[mini-AIR] mini-AIR: colors, resurrecting the podcast, and swelling

Wed Nov 27 21:21:09 EST 2019

mini-Annals of Improbable Research ("mini-AIR")
November 2019, issue number 2019-11. ISSN 1076-500X.
	<https://www.improbable.com/airchives/miniair/>
----------
  Research that makes people LAUGH, then THINK.
—————————

01 TABLE OF CONTENTS

02 Imminent Events
03 IN THE MAGAZINE ITSELF: Important Research
04 The Weight of Colors
05 Improbable Podcast Resurrection - and a Patreon
06 Limerick Challenge: Baboon Sexual Swelling Color Info Paucity
07 Breakfast-Cereal-Flake Winner
08 MORE IMPROBABLE: Beauty, Cakes, Horror
09 Caught in the Corner of the Eye, Sort Of
10 IMPROBABLE EVENTS
20 — Subscribe to the Actual Magazine! (*)
21 — How to start or stop receiving this little newsletter (*)
22 — Contact Info (*)
23 — Standard Gobbledegook (*)

	Items marked (*) are reprinted in every issue.

—————————
02 Imminent Events

	* Science Friday's Ig Nobel broadcast — November 29
	<https://www.sciencefriday.com/>

Ig Nobel EuroTour (in March/April 2020)
If your institution would like to host an event please email us.

FULL IMPROBABLE EVENTS SCHEDULE: <http://www.improbable.com/improbable-research-shows/complete-schedule/>

—————————
03 IN THE MAGAZINE ITSELF: Important Research

	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 [EXPLICITLY!] IMPORTANT RESEARCH issue (vol. 25, no. 5) has just been sent to subscribers. 
You can see the TOC, and a couple of articles ("Importance for Dogs" and "If You Can Measure It, It Must Be Important…"), at <https://tinyurl.com/r5ofpyl>

The special Ig Nobel issue is in prep.

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

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

—————————
04 The Weight of Colors

This month's quasi-randomly selected dip into our vast collection of Improbable Research:

"A Weighty Problem Cracked," William Hickmott, Nature, vol. 310, August 30, 1984, pp. 731-732. <https://www.nature.com/articles/310731c0>. (Thanks to Adrian Smith for bringing this to our attention.) the author explains:

"It all started when I had a slight accident. I fell over in the saloon bar at the Grovelling Toad and struck the back of my head on the space invaders machine. After two or three more pints I was back to normal, except...

"Colours have weight, and red is naturally heavier than blue....
All sorts of questions clamoured to be answered, for instance, what is the order of weight ofthe colours? I set out to determine this by repeating the balancing experiment a number of times with differently coloured plastics, and after many hours of delicate balancing I managed to discover the relative weights of the colours. In order of weight, lightest first, they are: white, yellow, green, blue, orange, pink, red, black."

—————————
05 Improbable Podcast Resurrection - and a Patreon

We are hatching plans to bring the Improbable Research podcast back from the dead!

The Improbable Research podcast ran for two years, weekly—a collaboration between us and the CBS Radio network. It was one of CBS's very first podcasts. It was one of the most fun things we ever did. Alas, when the CBS Radio network dismantled itself, we stopped doing the podcast.

We miss doing it. (We podcast regulars—Marc Abrahams, Jean Berko Gleason, Melissa Franklin, Richard Baguley, Nicole Sharp, Chris Cotsapas, etc.—really miss doing it!)

From what we've heard, some of you miss hearing it. Many others of you never got the chance to hear it.

Here's the plan.
We intend to bring back some of the existing episodes, one a week. and so…

	INTRODUCING OUR PATREON: 
	We have created a Patreon to raise funding 
	to resurrect the best of the old episodes, to create new episodes,
	and to support our related activities—the Ig Nobel Prize 
	ceremony, the magazine (Annals of Improbable Research), 
	the public events worldwide, and whoknowswhat!

	We would welcome your support!

	<www.patreon.com/ImprobableResearch>

DETAILS about the webcast will be coming soon, on the web site (www.improbable.com) and here in mini-AIR.

In the meantime, here are teasers for three of those glorious past episodes.

Podcast teaser: Physicist Melissa Franklin and Brussels Sprouts
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hP4WO9yYO0>

Podcast teaser: Psychologist Jean Berko Gleason and Kansas
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o73earsncxg>

Podcast teaser: Jean Berko Gleason and Soft-Boiled Eggs
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrBLbDXmg8Q>

—————————
06 Limerick Challenge: Baboon Sexual Swelling Color Info Paucity

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

"Baboon Sexual Swellings: Information Content of Size and Color," J.P. Higham, A.M. MacLarnon, C. Ross, M. Heistermann, and S. Semple, Hormones and Behavior, vol. 53, 2008, pp. 452-462. <https://tinyurl.com/tqvgng9>
The authors, at Roehampton University, UK, and German Primate Centre, Germany, explain:

"We show that swelling color and size vary independently, and that, consistent with results in other species, swelling size contains information about the timing of ovulation and the fertile period. However, we show that swelling color does not contain such information."

Submit your perfectly formed, delightfully enlightening limerick to:

	BABOON SWELL COLOR LIMERICK COMPETITION
	c/o <MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM>

—————————
07 Breakfast-Cereal-Flake Winner

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

"Physical Properties and Microstructural Changes during Soaking of Individual Corn and Quinoa Breakfast Flakes," Wenceslao T. Medina, Andrés A. de la Llera, Juan L. Condori, José M. Aguilera, Journal of Food Science, vol. 76, no. 3, April 2011, pp. E254–E265. <https://tinyurl.com/y4vgrk8r>

INVESTIGATOR FRED BETHKE writes:

Having flakes for their breakfast or brunch,
Folks prefer long-lasting crunch.
   Because of its fat,
   Milk's good at that.
We hear Snap! Crackle! Pop! as they munch.

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

QF and CF, i.e.,
BCF, they are both BFP.
  It seems so ethereal,
  Like Alpha-Bits cereal
In milk, as the letters float free.

—————————
08 MORE IMPROBABLE: Beauty, Cakes, Horror

Recent improbable research bits you may have missed...

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

* Associations: Financial Analysts’ Beauty and their Performance
* Mathematicians’ Continuing Fascination with Cakes
* Psychological Responses to Horror Films

NEWEST MEMBER of the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS) and its sibling clubs: 
* Kwan-Liu Ma.
<https://www.improbable.com/category/lfhcfs-hair-club/>

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

—————————
09 Caught in the Corner of the Eye, Sort Of

This month's quasi-randomly selected other dip into our vast collection of Improbable Research:

"Alarming Events in the Corner of Your Eye: Do They Trigger Early Saccades?" Christine R. Harris, Robin Kaplan, and Hal Pashler. SSRN abstract=2542346, April 11, 2008. <https://ssrn.com/abstract=2542346>
The authors, at the University of California, San Diego, explain:

"Is the eye drawn to configurations of objects in the periphery that would imply imminent danger? In three separate studies, subjects viewed color photographs that were either innocuous (e.g., a couple tossing a beach ball while a baby sat nearby in a stroller) or depicted the same objects rearranged to imply a potential for harm (e.g., couple tossing baby while beach ball lay in the stroller). The key elements in the danger scenes were fixated earlier as well as longer than the same items in control images. Low-level salience of the scenes was analyzed (according to the methods of Itti, Koch, and Niebur, 1998) and does not seem to account for the results."

—————————
10 IMPROBABLE EVENTS

Vienna, Austria				—Nov 7, 2019
Copenhagen, Denmark			—Nov 13, 2019
Gothenburg, Sweden			—Nov 14, 2019
Harvard U, Cambridge, MA, USA	—Nov 18, 2019
Science Friday, public radio, USA	—Nov 29, 2019
Beijing, China					—Jan 13, 2020
Arisia, Boston, MA, USA			—Jan 2020
AAAS Annual Meeting, Seattle	—Feb 2020
Ig Nobel EuroTour				—Mar/Apr 2020
Ig Nobel ceremony TICKETS go on sale	—Jul, 2020
30th First Annual Ig Nobel ceremony		—Sep, 2020
Osaka, Japan					—Fall, 2020

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

—————————
—————————
20 — 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)

—————————
21 — 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>

—————————
22 — 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

—————————
23 — 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

—————————