[mini-AIR] mini-AIR — Coffee As Fuel / Did His Orgasm Cause Blindness?

Fri Dec 16 00:23:13 EST 2016

mini-Annals of Improbable Research ("mini-AIR")
December 2016, issue number 2016-12. ISSN 1076-500X.
----------
  Research that makes people LAUGH, then THINK.
  A tiny supplement to the Annals of Improbable Research.
  Archive at <http://improbable.com/airchives/miniair>
—————————

01 TABLE OF CONTENTS

02 Impending Events: Friday-the-13th Dramatic Readings
03 In the Magazine Itself: The Special 2016 Ig Nobel Issue
04 SPOTLIGHT: Coffee As Fuel for Physically Trained Rats
05 Using-Coffee-to-Fuel-Cars Limerick Contest
06 Insane Partial Insanity Poet
07 MORE IMPROBABLE: Did His Orgasm Lead to Blindness?
08 MAY WE RECOMMEND: Exhausted Beets with Pig Manure
09 Improbable Research Events
10 — How to Get The Magazine (*)
11 — Contact Info (*)
12 — Standard Gobbledegook (*)
13 — How to start or stop receiving mini-AIR (*)

	Items marked (*) are reprinted in every issue.

—————————

02 Impending Events: Friday-the-13th Dramatic Readings

	ARISIA, Boston	— Jan 13, 2017, 9:00 pm.
	Dramatic Improbable Readings.

	IG NEWS: 
	The 27th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony 
	will be on Thursday night, September 14, 2017, 
	at Harvard University. Tix will go on sale in July.

—————————

03 In the Magazine Itself: The Special 2016 Ig Nobel Issue

The Special IG NOBEL issue (vol. 22, no. 6) of the magazine will be out some time in the very next few days. 

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

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

—————————
04 SPOTLIGHT: Coffee As Fuel for Physically Trained Rats

This month's research spotlight shines on coffee in rats:

"Interaction of physical trainings and coffee intakes in fuel utilization during exercise in rats," Eun-Young Choi and Yun-Ok Cho, Nutrition Research and Practice, vol. 7, no. 3, June 2013, pp. 178-84. <https://is.gd/xkt6HB> the authors, at Duksung Women's University, Seoul 132-714, Korea, report:

"This study investigates the impact of exercises, coffee intakes, and physical trainings on fuel utilization in rats. Ninety-six rats were fed a control diet with either water (C) or coffee (CF; 0.12 g freeze-dried instant coffee/100 g body weight/d).... For physical training, animals have to exercise on treadmills for 30 minutes (5 d per week, 15° incline, 0.5-0.8 km/h). Coffee can be an effective ergogenic aid during exercise for physically trained rats."

—————————
05 Using-Coffee-to-Fuel-Cars Limerick Contest

This month's challenge: Devise a limerick that explains this study:

"In-situ transesterification of wet spent coffee grounds for sustainable biodiesel production," Jeongseok Park, Bora Kim, and Jae W. Lee, Bioresource Technology, vol. 221, December 2016, pp. 55–60. <https://is.gd/ujShAM>. The authors, at KAIST, Korea, report:

"This work addresses in-situ transesterification of wet spent coffee grounds (SCGs) for the production of biodiesel. For in-situ transesterification process, the methanol, organic solvent and acid catalyst were mixed with wet SCG in one pot and the mixture was heated for simultaneous lipid extraction and transesterification."

Submit your perfectly formed, delightfully enlightening limerick to:

	USING-COFFEE-TO-FUEL-CARS LIMERICK COMPETITION
	c/o <MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM>

—————————
06 Insane Partial Insanity Poet

The judges have chosen a winner in last month's Insane Partial Insanity Limerick Competition, which asked for a limerick to explain this study:

"The Completely Insane Law of Partial Insanity: The Impact of Monomania on Testamentary Capacity," Bradley E.S. Fogel, Real Property, Probate and Trust Journal, 2007, pp. 67-111. <https://is.gd/VTqbu7> 

The winner is INVESTIGATOR DAVID MARPLES, who wrote:

If I think what you think is not so,
A will based on that is no go.
  If I say it's not true,
 And a judge says so too,
Then I’ll soon get my hands on your dough.

The word from our LIMERICK LAUREATE, MARTIN EIGER:

The courts have addressed the domain
Of impairments affecting the brain.
  Exactly what ills
  Should invalidate wills?
What the courts have decreed is insane.

—————————
07 MORE IMPROBABLE: Did His Orgasm Lead to Blindness?

Recent improbable research bits you may have missed...

The podcast:

	LISTEN / DOWNLOAD: <http://goo.gl/sxh7DX>

	#92 Is Every Measurement Wrong?
	#93 Did His Orgasm Lead to Blindness?
	#94 Do Frogs in Helium Get Squeaky Voices

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

<> "Pastarimeter" — Lefty Pasta and Righty Pasta
<> An Absence of Squamous Mucosa in Your Hot Dog
<> How to Create a Press Release From Nothing
	...and lots more

  TWITTER: @ImprobResearch, @MarcAbrahams, #IgNobel
  FACEBOOK: <http://www.facebook.com/improbableresearch>

—————————
08 MAY WE RECOMMEND: Exhausted Beets with Pig Manure

"Improvement of Exhausted Sugar Beet Cossettes Anaerobic Digestion Process by Co-Digestion with Pig Manure," Kaoutar Aboudi, Carlos José Álvarez-Gallego, and Luis Isidoro Romero-García, Energy and Fuels, vol. 29, no. 2, 2015, pp. 754–762. <https://is.gd/OtXpH6> (Thanks to Tom Gill for bringing this to our attention.) The authors are at the University of Cádiz, Spain.

—————————
09 Improbable Research Events

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

ARISIA, Boston					— Jan 13, 2017
AAAS Annual Meeting, Boston, MA	— Feb 18, 2017
Ig Nobel EuroTour					— Mar 2017
Sarnoff Cardiovascular Research Annual Meeting
								— Apr 27, 2017
2017 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony		— Sep 14, 2017
Ig Informal Lectures				— Sep 16, 2017

—————————
—————————
10 — How to Get The Magazine (*)

The Annals of Improbable Research is a 6-issues-per-year magazine, published in PDF form. It's packed with research that makes people laugh, then think. (mini-AIR, the thing you are reading at this moment, is but a tiny, free-floating appendix to the actual magazine.)

	<http://www.improbable.com/magazine/>
	SUBSCRIPTIONS	($25, for six issues) 
	SINGLE ISSUES 	($5 each)

—————————
11 — CONTACT INFO (*)

Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)
<http://www.improbable.com>
Twitter: @ImprobResearch
EDITORIAL: <MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM>
SUBSCRIPTION QUESTIONS: <subscriptions AT improbable.com>
PO Box 380853, Cambridge, MA 02238 USA
(+1) 617-491-4437

—————————
12 — Standard Gobbledegook (*)

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 2016, Annals of Improbable Research

—————————
13 — How to start or stop receiving mini-AIR (*)

Mini-AIR is a (free!) tiny monthly *supplement* 
to the big, bold six-times-a-year magazine AIR.
   ...................................................
   To subscribe or unsubscribe to mini-AIR, please visit
   <http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/mini-air>
   ...................................................
—————————

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist5.pair.net/pipermail/mini-air/attachments/20161216/27e4c239/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: AIR-22-6-cover-300pix.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 48725 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://pairlist5.pair.net/pipermail/mini-air/attachments/20161216/27e4c239/attachment-0002.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: six-covers.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 74194 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://pairlist5.pair.net/pipermail/mini-air/attachments/20161216/27e4c239/attachment-0003.jpg>