Marc Abrahams's Blog, page 56

Bugbee on Bugs that Bug Bees

“A New Species of the Genus Eurytoma Illiger Parasitic on Bees of the Genus Ceratina Latreille (Hymenoptera: Eurytomidae and Apoidea)” [by Robert E. Bugbee, Pan-Pacific Entomologist, vol. 42, no. 3, 1966, pp. 210-211.] is the study featured in “May We Recommend: Bugbee on Bugs that Bug Bees“, which is a featured article in the special Viruses and Pandemics issue of the magazine—Annals of Improbable Research.

Comparing Formulas for Parallel Parking

A new study can fuel old arguments and grievances about how other people should go about parking their cars. The study is:

“Parallel Parking Vehicle Alignment Strategies,” Benjy Marks and Emily Moylan, Findings, March 2022. (Thanks to Kurt Verkest for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at the University of Sydney and UNSW Sydney, report:

The alignment of vehicles within parallel parking spaces influences the efficiency of street parking. We numerically model the effect of vehicle-alignment strategy on the packing density over a range of block lengths. We investigate the effect of four strategies: a) front of available space, b) either end of available space, c) middle of space and d) randomly within the space…. All strategies offer efficiency advantages compared to pre-marked spaces….

We show that the four strategies identified here make systematic differences to the density of parked vehicles for a range of block-face lengths. The findings indicate that by instructing parkers, whether autonomous or human, to park at one end of any available gap, a significant increase in parking density can be achieved relative to other strategies for a range of block-face lengths and heterogeneous vehicle lengths.

Group Sex in the Time of COVID [research study]

“Group Sex in the Time of COVID: Intimacy, Learning and Community-Building in Sexual Communities During a Pandemic,” Anabelle Bernard Fournier, Karyn Fulcher, Leah Shumka, and Nathan J. Lachowsky, The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, , vol. 30, no. 2, August 2021, pp. 278-285.] is one of the studies featured in “Viruses Research Review: Group Sex, Singer, Saint, Count“, which is a featured article in the special Viruses and Pandemics issue of the magazine—Annals of Improbable Research.

Explaining why spin-1/2 particles obey Fermi-Dirac statistics

“Once I asked him to explain to me, so that I could understand it, why spin-1/2 particles obey Fermi-Dirac statistics. Gauging his audience perfectly, he said, “I’ll prepare a freshman lecture on it.” But a few days later he came to me and said: “You know, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t reduce it to the freshman level. That means we really don’t understand it.”

— “Richard P. Feynman, Teacher,” David L. Goodstein, Physics Today, vol. 42, no. 2, 1989, pp. 70-75.

Effect of washing Halloween candy handled by COVID-19 patients

“Handwashing and Detergent Treatment Greatly Reduce SARS-CoV-2 Viral Load on Halloween Candy Handled by COVID-19 Patients” [by Rodolfo A. Salido, Sydney C. Morgan, Maria I. Rojas, Celestine G. Magallanes, Clarisse Marotz, Peter DeHoff, Pedro Belda-Ferre, et al., Msystems, vol. 5, no. 6, 2020, e01074-20] is a featured study in “Pandemic Dining: Gelato, Candy, Lettuce, Frozen Meat“, which is a featured article in the special Viruses and Pandemics issue of the magazine—Annals of Improbable Research.

Vegetable-eating and COVID-19 Mortality in Europe

“Association Between Consumption of Vegetables and COVID-19 Mortality at a Country Level in Europe” [by Susana C. Fonseca, Ioar Rivas, Dora Romaguera (pictured here), Marcos Quijal-Zamorano, Wienczyslawa Czarlewski, Alain Vidal, Joao A. Fonseca, Joan Ballester, Josep M. Anto, Xavier Basagana, Luis M. Cunha, and Jean Bousquet, MedRxiv, 2020] is a featured study in “Pandemic Dining: Gelato, Candy, Lettuce, Frozen Meat“, which is a featured article in the special Viruses and Pandemics issue of the magazine—Annals of Improbable Research.

Ig Nobel Prize winner Berdimuhamedow replaced as Turkmenistan President by Berdimuhamedow

Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, co-winner of the 2020 Ig Nobel Prize for Medical Education, has stepped down as President of Turkmenistan, replaced by his son, according to an official government announcement and news reports. Caspian News reports:

Serdar Berdimuhamedow Wins Turkmenistan’s Presidential Election

The son of incumbent President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow has won snap presidential elections in Turkmenistan.

“In accordance with Article 76 of the Electoral Code of Turkmenistan and on the basis of a resolution of the Central Election Commission (CEC) of March 14, 2022, Deputy Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers of Turkmenistan Serdar Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, who received 72.97% of the votes, was declared elected president of Turkmenistan”, a statement by the country’s election commission on March 15, which was published on the Turkmenportal news website, said.

G. Berdimuhamedow’s Ig Nobel Prize

The 2020 Ig Nobel Prize for Medical Education was awarded to Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom, Narendra Modi of India, Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico, Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, Donald Trump of the USA, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Vladimir Putin of Russia, and Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow of Turkmenistan, for using the Covid-19 viral pandemic to teach the world that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors can.

NOTE: This was the second Ig Nobel Prize awarded to Alexander Lukashenko. In the year 2013, the Ig Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to Alexander Lukashenko, for making it illegal to applaud in public, AND to the Belarus State Police, for arresting a one-armed man for applauding.

Prize Cannot Be Transferred

We have received inquires as to whether Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow’s Ig Nobel Prize can be transferred to his son, Serdar Berdimuhamedow. The answer is no.

 

Sleeping next to the cat wherever the cat chooses to sleep

Yuri Nakahashi, a student at Hosei University, Japan, wrote a thesis about sleeping with a cat night after night in locations chosen by the cat. IT Media News reports that the thesis is called “Creation of new sleep value in search with cats,” and has been or will be published in Information Processing Society of Japan Interaction, this year, 2022.

A translated quote from it: “examines sleeping methods for sleeping next to cats whose beds are constantly changing. We considered how the physical and psychological effects of sleeping together for 24 days with a sleeping bag placed next to the cat were compared with the conventional sleeping style of sleeping on a bed or a futon.” A video accompanies the study:

https://shiropen.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/cat.mp4

The Spoon & Tomago blog has further detail and commentary.

(Thanks to Virginia Jacobs for bringing this to our attention.)

Researchers Plead for More Improbable Research

Researchers point out that as a field of research becomes big, much of the attention sinks into a middling pool of ideas. Unlikely ideas tend to get squeezed out. They explain, in this study:

“Slowed Canonical Progress in Large Fields of Science,” Johan S.G. Chu and James A. Evans, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, vol. 118, no. 41, October 12, 2021, e2021636118.  The authors, at Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, and the Santa Fe Institute, explain:

“In many academic fields, the number of papers published each year has increased significantly over time…. Here, we first lay out a theoretical argument for why too many papers published each year in a field can lead to stagnation rather than advance…. Then, we show data supporting the predictions of this theory. When the number of papers published per year in a scientific field grows large,… newly published papers become unlikely to disrupt existing work. These findings suggest that the progress of large scientific fields may be slowed, trapped in existing canon. Policy measures shifting how scientific work is produced, disseminated, consumed, and rewarded may be called for to push fields into new, more fertile areas of study.”

Podcast Episode #1090: “Obesity of Politicians, Corruption in Countries”

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.

In Podcast Episode #1090, Marc Abrahams presents the 2021 Ig Nobel Prize for Economics winner Pavlo Blavatskyy. They received the prize for discovering that the obesity of a country’s politicians may be a good indicator of that country’s corruption.

REFERENCE: “Obesity of Politicians and Corruption in Post‐Soviet Countries,” Pavlo Blavatskyy, Economic of Transition and Institutional Change, vol. 29, no. 2, 2021, pp. 343-356.

The video for this lecture—graphs, charts and all—can be found online at www.IMPROBABLE.com.

Where, you might wonder, did Professor Blavatskyy get the idea to do his study. The magazine Midi Libre interviewed Professor Blavatsky last year, and inquired. Here is part of their interview [translated here into English]:

How did the idea for this study come about?

By chance. I read in the newspaper the story of Volodymyr Zelensky, a Ukrainian actor who played a president who fought against corruption in a series, and he finally became the favorite in the first round of the real Ukrainian presidential election in 2017. So that I am not a specialist in this question, I asked myself the simple academic question: how to measure corruption? And I realized that the almost untraceable way to bribe a politician was to invite him to a restaurant. And when someone is often invited to the restaurant, he tends to gain weight.

Seth Gliksman, Production Assistant

Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Google Podcasts, AntennaPod, BeyondPod and elsewhere!