Marc Abrahams's Blog, page 393

Ig Nobel tix go on sale TODAY at NOON

TICKETS for the 2014 Ig Nobel Prize ceremony go on sale TODAY — TUESDAY, JULY 8, at noon (US eastern time). Tickets sell out rapidly, so we advise you get them sooner, rather than not be able to get them later.

Tickets will be available exclusively from the Harvard Box Office — online, by telephone (+1 617-496-2222), and in person at the Holyoke Center ticket window (1350 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge).

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. This year 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 at least one Ig Nobel Prize winner; A vintage Ig Nobel t-shirt; 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 will happen on Thursday, September 18, 2014, at Sanders Theatre, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Ten new Ig Nobel Prize winners will be honored for achievements that make people laugh, then think.

You can download a PDF version of the 2014 ceremony poster, by right-clicking on the image:

The Press Association, in the UK, previews this year’s ceremony.

Jiggling and scanning the brains of cadavers

How does one compare what doesn’t happen in the jiggled brains of dead persons with what does happen in the jiggling brains of living persons? This study is an attempt to answer that question:

“SimPACE: Generating simulated motion corrupted BOLD data with synthetic-navigated acquisition for the development and evaluation of SLOMOCO: A new, highly effective slicewise motion correction,” Erik B. Beall [pictured here] and Mark J. Lowe, NeuroImage, epub 2014. The authors at the Cleveland Clinic, making heavy use of acronyms, explain:

“In this study, we acquired BOLD-weighted data obtained with a motion-injection pulse sequence (described in the Appendix A: SimPACE) in cadavers and living subjects and compared the truemotion with the efficacy of several motion characterization metrics.”

Here’s further detail from the study:

The Neuroskeptic blog offers some thoughts, by a living person, about this. Neuroskeptic makes mention of, among other things, the famous dead-salmon brain-scan study that earned the 2012 Ig Nobel Prize for neuroscience.

In search of the “beautiful” umbilicus

Dr Shu Jin Lee, and colleagues at the Department of Surgery, at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, have been examining the pages of Playboy Magazine – they are in search of “beauty”. Specifically, beautiful navels. With the aid of computer software which they have developed (called the Aesthetic Analyzer*) they are working towards a definition of the “Beautiful” Umbilicus.

Methods: Previously, the authors developed software (the Aesthetic Analyzer) for marking and analyzing parameters from images of the nose, breast, and umbilicus. In the present study, the Aesthetic Analyzer was utilized to determine parameters of the beautiful umbilicus from images of 37 Playboy playmates. The vertical position, horizontal position, length, and shape of the umbilicus were assessed.

Results: Based on these images, the beautiful umbilicus possesses the following properties: a vertical ratio of 46:54 (with respect to the xiphoid process and lower limit of the vulvar cleft), a midline horizontal position, a length that is 5% of the length from the xiphoid process to the lower limit of the vulvar cleft, and an oval shape with no hooding (29.8%) or superior hooding (21.6%).

See: ‘Computer-Aided Analysis of the “Beautiful” Umbilicus‘ in the latest edition of the Aesthetic Surgery Journal.

Also see: The umbilical signalling hypothesis and, The quest for an ideal nose

* Note: Improbable has not been able to determine if the team’s Aesthetic Analyzer is the same as this Aesthetic Analyzer, or this one.

They remind us to remind you: Ig Nobel tickets go on sale Tuesday

The Press Association, with a knowing look back at past Ig Nobel winners, reminds us to remind you that tickets for this year’s Ig Nobel Prize ceremony go on sale Tuesday, July 8, 2014, at noon (US eastern time).

Tickets will be available exclusively from the Harvard Box Office, on line, on phone, and in person.

Please spread the word!

A new, more rapid, yet unhasty look at pitch slowly dropping

Inspired, eventually, by the long, slow, continuing Australian pitch-drop experiment, a team in London has speeded things up considerably but — deliberately — not at all completely. They published a study about it:

“Measurement of bitumen viscosity in a room-temperature drop experiment: student education, public outreach and modern science in one,” A.T. Widdicombe, P. Ravindrarajah, A Sapelkin, A.E. Phillips, D. Dunstan, M.T. Dove, V.V. Brazhkin and K. Trachenko [pictured here], Physics Education, vol. 49, 2014, 406. The authors, at  Queen Mary University of London, UK and the Institute for High Pressure Physics, RAS, Moscow, Russia, report:

“The slow flow of a viscous liquid is a thought-provoking experiment that challenges students, academics and the public to think about some fundamental questions in modern science. In the Queensland demonstration—the world’s longest-running experiment, which has earned the Ig Nobel prize—one drop of pitch takes about ten years to fall, leading to problems for actually observing the drops. Here, we describe our recent demonstration of slowly-flowing bitumen where appreciable flow is observed on the timescale of months. The experiment is free from dissipative heating effects and has the potential to improve the accuracy of measurement…. This demonstration… stimulates the discussion of fundamental concepts and hotly debated ideas in modern physics research: the difference between solids and liquids, the nature of the liquid–glass transition, the emergence of long timescales in a physical process and the conflict between human intuition and physical reality.

Here’s a look back, by New Scientist magazine, at recent doings in the original, still-ongoing Australian pitch-drop experiment:

A quick look at a typewriter typing, and some random digits [videos]

Here’s a quick look at a typewriter typing numbers:

And here are some random digits:

Short men get more sex, they say

Here’s a recent exercise in data collection:

“Sexual Activity of Young Men is Not Related to Their Anthropometric Parameters,” Imre Rurik [pictured here, below], Attila Varga, Ferenc Fekete, Timea Ungvári and János Sándor, Journal of Sexual Medicine, epub June 21, 2014. (Thanks to investigator Ivan Oransky for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at the University of Debrecen, Debrecen, Primary Care Center, Budapest, Hungarian Society for Sexual Medicine, Budapest, Mr. Clinic Outpatient Center, Budapest, Hungary, report:

“Data for 531 heterosexual men aged 20–54 years were collected… The highest self-reported weekly coital frequency was recorded for men between the ages of 25 and 29 (3.02 ± 1.27). Coital frequency was higher among men with a height of less than 175 cm (2.69 ± 1.24)…”

Dr. Bacon’s “‘fatter’ future” feminist theology paper

Those who are interested in a feminist theology of food and fat might be interested in : ‘Expanding Bodies, Expanding God: Feminist Theology in Search of a ‘Fatter’ Future’ ( in : Feminist Theology, May 2013, vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 309-326) by Dr. Hannah Bacon, BA (Liv), PhD (Liv), PG Cert HE (Liv) FHEA, who is a Senior Lecturer and Deputy Head of Department at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Chester, UK.

For Dr. Bacon, fat can be regarded as a theological issue. The paper not only covers the concept of ‘Alimentary Theology’ :

“I suggest that feminist theology must go in pursuit of what I purposefully call a ‘fatter’ future – one which theologically values rather than demonizes fat and one which refuses to demarcate ‘normative’ bodies.“

but also tackles the idea of, and the implications of :

“The Trinitarian God as a Corpulent and Expansive God.” [...] “Because God cannot be without the flesh – without relationship and connection with the material – the Trinitarian God is a very fleshy God. More than this, however, God is also a corpulent, fat God because God extends limitlessly to embrace and include the other in the koinonia – unbreakable com­munion – of the divine life.”

Also see: The work of Professor Lisa Isherwood (University of Winchester, UK) who is cited in the paper and who examines the question : Can fat people get into heaven?

“The gate [to Heaven] is narrow, so if you have large hips, you can’t get in! How could Jesus walk on water if he was overweight?”

No harmful effects of 6 months of Coca-Cola on rat testes

Here’s another, very specific study of the effects, side-effects, and sometimes-wild fears about popular, refreshing beverages:

“No harmful effect of different Coca-cola beverages after 6 months of intake on rat testes,” Ľubomíra Tóthová, Július Hodosy, Kathryn Mettenburg, Helena Fábryová, Alexandra Wagnerová, Janka Bábíčková, Monika Okuliarová, Michal Zeman, and Peter Celec, Food and Chemical Toxicology, vol. 62, 2013, pp. 343-348. (Thanks to investigator Erwin Kompanje for bringing this to our attention.)

The authors, at Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia and Iowa State University, USA, report:

“Fifty adult male Wistar rats were divided into control group drinking water, and groups drinking different Coca-cola beverages (regular Coca-cola, Coca-cola caffeine-free, Coca-cola Light and Coca-cola Zero). Oxidative and carbonyl stress markers were measured in the testicular tissue to assess oxidative status together with testicular and plasma testosterone. StAR expression in testes as a marker of steroidogenesis was quantified. No significant differences were found between the groups in any of the measured parameters. In conclusion, oxidative and carbonyl stress in testicular tissue were not influenced by drinking any type of Coca-cola.”

Here’s further detail from the study:

The rat study cites many other studies, including the Ig Nobel Prize-winning “The Spermicidal Potency of Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola,” C.Y. Hong, C.C. Shieh, P. Wu, and B.N. Chiang, Human Toxicology [note: the journal later changed its name, and is now called Human & Experimental Toxicology], vol. 6, no. 5, September 1987, pp. 395-6. Here’s video of Dr. Deborah Anderson, chief author of that spermicide study, at the Ig Informal Lectures, at MIT, two days after she was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize:

BONUS: “The Coca-Cola incident in Belgium, June 1999,” B. Nemery, B. Fischler, M. Boogaerts, D. Lison, J. Willems, Food and Chemical Toxicology, vol. 40, 2002, pp. 1657–1667. The authors explain:

“The present paper describes the outbreak of health complaints that occurred in Belgium, in June 1999, among schoolchildren and members of the general public in relation to the consumption of Coca-Cola and other soft drinks. The outbreak took place in the wake of a major food crisis, caused by PCB/dioxin contamination of animal feed, that had erupted shortly before. The clinical features (absence of serious poisoning) and epidemiological characteristics of the Coca-Cola outbreak pointed to mass sociogenic illness, and no subsequent toxicological or other data have refuted this hypothesis.”

This a map from that study:

Ig Nobel tickets go on sale Tuesday, July 8

Tickets for the 2014 Ig Nobel Prize ceremony will go on sale TUESDAY, JULY 8, at noon (US eastern time). Tickets sell out rapidly, so we advise you to get them sooner, rather than not be able to get them later.

Tickets will be available exclusively from the Harvard Box Office — online, by telephone (+1 617-496-2222), and in person at the Holyoke Center ticket window (1350 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge).

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

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

Ig Glorious tickets: We fund the ceremony (theater rental, and half a zillion other expenses) mainly through ticket revenues. This year we are offering a few special “Ig Glorious” tickets, for persons who want to be specially supportive. Ig Glorious tickets come with special perks.

The ceremony will happen on Thursday, September 18, 2014, at Sanders Theatre, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Ten new Ig Nobel Prize winners will be honored for achievements that make people laugh, then think. (For details, see the ceremony web page.)

You can download a PDF version of the 2014 ceremony poster, by right-clicking on the image:

 

Here are two videos of last year’s — 2013 — Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. The first video is the official recording, more or less as it was webcast live. The second video, which you may find frustrating to watch, is the alternate video feed, from our unofficial NSA Courtesy Cam. (Yes, we will again be providing two live webcast  feeds for this years’s ceremony on September 18, 2014!)