[mini-AIR] mini-AIR: toast and tea research, with cigarette butts

Wed Apr 26 23:48:54 EDT 2017

mini-Annals of Improbable Research ("mini-AIR")
April 2017, issue number 2017-04. ISSN 1076-500X.
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  Research that makes people LAUGH, then THINK.
	This is a tiny supplement to the magazine
	Annals of Improbable Research.
	Archive at <http://improbable.com/airchives/miniair>
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01 TABLE OF CONTENTS

02 In the Magazine Itself: Face the Faces
03 Ig Nobel Spring EuroTour Inspires Ig Nobel Fall EuroTour
04 SPOTLIGHT: Bread With Tea Dust As an Ingredient
05 Bread-With-Coffee-As-an-Ingredient Limerick Contest
06 Cigarette Butt and Urban Bird Poet
07 MORE IMPROBABLE: Output, Bitten Food, Umpteenish Numbers
08 MAY WE RECOMMEND: Toast and Tea and Coffee, and Surgery
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.

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02 In the Magazine Itself: Face the Faces

The special FACES issue (vol. 23, no. 2) is ready for your delighted gaze. So are all the issues of the magazine that preceded it:

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

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

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03 Ig Nobel Spring EuroTour Inspires Ig Nobel Fall EuroTour

This year's Ig Nobel Spring Eurotour, just completed, has the happy side effect of spawning an Ig Nobel Fall Eurotour. The Fall tour, in late November and early December, includes:

 — University of Manchester, UK
 — EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany
 — Others, to be announced

A big thank you to the splendid organizers, performers, and audiences at these recent, Spring EuroTour events:

— Nottingham Trent University
— Imperial College London
— EPFL
— University of Oslo
— Stockholm University
— Karolinska Institute
— Fri Tanke Förlag
— ORF
— University of Graz
— University of Catania
— Natuurhistorisch Museum Rotterdam

Video highlight reels from the University of Stockholm and University of Graz shows are at <https://is.gd/H5Joon>

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04 SPOTLIGHT: Bread With Tea Dust As an Ingredient

This month's research spotlight shines on tea-dusty bread:

"Effect of theanine and polyphenols enriched fractions from decaffeinated tea dust on the formation of Maillard reaction products and sensory attributes of breads," Alina Culetu, Beatriz Fernandez-Gomez, Monica Ullate, Maria Dolores del Castillo, and Wilfried Andlauer, Food Chemistry, vol. 197, 2016, pp. 14-23. <https://is.gd/zpjokL>

The authors are at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland, the National Institute of Research & Development for Food Bioresources, Bucharest, Romania, and the Institute of Food Science Research (CIAL, CSIC-UAM), Madrid, Spain. The report that they obtained the tea dust from Infré SA in Semsales, Switzerland.

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05 Bread-With-Coffee-As-an-Ingredient Limerick Contest

This month's challenge — 
Devise a pleasing limerick that encapsulates this study:

"Wheat bread enriched with green coffee – In vitro bioaccessibility and bioavailability of phenolics and antioxidant activity," Michal Świeca, Urszula Gawlik-Dziki, Dariusz Dziki, and Barbara Baraniak, Food Chemistry Food Chemistry, vol. 221, 2017, pp. 1451–1457. <https://is.gd/flFvmN>

The authors, at the University of Life Sciences, Lublin, Poland, explain how they simulated digestion for this delicious foodstuff:

"For gastric digestion, 300 U/ml of pepsin (from porcine stomach mucosa, pepsin, EC 3.4.23.1) was prepared in 0.03 mol/l NaCl, pH 1.2. Simulated intestinal juice was prepared by dissolving 0.05 g of pancreatin and 0.3 g of bile extract in 35 ml 0.1 mol/l NaHCO3."

Submit your perfectly formed, delightfully enlightening limerick to:

	BREAD-WITH-COFFEE LIMERICK COMPETITION
	c/o <MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM>

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06 Cigarette Butt and Urban Bird Poet

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

"Incorporation of Cigarette Butts into Nests Reduces Nest Ectoparasite Load in Urban Birds: New Ingredients for an Old Recipe?" Monserrat Suarez-Rodrıguez, Isabel Lopez-Rull and Constantino Macıas Garcia, Biology Letters, vol. 9, no. 1, 2013, 20120931. <https://is.gd/CBNDsO>

The winner is INVESTIGATOR BUZZ BROOKS, who wrote:

"Let's include a nice cigarette butt
In our nest, for I feel in my gut 
  That a nest pristine
  Must include nicotine
To repel nasty bugs, somewhat."

The word from our LIMERICK LAUREATE, MARTIN EIGER:

In birds' nests, researchers have found,
Ectoparasite vermin abound.
  You can help them, you know.
  Take up smoking and throw
All your cigarette butts on the ground.

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07 MORE IMPROBABLE: Output, Bitten Food, Umpteenish Numbers

Recent improbable research bits you may have missed...

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

<> Urination-Duration Ig Winners Turn to Defecation
<> Should Dessert Ads Include Bite Marks in the Food?
<> Umpteen Reflections on Indefinite Hyperbolic Numerals

Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS):
<> Nicholas H. Wolfinger

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

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08 MAY WE RECOMMEND: Toast and Tea and Coffee, and Surgery

"Toast and tea before elective surgery? A national survey on current practice," Sujit K. Pandit, Katherine W. Loberg, and Uma A. Pandit, Anesthesia & Analgesia, vol. 90, no. 6, 2000, pp. 1348-1351. <https://is.gd/zCB4vi> The authors, at the University of Michigan, report:

"A more tolerant approach to preoperative fasting guidelines for healthy adults undergoing elective surgery was recently recommended by a task force appointed by the American Society of Anesthesiologists.... only 3% of the responders said they would cancel the operation if a patient actually arrived at the facility after consuming a light breakfast, such as toast and tea 6 h before elective surgery, 32% would delay surgery to later that day, and 65% would proceed without delay. We concluded that most anesthesiologists practicing outpatient anesthesia in the United States have already changed their practice pattern."

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09 Improbable Research Events

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

Sarnoff Cardiovascular Research Annual Meeting
								— Apr 27, 2017
British Council, New York City			— May 17, 2017
Ig Nobel Ceremony TICKETS go on sale — Jul, 2017
2017 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony		— Sep 14, 2017
Ig Informal Lectures				— Sep 16, 2017
Ig Nobel Fall EuroTour
	U Manchester, UK				— Nov 29, 2017
	EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany		— Dec 4, 2017
SLAS Conference, San Diego		— Feb 7, 2018
AAAS Annual Meeting, Austin, TX		— Feb 2018

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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.)

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

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11 — CONTACT INFO (*)

Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)
<www.improbable.com>
EDITORIAL: <MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM>
SUBSCRIPTION QUESTIONS: <subscriptions AT improbable.com>
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA, (+1) 617-491-4437
Twitter: @ImprobResearch

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12 — Standard Gobbledegook (*)

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 2017, Annals of Improbable Research

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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.
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