Marc Abrahams's Blog, page 22

Dog tail wagging, Donald Duck dam jubilee, Anti-covid tea-gargling, Urine on acorns

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them:

Chasing the tale — Silvia Leonetti and colleagues in the Netherlands, Italy, Austria, the US and Denmark don’t quite explain why dogs wag their tails, but they do explain that it is hard to explain. In a paper called “Why do dogs wag their tails?” in Biology Letters, these dog-tail contemplators confront one, presumably easier, sub-question…Donald Duck dam jubilee — We are just a year away from the jubilee – the 50th anniversary! – of the publication of the most beloved technical report ever written by a deputy director of design and construction for the US Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation. That report, which perhaps needs no introduction, is “Construction of Grand Coulee [Dam’s] Third Power Plant”. Published in the Journal of the Construction Division in 1975, it was written by Donald J. Duck….Anti-covid tea gargling — The story of tea is now, in tiny part, the story of an attack – an attack by inanimate bits of tea on a virus that attacks humans: the coronavirus.It is the story of “SARS-CoV-2 viral particles resuspended in saliva”, where those particles are assaulted by one or another kind of tea commercially available in North America….Just a wee experiment — An ounce of prevention was not worth a pound of cure in Jorge Castro’s attempt “to find an easy to use, cheap, and universal substance to protect seeds against predators in forest restoration programs”. Restoration Ecology published Castro’s explanation of what went wrong. It is called “Human urine does not protect acorns against predation by the wood mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus): A field study with video recording”….

Coffee-Smell-Enhanced Coffee Smell

Coffee smell can be enhanced in reliability and intensity, suggests this study, by adding coffee smell from used coffee:

“Improvement of Robusta coffee aroma by modulating flavor precursors in the green coffee bean with enzymatically treated spent coffee grounds: A circular approach,” Cyril Moccand, Aditya Daniel Manchala, Jean-Luc Sauvageat, Anthony Lima, Yvette Fleury Rey, and Arne Glabasnia, Food Research International, vol. 170, August 2023, article 112987. The authors explain:

“Spent coffee grounds (SCG) are by-products obtained from the industrial process of instant coffee production or alternatively after brewing of coffee at the point of consumption…. Here, we report on the enzymatic hydrolysis of industrial SCG by the use of a combination of specific carbohydrate active enzymes, enabling sugar extraction yield of 74.3 %. The generated sugar-rich extract… is separated from hydrolyzed grounds and soaked with green coffee. After drying and roasting, the coffee soaked with SCG enzymatic extract displayed lower earthy, burnt and rubbery notes as well as smoother and more acidic notes in the flavor profile as compared to untreated reference…. This novel technology could represent an innovative in situ valorization stream for the coffee industry, coupled with sensory improvement of the final cup.”

Ig Nobel events in Denmark — April 9 and 10

The Ig Nobel EuroTour comes to Denmark this week, with 2 events:

Tuesday, April 9, 2024, 7 pm — Aarhus University (and specially livestreamed to more than 300 theaters, libraries and other venues, some also offering dinner, throughout the kingdom of Denmark)

Wednesday, April 10, 7 pm — Copenhagen University, as part of the Vin & Videnskap [wine and science] series

All Ig Nobel EuroTour events are listed, with links and details, on our upcoming events page.

 

 

Tea paving, Solar cells like razor blades, Alligator bellows, Ants for your arteries

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them:

Paved with good tea — What to do with all the waste from preparing zillions of cups of tea? Researchers in Malaysia propose converting some of it into infrastructure.Mohammad Al Biajawi at University Malaysia Pahang Al-Sultan Abdullah and his team outline both the problem and their plan to attack it: “The annual consumption of a country’s population of hundreds of tons of black tea results in considerable numbers of discarded teabags. These huge quantities are disposed in landfills… The aim of this study is to experimentally investigate the effect of [carbon nanotubes] from tea waste on the mechanical and fresh properties of cement mortars.” …Solar blades — Electricity-producing solar cells could go the way – well, a way – of razor blades. Layers of razor blades, rather than solitary blades, gave hairy-legged and hairy-faced people a more efficient way to get sunlight to interact with those legs and faces (benefitting those people by making their skin more clearly visible to admiring spectators). A great transformation happened several decades ago when double-blade, then triple-blade razors went on sale and quickly captured market share as well as hairs. Single-blade razors came to seem a bit passé. Now, plans are a-print to create solar cells that have multiple layers. …Individual alligators — Grown-up children, as well as young children, who like to impress their friends by making loud imitations of animal sounds can easily up their game – after they realise that alligators are individuals, not cookie-cutter soundalikes. Every alligator, like every chimpanzee, cat, dog, crow or most kinds of large animal (every human, too!), makes its own, personally distinctive sounds. A study by Thomas Rejsenhus Jensen and colleagues at Lund University, Sweden, chats up the ubiquity and the power of this noisy individuality….Ants for arteries — The scourge of atherosclerosis, like many other medical scourges, might sometimes succumb to attack by dining. Dietary discipline could carry the cardiovascular system to victory, so to speak. A study by Abdul Ademola Olaleye at Federal University Dutse in Nigeria and his colleagues highlights a health benefit of eating small bits of one kind of all-natural, but little-publicised foodstuff. Details are in their study, “Analytical evaluation of fatty acid, phospholipid and sterol profiles of five species of edible insects: Lipid composition in five species of edible insects” …

Hooking the Scientific Community on Thorny-Headed Worms

Info and maybe advice for admirers of thorny-headed worms:

“Hooking the Scientific Community on Thorny-Headed Worms: Interesting and Exciting Facts, Knowledge Gaps and Perspectives for Research Directions on Acanthocephala,” Marie-Jeanne Perrot-Minnot, Camille-Sophie Cozzarolo, Omar Amin, Daniel Barčák, Alexandre Bauer, Vlatka Filipović Marijić, Martín García-Varela, et al.,  Parasite, vol. 30 2023.

Yell at the umpire, nozzles (ice cream, chocolate, bevelled), crypto-emojis

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them:

Berate the refs — There is new evidence that it can pay to scream at referees in sports stadiums. That evidence appears in the study ‘Verbal aggressions against Major League Baseball umpires affect their decision making”…Your ice cream nozzle — Questions arise when things start growing on your nozzle – questions that grow less pressing if you diligently clean the nozzle after you use it to dispense a serving of ice cream. Because if you don’t clean a food machine’s nozzle and other parts, things get a healthy (from the things’ point of view) chance to grow on them….Your chocolate nozzle — Unexpected, vaguely related questions can arise when you consider what shape of nozzle to use for, say, 3D printing chocolate. A study in Frontiers in Psychology looks at one question that is surprisingly subtle and complex: how much chocolate is too much chocolate when it comes to matters of taste? The study is called “The influence of bouba- and kiki-like shape on perceived taste of chocolate pieces”….Your bevelled nozzle — Bevel your nozzles, if you insist on equipping your jet aircraft with turbofan engines – and if quiet is what you seek. Bevel them. That’s the word from Julien Christophe, Julien de Decker and Christophe Schram at the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics in Belgium. Writing in Flow, Turbulence and Combustion, they explain why…Crypto-emojis — If there is a competition for most jargon-dense research writing about sketchy financial undertakings, maybe put your cryptocurrency on a study called “Emoji driven crypto assets market reactions”, by Xiaorui Zuo, Yao-Tsung Chen and Wolfgang Karl Härdle. The word “pith” is sometimes defined as “the spongy white tissue lining the rind of oranges and other citrus fruits”. This study includes a pithy description of itself…

Autolycus’ Trumpery

The word “trumpery” has gained prominence, says this study: “Autolycus’ Trumpery,” David Kaula, Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, vol. 16, no. 2, published in the journal Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama, Spring 1976, pp. 287-303.

The author explains: “writers seem to be especially addicted to the word “trumpery,” probably because, through its derivation from tromperie, it suggests deception or trickery… The blessing Hermione then asks the gods to bestow on her daughter is a last reminder of the difference between this kind of spirituality and the sham “benediction” Autolycus sold with his hallowed trumpery.”

The study begins by giving the Shakespearean background to it all: “Autolycus, the entertaining rogue who appears as part of the Bohemian scene in The Winter’s Tale, is a character with as many sides as the ‘many knavish professions’ he has run through since he was whipped out of court and lost his job as servant to Prince Florizel”

mini-AIR (March 2024): physics, chemistry, and other personality

The March 2024 issue of mini-AIR (the monthly teeny tiny supplement to the magazine Annals of Improbable Research) has just gone out. You can add yourself to the email distribution list, if you like, or read it online.

Ig Nobel Prizes on Jeopardy, again (with wasabi)

This week the Ig Nobel Prizes made another appearance on the Jeopardy! TV game show, this time as an answer. It refers to the 2011 Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize, which honored the inventor who tried to determine the ideal density of airborne wasabi (pungent horseradish) to awaken sleeping people in case of a fire or other emergency, and who applyied this knowledge to invent the wasabi alarm.

The Igs have been an entire category on Jeopardy at least eight times, in the past, and may have put in additional appearances.

(Thanks to Martin Eiger for bringing this to our attention.)

Wins and births / Celebratory sex in cars / Time zones? / Unread and vanished

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them:

Wins for kids — Spectator sports are good for children – good for creating children, that is – according to data in a study by Gwinyai Masukume at University College Dublin, Ireland, and his colleagues…. “With a few exceptions,” say the researchers, these popular contests “were associated with increases in the number of babies born and/or in the birth sex ratio 9(±1) months following notable team wins and/or hosting the tournament”. Sports events on this level seem to work that way for winners – but not for losers, says the study….Celebratory sex — That spectator-sports study begins with a seductive sentence: “Major sporting tournaments may be associated with increased birth rates 9 months afterwards, possibly due to celebratory sex.” Not many researchers focus on the topic of celebratory sex. But four scholars at the University of South Dakota did, in a 2017 paper called “Sexual behavior in parked cars reported by Midwestern college mehttps://outlook.office.com/mail/feedb... and women“….Timeliness of time — The eternal question “What is time?” has staggered doubly to centre stage – first in a Finnish report about Russian time zones, second in a shifty action by the nation of Kazakhstan…. Independently, the government of Kazakhstan added clarification, wonder and, maybe, confusion to the general timely mix. On 1 March, Kazakhstan rendered its two time zones down into a solitary, nationwide time zone….Unread, un-existent — How many research studies that nobody had read… eventually just disappeared? And how many studies that have disappeared… had never been read by anybody, even before disappearing? Rough answers to both questions – they are not quite the same question! – now exist…. Meho wrote: “It is a sobering fact that some 90% of papers that have been published in academic journals are never cited. Indeed, as many as 50% of papers are never read by anyone other than their authors, referees and journal editors.” …