Marc Abrahams's Blog, page 507

Instruction for those who would behave too rationally

Ig Nobel Prize winner Dan Ariely is teaching a new online course called “A beginner’s guide to irrational behavior.” Perhaps irrationally, it’s free.

Ariely and colleagues Rebecca L. Waber, Baba Shiv, and Ziv Carmon were awarded the 2008 Ig Nobel Prize in medicine for  demonstrating that high-priced fake medicine is more effective than low-priced fake medicine. [REFERENCE: "Commercial Features of Placebo and Therapeutic Efficacy," Rebecca L. Waber; Baba Shiv; Ziv Carmon; Dan Ariely, Journal of the American Medical Association, March 5, 2008; 299: 1016-1017.]

BONUS: The photo of Ariely you see here exhibits possibly irrational design juxtaposition of contrasting colors.

Partially-bicycle-powered espresso maker

This is a partially-bicycle-driven espresso maker and coffee vending cart called a velopresso. The prototype is on display at Conway Hall in London. The inventors describe it lovingly, in the engineering sense:

Rear-steering and front-wheel drive give a very tight turning circle and optimal transmission arrangement. The transmission incorporates both roller-chains and belt-drives and a lever-operated clutch mechanism that allows the pedal drive to be switched from powering the wheels to directly (mechanically) driving the grinder.

This video shows it in action (though the action-filled part of the video is relatively brief — see especially around the 2:20 point):

(Thanks to investigators Sid Rodrigues and Elizabeth Donnelly for bringing this to our attention.)

On the efficiency of the new Italian Senate

Undiscouraged by history, the winners of the 2010 Ig Nobel Prize for management have applied their methods to try to make sense of the current state of Italian national politics. Their new study is:

“On the efficiency of the new Italian Senate and the role of 5 Star Movement: Comparison among different possible scenarios by means of a virtual Parliament model,” A. Pluchino, A. Rapisarda, C. Garofalo, S. Spagano, M. Caserta, University of Catania, March 18th 2013. The researchers begin their quest with this declaration:

“The recent 2013 Italian elections are over and the situation that President Napolitano will have to settle soon for the formation of the new government is not the simplest one. After twenty years of bipolarism (more or less effective), where we were accustomed to a tight battle between two great political coalitions, the center-right and center-left, now, in the new Parliament, we have four political formations….”

That 2010 Ig Nobel Prize was awarded to Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo of the University of Catania, Italy, for demonstrating mathematically that organizations would become more efficient if they promoted people at random. [REFERENCE: “The Peter Principle Revisited: A Computational Study,” Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo, Physica A, vol. 389, no. 3, February 2010, pp. 467-72.]

 

Anthropology exercise: British wedding ritual

This video was pointed out to us by a British person as possibly being in some sense typical of modern British wedding rituals. It documents a recent wedding held on the Isle of Bute.

This week’s Anthropology Exercise of the Week is to write a limerick (in traditional Limerick form) explaining some key ritual element that makes this particular wedding typical of all modern British weddings:

Cutting Off the Nose to Save the Penis

A provocative study, from the American midwest, about safety:

“Cutting Off the Nose to Save the Penis,” Steven M. Schrader, Michael J. Breitenstein, and Brian D. Lowe, Journal of Sexual Medicine, vol. 5, no. 8, 2008, pp. 1932–40. The authors, at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Cincinnati, Ohio, report [AIR 15:5]:

“The average bicycle police officer spends 24 hours a week on his bicycle and previous studies have shown riding a bicycle with a traditional (nosed) saddle has been associated with urogenital paresthesia and sexual dysfunction. The objective of this study was to assess the effectiveness of the no-nose bicycle saddle as an ergonomic intervention and their acceptance among male bicycle police officers. Bicycle police officers from five U.S. metropolitan areas were recruited for this study.”

From glorious mud comes forth the Higgs: A song

The CERN Choir performed this song about the quest for the Higgs particle (a quest that, reportedly, has very likely succeeded), using the Flanders and Swann tune from a song originally about “Mud, mud, glorious mud…” and a hippopotamus:

(Thanks to investigator James Gillies for bringing this to our attention.)

BONUS: The Flanders and Swann song:

Storification of last night’s Ig Nobel show at Imperial College

@Liveskeptic has storified last night’s big Ig Nobel show at Imperial College London.

Resurrecting an extinct, odd frog, using an Ig Nobel winner’s discovery

Ed Yong reports on Mike Archer‘s ambitious project to resurrect — so to speak — an unusual species of frog that went extinct not long ago. The frog’s oddity was researched, and reported in 1981, by Mike Tyler, who later was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize for studying and cataloguing odd smells produced by different frogs. Detail about the new project:

Archer’s goal is simple: To bring the extinct gastric brooding frog back from oblivion and, in doing so, provide hope for the hundreds of other frogs that are heading that way. Getting the embryo was a milestone and Archer is buoyantly optimistic that he’ll cross the finish line soon. Lazarus, he says, will rise again.

The southern gastric brooding frog (Rheobatrachus silus) was discovered in 1972 in the mountains of Queensland, Australia. But the world only took notice of it in 1974 when Mike Tyler discovered how it reproduced.

Simply put, the mother frog converts her stomachs into a womb. She swallows her own eggs and stops making hydrochloric acid in her stomach to avoid digesting her own young. Around 20 to 25 tadpoles hatch inside her and the mucus from their gills continues to keep the acid at bay. While the tadpoles grow over the next six weeks, mum never eats. Her stomach bloats so much that her lungs collapse, forcing her to breathe through her skin. Eventually, she gives birth to her brood through “propulsive vomiting”, spewing them into the world as fully-formed froglets.

When news broke about this weird strategy, other scientists were incredulous….

Here’s detail from Mike Tyler’s 1981 study:

Detail about Mike Tyler’s Ig Nobel Prize: The 2o05 Ig Nobel Prize in biology was awarded to

Benjamin Smith of the University of Adelaide, Australia and the University of Toronto, Canada and the Firmenich perfume company, Geneva, Switzerland, and ChemComm Enterprises, Archamps, France; Craig Williams of James Cook University and the University of South Australia; Michael Tyler of the University of Adelaide; Brian Williams of the University of Adelaide; and Yoji Hayasaka of the Australian Wine Research Institute; for painstakingly smelling and cataloging the peculiar odors produced by 131 different species of frogs when the frogs were feeling stressed.

REFERENCE: “A Survey of Frog Odorous Secretions, Their Possible Functions and Phylogenetic Significance,” Benjamin P.C. Smith, Craig R. Williams, Michael J. Tyler, and Brian D. Williams, Applied Herpetology, vol. 2, no. 1-2, February 1, 2004, pp. 47-82.

REFERENCE: “Chemical and Olfactory Characterization of Odorous Compounds and Their Precursors in the Parotoid Gland Secretion of the Green Tree Frog, Litoria caerulea,” Benjamin P.C. Smith, Michael J. Tyler, Brian D. Williams, and Yoji Hayasaka, Journal of Chemical Ecology, vol. 29, no. 9, September 2003.

Health advice from The Mighty Atom, strongman

The Mighty Atom (AKA Joseph Greenstein), a stongman whose public heyday was in the 1930s, offers medical advice in this rare video:

(Thanks to investigator David Kessler for bringing this to our attention.)

BONUS: The Mighty Atom bears a resemblance, in appearance and perhaps otherwise, too, to the character Al Swearengen, as played by actor Ian McShane in the recent television series Deadwood:

BONUS: A later strongman: Astro Boy Mighty Atom

Exercise device w elongated flexible member

This week’s salacious patent description of the week is “Exercise device with elongated flexible member“, US patent #D507311, granted July 12, 2006 to Jaremy T. Butler and William T. Dalebout. The patent document features this drawing. Its shape may strike you as begin counter-intuitive: