Improbable Research

Distantly descended from the Time and Motion Men, Ben Waber [pictured here] writes, in Technology Review:

A new line of research examines what happens in an office where the positions of the cubicles and walls—even the coffee pot—are all determined by data.

…For instance, what if office coffee machines moved around according to the social context? When a coffee-pouring robot appeared as a gag in TV commercial two years ago, I thought seriously about the uses of a coffee machine with wheels. By positioning the coffee robot in between two groups, for example, we could increase the likelihood that certain coworkers would bump into each other. Once we detected—using smart badges or some other sensor—that the right conversations were occurring between the right people, the robot could move on to another location. Vending machines, bowls of snacks—all could migrate their way around the office on the basis of social data. One demonstration of these ideas came from a team at Plymouth University in the United Kingdom. In their “Slothbots” project, slow-moving robotic walls subtly change their position over time to alter the flow of people in a public space, constantly tuning their movement in response to people’s behavior.

BONUS: “Time-and-Motion Man and The Mad Inventor”

A joint research team from the US National Institute of Mental Health and North Carolina based Cielo Institute have discovered what they call ‘Strudels’ in magnetoencephalography symmetric sensor difference (MEG-ssd) brain-scans. 17 experimental subjects were brain-scanned in an ‘eyes-closed’ and ‘task-free’ state. In other words they were permitted to relax and think about anything they pleased – encouraging so-called Task Unrelated Thoughts (TUTs). During this daydreamy state :

“Strudels manifesting time scales of five to fifteen seconds appear to emerge vertically, across scale, from irregular faster frequencies of 100 Hz or greater.”

The strudels, pictured above :

“ … can be interpreted as neurophysiological correlates of the spontaneous intrusions into consciousness of the never idle unconscious mind.”

The strudels appear as turbulent-looking disturbances in the scans, leading to radical ideas for their possible analysis :

“In recent fundamental physics, vacuum fluid fluctuations at the Planck length scale and emergent hierarchical turbulent dynamics have been invoked in a radical new theory of reality. We might use this new ‘turbulence theory of everything’ to justify the use of turbulence mathematics to characterize the dynamics of the brain’s magnetic fields.”

There is more work to be done, however, in pinpointing the strudels’ relation to what Freud called the unconscious (Ucs) and the conscious (Cs) mind.

“The question concerning whether the strudels and entropies of brain information bearing, magnetic fields are Cs itself or reflections of intermittent daydreaming intrusions into it by the Ucs remain.”

BONUS: The authors give an example of a Freudian Slip.

“A Freudian slip occurs when you mean one thing, but you say your mother.”

The full paper is available via the Cielo Insitute, see : Daydreaming, Thought Blocking and Strudels in the Taskless, Resting Human Brain’s Magnetic Fields AIP Conf. Proc. 1339, pp. 7-22; INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON APPLICATIONS IN NONLINEAR DYNAMICS (ICAND 2010)Date: 21–24 September 2010 Location: Alberta, (Canada)

A scientist suggests that others have committed wrongs with some of his research. Martin Short, who is CAM Assistant Adjunct Professor at the UCLA Mathematics Department, writes on his web site:

Published Works
…

[7] M.B. Short, M.R. D’Orsogna, P.J. Brantingham, and G.E. Tita, Measuring and modeling repeat and near-repeat burglary effects,  J. Quant. Criminol. 25 (2009)

[6] M.B. Short, M.R. D’Orsogna, V.B. Pasour, G.E. Tita, P.J. Brantingham, A.L. Bertozzi, and L.B. Chayes, A statistical model of criminal behavior, M3AS 18 (2008)

…

Works Plagiarized by Others
Unfortunately, sometimes people copy your work and claim it as their own.  Here is a collection of known papers that plagiarize from myself and my co-authors:

[2] M. VijayKumar and C. Chandrasekar, A Mathematical Framework for Analyzing and Representing Recur and Near-recur Results in Burglary Crime Data, published in IJMA 2 (2011), plagiarized from publication [7] above.

[1] M. VijayKumar and C. Chandrasekar, Spatial Statistical Model for Predicting Crime Behavior Based On the Analysis of Hotspot Mapping, published in EJSR 54 (2011), plagiarized from publication [6] above.

(Thanks to investigator Dan Meyer for indirectly bringing this to our attention.)

This newly published study, done by marketing experts at two universities, demonstrates how you can, if you like, make simple, clear sense of complicated, not-well-understood biological/medical/psychological/political phenomena:

“The Fluctuating Female Vote — Politics, Religion, and the Ovulatory Cycle,” Kristina M. Durante [pictured here], Ashley Rae, Vladas Griskevicius [also pictured here], Psychological Science, epub April 23, 2013. The authors, at the University of Texas, San Antonio’s Department of Marketing and at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, explain:

“Each month, many women experience an ovulatory cycle that regulates fertility. Although research has found that this cycle influences women’s mating preferences, we proposed that it might also change women’s political and religious views. Building on theory suggesting that political and religious orientation are linked to reproductive goals, we tested how fertility influenced women’s politics, religiosity, and voting in the 2012 U.S. presidential election. In two studies with large and diverse samples, ovulation had drastically different effects on single women and women in committed relationships. Ovulation led single women to become more liberal, less religious, and more likely to vote for Barack Obama. In contrast, ovulation led women in committed relationships to become more conservative, more religious, and more likely to vote for Mitt Romney.”

Co-authors Durante and Griskevicius have also, together and singly, published simple, clear explanations of other complicated matters. Researchers in the fields of biology, medicine, psychology and politics might gain insight from studying how Durante and Griskevicius manage to reduce complexity into simplicity.

(Thanks to investigator Geoffrey Miller for bringing this to our attention.)

BONUS: We have a regular column (in the Annals of Improbable Research) called “Soft Is Hard — Further evidence why the “soft” sciences are the hardest to do well”.

If you were compiling a compendium of everyday household items which can pose a danger, stepladders, drain-cleaning chemicals, and hot saucepans might immediately spring to mind. Feather duvets would quite probably be considerably further down the list.
But don’t be lulled into a false sense of security by their lightweight, soft and fluffy demeanour -  they can be hazardous.

Authors Inase Naohiko, Oba Takehiko, Umino Takeshi, Sekiguchi Shigeo and Yoshizawa Yasuyuki draw attention to the dangers in their 2005 paper for Allergy in Practice (Vol 332; pp. 462-465)
‘Bird fancier’s lung induced by a feather duvet-feather duvet lung‘

“A 71-year-old woman complained of exertional dyspnea. She used the down quilt in last 3 winter seasons. She was diagnosed as hypersensitive pneumonia, and it was improved by corticosteroid administration. However, it recurred by the use of the down quilt. Lymphocyte proliferation assay using the BALF cells was positive. In the environmental provocation test, only down quilt was positive. From them, she was diagnosed bird fancier’s lung induced by down quilt. By the administration of methylprednisolone and prednisolone, pulmonary function and laboratory findings were improved obviously.”

Further reading :

• Presenting Features of Feather Duvet Lung

• A Case of Acute Bird Fancier’s Lung Caused by Feather Duvet

• Antigen-specific IgG antibodies in feather duvet lung

[Duvet photo courtesy of uploader Wikicanadashawn at Wikipedia]