Marc Abrahams's Blog, page 561

Do Female Bonobos Fake Orgasm?

“Do Female Bonobos Fake Orgasm?” ask Wolter Seuntjens and Karolina Hansen (pictured here), going on to explain that they would like to know the answer. Details are in their paper (which you can read in its entirety):

“Do Female Bonobos Fake Orgasm?” Wolter Seuntjens and Karolina Hansen, Journal of Unsolved Questions, vol. 1, no., 15, 2011.

BONUS: Walter Seuntjens’ earlier masterpiece, “On Yawning; or, The Hidden Sexuality of the Human Yawn“, was published in volume 11, no. 1 of the Annals of Improbable Research. It’s a a specially abridged version of the Ph.D. dissertation which the author defended (successfully!) on October 27, 2004. The related web site www.baillement.com is a lavish compendium of information about yawning.

(Thanks to investigator Martin Gardiner for finding this.)

Defending Pay Phones and Parking Spots

As pay telephones disappear from our cities, with them vanish opportunities to watch an entertaining, maddening form of behaviour. The behaviour was documented in a study called Waiting For a Phone: Intrusion on Callers Leads to Territorial Defence. The report came out in 1989, before mobile phones nudged public pay phones towards oblivion.

Professor R Barry Rubak [pictured here], with some of his students at Georgia State University, performed an experiment. They began by asking people what they would do if, while talking on a public pay telephone, they noticed someone else waiting to use that phone. Most people said they would hurry up and terminate their call.

The researchers put that common belief to the test….

So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian.

Walter Lewin draws some lines

This video compilation shows MIT physics professor Walter Lewin (who once did star turn at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, on a different matter) drawing lines:

BONUS: Much more, from the MIT archives

Relation between 2 Ig Nobel Prize-winning orgs revealed

An Ig Nobel relationship is disclosed in today’s edition of The New York Times. In a report headlined “Goldman Sachs and the $580 Million Black Hole“, the newspaper tells about a dance done several years ago between two eminent corporations: Lernaut & Hauspie, and Goldman Sachs. The leaders of both corporation shared Ig Nobel Prizes in economics, though in different years. The Times says:

And yet, even today what happened next to the Bakers seems remarkable. With Goldman Sachs on the job, the corporate takeover of Dragon Systems in an all-stock deal went terribly wrong. Goldman collected millions of dollars in fees — and the Bakers lost everything when Lernout & Hauspie was revealed to be a spectacular fraud. L.& H. had been founded by Jo Lernout and Pol Hauspie, who had once been hailed as stars of the 1990s tech boom. Only later did the Bakers learn that Goldman Sachs itself had at one point considered investing in L.& H. but had walked away after some digging into the company.

This being Wall Street, a lot of money is now at stake….

Here’s the story on those Ig Nobel Prizes:

The 2002 Ig Nobel Prize in economics was awarded to the executives, corporate directors, and auditors of Enron, Lernaut & Hauspie, Adelphia, Bank of Commerce and Credit International, Cendant, CMS Energy, Duke Energy, Dynegy, Gazprom, Global Crossing, HIH Insurance, Informix, Kmart, Maxwell Communications, McKessonHBOC, Merrill Lynch, Merck, Peregrine Systems, Qwest Communications, Reliant Resources, Rent-Way, Rite Aid, Sunbeam, Tyco, Waste Management, WorldCom, Xerox, and Arthur Andersen, for adapting the mathematical concept of imaginary numbersfor use in the business world.

The 2010 Ig Nobel Prize in economics was awarded to the executives and directors of Goldman Sachs, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Magnetar for creating and promoting new ways to invest money — ways that maximize financial gain and minimize financial risk for the world economy, or for a portion thereof.

Instrumental Maladies (part 3: Trumpets)

Another (partial) look at the health dangers to which musicians selflessly submit themselves – for our entertainment, edification and amusement …

Part 3 : Trumpets

• Cheilitis due to nickel contact allergy in a trumpet player.

• Bilateral laryngoceles in a young trumpet player: case report.

• Transient ischemic attacks caused by trumpet playing.

• Stress velopharyngeal incompetence in an adolescent trumpet player.

• Further experience with rupture of the orbicularis oris in trumpet players.

• Rupture of the orbicularis oris in trumpet players (Satchmo’s syndrome).

Musical note: Is this the only medical condition named after a musician?

Coming soon: Yet more Instrumental Maladies

Colorful Russian Mathematicians: V.I. Arnold

Russia is an efficient producer of colorful mathematicians. Leonid Polterovich wrote an appreciation of one of them, Vladimir Igorevich Arnold [pictured here]. It’s called ”Remembering V.I. Arnold, 1937-2010.” and begins:

“Those who know the material will not learn anything new, and those who do not know it will not understand anything.”

—V.I. Arnold about a badly written introduction.

I’d like to write a couple of words about Vladimir Arnold, a great man whom I had a privilege to know and to whom I owe a lot; the man whose name appears in virtually every mathematical discussion among my colleagues working in symplectic topology and dynamical systems: Arnold’s conjecture, KAM theory with A for Arnold, Liouville-Arnold theorem, Arnold’s tongue, Arnold’s diffusion, Arnold’s cat, etc., etc.

Arnold was one of the major attractions, one of the wonders of Moscow mathematical life in the 1980′s…

 

Improbable on “Science Friday” today: Flavor

I’m going to be on NPR’s Science Friday program again today, discussing odd experiments and discoveries about flavor.

This will be the final segment in Hour 2 of the program. Listen on an NPR station, or online.

Music That Overwhelms Tooth Pain, They Say

Begin playing the soothing music video, below. Listen to it as you read this item from the Bibliolore blog:

A 28-year-old woman urgently needed a tooth extraction, and local anesthesia was not an option.

The patient was offered all of the other anesthetizing options, but she chose music instead. A recording of a Rām dhun (Hindu devotional song for the deity Rāma) was played. The patient did not show any signs of pain or any pain behavior during the extraction procedure, indicating that analgesia was induced through music.

This according to “Extraction of a grossly decayed tooth without local anesthesia but with audio analgesia: A case report” by Manish Bhagania and Anirudha Agnihotry (Music and medicine: An interdisciplinary journal III/4 [October 2011] n.p.). Below, Morari Bapu sings the Rām dhun Hare Rām.

 (Thanks to investigator Jim Cowdery for bringing this to our attention.)

Mysterious importance of an expanding waistline

The title of this medical report alludes mysteriously to “the importance of an expanding waistline”:

“Unexpected outcome (positive or negative) including adverse drug reactions Acyclovir-induced acute renal failure and the importance of an expanding waist line,” Ahmed Seedat and  Georgia Winnett, BMJ Case Reports 2012; doi:10.1136/bcr-2012-006264. The authors, at Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS, Basildon, UK, report:

“A 23-year-old gentleman with no significant medical history other than obesity was admitted with a history of balance problems, double vision and strange behaviour following a fall from bed. Systems examination was unremarkable. The patient was given intravenous acyclovir and intravenous ceftriaxone given the suspicion of encephalitis/meningitis. Investigations including routine bloods, CT/MRI Head and lumbar puncture were unremarkable. Within 48 h of commencing intravenous acyclovir, there was a marked deterioration in renal function. On stopping acyclovir therapy, renal function improved back to baseline. No other cause for deterioration in renal function was identified. The most likely cause for acute renal failure was secondary to acyclovir therapy. This has been well documented and is due to intratubular crystal precipitation. Moreover, in this case nephrotoxicity is likely secondary to the large boluses of intravenous acyclovir that had been given as prescribed according to the total body weight.”

Instrumental Maladies (part 2: Guitars)

Continuing Improbable’s partial listing of the work-related diseases which professional musicians might encounter …

Part 2 : Guitars

• Habit tic deformity secondary to guitar playing.

• Incomplete anterior interosseous nerve syndrome in a guitar player

• Contact dermatitis in guitar players

• Occupational acroosteolysis in a guitar player

• Guitar player acro-osteolysis

• Selective phalangeal tuft fractures in a guitar player

Coming soon: Even more Instrumental Maladies