Marc Abrahams's Blog, page 26

The special Puzzles & Games issue of the magazine

The special Puzzles & Games issue of the magazine (volume 30, number 1) has just gone out to subscribers. It’s got copious details about the 2023 prize winners and the ceremony. And more. Lotsa stuff that makes people LAUGH, then THINK.

The magazine is in PDF format. You can buy a copy, or buy a subscription.

Threatened masculinity, Rambling points, Sedate entertainment, Masterly inactivity, Tiny Truths

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

Threatened masculinity — … Psychology research procedures can be innovative and intricate, especially in the US. A study called “Examining the effect of threatened masculinity on gun violence” by Brittany Vincent and her colleagues at St. Joseph’s University in New York showcases these qualities…. It is at this point that things get interesting: each participant will then “either have their masculinity threatened or be assigned to a control group”. In the final stage, the interestingness continues to grow: “participants will be asked to play a game involving an online voodoo doll where they will be asked to pretend the voodoo doll is the person from the recording, and to shoot the voodoo doll”.A bunch of points — … Mathematician Ravi Vakil at Stanford University in California wrote a phrase you might apply to lecturers who ramble at whim – who flit yon, thither and hither as they tell some simple fact….Sedate entertainment — … “But amusing the patient? During surgery under general anaesthesia, no patient amusement is required, and keeping the surgeon amused and in good humour is the best service the anaesthetist can provide for the theatre staff. Stories, chat and anecdote all help. “Surgery under local anaesthesia demands the same amusement for the patient. And what you learn! Under mild sedation, as under mild intoxication, all sorts of stories come out about their lives, none of which may be repeated, of course.”Masterly inactivity — … “[Long ago] a highly respected clinician, for whom I was working, explained that if you were not sure what was wrong or what treatment to give, then you should give MICLO therapy. MICLO stood for ‘masterly inactivity and cat-like observation’….”Tiny truths — Alison Flood, New Scientist‘s comment and culture editor, offhandedly came up with a good new definition for medicine: “quite gross – but also interesting”. Those five words remind Feedback of biologist Dany Adams’s classic seven-word definition of biology: “If it can get infected, it’s biology.” Can you come up with a pithy new definition (of seven or fewer words) for some scientific concept? If so, please send it to: “TINY TRUTHS” c/o Feedback.

Prizes of various sorts in Lund

Allen Morris sent these photos he took on a January 2023 visit to Lund University in Sweden. The university is home to many Ig Nobel Prize winners, for research on, among other things, cat communications, alligators in helium, chimpanzee/human mutual imitation, and dung beetle celestial navigation.

Later in 2023, part of the story told in these signs was suddenly, joyously (see video, below) rendered no longer true. The University’s announcement of that says: “Anne L’Huillier awarded Nobel Prize in Physics“.

 

Coming event: Science Communication in Vienna

The Vienna Science Ball announces:

Vienna (OTS) – The Science Ball is entering the home stretch: two weeks before the major event, the final preparations are being made to delight the audience with scientific and artistic performances on January 27th….

Another premiere will take place the day before the ball: Marc Abrahams [pictured here] will give the very first Vienna Lecture on Science Communication under the title “ Why communicate science?” The setting is the ÖAW campus in the center of Vienna. Abrahams, creator and Spiritus Rector of the legendary Ignoble Prizes, was already a guest at the premiere of the Science Ball in 2015. On January 26, 2024, at the invitation of ÖAW President Heinz Faßmann and ball organizer Oliver Lehmann, he will analyze the purpose of science communication – introduced by Matthias Karmasin, Director of the Institute for Comparative Media and Communication Research (CMC) at the ÖAW and the University of Klagenfurt.

The starting point for the lecture is scientific skepticism, as recently documented again in the OeAW’s science barometer . The reaction of universities and researchers to do more education and communication is understandable. But Abrahams – a globally recognized pioneer of contemporary science communication – goes beyond this and asks: Why do we need science communication? How is science communication different from communication about other topics – and should it be different?

Black hole batteries, 2-at-a-time reading, Coffee with confusion, Edge on Edge, Names harvest

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

Tiny black hole batteries — … They handwave away the swath of problems reputed to afflict anyone who suggests even going near a black hole. Their black hole, they specify, will be a “tiny black hole”. This kind of confidence inspires venture capitalists, a variety of humans who are experiencing a golden age here in the early 2020s. Many are looking for new big opportunities to raise funds and invest portions thereof after extracting appropriate fractions therefrom. Black hole batteries could be their next big thing, following hard on the flighty footsteps of cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence, both of which flocks of investors have found to be as compellingly attractive as black holes.Two-story superpower — … “I could read them a bedtime story out loud while at the same time silently reading a novel to myself. I have no idea how my brain managed to separate out the two stories, but it certainly helped with the tedium of reading the same bedtime story yet again.”Coffee with confusion — Ambiguity has a field day in this medical journal headline: “Coffee and heart failure: A further potential beneficial effect of coffee“….Edge on edge — Sam Edge is vexed about a paper that featured in a previous Feedback column (4 November 2023) called “New insights on the genetics of hair whorls from twins and the southern hemisphere“. Sam finds it hair-raising that the paper drew any attention. He says: “The old chestnut about drain circulation rears its head again, I see….”Sheffield names harvest — Susan Frank doesn’t beat about the bush in conveying garden variety information. She writes: “I thought you’d like the names of two of our trustees associated with the Sheffield Botanical Gardens Trust, Barbara Plant and Christine Rose.” …

Collecting Objects That Fell to Earth from Outer Space — Use a Net

How does one catch a rock that plummets to earth from outer space?

Scott Sandford, a research astrophysicist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, is seen in the photo below (he is at the left) with the OSIRIS-REx Sample Return Capsule immediately after it landed in Utah on September 24, 2023. This was the first sample ever deliberately collected from an asteroid and brought to earth. Sandford was working without a net — in contrast to a method he favored on a much earlier expedition to collect a passively fallen — and eventually extremely famous — rock sample.

Sandford has a long history of retrieving and analyzing objects that have fallen to earth from space. He was one of the scientists who retrieved the Martian meteorite that entranced earth’s scientists and public many years ago — the meteorite appeared to contain evidence that the planet Mars had once hosted life. That piece of rock, known as “Allan Hills 84001”, was gathered in 1984.

Sandford and colleague Randy L. Korotev wrote a fanciful account of the retrieval method, which he published in 1996 in the Annals of Improbable Research, with the title “To Catch a Falling Star”. The key passage: “When an incoming object was sighted, its most likely impact point with the ground was calculated from its aerial trajectory using standard ‘outfielder’ techniques.  Once an impact site was determined, an expedition member was dispatched to the landing site to ensure immediate collection (Figure 3).”

A snippet of that article is shown above. It shows Sandford leaping full out, arms outstretched holding a net that captures the falling meteorite. (You can download a copy of the entire article.)

[NOTE: Scott Sandford is also the author of the classic paper explaining how and why if you properly compare apples and oranges — using spectrographic analysis — they are virtually identical. That article, too, was published in the Annals of Improbable Research.]

 

Bulgarian yogurt in space, Science names hodgepodge, Sickens and the nose, Pomelo Penetration

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

Bulgarian yogurt in space — “Can Bulgarian yogurt enhance astronauts’ performance during the Mars missions?” ask Izabela Shopova, Diana Bogueva, Maria Yotova and Svetla Danova in their study of that name published in the Journal of Ethnic Foods.The researchers had seven people prepare and eat Bulgarian-style yogurt – made with Lactobacillus delbrueckiisubsp. bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus. The seven were, at that time, members of “a team of analog astronauts participating in a two-week analog mission in a closed, Mars-like environment at the Mars Desert Research Station in the Utah desert, the USA”. These stay-down-to-Earth astronauts were not, most of them, naive yogurt eaters….In the names of science — Considered all together, the scientific names of living critters are a miscellany of hodgepodges. Richard Wakeford alerts Feedback to an attempt, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, to savour the variety.In their paper “Naming the menagerie: Creativity, culture and consequences in the formation of scientific names“, Stephen B. Heard at the University of New Brunswick, and Julia J. Mlynarek at the Montreal Insectarium, both in Canada, sketch the manyness – and rue its difficulties….Sikkens, from the nose — Healthcare workers (HCW), consider yourself warned. “Nose picking among HCW is associated with an increased risk of contracting a SARS-CoV-2 infection,” says a study called “Why not to pick your nose: Association between nose picking and SARS-CoV-2 incidence, a cohort study in hospital health care workers” in the journal PLoS One. It was written by Jonne J. Sikkens and five colleagues at Vrije University Amsterdam in the Netherlands. (Sikkens, Feedback notes, is obviously another name in the long annals of nominative determinism.) Healthcare workers, please also consider, if only a little, the emotional side of nose picking….Penetrating question — Can light penetrate through pomelos and carry information?The question is addressed in a study called “Can light penetrate through pomelos and carry information for the non-destructive prediction of soluble solid content using Vis-NIRS?” Hao Tian and colleagues at Zhejiang University, China, published it in the journal Biosystems Engineering. Pomelos are ancestors of grapefruits….

Price of a Life: Statistical Navel-Gazing Deep Dive

You can spend your life analyzing the analyses of lives. Yes, there is a cost to it. To jump-start that process, read this study:

“The Value of Statistical Life: A Meta-Analysis of Meta-Analyses,” H. Spencer Banzhaf, Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, vol. 13, no. 2, 2022, pp. 182-197. the author explains:

“The value of statistical life (VSL) is arguably the most important number in benefit–cost analyses of environmental, health, and transportation policies. However, agencies have used a wide range of VSL values. One reason may be the embarrassment of riches when it comes to VSL studies. While meta-analysis is a standard way to synthesize information across studies, we now have multiple competing meta-analyses and reviews. Thus, to analysts, picking one such meta-analysis may feel as hard as picking a single “best study.” This article responds by taking the meta-analysis another step, estimating a meta-analysis (or mixture distribution) of seven meta-analyses. The baseline model yields a central VSL of $8.0 m, with a 90 % confidence interval of $2.4–$14.0 m.”

Ig Noted in Nigerian Literature

‘Perhaps the most famous reference to this issue comes from the Ig Nobel Prize committee which honours achievements that “first make people laugh, then make people think.” ‘

That quotation is from the chapter “Satire, Humour, Language and Style in Nigerian Literature“, by Taiwo Oloruntoba-Oju, in the book Humour Theory and Stylistic Enquiry, T. Oloruntoba-Oju (editor), Palgrave Macmillan, Cham., 2023.

New Year’s Fireworks, Wild Geese Chased, Fish and Arms, Caller Pre-ID

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

New Year’s Eve Adventures — Happy New Year to ears, noses and throats – and to the people who minister to them! Julia Werz at Ulm University Hospital, Germany, and three colleagues began the celebration early, publishing the study “New Year’s Eve in otorhinolaryngology: A 16-year retrospective evaluation“. That celebration comes in three parts. First, a sketch of 16 years of adventures on New Year’s Eve in the otorhinolaryngology department of a single hospital. Simply put: “Pyrotechnics are a long-standing tradition at the turn of the year.” …Wild Geese Chased — Wild geese in northern Europe – some of them – have a high time on New Year’s Eve. Evidence for that appears in a study called “Wild goose chase: Geese flee high and far, and with aftereffects from New Year’s fireworks“. The facts, presented plainly, show what the geese were up to on those nights….Fish and Arms — Feedback is entranced by the meanings of the title of the old book Heraldry of Fish: Notices of the principal families bearing fish in their arms. Entranced also by the name of the book’s author, Thomas Moule. Moule is a near case of nominative determinism – his surname is the French word for the kind of shellfish English speakers call a mussel. But mussels, being bivalve molluscs, aren’t fish. And Moule, writing about fish, therefore may not be a pure case of nominative determinism. It’s a bit iffy. Maybe a red herring. Which brings us back to the book title….Caller Pre-ID — Anne Tener says she has an ability that should be added to Feedback’s list of trivial superpowers. She writes: “Well before the time of call display and often before the phone even rings, I know who is trying to contact me and sometimes, the nature of the call. This ‘power’ has often come in handy when I would prefer to avoid that particular contact at that moment!”… Feedback also notes that Anne Tener, having superior reception clarity, is a case of nominative determinism.