month's Competition, which asked for a limerick to explain this study:
"Booing," Dan Rebellato, Contemporary Theatre Review, vol. 23, no. 1, 2013, pp. 11-15. doi.org/10.1080/10486801.2013.765102
Winning limerickicist RAY CARMAN writes:
If you feel like you're wanting to boo,
But of timing uncertain; when to?
Just look at you mate,
Then don't hesitate,
The noise comes out louder from two.
This month's take from our LIMERICK LAUREATE, MARTIN EIGER:
Here's what I believe we should do.
Let's go find a playwright or two.
If this paper, some day,
Were performed as a play,
We'd find out, would the audience boo?
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07 MORE IMPROBABLE: Simulated Ducks, Colossal Carbuncles, etc.
Recent improbable research bits you may have missed...
BLOG (improbable.com):
• Boredom and the Best Evidence Pertaining Thereto, Maybe
• We are Placid Plastic Simulated Ducks?
• Sad Roomba Research Protocol v1.1
• …and much more
SUBSTACK: (improbablestuff.substack.com)
• Can Cats Cause Colossal Contagious Cutaneous Carbuncles?
• Petting a Cat or a Cushion
• IMPROBABLE SEX: Did Lesbians Evolve to Please Men?
• …and much more
MASTODON: @MarcAbrahams@mstdn.science
FACEBOOK: facebook.com/improbableresearch
PATREON: patreon.com/ImprobableResearch
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08 Subglottal Pressure in Six Professional Country Singers
This month's Other Haphazardly-Selected Research Report (OQHSRROTM) of the month is:
"Estimated Subglottal Pressure in Six Professional Country Singers," Thomas F. Cleveland, R.E. (Ed) Stone, Jr., Johan Sundberg, and Jenny Iwarsson, Journal of Voice, vol. 11, no. 4, 1997, pp. 403-9. (Thanks to Silvan Urfer for bringing this to our attention.)
doi.org/10.1016/S0892-1997(97)80035-5
The authors, at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee and at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, report:
"Estimates of subglottal pressure in six professional male country singers were obtained during the/p/occlusion while the subjects spoke, sang a country tune, and sang the tune of the United States national anthem. The subglottal pressure values, which were very similar in both the speech-like and singing-mode syllables, usually measured below 45 cm of water column, but they ranged as high as 59 cm. The sound pressure level in singing was also measured and was lower than that discovered in classically trained singers at high subglonal pressures."
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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
· 35th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, Boston, USA — Sep 18, 2025
· Ig Nobel Face-to-Face, Cambridge, USA — Sep 20, 2025
· Ig Nobel Face-to-Face, JAPAN, UK, and elsewhere — Oct & Nov 2025
· Falling Walls, Berlin, GERMANY — Nov 2025
· Monell Center, Philadelphia, PA, USA — Nov 12, 2025
· Royal Society Club, London, UK — Nov 27, 2025
For details and additional events, see: improbable.com/upcoming-events/
If your institution would like to host an event,
please get in touch with us at:
MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM
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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.
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SUBSCRIPTIONS ($40 for six issues)
BACK ISSUES ($8 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 (*)
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EDITORIAL: MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM
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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 2025, Improbable Research
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