Marc Abrahams's Blog, page 44

Snake double anatomy news

“Dr. Brennan said the find was so shockingly obvious that she almost fell out of her chair.” —December 14, 2022 report in the New York Times.

Old Tea Leaves for Supercapacitors

Not everyone uses used tea leaves to make supercapacitors. The authors of this study are among the people who do:

“Eco-Friendly and High Performance Supercapacitors for Elevated Temperature Applications Using Recycled Tea Leaves,” Sanket Bhoyate, Charith K. Ranaweera, Chunyang Zhang, Tucker Morey, Megan Hyatt, Pawan K. Kahol, Madhav Ghimir, Sanjay R. Mishra, and Ram K. Gupta, Global Challenges, vol. 1, no. 8, November 16, 2017, article 1700063.

Gossip, Honesty and Dishonesty: 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 Peace Prize 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: “Honesty and Dishonesty in Gossip Strategies: A Fitness Interdependence Analysis,” Junhui Wu, Szabolcs Számadó, Pat Barclay, Bianca Beersma, Terence D. Dores Cruz, Sergio Lo Iacono, Annika S. Nieper, Kim Peters, Wojtek Przepiorka, Leo Tiokhin and Paul A.M. Van Lange, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, vol. 376, no. 1838, 2021, 20200300.

As the ball bearing turns / Pretty Sweet biting / Arithmomania

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

Turning point—… And that paper, in its own turn, led to a study published this year in the journal Scientific Reports. It is called “Influence of roundness errors of bearing components on rotational accuracy of cylindrical roller bearings”. The authors lament that “there is relatively little research on the rotational accuracy of rolling bearings”. For youthful great explorers, keen for adventure, this unmapped territory beckons.A Pretty Sweet biting issue—… Four years ago, Pretty also peered into the story, and not a very sweet one, of older people and their teeth. The Pretty team looked at what happens when you ask some older folk the question: “What would you fear happening to your mouth?” The answer, as described in a study in the International Journal of Health Services: plenty.Arithmomania—… Maddeningly, for scientists and people with arithmomania, and for those who count themselves as being both, the exact number of causes for the condition could turn out to be uncountable.

Sleeping in the Audience at Science Meetings

At least one co-author of this study stayed awake while the data for the research was being collected. Probably. The study is:

“Dreaming During Scientific Papers: Effects of Added Extrinsic Material,” Richard F. Harvey, Melvin B. Schullinger, Alexis Stassinopoulos, and Erica Winkle, British Medical Journal (Clinical Research Edition), vol. 287, no. 6409, 1983, pp. 1916-1919. (Thanks to Richard Harper for bringing this to our attention.) The authors explain:

“During a series of presentations of scientific papers 40.6% of 276 subjects reported dreaming, but only 18.1% actually fell asleep. The frequency of dreaming was significantly increased by the addition of either “very boring” or ‘very interesting’ slides to the usual ones, but not by “neutral” slides. The recall of lecture content and the proportion of audience asleep were (surprisingly) not greatly affected by the addition of extraneous slides of any sort. On the other hand, adding ‘very interesting’ slides greatly increases audience enjoyment.”

Ice Cream to Prevent Chemo Damage: 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 Medicine was awarded to Marcin Jasiński, Martyna Maciejewska, Anna Brodziak, Michał Górka, Kamila Skwierawska, Wiesław Jędrzejczak, Agnieszka Tomaszewska, Grzegorz Basak, and Emilian Snarski, for showing that when patients undergo some forms of toxic chemotherapy, they suffer fewer harmful side effects when ice cream replaces one traditional component of the procedure.

REFERENCE: “Ice-Cream Used as Cryotherapy During High-Dose Melphalan Conditioning Reduces Oral Mucositis After Autologous Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation,” Marcin Jasiński, Martyna Maciejewska, Anna Brodziak, Michał Górka, Kamila Skwierawska, Wiesław W. Jędrzejczak, Agnieszka Tomaszewska, Grzegorz W. Basak, and Emilian Snarski, Scientific Reports, vol. 11, no. 22507, 2021.

Karaoke endurance / Kinetics and monkeypox / lint as renewable / biosupercapacitor

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

Sing it loud—… One implication from that intensive Hong Kong experiment: most karaoke singers manage to keep the quality of their singing fairly constant, no matter what.Kinetic excitement— … Then the word “kinetics” takes centre stage, in this dramatic passage: “To the best of our knowledge, the kinetics of symptom onset in both patients and, subsequently, in their dog suggest human-to-dog transmission of monkeypox virus.”Greenwashing— … The researchers make and – in an exploratory way – test a simple solution: collect the lint from clothes dryers and burn it to produce a hitherto-neglected “sustainable source of renewable energy”.Perspiration inspiration— … The researchers assure us that “the wearable device can store energy and deliver high-power pulses long after the perspiration stopped”. (A technical concession for the persnickety reader: Habitually naked except for a wearable biosupercapacitor.)

Partial Analysis of Behavior of a Drop of Whiskey

A lot can happen to a drop. That becomes evident as one reads this study, and even more evident if and as one tried to replicate the study:

“Controlled Uniform Coating from the Interplay of Marangoni Flows and Surface-Adsorbed Macromolecules,” Hyoungsoo Kim, François Boulogne, Eujin Um, Ian Jacobi, Ernie Button, and Howard A. Stone, Physical Review Letters, vol. 116, no. 12, 2016, article 124501. The authors report:

“We were motivated to pursue the ideas here from examining a whisky droplet after drying on an ordinary glass where it creates a relatively uniform particle deposit, which is in contrast to the well-known ‘coffee-ring stain’. “

Scorpion Love with No Butt: 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 Biology was awarded to Solimary García-Hernández and Glauco Machado, for studying whether and how constipation affects the mating prospects of scorpions.

REFERENCE: “Short- and Long-Term Effects of an Extreme Case of Autotomy: Does ‘Tail’ Loss and Subsequent Constipation Decrease the Locomotor Performance of Male and Female Scorpions?” Solimary García-Hernández and Glauco Machado, Integrative Zoology, epub 2021.REFERENCE: “Fitness Implications of Nonlethal Injuries in Scorpions: Females, but Not Males, Pay Reproductive Costs,” Solimary García-Hernández and Glauco Machado, American Naturalist, vol. 197, no. 3, March 2021, pp. 379-389.REFERENCE: ”‘Tail’ Autotomy and Consequent Stinger Loss Decrease Predation Success in Scorpions,” Solimary García-Hernández and Glauco Machado, Animal Behaviour, vol. 169, 2020, pp. 157-167.

The 2022 Heinz Oberhummer Award Ceremony (video): The Ig Nobel Prize

The 2022 Heinz Oberhummer award, for “outstanding science communication”, was awarded to the Ig Nobel Prize on Nov 24, at the Stadtsaal in Vienna, Austria. The ceremony was webcast. Here’s recorded video of it: