[mini-AIR] mini-AIR: the sounds of walked-upon stuff

Marc Abrahams marc at improbable.com
Tue Dec 22 19:56:33 EST 2015 

mini-Annals of Improbable Research ("mini-AIR")
December 2015, issue number 2015-12. ISSN 1076-500X.
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The monthly wee little tiny mini update/alert from Improbable Research
	Archive at <http://improbable.com/airchives/miniair>
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2015-12-01 TABLE OF CONTENTS

2015-12-02 Imminent Events: SIPB
2015-12-03 In the Magazine: The Special Ig Nobel Issue
2015-12-04 RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT: Audio–haptic Footstep Simulation
2015-12-05 Footstep-Sounds Limerick Contest
2015-12-06 Wine/Coffee Poet
2015-12-07 MORE IMPROBABLE: Beef Boom Disgusting Sounds, Grateful Dead
2015-12-08 MAY WE RECOMMEND: The Sound of Walked-Upon Stuff
2015-12-09 — Improbable Research Events
2015-12-10 — How to Get the Magazine (*)
2015-12-11 — Our Address (*)
2015-12-12 — Please Forward/Post This Issue! (*)
2015-12-13 — How to start or stop receiving this newsletter (*)

	Items marked (*) are reprinted in every issue.


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2015-12-02 Imminent Events: SIPB

	SIBC, Portland, OR		— Jan 5, 2016


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2015-12-03 In the Magazine: The Special Ig Nobel Issue

The special IG NOBEL issue of the magazine (vol. 21, no. 6) is now available — filled with photos and reports of what happened at the Twenty-Fifth 1st Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony.
The issue has lots of other good stuff, too.

	SUBSCRIPTIONS & BACK ISSUES <https://gumroad.com/improbable>

	Tables of Contents: <http://www.improbable.com/magazine/>

The magazine is now published in PDF form:

	GIVE YOURSELF A GIFT!

	A 1-YEAR SUBCRIPTION IS JUST $25
	OR GET INDIVIDUAL ISSUES FOR JUST $5 EACH

(REMINDER to paper subscribers: 
21:6 is the last issue we are publishing also on paper. Your paper issue is now at the printer; it will arrive at your doorstep in the next few weeks. After this, it will be all PDFs! We will convert your subscription so you receive subsequent issues in PDF form; see <http://goo.gl/ePbTmD>.)


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2015-12-04 RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT: Audio–haptic Footstep Simulation

This month's spotlight shines (cross-modally, sort of) on the sound of footsteps:

"Semantic Congruence in Audio–haptic Simulation of Footsteps," Luca Turchet and Stefania Serafin, Applied Acoustics, vol. 75, 2014, pp. 59-66. <http://goo.gl/dBTeBD> The authors, at Aalborg University Copenhagen, Denmark, report:

"The audio–haptic displays selected for this study simulated materials of different degrees of compliance (from the least to the most compliant: metal, wood, dry leaves, sand, gravel, snow) that were shown previously to be correctly perceived as belonging to either the solid or aggregate material typology.... Results... reveal that when simulating non-interactively the audio–haptic walk on a surface material, in presence of a footstep sound on a solid material it is possible to utilize at haptic level any other solid material, but not an aggregate one, which would be perceived as not fitting well."


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2015-12-05 Footstep-Sounds Limerick Contest

Footsteps mark this month's limerick competition. To enter, compose an original limerick that clarifies the nature of this study:

"Expressive Sonification of Footstep Sounds," Roberto Bresin, Anna de Witt, Stefano Papetti, Marco Civolani, and Federico Fontana, Interaction Sonification workshop (ISon) 2010, Stockholm, April 7, 2010, pp. 51-54. KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 2010. <http://goo.gl/FKbkwG> The authors are at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, and at the University of Verona, Italy, report:

"Preliminary results show that walkers used a more active walking style (faster pace) when the sound of the walking surface was characterized by an higher spectral centroid (e.g. iced snow), and a less active style (slower pace) when the spectral centroid was low (e.g. muddy ground)."

Submit your perfectly formed, delightful limerick to:

	FOOTSTEP-SOUNDS LIMERICK COMPETITION
	c/o <MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM>


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2015-12-06 Wine/Coffee Poet

The judges have chosen co-winners in last month's Wine/Coffee Electro-Discrimination Limerick Competition, which asked for a limerick to honor this study:

"Improving the Performance of an Electronic Nose by Wine Aroma Training to Distinguish between Drip Coffee and Canned Coffee,"  K. Fujioka, Y. Tomizawa, N. Shimizu, K. Ikeda, and Y. Manome, Sensors (Basel), vol. 15, no. 1, 2015, pp. 1354-1364. <http://goo.gl/bEHw9C>

The winners are INVESTIGATOR ROSE FOX, who wrote:

The bean and the fruit of the vine
Make drinks with aroma divine.
  An electronic sniffer
  Can tell how they differ,
With vocab of expert design.

...and INVESTIGATOR JOANNE LEARY, who wrote:

The aroma of coffee surrounds us,
But describing it really confounds us.
  A programmable nose
  That’s been trained in the prose
Of wine tasting truly astounds us.

Here's an offering from our LIMERICK LAUREATE, MARTIN EIGER:

Electronic devices do well.
Coffees differ? They're able to tell.
  Researchers disclose
  An electronic nose.
Trained on wine, it describes coffee's smell.


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2015-12-07 MORE IMPROBABLE: Beef Boom Disgusting Sounds, Grateful Dead

Recent improbable bits you maybe missed.

The weekly podcast — in which scientists, journalists, actors, and all sorts of people do dramatic readings from bizarre-seeming genuine research studies:

	LISTEN / DOWNLOAD: <http://goo.gl/sxh7DX>
		(It's also on Play.it, iTunes, and Spotify)

	#39 A Beef Boom, and Who Can Touch Whom
	#40 Sounds Delicious, Sounds Disgusting, Everything, and Nothing
	#41 Kansas is Flatter Than a Pancake (and water, and holes)
	#42 Dream telepathy and the Grateful Dead
	#43 The Impossible Expertise of Self-Perceived Experts

The blog: <http://www.improbable.com/>:

	· Totting up the deaths by this and that in Shakespeare's plays
	· Being fluent at swearing is a sign of healthy verbal ability
	· Medical fetish: Americans shooting themselves in the foot
	...and lots more

MORE MORE MORE, at 
	[twitter]	@ImprobResearch, @MarcAbrahams, #IgNobel
	[facebook]	<http://www.facebook.com/improbableresearch>


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2015-12-08 MAY WE RECOMMEND: The Sound of Walked-Upon Stuff

"Identification of Walked-Upon Materials in Auditory, Kinesthetic, Haptic, and Audio-haptic Conditions)," Bruno L. Giordano, Yon Visell, Hsin-Yun Yao, Vincent Hayward, Jeremy R. Cooperstock, and Stephen McAdams, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vol. 131, no. 5, 2012, pp. 4002-4012.<http://goo.gl/Ks23X5> 
The researchers are in Canada and France.


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2015-12-09 — Improbable Research Events

For details and additional events, see
<http://improbable.com/improbable-research-shows/complete-schedule>

SIBC, Portland, OR				— Jan 5, 2016
AAAS, Washington, DC			— Feb 13, 2016
Ig Nobel EuroTour				— Mar TBA, 2016
ESOF, Manchester, UK			— Jul TBA, 2016
IG NOBEL TICKETS GO ON SALE	— Jul TBA, 2016
Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony		— Sep 22, 2016
Ig Informal Lectures			— Sep 24, 2016

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2015-12-10 — How to Get the Magazine (*)

The Annals of Improbable Research is a 6-issues-per-year magazine, in PDF form. It's chock full of research that makes people laugh, then think. (This newsletter — the thing you are reading at this moment — is just a tiny taste of what's in the magazine.)

	SUBSCRIPTIONS and BACK-ISSUES: 
	<http://www.improbable.com/magazine/>


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2015-12-11 — Our Address (*)

Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)
PO Box 380853, Cambridge, MA 02238 USA
(+1) 617-491-4437

EDITORIAL: <MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM>
SUBSCRIPTIONS: <subscriptions AT improbable.com>
Web Site and blog: <http://www.improbable.com>
Twitter: @ImprobResearch


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2015-12-12 — Please Forward/Post This Issue! (*)

Please distribute copies of mini-AIR (or excerpts!) wherever appropriate. The only limitations are: A) Please indicate that the material comes from mini-AIR. B) You may NOT distribute mini-AIR for commercial purposes.

	------------- mini-AIRheads -------------
EDITOR: Marc Abrahams
CO-CONSPIRATORS: Kees Moeliker, Alice Shirrell Kaswell, Gary Dryfoos, Ernest Ersatz, Stephen Drew
PROOFREADER: Ambient Happenstance
AUTHORITY FIGURES: Nobel Laureates Dudley Herschbach, Sheldon Glashow, Richard Roberts

Key words: improbable research, science humor, Ig Nobel, AIR, the
(c) copyright 2015, Annals of Improbable Research


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2015-12-13 — How to start or stop receiving this newsletter (*)

Mini-AIR is a (free!) teeny-tiny monthly *supplement* 
to the big, bold six-times-a-year magazine AIR.
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