Improbable Research

Geneva, Switzerland (and environs) will host lots of Improbability during the next week or so: two events. Both events will be webcast. Soprano Maria Ferrante and pianist Alice Martelli will perform songs from Ig Nobel operas, at both events.

Improbable Research at CERN

I will do a TEDx CERN talk on the topic: “Why All Good, and Some Bad, Research is Improbable“:

TEDxCERN,
Friday, May 3, 2013, 2:00 pm , Geneva time. [TWITTER: #TEDxCERN]
Webcast starts at 1:45 pm [7:45 am US eastern time].
My talk, and Maria and Alice’s musical performance, will be in the first of TEDx CERN’s three sessions.

Ig Nobel at the University of Geneva

Four nights later, there’s a big Ig Nobel show at the University of Geneva:

UNIVERSITY OF GENEVA
Tuesday, May 7, 6:30 pm, Geneva time.  [TWITTER: #IgNobelGVA]
Uni Dufour, Rue Général-Dufour 24.
Show en anglais, sans interprétation.
Admission is FREE.

The University of Geneva show features genuine Ig Nobel Prize winners, who will explain, as best they can, what they did and why they did it:

• Stephan Bolliger and Steffen Ross (is it better to be smashed on the head with a full bottle of be, or to be smashed on the head with an empty bottle of beer?)
• Bart Knols (malaria mosquitoes are strongly attracted to the smells of Limburger cheese and human feet)
• Kees Moeliker (homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck)

BONUS: The TED Blog previews TEDx CERN

Steve Colgan chronicled the recent Ig Nobel show at the Institute for Engineering and Technology, in London. This photo shows Dr. Charlotte Burn discussing what people make of the question of why dogs chase their tails. Colgan was one of the stars of the event, which was a featured part of this year’s Ig Nobel tour of the UK.

BONUS: Recorded video of the event.

Robin McKie, in The Observer, chronicles the slowly, slowly, slowly mounting excitement about the Ig Nobel Prize-winning [physics prize, 2005] Australian pitch-drop experiment:

In terms of output, Queensland University’s pitch drop study – the world’s oldest laboratory experiment – has been stunningly low. Only eight drops have emerged from the lump of pitch installed in the university’s physics building foyer in 1927. Watching paint dry looks exhilarating by comparison.

But excitement is now rising over the experiment, which was set up to calculate the viscosity of the world’s stickiest substance, pitch, which has been found to be at least 230 billion times more viscous than water. According to Professor John Mainstone [pictured here], who has run the experiment since the 1960s, a ninth drop looks set to emerge from the pitch block in the very near future.

“No one has actually seen a drop emerge, so it is getting quite nervy round here,” said Mainstone. “The other eight drops happened while people had their backs turned….

(Thanks to investigator DK for bringing this report to our attention.)

You can and perhaps should watch the live webcam video of the experiment.

BONUS: A minor philosophy question to ponder: If one can hear a pin drop, can one hear a pitch drop?

The long-named Harvard Mind/Brain/Body Interfaculty Initiative announces:

MBB 2013 Distinguished Lecture Series

Uta Frith and Chris Frith (University College London)

Uta Frith - Autism: The First Fifty Years
Wednesday, April 24th, 5:15 p.m., Science Center Hall D

Chris Frith - How the Brain Creates Culture
Thursday, April 25th, 5 p.m., Science Center Hall D

BACKGROUND: Chris Frith, together with colleagues Eleanor Maguire, David Gadian, Ingrid Johnsrude, Catriona Good, John Ashburner and Richard Frackowiak, were awarded the 2003 Ig Nobel Prize for medicine, for presenting evidence that the brains of London taxi drivers are more highly developed than those of their fellow citizens. [That research was published in the report "Navigation-Related Structural Change In the Hippocampi of Taxi Drivers," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 97, no. 8, April 11, 2000, pp. 4398-403.]

BONUS: To become a London taxi driver, one must have The Knowledge. It is said that The Blue Book is a valuable aid in attaining The Knowledge. [The NBC News Photo Blog recently looked at would-be London taxi drivers striving to attain The Knowledge.

BONUS: The application to become a London taxi driver

Ig Nobel Prize winner Dr. Nakamats writes, on his blog:

I’m looking for the most innovative Manga cartoonist in the world to make my own life story by manga.

This is from The Committee of Sir Making Dr. NakaMats Manga.

On April 18, 2013, Dr. NakaMats announced to make his own Manga, cartoon, about his 80 years of journey of 3,048 inventions, since age 5.

Many people in the world today know about his inventions but not much about his hidden stories and the values. There are many episodes thru the experience during the world war II, lectures based upon physics, chemistry, and medical science. This manga will be very unique and so innovative. And, we are looking for innovative cartoonist / manga-ka in the world who can devote him/herself to create a new manga.

Dr. Nakamats was awarded the 2005 Ig Nobel Prize for nutrition, “for photographing and retrospectively analyzing every meal he has consumed during a period of 34 years (and counting)”.

BONUS: A small portion of the major film The Invention of Dr. Nakamats: