Marc Abrahams's Blog, page 89

“Wombat research that’s not to be sniffed at”

“Wombat research that’s not to be sniffed at” is the headline on this Royal Society of Chemistry article about a new research study:

The findings – published today in our aptly named journal Soft Matter – could help develop new colon cancer diagnostics.

An international team of scientists have been able to replicate how a wombat produces square poo – and it could change the way geometric products are manufactured in future.

Research published today in the Royal Society of Chemistry’s journal Soft Matter, expands on the discovery that wombat poo forms its distinctive shape within the wombat’s intestines, not at the point of exit as previously thought….

The team of Australian and US scientists were awarded an Ig Nobel prize for “research that makes you laugh then think” in 2019.

Inside (and also outside) Details of the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony

Lavish and copious details about the 30th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony dominate the special Ig Nobel issue (vol. 26, no. 6) of the magazine. (The issue contains other stuff, too!)

Here’s the front cover of the magazine issue:

 

A word count counter’s diatribe: 24/7

Earle Spamer wrote us a scathing letter, about some of the 24/7 Lectures.

In case you are not familiar with the 24/7 Lectures, which happen every year as part of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, here’s what they are:

Each year at the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, we invite some of the world’s top thinkers to tell us what they are thinking about. Each 24/7 Lecturer explains their topic twice:
First, a complete, technical description in 24 seconds
Then, a clear summary that anyone can understand in 7 words

Spamer, having watched the most recent Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, and having paid especially close to the 24/7 Lectures that were part of that ceremony, thunders:

You are hereby summoned to the Word Count Court to explain the following misstatements made by 24/7 Lecturers under your immediate direction as the be-all and et-cetera of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremonies; specifically, the 2020 ceremonies.

Each 24/7 Lecturer must provide a (quote) “Clear summary that anyone can understand, in SEVEN (7) WORDS” (end quote).

Lecturer Bodnar: “Emergency bra masks protect others. Care. Wear. Share.”  Wordy.  Requires a good editor.

Lecturer Chalfie: “GFP: Shine blue, see green, watch life.”  The Word County Police are not certain whether “GFP” is one or three words; it certainly is an unintelligible word composed of three syllables, but as an acronym neither does it represent “a” word.  Has the Lecturer pulled a fast one on you?

We bring to your attention that you had been summoned before the Court in the case of a prior miscounting (years ago, before court stenography), wherein a Lecturer responded with a six-word lecture.  You had been asked to provide the Lecturer’s “final word” on the subject, which the Court still awaits.

NOTE: Spamer is co-author of the classic unnatural history report “The Taxonomy of Barney“, and has written many other equally reliable science studies.

Terminal Insomnia is Not Necessarily Fatal

A patient who is diagnosed as having terminal insomnia might be disposed to panic at the news. But the condition is not necessarily fatal, as one can learn by carefully reading this study:

“Relationship between personality and insomnia in panic disorder patients,” Hae-Ran Na, Eun-Ho Kang, Bum-Hee Yu, Jong-Min Woo, Youl-Ri Kim, Seung-Hwan Lee, Eui-Jung Kim, Sang-Yeol Lee, and Sang-Keun Chung, Psychiatry Investigation, vol. 8, no. 2, 2011, pp. 102-106. The authors, at Sungkyunkwan University, Inje University School of Medicine, Ewha Women’s University, and Wonkwang University, South Korea, report:

“We assessed sleep outcomes using the sleep items of 17-item Hamilton Depression Rating Scale. We classified insomniacs as three groups; initial, middle and terminal insomnia groups…. patients who had score of more than zero on item 4 [sleep onset latency], 5 [middle awakening] and 6 [early awakening] were defined as initial, middle and terminal insomniacs, respectively.”

Right-wing authoritarians aren’t very funny [study]

“Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) has well-known links with humor appreciation, such as enjoying jokes that target deviant groups, but less is known about RWA and creative humor production – coming up with funny ideas oneself.”

To test the ground, a research team from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and the University of Pennsylvania, US, devised a set of experiments. 186 participants (students) were shown cartoons* and asked to suggest a caption. They were also shown jokes without punchlines, which they were invited to provide.  Example :

The set of participants were also rated with regard to their RWA attitudes :

“RWA was measured with Zakrisson’s (2005) scale, which assesses authoritarian beliefs without referring to specific social groups.”

Results :

“Taken together, the findings suggest that people high in RWA just aren’t very funny.”

See : Right-wing authoritarians aren’t very funny: RWA, personality, and creative humor production  in Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 170, 15 February 2021, 110421

*Note: For copyright reasons, the cartoons are not shown here – nevertheless, they are available for viewing.

Research research by Martin Gardiner

Obrador of Mexico is Latest Ig Nobel Prize Co-Winner with Covid

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico announced today that he has the Covid-19 virus. He becomes the fifth co-winner of the 2020 Ig Nobel Prize for Medical Education known to have achieved that, joining Boris Johnson, Jair Bolsonaro, Alexander Lukashenko, and Donald Trump. The other four co-winners have not yet announced that they have personally contracted the virus. (Co-winner Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow has announced that no one in his country has ever had the virus.)

The 2021 Ig Nobel Prize for Medical Education was awarded on September 17 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 is 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.

Get thee down a rabbit hole…

The special Ig Nobel issue (vol. 26, no. 6) of the magazine includes a new kind of guide, in addition to [A] the lavish details about the 30th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, and [B] other stuff.

The new guide is called “Ways to Use This Magazine.

The ways include:

Write a limerick about one of the cited studies.Write a long-single-sentence short story that includes the titles of every study mentioned in one of the review articles.Do dramatic readings, in person, or in live or recorded video, of little chunks from the magazine.Go down a rabbit hole.Go down a maybe-important rabbit hole.Start an argument about whether some particular study is good or bad, important or trivial, valuable or worthless.Watch an Ig Nobel Prize winner.

There are, of course, other ways, too.

 

Podcast Episode #1052: “Do Frogs in Helium Get Squeaky Voices?”

In Podcast Episode #1052, Marc Abrahams shows an unfamiliar research study to developmental biologist Dany Adams. Dramatic readings and reactions ensue.

Remember, our Patreon donors, on most levels, get access to each podcast episode before it is made public.

Dany Adams encounters:

“Frogs in helium: the anuran vocal sac is not a cavity resonator,” A.S. Rand and R. Dudley, Physiological Zoology, vol. 66, 1993, pp. 793-806. 

Seth Gliksman, Production Assistant

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

Carpi’s Voice Rectifier

A beautiful or not-so-beautiful voice can be made more beautiful by sticking Carpi’s voice rectifier in one’s mouth, perhaps. The well-more-than-century-old device is enshrined in a patent:

“Voice Rectifier,” US patent 527235, granted to Vittorio Carpi, 1894. Carpi explains:

Be it known that I, VITTORIO CARPI, of Chicago, in the county of Cook and State of Illinois, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Voice-Rectifiers; and I do hereby declare that the following is a full, clear, and exact description thereof, reference being had to the accompanying draw ings, and to the letters of reference marked thereon, which form a part of this specification. This invention relates to devices to be used by singers and others in vocal exercising for the purpose of correcting and perfecting stiff and defective voices and assisting such persons in the proper cultivation and development of the voice….

When the high notes sound too disagreeably thin or woody the practice should be conducted alternately with and without the plate A in the mouth until the person obtains control of the voice, cures the defects above pointed out and acquires a regular, even, extensive and round voice. To this end the voice rectifier will be found extremely convenient in curing throaty and nasal voices and uneven voices in the different registers.

Mis-placement of the device could make the voice less beautiful, perhaps.

BONUS (possibly related): The pebbles of Demosthenes

 

Daily Defecation Outputs of Mountain Gorillas

Output takes center stage in this new study of what some gorillas left behind:

“Daily Defecation Outputs of Mountain Gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei) in the Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda,” Elie Sinayitutse, David Modry, Jan Slapeta, Aisha Nyiramana, Antoine Mudakikwa, Richard Muvunyi, and Winnie Eckardt, Primates, epub 2020. (Thanks to Damien Caillaud for bringing this to our attention.)

The authors, at the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International; the University of Rwanda, Butare; the University of Veterinary and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Czech Republic; the Czech Academy of Sciences; the University of Sydney, Australia; the University of Rwanda; and the Rwanda Development Board, report:.

“We weighed 399 wet fecal samples deposited at nest sites and on trails between nest sites by gorillas of varying age and sex, determined by lobe diameter, from five social groups (n = 58 gorillas) that range in the Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda. We found increasing daily average defecation outputs with increasing age-sex class (infants, 435 g; juveniles, 1346 g; medium-sized gorillas, 2446 g; silverbacks, 3609 g). Gorillas deposited two– to threefold the amount of feces at nest sites compared to on trails, suggesting that nest sites may function as hotspots for enteric pathogen infections through direct contact or when gorillas ingest foods contaminated with infectious larvae during site revisits in intervals matching the maturation period of environmentally transmitted gastrointestinal parasites.”

PERSONAL (by Marc) NOTE: In my 9th grade biology class the teacher gave me an F on a book report, because she insisted I was concocting the details. The details were about observing gorilla droppings. The book, I’m pretty sure, was either by or about Dian Fossey. The teacher was so angry at me that, even after I retrieved the book from the library and showed her the things I had described she still insisted on giving me an F for that report. It’s the only F I ever got, and I am still proud of it.