[mini-AIR] mini-AIR - adventures of rats

Tue Jun 11 21:34:13 EDT 2019

mini-Annals of Improbable Research ("mini-AIR")
June 2019, issue number 2019-06. ISSN 1076-500X.
	<https://www.improbable.com/airchives/miniair/>
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  Research that makes people LAUGH, then THINK.
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01 TABLE OF CONTENTS

02 Imminent Events
03 IN THE MAGAZINE ITSELF: Habits and Tricks
04 Giving Rats Chloroform in Their Toothpaste
05 Further Response to Upside-Down Art
06 Effect of Perfume on Rats' Cadavers Challenge
07 Ravens Flying Upside-Down Winner
08 MORE IMPROBABLE: Childhood, Wig-Waste Roads, ASCII Flow
09 Gasoline-Influenced Erectile Dysfunction in Certain Rats
10 IMPROBABLE EVENTS
11 — Subscribe to the Actual Magazine! (*)
12 — How to start or stop receiving this little newsletter (*)
13 — Contact Info (*)
14 — Standard Gobbledegook (*)

	Items marked (*) are reprinted in every issue.

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02 Imminent Events

<> Improbable Table Talk, at Toscanini's, June 19, 2019. 
	The series of come-and-chat events we began last summer
	resumes. First topic: Pizzo's Ig Nobel Prize-winning 
	trap-an-airplane-hijacker patent.)

<> TICKETS to the 29th First Annual IG NOBEL PRIZE CEREMONY will go on sale WEDNESDAY, JULY 10, 2019.

<> Readercon, Quincy, MA, USA, July 14-16, 2019.

DETAILS, and full schedule: <http://www.improbable.com/improbable-research-shows/complete-schedule/>

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03 IN THE MAGAZINE ITSELF: Habits and Tricks

	WHAT YOU ARE READING AT THIS MOMENT
	is just our monthly newsletter, (mini-AIR).

	Our best stuff goes into the actual magazine:
	Annals of Improbable Research (AIR). 

The special Habits & Tricks issue (vol. 25, no. 2) has, after a habitual, tricky delay, popped into existence:
<https://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume25/v25i2/v25i2.php>

SUBSCRIBE to the MAGAZINE, or get SINGLE ISSUES:
	<https://gumroad.com/improbable>

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

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04 Giving Rats Chloroform in Their Toothpaste

This month's Research involves rats, chloroform, and toothpaste:

"Safety evaluation of toothpaste containing chloroform. 2. Long-term studies in rats," A.K. Palmer, A.E. Street, F.J.C. Roe, A.N. Worden, and N.J. Vanabbe, Journal of Environmental Pathology and Toxicology, vol. 2, 1979, pp. 821-833. The authors are at Huntingdon Research Centre and Beecham Products, UK. <https://tinyurl.com/yy8bejso>

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05 Further Response to Upside-Down Art

An insistently-anonymous mathematics professor writes:

I may or may not find references to upside down art useful.
  Explanation: in my art class I have a short lecture
   on cartoonists whose cartoons can be turned mover.
  Ideally I try to be a student to attempt it as a project but 
  none of them ever have.

For reference: I usually show some cartoons of Peter Newell and of Gustav Verbeek. (Peter Newell was an illustrator of some of the
books of Lewis Carroll.)

Here's a downloadable book of Peter Newell's "Topsys and Turvys:
<https://www.loc.gov/item/16005309/>

Here's a sample of Verbeck's "Upside Downs":
<Gustav http://konkykru.com/e.verbeek.upside.downs.html>

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06 Effect of Perfume on Rats' Cadavers Challenge

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

"Effect of Some Household Products (Kerosene, Insecticide and Perfume) on Arthropods Colonization on Rats' Cadavers," Nagwa M. Ghandour, and Rasha A.H. Attia, Ain Shams Journal of Forensic Medicine and Clinical Toxicology, vol. 20, 2013, pp. 61-71. 
<https://ajfm.journals.ekb.eg/article_19387_a502091c5b5659b6761600b531fcccd2.pdf> The authors, at Assiut University, Egypt, report:

"This study aimed to evaluate the effect of some common household products (kerosene, insecticide, perfume) on arthropods colonization on rats' cadavers including their effect on the type of species, and first insect’s arrival time.... These results together confirm the repellent effect of some household products on flies..."

Submit your perfectly formed, delightfully enlightening limerick to:

	PERFUME RATS CADAVERS LIMERICK COMPETITION
	c/o <MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM>

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07 Ravens Flying Upside-Down Winner

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

"Ravens Flying Upside-Down," Å. Vedel Tåning, Nature, vol. 127, no. 3214, 1931, p. 856. <https://www.nature.com/articles/127856c0>.

INVESTIGATOR ALISTAIR MCCULLOCH writes:

Evershed notes with delight,
While looking at ravens in flight,
  Upside-down is not rare --
  Indeed common up there --
Not distance, but circling at height.

This month's take from our LIMERICK LAUREATE, MARTIN EIGER:

One guy says the frequency's low,
But the other says that isn't so.
  What the one has asserted,
  The other's inverted.
Which one to believe?  I don't know.

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08 MORE IMPROBABLE: Childhood, Wig-Waste Roads, ASCII Flow

Recent improbable research bits you may have missed...

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

* Innovative Scientists Talk About Their Childhood [our new little video series]
* Reinforcing Bitumen-Based Road Surfaces with Waste from Plastic Wigs
* Watching text flow…: ASCII Fluid Dynamics

Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS) and its sibling clubs: <https://www.improbable.com/category/lfhcfs-hair-club/>

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

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09 Gasoline-Influenced Erectile Dysfunction in Certain Rats

"Mechanisms of Long-Term Gasoline Vehicle Exhaust Exposure–Induced Erectile Dysfunction in a Rat Model," Shankun Zhao, Jiamin Wang, Qiang Xie, Lianmin Luo, Zhiguo Zhu, Yangzhou Liu, Yihan Deng, Ran Kang, Jintai Luo, Zhigang, The Journal of Sexual Medicine, epub 2019. The authors are at Guangzhou Medical University, Southern Medical University, and University of South China, China.

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10 IMPROBABLE EVENTS

Table Talk, Cambridge, MA, USA		—Jun 19, 2019
Ig Nobel TICKETS go on sale			—Jul 10, 2019
Readercon, Quincy, MA, USA			—Jul 12-14, 2019
Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony			—Sep 12, 2019
Ig Informal Lectures				—Sep 14, 2019
BeWORKS Summit, Ottawa, Canada	—Sep 23, 2019
Red Hat, Boston, MA, USA			—Oct 8, 2019
Lubbock, TX						—Oct 25, 2019

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

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11 — Subscribe to the Actual 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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12 — How to start or stop receiving this newsletter (*)

This newsletter, Mini-AIR, is just a (free!) tiny monthly *supplement* to the big, bold six-times-a-year magazine Annals of Improbable Research.

   To SUBSCRIBE or UNSUBSCRIBE to mini-AIR:
   <http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/mini-air>

   ARCHIVES: <http://improbable.com/airchives/miniair>

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13 — CONTACT INFO (*)

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

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14 — Standard Gobbledegook (*)

EDITOR: Marc Abrahams
CO-CONSPIRATORS: Kees Moeliker, Alice Shirrell Kaswell, Gary Dryfoos, Nan Swift, 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 2019, Annals of Improbable Research

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