Marc Abrahams's Blog, page 471

“Bone: The Man Behind the Lloyds Bank Turd” [video]

If you watch only one video today about the man behind the Lloyds Bank Turd, we suggest you watch this video called ”Bone: The Man Behind the Lloyds Bank Turd“:

The video centers, obsessively, on the work of archaeologist Andrew “Bone” Jones of the University of York, an institution still known (but now erroneously) to some as York University.  (Thanks to Frank Wilczek for bringing this to our attention.) Dr. Jones also explores food.

BONUS (somewhat related): Boys Will Be Boys

BONUS (possibly unrelated): The 1992 Ig Nobel Prize for economics was awarded to the investors of Lloyds of London, heirs to 300 years of dull prudent management, for their bold attempt to insure disaster by refusing to pay for their company’s losses.

Little Kids Don’t Sit Still For As Long as Adults Do, Generally

How long do little kids stand sitting still? This study is part of an ongoing effort to explore that question:

“The Influence of Minimum Sitting Period of the ActivPAL™ on the Measurement of Breaks in Sitting in Young Children,” Zubaida Alghaeed, John J. Reilly [pictured here, in adulthood], Sebastien F.M. Chastin, Anne Martin, Gwyneth Davies,  James Y. Paton, PLoS ONE, vol. 8, no. 8, 2013: e71854. The authors report:

“Chastin and Granat [in an earlier study]… found that the mean sitting bout length in free-living adults was 45 minutes. In contrast, and using a 10 s minimum sitting time for purposes of comparison, the majority of sitting bouts for the young children in the present study (study 1) lasted ≤8 minutes suggesting that the children studied predominantly accumulated their sitting time in short bouts.”

(Thanks to investigator Neil Martin for bringing this to our attention.)

The universality of “Boys Will Be Boys”

We have a column called “Boys Will Be Boys — Research by and for adolescent males of all ages and sexes“, that runs in every issue of our magazine, the Annals of Improbable Research.

Occasionally, someone complains that the column appeals only to males, males who are especially juvenile. But our experience with readers says otherwise. There are lots and lots of people — yes, of all ages and sexes — who send us reams and reams of juicy material for that column.

With that fact in mind, we happily bring your attention to this video, in which Carmen Drahl and Lauren Wolf, two renowned Chemical & Engineering News editors, discuss an essay that Wolf wrote recently:

BONUS: Their colleague Jeff Huber briefly discusses the situation.

 

On the non-omnipotence of Elephant Snot: Cactus graffiti

Elephant Snot is not the solution to every problem. The Arizona Daily Star confirms that, in this article:

Elephant Snot isn’t the answer.

Saguaro National Park officials tested a viscous product — with the odd brand name of Elephant Snot — to remove graffiti from saguaros at the park. It didn’t work.

“Elephant Snot is out,” said Brad Shattuck, chief of maintenance for the park. “It was corrosive. On the two tests we tried, it did some cracking on the saguaro. So we stopped. Obviously, we want to clean the saguaros without hurting them.” Shattuck said there’s still hope for removing graffiti from 11 saguaros along the Douglas Spring Trail in the park’s east district that were defaced in May.

BONUS: Testimonials for Elephant Snot

(Thanks to investigator Robert Sparks for bringing this to our attention.)

BONUS (possibly unrelated): The 2010 Ig Nobel Prize for engineering was awarded to Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse and Agnes Rocha-Gosselin of the Zoological Society of London, UK, and Diane Gendron of Instituto Politecnico Nacional, Baja California Sur, Mexico, for perfecting a method to collect whale snot, using a remote-control helicopter. [REFERENCE: "A Novel Non-Invasive Tool for Disease Surveillance of Free-Ranging Whales and Its Relevance to Conservation Programs," Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse, Agnes Rocha-Gosselin and Diane Gendron, Animal Conservation, vol. 13, no. 2, April 2010, pp. 217-25.]

C DNA: C from cats, against criminals

“This is the first time cat DNA has been used in a criminal trial in the UK.”

That’s the killer quote from a report by Alan Boyle for MSNBC, under the headline:

“Elementary, my dear Fluffy: Cat DNA solves another homicide“

The University of Leicester issued a proud press release, giving background on the case. This photo shows Dr. Jon Wetton, the person to whom the press release attributes the statement ”This is the first time cat DNA has been used in a criminal trial in the UK”:

(Thanks to investigator Maggie Fox for bringing this to our attention.)

How to take a punch

This video shows and tells, in a general way, about the momentum involved when one person punches another:

That advice, with a bit of physics thrown in, is most helpful for taking a punch coming towards one side. The video does not tell what to do if that punch is unavoidably coming squarely at “your center line, including your groin, solar plexus, and throat,” as it is in this video:

Many other people offer their own advice about how to take a punch. Here’s a small selection:

 

 

‘Welcome to My Brain’ (paper)

Dr. Anne Beate Reinertsen PhD is associate professor and post-doctoral research fellow in the Department of Education at Nord-Trøndelag University College, Norway. The professor welcomes you to her brain. She offers you this explanation in her paper entitled : ‘Welcome to My Brain’ (in: Qualitative Inquiry, July 12, 2013)

“This is about developing recursive, intrinsic, self-reflexive as de-and/or resubjective always evolving living research designs. It is about learning and memory cognition and experiment poetic/creative pedagogical science establishing a view of students ultimately me as subjects of will (not) gaining from disorder and noise: Antifragile and antifragility and pedagogy as movements in/through place/space. Further, it is about postconceptual hyperbolic word creation thus a view of using language for thinking not primarily for communication. It is brain research with a twist and becoming, ultimately valuation of knowledges processes: Becoming with data again and again and self-writing theory. I use knitting the Möbius strip and other art/math hyperbolic knitted and crocheted objects to illustrate nonbinary . . . perhaps. Generally; this is about asking how-questions more than what-questions.“

The author provides a number of references to support her thesis, centering around the concept of ‘Neuroknitting’ : for example :

[1] The work of Dr. Karen Norberg, of the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who “… spent a year knitting an anatomically correct replica of the human woolly brain.” (Gammell, C. ‘Psychiatrist knits anatomically correct woolly brain.’ The Telegraph, 15 Jan 2009)

[2] The work of Papathanasiou, E. S., Myrianthopoulou, P., & Papacostas, S. S. (2003). ‘Knitting artifact’. (Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry, 74, 1501) who were the first to show artifact generation in EEG plots of experimental subjects whilst knitting (that’s the subjects, not the researchers).

COMING SOON:  Knitting Mathematics

A Template for Scientific Press Releases & Science News Articles

Every scientist need, or could use “A Template for Scientific Press Releases and Science News Articles“.

One month from today: The Ig Nobel Ceremony

The 23rd First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony happens one month from today — on Thursday, September 12.

A few TICKETS are still available. The ceremony will be webcast live.

The ceremony will include the premiere of a new opera about the Blonsky Device (US Patent #3,216,423) to aid women in giving birth — the woman is strapped onto a circular table, and the table is then rotated at high speed. (The inventors, George and Charlotte Blonsky, were posthumously awarded an Ig Nobel Prize, in 1999.)  The opera singers will be backed by an orchestra composed of eminent Boston area researcher/doctors, and supported by several Nobel laureates in non-singing roles.

 

Two days later (on Saturday, September 14) come the Ig Informal Lectures, at MIT.

Kevin, the singing biochemistry instructor: Gluconeogenesis

Dr. Kevin Ahern is a Senior Instructor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at Oregon State University, US.

 Dr. Ahern  Kevin has created a selection of “Wildly Popular Metabolic Melodies, Verses and Mildly Popular Limericks” Here is an example : a melody entitled ‘Gluconeogenesis’

Also see : Ahern, Kevin. “Song: I’m a Little Mitochondrion (To the tune of “I’m a Lumberjack and I’m OK”)*” in : Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education (2006) 34, p. 350