Marc Abrahams's Blog, page 261

The Principle of Mediocrity

Mediocrity is a way of life to some, a curiosity to others. To cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin [pictured here], it’s a principle.

This principled man gives details in this monograph:

“The Principle of Mediocrity,” Alexander Vilenkin,  arXiv:1108.4990v1, 25 Aug 2011.

A then-new finger for a chicken-plucking machine

This is a finger for a chicken-plucking machine, as shown in the patent granted in 1962 for a finger for a chicken-plucking machine.

 

BONUS: Chicken chicken chicken subways subways subways

Ingredients list for the All-Natural Egg

Chemistry teacher James Kennedy, of the Haileybury Institute in Australia, created this poster that lists the “Ingredients of an All-Natural Egg”. Kennedy says, “This is the last of three posters in the ‘ingredients’ series. I think I’ve made my point. I’ve exhausted it, in fact. Enjoy.”

Kennedy’s posters of this sort for other all-natural products include a poster for the all-natural banana.

(HT Cliff Pickover for news about the existence of these posters.)

 

Banana Skins – their promise as an industrial lubricant additive

The work of Kiyoshi Mabuchi, Kensei Tanaka, Daichi Uchijima and Rina Sakai, who were awarded the 2014 Ig Nobel Physics Prize for measuring the amount of friction between a shoe and a banana skin, and between a banana skin and the floor, when a person steps on a banana skin that’s on the floor, continues to gain traction. (See ‘Frictional Coefficient under Banana Skin’, Tribology Online, 7, no. 3, 2012, pp. 147-151.) It’s cited by A. H. Hamid et al. of the Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, in a new study which examines the potential of banana skin as a lubricant additive for machinery :

“Banana skin has been often referred as slipping tools by the literature. Previous study had showed that coefficient of frictions under epicarp of banana skin; on the floor material is much lower to the value of common materials and similar to the well lubricated surface. During their study, they found that, lubricating effect of banana skin is contributed by existence of follicular gel which sized about a few micro meters.”

Their experimental research, published in Jurnal Teknologi (Sciences & Engineering), 77:21 (2015) 73–77, is entitled ‘EFFECT OF BANANA PEELS AS AN ADDITIVE ON THE TRIBOLOGICAL PROPORTIES [sic] OF PARAFFIN OIL’

It was determined that :

“The dispersion of BP [Banana Peel] in the paraffin oil is stable and smooth without any sedimentation problem. The kinematic viscosity of the mixture increased from 30.0 to 38.4 cSt for 40°C and from 17.5 to 32.3 cSt for 100°C temperature. Dispersion of banana peel in the paraffin oil has significantly reduced the COF [Coefficient Of Friction] and wear volume at 500 N load and 100°C. Our preliminary result shows that dispersion of banana peel in the paraffin oil shows good and promising tribological characteristic of lubricant. Further investigation should be carried out in future to enhance and reveal the properties of banana peel waste for biolubricant’s application.”

BONUS: (Bananas related) ‘Nestlé’s first peelable ice cream rolls out worldwide’ (2011 press release)

Ig Nobel tickets go on sale TODAY (July 7) at noon

Tickets for the 26th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony go on saleTODAY,  THURSDAY, JULY 7, 2016, at NOON (US eastern time).

We expect (based on experience) the tickets will get snapped up quickly.

TICKETS: The Harvard Box Office handles all ticket sales. The physical ticket office [now in a temporary location in Farkas Hall, 10 Holyoke Street, Cambridge] is open some (but not all!) days from noon to 6 pm. The web site is open 24 hours, every day.

Box Office web site: https://www.boxoffice.harvard.edu, Telephone (+1) 617-496-2222.

Tickets: $75 / $65 / $55 / $35

Student tickets: $70 / $60 / $50 / $30

Ig Glorious tickets: $150. We fund the ceremony (theater rental, and half a zillion other expenses) mainly through ticket revenues. We are offering a few special “Ig Glorious” tickets, for persons who want to be specially supportive. Ig Glorious tickets come with special perks: Excellent seats; An Ig Nobel poster, signed by an emissary; Their photo taken at the Ig Nobel lectern on stage (before or after the ceremony, at the discretion of the Stage Manager); Access to our Ig Glorious Liaison, a staff member assigned to the “Ig Glorious” group for the entirety of the event; And a hearty handshake!

THE CEREMONY: The ceremony will happen at the usual place. This year’s theme: TIME.

WHERE: Sanders Theatre, Harvard University

WHEN: THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2016, 6:00 pm.

Ceremony details: <http://www.improbable.com/ig/2016>

Chicken soup, colds, and the therapeutic armamentarium – maybe Grandma was right

“Traditional chicken soup was prepared according to a family recipe, which will be referred to as ‘Grandma’s soup’ (C. Fleischer; personal communication; 1970). This recipe is as follows:

• 1 5- to 6-lb stewing hen or baking chicken;

• 1 package of chicken wings;

• 3 large onions;

• 1 large sweet potato;

• 3 parsnips;

• 2 turnips;

• 11 to 12 large carrots;

• 5 to 6 celery stems;

• 1 bunch of parsley; and

• salt and pepper to taste.

Clean the chicken, put it in a large pot, and cover it with cold water. Bring the water to a boil. Add the chicken wings, onions, sweet potato, parsnips, turnips, and carrots. Boil about 1.5 h. Remove fat from the surface as it accumulates. Add the parsley and celery. Cook the mixture about 45 min longer. Remove the chicken. The chicken is not used further for the soup. (The meat makes excellent chicken parmesan.) Put the vegetables in a food processor until they are chopped fine or pass through a strainer. Both were performed in the present study. Salt and pepper to taste. “

The soup was prepared and used in a 2000 study by Barbara O. Rennard et al., of the Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Section, Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, US, to evaluate if it could be regarded as a remedy for symptomatic upper respiratory tract infections. More specifically, whether it might inhibit neutrophil migration using the standard Boyden blindwell chemotaxis chamber assay with zymosan-activated serum and fMet-Leu-Phe as chemoattractants.

Findings:

“The present study provides one piece of evidence that chicken soup contains compounds of potential medical value. No doubt, many other traditional remedies do as well. The evaluation of traditional remedies by rigorous modern methods has the potential to expand our therapeutic armamentarium.”

See: ‘Chicken Soup Inhibits Neutrophil Chemotaxis In Vitro’ in the journal Chest, 2000 Oct;118(4):1150-7. Authors Barbara O. Rennard, BA; Ronald F. Ertl, BS; Gail L. Gossman, BS; Richard A. Robbins, MD, FCCP; and Stephen I. Rennard, MD, FCCP

Note: Our website hosts a fairly extensive chicken-based improbable resource database – start your enquiries here.

Boring machines [podcast 71]

Boring machines, boring machines, boring machines, and more boring machines enliven this week’s Improbable Research podcast.

SUBSCRIBE on Play.it, iTunes, or Spotify to get a new episode every week, free.

This week, Marc Abrahams  — with dramatic readings by Chris Cotsapas — tells about:

Boring Machines—  Most, maybe all, of the boring machines featured in this week’s thrilling podcast are profiled, or at least mentioned in detail, in the special Boring Machines issue of our magazine (Annals of Improbable Research: 
You can find many boring machines by searching the files of the Unites States Patent Office. There are, of course, more boring machines in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by people who manage to obtain patents.

The mysterious John Schedler or the shadowy Bruce Petschek perhaps did the sound engineering this week.

The Improbable Research podcast is all about research that makes people LAUGH, then THINK — real research, about anything and everything, from everywhere —research that may be good or bad, important or trivial, valuable or worthless. CBS distributes it, on the CBS Play.it web site, and on iTunes and Spotify).

A fond look back at one of Troy’s many bear-suit adventures

This CTV news report shows Ig Nobel Prize winner Troy Hurtubise, some years ago, testing one of the many increasingly-sophisticated suits of armor he developed to protect himself against grizzly bears. In this report, Troy, wearing the suit, was strapped to the front of an automobile, and the car was then driven head-on into a brick wall. This image is from the news report. Click on it, and be transported to the CTV web site, where you can watch the report, and Troy, unfold:

Troy enjoys a huge following of admirers and prospective imitators. It’s rumored that there could some day be a television series starring Troy, in which Troy would take on all comers in a series of intriguingly dangerous situations (such as being tossed into the Bering Sea to see who could survive the longest). This rare video (below) appears to be a pilot for that TV series.

Troy has already, of course, been the star of a hit documentary film, Project Grizzly:

And Troy authored a hit book, which includes among its many delights hints of Troy’s relationships with members of the British royal family.

 

Ig Nobel Tickets will go on sale THURSDAY, JULY 7, at NOON

Tickets for the 26th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony will go on sale THURSDAY, JULY 7, 2016, at noon (US eastern time).

We expect (based on experience) the tickets will get snapped up quickly.

TICKETS: The Harvard Box Office handles all ticket sales. The physical ticket office [now in a temporary location in Farkas Hall, 10 Holyoke Street, Cambridge] is open some (but not all!) days from noon to 6 pm. The web site is open 24 hours, every day.

Box Office web site: https://www.boxoffice.harvard.edu, Telephone (+1) 617-496-2222.

Tickets: $75 / $65 / $55 / $35

Student tickets: $70 / $60 / $50 / $30

Ig Glorious tickets: $150. We fund the ceremony (theater rental, and half a zillion other expenses) mainly through ticket revenues. We are offering a few special “Ig Glorious” tickets, for persons who want to be specially supportive. Ig Glorious tickets come with special perks: Excellent seats; An Ig Nobel poster, signed by an emissary; Their photo taken at the Ig Nobel lectern on stage (before or after the ceremony, at the discretion of the Stage Manager); Access to our Ig Glorious Liaison, a staff member assigned to the “Ig Glorious” group for the entirety of the event; And a hearty handshake!

THE CEREMONY: The ceremony will happen at the usual place. This year’s theme: TIME.

WHERE: Sanders Theatre, Harvard University

WHEN: THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2016, 6:00 pm.

Ceremony details: <http://www.improbable.com/ig/2016>

Mary Glesner joins Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS)

Mary Glesner has joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS). She says:

As my years in graduate school mounted and I found myself poor and without “free time”, I found that a trip to the salon got cut out of the schedule and led to my lengthening hair. With hopes of defending, I wondered how long my hair would grow until I graduated. The result? A head of luxuriant flowing hair and one PhD! Now, I spend my days thinking about carpet…I suppose frieze is the luxuriant flowing carpet among floorcoverings.

Mary Glesner, Ph.D, LFHCfS

R&D Chemist

INVISTA

Camden, South Carolina,USA