Improbable Research

Today, Friday, is a big day for bacteria. Bacteria is the theme of this year’s Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony. And today is the traditional day-after-Thanksgiving Ig Nobel broadcast on NPR’s “Science Friday” program — specially edited highlights from the ceremony!

WHEN: Friday, November 26, 2010. It will be the first hour of the two-hour “Science Friday” program. In most—but not all!—cities this will be from 2:00-3:00 pm. (Some NPR stations schedule it at other times.) Many stations also stream the broadcast online.

A stand-up-and-take-notice report last month in the journal Science explains that some kinds of bacteria can walk, and that those bacteria often do. The study, done by researchers from UCLA, The University of Illinois, and Notre Dame University, is:

“Bacteria Use Type IV Pili to Walk Upright and Detach from Surfaces“, Maxsim L. Gibiansky, Jacinta C. Conrad, Fan Jin, Vernita D. Gordon, Dominick A. Motto, Margie A. Mathewson, Wiktor G. Stopka, Daria C. Zelasko, Joshua D. Shrout and Gerard C. L. Wong, Science, vol. 330, no. 6001, October 8, 2010, p. 197.

BONUS: A nice report about the report, in the November 6, 2010 issue of Science News.

Though many enjoy the experience of opening ‘Fortune Cookies’ in a Chinese restaurant, some have asked “How Chinese are they?” In particular, Jing Yin and Yoshitaka Miike of the Department of Communication, at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo , Hilo, Hawaiʻi. The two researchers examined the “Chineseness” of 595 fortune cookie sayings, using the definition of a fortune cookie from The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (1995) ‘‘A Chinese biscuit that contains a piece of paper that says what will happen to you in the future.’’
Textual Analysis of the fortune cookie discourse confirmed that the messages broke down into four broad categories :
Prophecy : e.g.  “You’ll be invited to a royal dancing party and meet your first lover.”

Compliments : e.g. “You have the ability to excel in untried areas.”

Advice : e.g. “Yes, do it with confidence.”

and Wisdom : e.g. “No man is rich enough to buy back his past.”

Another advance in FR(finger ratio)enology research!

Index to ring digit ratio in Saudi Arabia at Almadinah Almonawarah province: a direct and indirect measurement study.

Almasry SM, El Domiaty MA, Algaidi SA, Elbastawisy YM, Safwat MD
J Anat. 2010 Nov 2;
The digit ratio, or the relative lengths, of the 2nd and 4th digits (2D:4D) shows a sex difference, with males tending to have lower values in comparison with females…. This study aimed to estimate finger lengths and the 2D:4D ratios for the first time in Saudi Arabian subjects using direct and indirect measurements, and to evaluate the correlations between both indirect and direct 2D:4D with adult testosterone and various sexually dimorphic physical traits.

Another advance in FR(finger ratio)enology research!

Digit ratio (2D:4D) and performance in elite rugby players.
Bennett M, Manning JT, Cook CJ, Kilduff LP
J Sports Sci. 2010 Oct 21;:1-7

The relative length of the second and fourth digits (2D:4D) is a putative marker for prenatal testosterone…. Here, for the first time, we examine the relationship between 2D:4D and performance in elite rugby players.