Marc Abrahams's Blog, page 24

COMING: The 2024 Ig Nobel EuroTour

This April, 2024, the Ig Nobel EuroTour will spring to life after several years of hibernation (the hibernation was caused by the Covid pandemic). It’s all about research (and researchers) that makes people LAUGH, then THINK.

Events are scheduled in GERMANY, DENMARK, SWITZERLAND, ITALY, and SPAIN. Details are on our coming events page.

And more?

If your institution (in Europe) would like to host an event, please get in touch with us ASAP!

 

Almost everyone dies / Mindfulness and electroshock therapy / Mindfulness and dishwashing

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

Sweet or not, the end — Almost everyone who gets old dies. In a gross way, that brief sentence could sum up a Dutch/Danish/British study called “Use of sugar in coffee and tea and long-term risk of mortality in older adult Danish men: 32 years of follow-up from a prospective cohort study“….Shocking news —… Feedback cannot stop focusing on a 10-year-old study called “Role of mindfulness-based psychological support during a course of ECT”. ECT is an acronym for electroconvulsive therapy. This study was one of the most successful attempts – perhaps the only attempt – to intentionally combine mindfulness with this therapy….Mind the dishes — Just a year later, researchers in the US published a study called “Washing dishes to wash the dishes: Brief instruction in an informal mindfulness practice“….Mindful of mindfulness — One can also be mindful about mindfulness. Three researchers (two at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, one at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia) looked mindfully at the heaps of published studies about mindfulness, then published a study about what they think they saw….Resisting antibiotics — David Gordon adds his non-prescriptive perspective to Feedback’s collection of professional opinions about whether “the art of medicine amounts to entertaining the patient while nature effects the cure”. He says: “All interventions have potential side-effects, so avoidance of unnecessary ones is a no-brainer….Losing power — Superpowers – even the trivial ones readers add to Feedback’s compendium – aren’t all permanent. Grainne Collins confides…

Improbable Dramatic Readings at Boskone

This photo shows the performers in the Improbable Dramatic Readings session we (Improbable Research) did at Boskone (the scifi convention in Boston, Massachusetts), on February 10, 2024. The performers include: Sara Dion, James Bacon, Geri Sullivan, Roksi Freeman, Amy Kucharik, Robin Abrahams, Gary Dryfoos, and three timekeepers. The event was emceed by Marc Abrahams, with portaborsing by Michele Liguori, stage managed by David Kessler. David Kessler took this photo.

Get the drift of the story of story drift (about buildings)?

If you’ve ever yearned to learn the difference between story drift and story displacement — it’s a story of how buildings can go awry — this eagerly-narrated video might fascinate you:

Improbable Research show at AAAS in Denver: Saturday night

If you will be in Denver, Colorado this Saturday, join us at the Improbable Research show.

After three pandemic years when the annual special Improbable Research session was done online, it will return in 2024 to having lots of people all together in a room at the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) meeting. Featuring

Marc Abrahams, founder of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremonyDaniel Preston, 2023 Ig Nobel Physics Prize winner for re-animating dead spiders to use as mechanical gripping toolsNicole Sharp, creator of the fluid dynamics site FYFD, will explore fluid dynamics adventures that were eventually or should be honored with Ig Nobel PrizesImprobable Dramatic readings (read aloud by probably dramatic readers) of very brief extracts from improbably exciting genuine published research studies

WHERE: AAAS Annual Meeting, Denver, Colorado, USA — Crystal Ballroom on the third Floor, Embassy Suites by Hilton Denver Downtown Convention Center

WHEN: Saturday, February 17, 2024, 8:00 pm

WHO: This event is open to meeting attendees — and to the general public — free

PAPER AIRPLANES: are welcomed, if you bring paper to make and fly them

Other-handed politics, Solitary sheep, Nothing good, Onions on milk, Carrying,

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

On the other hand — It is maybe the most politically insightful psychology study published in the past 60 years. And it is maybe not. The study in question is “State resident handedness, ideology, and political party preference: U.S. presidential election outcomes over the past 60 years“….In solitary splendor — One’s personality can shine forth when one is alone rather than with companions. That is the big reveal in a study called “Temperament behaviours in individually tested sheep are not related to behaviours expressed in the presence of conspecifics“….When nothing is good — James Hodges writes: “In response to your segment on doctors waiting for patients to get better by themselves: it is absolutely totally a part of our job. “I am a paediatrician. We take doing nothing very seriously. ‘Cat-like observation and masterful inactivity’ is a firmly held mantra in our world. We often admit patients for viral illnesses for which there is no treatment. We watch, we support, and the child gets better….As fresh as onions — Dimple Devi and her colleagues have devised a way to use onions to prolong the freshness of milk….Carry on carrying — Perusing Feedback’s growing list of trivial superpowers, Ken Taylor poses a question about his own ability: “Here’s a trivial superpower I only just realised I had… the ability to carry lots of glass containers. As a teenager, I delivered milk and could manage six full pint bottles of milk and 10 empties. As an adult…

Inflammation of the populace, Anarchist cookbook tip, Necrophilia update, Happily horrific

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

Learning from mole rats — Marketers who specialise in inflammation of the populace won’t have missed the Journal of Experimental Biology‘s appreciation of hyaluronan. Beneath the headline “Underground anti-aging secrets from burrowing rodents“, the journal says…Anarchist cookbook tip — Books can be dangerous in little-anticipated ways. Feedback reminds you to be careful when using The Anarchist Cookbook. If you don’t cook your anarchist to the proper temperature, there may be problems. Similarly with The Shredded Vegan Chef. If you don’t properly shred your vegan chef, distress can result. If your hobby is astrophysics, the warning applies to The Whole Earth Cook Book.Post-deadly encounters — After the world became aware two decades ago of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck, more reports of “Davian behaviour” found their way into the public record. Here is a quick update….Happily horrific titles – Some medical papers have titles so intriguingly horrifying that – to anyone who loves a good horror story – the title almost begs the reader to NOT read the study itself. Why avoid the complete study? Because one’s imagination, when overstimulated, can conjure up wonders. In comparison, the actual you-could-go-see-it-yourself details might seem mundane, dull, even comparatively dreary. Reading them could produce literary disappointment and disgruntlement – maybe even the death of curiosity. For example…

Unclassified Ads

The “Unclassified Ads” section of the magazine (Annals of Improbable Research) offers a marketplace for unusual items.

An offering (from France) of favorite Ig Nobel Prize winners

Doc’nRoll tells (in French) about many of their favorite Ig Nobel Prize winners, in this short video:

La Jolla Alert: A possible profusion of wild anchovy wild sex

“Anchovy Sex Is a Force of Nature” is the headline on a Hakai magazine report by Christina Crouch, on February 7, 2024. The report says, in part:

…But Castro’s study—which was published in 2022 and won a 2023 Ig Nobel Prize for humorous, thought-provoking scientific achievement—shows that within ocean layers, anchovy spawning causes significant, if subtle, swings in temperature. This finding suggests that in shallower water, the ruckus produced by plentiful piscine participants procreating all at once might be more powerful and more important for ocean mixing than previously thought….

It’s even possible, Castro says, that his study actually underrepresents the effects of anchovy sex. Local fishermen told him the anchovy aggregation he studied was much smaller than similar swarms spotted farther offshore. In places like La Jolla, California, researchers have seen anchovy aggregations of between 10 million and one billion fish—schools so vast and dense they look like an oil spill cutting through clear water. Other schooling species, such as sardines and herring, swim in groups of similar sizes. But scientists have very little data on whether these species produce similarly titillating turbulence.