From improbable.com
Ig Nobel Face-to-Face (video part 1 of 3)
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The Ig Nobel Prizes honor things so surprising that they make people LAUGH, then THINK. At the 2024 Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, ten new prizes were awarded. Two days later, most of the winners gathere…
on Tue, 5PM
From improbable.com
Coffee and the Wellbeing of Mice
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Humanity’s persistent wondering about how and whether drinking coffee might affect the wellbeing of mice led to this new study done in Portugal: “Impact of Coffee Intake on Measures of …
on Tue, 5PM
From improbable.com
Explaining a strange idea: The Oreo Cookies Diet
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The key to explaining a strange idea, someone somewhere may once have said, is to talk really, really fast. Here is a new example. An explanation is given, in video form, at two speeds. A lengthy t…
on Nov 5
From improbable.com
About the Predicament of Earthworms
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Earthworms are getting some loving, concerned attention as to their imminent aqua predicament. The University of Leeds made this announcement: Researchers are to investigate whether the humble eart…
on Oct 29
From improbable.com
Angelica Ørregaard Lindholm joins the The Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists™ (LFHCfS)
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Angelica Ørregaard Lindholm has joined the The Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists™ (LFHCfS). She says: I am a PhD candidate in forensic toxicology at the University of Copenhagen, where I a…
on Oct 24
From improbable.com
Celebrating the vampire bat human blood investigation
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This is the latest in a series of drawings by artist Becky Moon, about her favorite Ig Nobel Prize winners. (This one also harmonizes with the Halloween season.) This one celebrates the Ig Nobel Nu…
on Oct 22
From improbable.com
Python limericks, and so on, in mini-AIR
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Two limericks about this research study — “Python Farming as a Flexible and Efficient Form of Agricultural Food Security” — grace the October 2024 issue of mini-AIR, our free monthly li…
on Oct 22
From improbable.com
“How the Ig Nobel Prize Became a Status Award”
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Russian science journalist Dmitry Borisov wrote a comprehensive, good history of the Ig Nobel Prizes, in the publication N+1. It’s written in the Russian language. Here, below, is a machine-transla…
on Oct 21
From improbable.com
Sad news: Ig Nobel Prize winner Phil Zimbardo has died
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Phil Zimbardo died on October 14. His obituary is online. One of his lesser professional accomplishments came in 2003 when that year’s Ig Nobel Prize in psychology was awarded to Gian Vittori…
on Oct 18
From improbable.com
Celebrating the swallow-and-excrete-a-shrew experiment
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This is the latest in a series of drawings by artist Becky Moon, about her favorite Ig Nobel Prize winners. This one celebrates the Ig Nobel Archaeology Prize that was awarded in the year 2013 to B…
on Oct 17
From improbable.com
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A technically roundabout look at the bits and bobs that altogether are a lamb brain — that was the goal of a team of researchers in Spain, the UK, and China. You can see what they say they saw by r…
on Oct 16
From improbable.com
On Balance, A Cup of Coffee Does Nothing
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This study attempted to see how giving a cup of coffee, or not giving a cup of coffee, to 22 old people would affect the balance of those old people. The study is: “The acute effects of coffe…
on Oct 9
From improbable.com
Ig Nobel Face-to-Face in Tokyo on November 17
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The 2024 Ig Nobel Prizes celebration will take further flight in a flurry of paper airplanes at the Miraikan science Museum in Tokyo, Japan, on Sunday, November 17, 2024. This will be an Ig Nobel F…
on Oct 2
From improbable.com
Phrases of philosophers: Logical Copulation
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Philosophers see meaning in places and things that some people who are not philosophers may not have noticed. Philosopher George Englebretson sees a concept that many people had not noticed: the co…
on Sep 30
From improbable.com
The importance of the hat on a cat in a hat
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This photo of a cat in a hat is an important part of why some people expect a good deal of media attention for this study: “Non-invasive electroencephalography in awake cats: Feasibility and …
on Sep 27
From improbable.com
The new Ig Nobel Prize winners — A view from Stockholm
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Every year, the new Ig Nobel Prize winners get a discerning and artistic look by the science and graphics teams at Dagens Nyheter, Sweden’s largest newspaper. Here is this year’s Ig Nob…
on Sep 26
From improbable.com
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If you feed coffee to rats you will, maybe, want to drink in some or all of the info in this study, which involved feeding coffee to rats, and which poses intellectual challenges of many sorts: …
on Sep 23
From improbable.com
Announcing the 2024 Ig Nobel Prize winners
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Ten new Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded at the 24th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, held at the Massachusetts Institute of technology. The photo you see here is the blackboard in MIT building 10…
on Sep 13
From improbable.com
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Ig® Nobel Prize Winners For achievements that first make people LAUGH then make them THINK Winners by year: 2024 : 2023 : 2022 : 2021 2020 : 2019 : 2018 : 2017 : 2016 2015 : 2014 : 2013 : 2012 : 20…
on Sep 13
From improbable.com
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Today the 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony will happen. Watch the webcast here at improbable.com, today, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2024, beginning at 6:00 pm (US eastern time). This drawing …
on Sep 12
From improbable.com
The 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Ceremony
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The 2024 Ig Nobel Prizes will be awarded at the 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, on Thursday evening, September 12, 2024, at MIT (The Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in C…
on Sep 12
From improbable.com
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Tomorrow the 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony will happen. Watch the webcast here at improbable.com, on THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2024, beginning at 6:00 pm (US eastern time). This drawing i…
on Sep 11
From improbable.com
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Two days from now, the 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony will happen. Watch the webcast here at improbable.com, on THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2024, beginning at 6:00 pm (US eastern time). This…
on Sep 10
From improbable.com
Three days until the Ig Nobel Prizes
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Three days from now, the 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony will happen. Watch the webcast here at improbable.com, on THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2024, beginning at 6:00 pm (US eastern time). Th…
on Sep 9
From improbable.com
Scientists Who Like to Lick Rocks [tribute drawing about a past Ig Nobel Prize winner]
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This is another drawing by artist Becky Moon, about her favorite Ig Nobel Prize winners. Moon has been a scholar of the Ig Nobel Prizes since she was a young teenager. This one celebrates Ig Nobel …
on Sep 6
From improbable.com
Ovulation and Tipping for Lap Dancers [tribute drawing about a past Ig Nobel Prize winner]
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This is another drawing by artist Becky Moon, about her favorite Ig Nobel Prize winners. Moon has been a scholar of the Ig Nobel Prizes since she was a young teenager. This one celebrates Ig Nobel …
on Sep 3
From improbable.com
Bifurcation, Predators, Prey, and Taxis
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Much is explained, and some is not, in a study about Hopf bifurcation that arises in circular-distributed predator-prey interaction with taxis. The study goes into more detail than the title does: …
on Sep 2
From improbable.com
Annals of Improbable Research SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2024 (vol 30, number 5)
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Buy this issue as a PDF Special Issue: Morbid The features marked with a star (*) are based entirely on material taken straight from standard research (and other Official and Therefore Always Corre…
on Sep 1
From improbable.com
Backwards Speech and Listening Rats [tribute drawing about a past Ig Nobel Prize winner]
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This is another drawing by artist Becky Moon, about her favorite Ig Nobel Prize winners. Moon has been a scholar of the Ig Nobel Prizes since she was a young teenager. This one celebrates the Ig No…
on Aug 30
From improbable.com
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What’s new in knitting, you might wonder after having wondered what’s new in sewing. Some physics is new, says this study: “Programming mechanics in knitted materials, stitch by s…
on Aug 26
From improbable.com
Microbes and bearded men [tribute drawing about a past Ig Nobel Prize winner]
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This is another drawing by artist Becky Moon, about her favorite Ig Nobel Prize winners. Moon has been a scholar of the Ig Nobel Prizes since she was a young teenager. This one celebrates Ig Nobel …
on Aug 26
From improbable.com
“And as usual, they were wrong.”
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“As with many areas of science, humans went into it assuming that they pretty much knew what they were going to discover, and that refining their instruments would just make their existing si…
on Aug 12
From improbable.com
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Hicks, Humphries and Slater express an opinion: “ChatGPT is Bullshit,” Michael Townsen Hicks, James Humphries, and Joe Slater, Ethics and Information Technology, vol. 26, no. 38, 2024.
on Aug 5
From improbable.com
The audience at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony…
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At the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony (and at the related event, Ig Nobel Face-to-Face, two days later), the audience is part of the show. Some people come from distant towns, states, countries and contin…
on Aug 3
From improbable.com
Ig Nobel Prize 2024 Ceremony TICKETS
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TICKETS to attend the 34th First annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony in person GO ON SALE FRIDAY, AUGUST 2, 2024, at noon US eastern time. Tickets are sold exclusively at Seating is limited. The lecture…
on Aug 2
From improbable.com
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De Kikker Kamasutra “The Frog Kamasutra” is a new book [in Dutch] of delights — about biological surprises — written by Ig Nobel Biology Prize winner Kees Moeliker. The ISBN is 9789044…
on Jul 31
From improbable.com
Throw paper airplanes in the 2024 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony
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We invite you (together with as large a group as you can muster) to throw paper planes at the 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, to honor the new Ig Nobel Prize winners. This year we will b…
on Jul 30
From improbable.com
Can 12 Large Clowns Fit in a Mini Cooper?
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Reason this out. Or do the experiment. Or read what Renée Baillargeon has to say about these two questions: “Can 12 Large Clowns Fit in a Mini Cooper? Or When Are Beliefs and Reasoning Explic…
on Jul 29
From improbable.com
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High drinking in the dark and other intellectual adventures await you, yours for the reading, in the study: “Development and implementation of a Dependable, Simple, and Cost-effective (DSC), …
on Jul 22
From improbable.com
Some books about the Ig Nobel Prizes
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This photo shows some of the books people have written about, or mostly about, the Ig Nobel Prizes. (Marc Abrahams, too, has written some books; those are not included in this photo.) Ig Nobel Priz…
on Jul 17
From improbable.com
New depths of con-man-ism in the science world
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In this golden age of con men (call them “con artists, if you are persnickety about your lingo), more of them are worming their way into the science world. Those science con men are devising …
on Jul 16
From improbable.com
US Mail questions (what remains?)
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When you consult the US Postal Service (via their web site) prior to mailing a letter, these are the first questions they ask you: What are you Sending? Cremated Remains – Learn about mailin…
on Jul 15
From improbable.com
The doctor who performed the first self-colonoscopy
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A TV crew from Thai PBS visited Akira Horiuchi, the doctor who won the 2018 Ig Nobel Prize for medical education, for performing the first self-colonoscopy:
on Jul 8
From improbable.com
Some People Prefer Spurious Specifications
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Some specific research news (note: this news is not new) about specifications: “Specification Seeking: How Product Specifications Influence Consumer Preference,” Christopher K. Hsee, Ya…
on Jul 1
From improbable.com
Looking for the new Miss Sweetie Poo
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We are looking for a new Miss Sweetie Poo, for this year’s Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. The 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony will happen on Thursday evening, September 12, 2024, at MIT in Camb…
on Jun 28
From improbable.com
Severed foot / Sea squirt, Holy ghostwriters, Tasty worms
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This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has five segments. Here are bits of each of them: Legless on the shore — Extremities can bring confusion even to trained experts…
on Jun 26
From improbable.com
Annals of Improbable Research JULY | AUGUST 2024 (vol 30, number 4)
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Buy this issue as a PDF Special Issue: Non-Quantum Physics The features marked with a star (*) are based entirely on material taken straight from standard research (and other Official and Therefore…
on Jun 25
From improbable.com
Large Variations in Sleepiness Related to Time of Day
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Some scientists are awakening to the possibility that there are variations in sleepiness related to time of day. Other scientists are already awake to that possibility. All scientists are to some o…
on Jun 25
From improbable.com
How Hooked Are Leisure Fisherman on Leisure Fishing?
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Some people who love to fish love to fish more than some other people love to fish. This study began the lengthy process of understanding who and how much. “How Do Recreationists Make Activit…
on Jun 25
From improbable.com
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The description of this phlegm thrower suffers a bit from machine-translation woes: “Suction Device and Usable Ejection for Care,” French patent application FR2889070A1, Michel Brun, fi…
on Jun 24