Marc Abrahams's Blog, page 43

Optimal Wings for Flying Fruits

If you were to design wings for flying fruit, how best to optimize the wing shape? If you don’t already know the answer to that, you might begin your knowledge adventure by reading this study:

“Curving to Fly: Synthetic Adaptation Unveils Optimal Flight Performance of Whirling Fruits,” Jean Rabault, Richard A. Fauli, and Andreas Carlson, Physical Review Letters, vol. S122, no. 024501, 2019. The authors, at the University of Oslo, Norway, report:

“Appendages of seeds, fruits, and other diaspores (dispersal units) are essential for their wind dispersal, as they act as wings and enable them to fly. Whirling fruits generate an autogyrating motion from their sepals, a leaflike structure, which curve upwards and outwards, creating a lift force that counteracts gravitational force. The link of the fruit’s sepal shape to flight performance, however, is as yet unknown. We develop a theoretical model and perform experiments for double-winged biomimetic 3D-printed fruits, where we assume that the plant has a limited amount of energy that it can convert into a mass to build sepals and, additionally, allow them to curve. Both hydrodynamic theory and experiments involving synthetic, doublewinged fruits show that to produce a maximal flight time there is an optimal fold angle for the desiccated sepals. A similar sepal fold angle is found for a wide range of whirling fruits collected in the wild, highlighting that wing curvature can aid as an efficient mechanism for wind dispersal of seeds and may improve the fitness of their producers in the context of an ecological strategy.”

Vortex-Driven Ducklings: 2022 Ig Informal Lecture

The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK.

In the Ig Informal Lectures, some days after the ceremony, the new Ig Nobel Prize winners attempt to explain what they did, and why they did it.

The 2022 Ig Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Frank Fish, Zhi-Ming Yuan, Minglu Chen, Laibing Jia, Chunyan Ji, and Atilla Incecik, for trying to understand how ducklings manage to swim in formation.

The 2022 Ig Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded jointly to two separate research groups for their research about how ducklings swim in formation. Each group has prepared an Ig Informal Lecture. This is one of those lecture videos.

REFERENCE: “Energy Conservation by Formation Swimming: Metabolic Evidence from Ducklings,” Frank E. Fish, in the book Mechanics and Physiology of Animal Swimming, 1994, pp. 193-204.REFERENCE: “Wave-Riding and Wave-Passing by Ducklings in Formation Swimming,” Zhi-Ming Yuan, Minglu Chen, Laibing Jia, Chunyan Ji, and Atilla Incecik, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, vol. 928, no. R2, 2021.

Murderous Twins Paradox, From the Wood, Alumni Decomposition

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

Double Jeopardy — … Jane Ridley assesses a tough legal problem in an Insider.com article with an extremely long headline: “Identical college twins were accused of cheating in an exam by signaling. They won $1.5 million in damages after a jury decided they hadn’t cheated because their minds were connected”. This kind of twins paradox becomes more consequential – and more extreme – if we up the level of the allegation. Let’s make it murder. And conjoined twins. That exact combination got six pages of analysis in the Alternative Law Journal in 2017….Out of the Woodwork — … Obhrai supplied photos that show the now-unsealed wooden cupboard and some of the magazines that, like pharaohs entombed in the Egyptian pyramids for a static journey towards forever, had lain for a long time concealed within….Decomposed Alumni — Feedback’s Ambiguously Titled Research Study of the Month (submissions for which are welcome) sets a standard, or a model, that higher education institutions can use as they strive to achieve total quality management and business excellence. The study is called “Developing a Decomposed Alumni Satisfaction Model for Higher Education Institutions”….

Ducks and cats [advice from James Rankin, in 1906]

This advice about cats, from an artificial duck farmer — a farmer who raised ducks under artificial conditions — was published in 1906, in the book Natural and Artificial Duck Culture by James Rankin:

Do Not Have Neighbors Too Near.

Another source of discomfort was our neighbors’ cats. Now, we are eminently social in our disposition, and enjoy our neighbors’ company very much. We like to spend a social evening with them and have them do the same by us. But not so their cats. We never interchanged civilities with them, their visits were too ill timed and frequent. Our ducklings were carried off in large numbers, and in pure self-defense we shot the cats.

Of course, this made trouble in our neighbors’ families, especially the female portion, by whom it was promptly resented. The principle of “touch my dog, touch me,” was illustrated here in all its force. No amount of provocation ever justified us in their eyes in killing their cats. With pater familias it was different. His affections were not engaged. He recognized the necessity of the thing, laughed it off, and said it was all right. Now, cats breed fast and are very prolific, and our neighbors were plenty, and we are unwilling to state the amount of our losses from those sources, for fear our veracity would be doubted. We endured this sort of annoyance for some twelve years, but made up our minds that if we ever selected another poultry ranch we would locate our neighbors at a distance. We have done so, and now have no trouble from this source.

Wave-Riding Ducklings: 2022 Ig Informal Lecture

The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK.

In the Ig Informal Lectures, some days after the ceremony, the new Ig Nobel Prize winners attempt to explain what they did, and why they did it.

The 2022 Ig Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Frank Fish, Zhi-Ming Yuan, Minglu Chen, Laibing Jia, Chunyan Ji, and Atilla Incecik, for trying to understand how ducklings manage to swim in formation.

The 2022 Ig Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded jointly to two separate research groups for their research about how ducklings swim in formation. Each group has prepared an Ig Informal Lecture. This is one of those lecture videos.

REFERENCE: “Energy Conservation by Formation Swimming: Metabolic Evidence from Ducklings,” Frank E. Fish, in the book Mechanics and Physiology of Animal Swimming, 1994, pp. 193-204.REFERENCE: “Wave-Riding and Wave-Passing by Ducklings in Formation Swimming,” Zhi-Ming Yuan, Minglu Chen, Laibing Jia, Chunyan Ji, and Atilla Incecik, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, vol. 928, no. R2, 2021.

Handy Key Words

Many published research studies include list of “key words” — words that should or might help people (and help search engines) discover that the study exists.  This new study includes an unusual word in its list of key words: “Endogenous opioid release following orgasm in man: A combined PET-fMRI study,” Patrick Jern, Jinglu Chen, Jouni Tuisku, Tiina Saanijoki, Jussi Hirvonen, Lasse Lukkarinen, Sandra Manninen, Semi Helin, Vesa Putkinen, and Lauri Nummenmaa, bioRxiv, 2022.

The authors are at Åbo Akademi University and the University of Turku, FInland. Here is their list: “Keywords: Orgasm, Handjob, Arousal, Opioids, fMRI, Positron Emission Tomography”

 

‘Polarized World’ — Tombstones, Dragonflies, and Light

Here’s a teaser video for the film “Polarized World’:

And some background info about it, from ELTE [Eötvös Loránd University, in Budapest]:

TRICKED INSECTS – AND WHAT WE CAN DO FOR THEM

In 2016, ELTE researchers received the prestigious Ig Nobel prize for physics for the funniest research of the year  . The award-winning publication of Gábor Horváth and  György Kriska  asked a surprising question:  Why are dragonflies attracted to black tombstones?  During years of intensive research, it turned out that the answer lies in the polarization pattern of the reflected light….

György Kriska made a breathtaking one-hour film entitled ‘Polar World’ about his joint environmental optics research with Gábor Horváth: the film will premiere on December 27 on YouTube. The  Polar World  shows how the apparently ridiculous and marginal discovery mentioned in the introduction became extremely important, and by the end of the film we also learn how to save endangered aquatic insects, change the cityscape, build safer bridges and ports, and protect our farm animals from bloodsuckers – or why there are stripes on the zebra.

The announcement also notes that “György Kriska’s peculiar nature films [have] been a delicacy on the market for years.”

Too Much Excitement Under Highway 87

The title of this study doesn’t say it all. But it says enough to make any thoughtful person want to take a look, and see what’s what:

“Too Much Excitement under Highway 87,” D.E. Hook, R.L. Volpe, and C. Chamness, in Pipelines 2006: Service to the Owner, 2006, pp. 1-9. The authors begin their summing up with this thought:

“Major lessons learned from this surprising adventure included: 1. Ensure that the appropriate professionals (geotechnical engineer or record in this case) are involved throughout design and construction rather than only during initial investigation….”

A Good Grasp of Knobs: 2022 Ig Informal Lecture

The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK.

In the Ig Informal Lectures, some days after the ceremony, the new Ig Nobel Prize winners attempt to explain what they did, and why they did it. We are releasing these lectures one at a time.

The 2022 Ig Nobel Prize for Engineering was awarded to Gen Matsuzaki, Kazuo Ohuchi, Masaru Uehara, Yoshiyuki Ueno, and Goro Imura, for trying to discover the most efficient way for people to use their fingers when turning a knob.

REFERENCE: “How to Use Fingers during Rotary Control of Columnar Knobs,” Gen Matsuzaki, Kazuo Ohuchi, Masaru Uehara, Yoshiyuki Ueno, and Goro Imura, Bulletin of Japanese Society for the Science of Design, vol. 45, no. 5, 1999, pp. 69-76.REFERENCE: “Experimental Studies on the Rotary Control of Columnar Knobs — The Number of Fingers used at the Time of starting Rotary Control,” Gen Matsuzaki, Goro Imura, and Maseru Uehara, Proceedings of the Third Asia Design Conference, 1998, pp. 37-40.

Can you hear the strains of an imaginary Bing Crosby?

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has three segments. Here’s how each of them begins:

May your daze be merry — A recent study builds on more than half a century of experiments to see whether people think they hear Bing Crosby crooning White Christmas. Crosby’s recording of the song, released in 1942, became enduringly popular. In the 1960s, Theodore Xenophon Barber at the Medfield Foundation in Massachusetts and his colleagues began using White Christmas – and also not using it – as an experimental probe….Seasonal upswing— Do seasonal holidays bring a predictable rise in the total number of alive-and-kicking humans? Research suggests that, firstly, the answer is predictably jumbled, and, secondly, it is likely to be marred by manipulations and errors in birth records….Seasonal downswing—… Do seasonal holidays bring a predictable drop in the total number of alive-and-kicking humans (or, to phrase it more strenuously, a rise in the number who kick the bucket)? Research suggests that here, too, the answer is predictably jumbled and manipulation of the deaths records not only occurs, but sometimes happens to save oodles of money….

Here, for context, is the 1942 recording of Bing Crosby singing White Christmas: