Improbable Research

Only a handful (or less) of scientific investigators have ever utilised MRI techniques to track hydration in milky breakfast cereals.But a team of experimenters from Madrid (in collaboration with Nestlé, Switzerland) have done just that. They were working on the basis that :

“When they are soaked in milk, they may present lost [sic] of crispness and organoleptics which are undesirable characteristics for consumers.”

To investigate, various types of cereals (with milk) were scanned by a Bruker BIOSPEC 47/40 spectrometer, operating at 200 MHz (like this one).

“MRI experiments were made in 2D Proton Density-weighed, Rapid Acquisition with Relaxation Enhancement (RARE) sequences, targeted at obtaining 15 slices from each image during 60 minutes, every 120 seconds and during 30 minutes, every 60 seconds, depending on the sample.”

Findings :

“According to the rehydration level, no advisable clustering behavior was found. Nevertheless, some differences were noticeable between the coating, the type of milk and the variety of cereals.”

Full details are published in the journal Procedia – Food Science 00 (2011) 000–000 MRI texture analysis as means for addressing rehydration and milk diffusion in cereals presented at the 11th International Congress on Engineering and Food (ICEF11)

BONUS: A look back: the 1995 Ig Nobel Physics Prize was awarded to D.M.R. Georget, R. Parker, and A.C. Smith, of the Institute of Food Research, Norwich, England, for their rigorous analysis of soggy breakfast cereal, published in the report entitled “A Study of the Effects of Water Content on the Compaction Behaviour of Breakfast Cereal Flakes,” published in Powder Technology, November, 1994, vol. 81, no. 2, pp. 189-96.

If you choose to approach a bear, you also get to choose which way to go about your task. Here are three of the many ways.

1. Troy Hurtubise designed, personally tested, then used a purpose-built suit of armor. Hurtubise was later, in 1998, awarded an Ig Nobel Prize in the field of safety engineering.

2. Anthony Victor Saunders and Adam Warwick Bell invented and patented what they call a “pop-up device for deterring an attacking animal”.

3. The unnamed person in this video used a flute. (Thanks to investigator Bruce Petschek for bringing it to our attention.)

BONUS: It’s always worth another look back at Troy Hurtubise in action:

SPECIAL BONUS: Troy eats ants:

BONUS: The special Mathematicians & Bears issue of the Annals of Improbable Research

Apocryphal animals are notoriously difficult to tag and track. This new study tells of a technological advance that could make a difference:

“Indirect Tracking of Drop Bears Using GNSS Technology“,” Volker Janssen [pictured here], Australian Geographer, Volume 43, Issue 4, December 2012. (Thanks to investigator Tom Gill for bringing this to our attention.) The author, at the University of Tasmania, explains:

“The use of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) technology has been responsible for significant advances in [animal tagging and tracking] by providing the ability to obtain accurate, regular and frequent estimates of the changing distributions of many rare animal species. Employing conventional GNSS-based animal tracking methods to study drop bears is extremely difficult due to their habitat. The dense tree canopy regularly causes extended periods of complete GNSS signal loss, and sensors are often damaged during attacks on prey. This paper proposes an indirect, GNSS-based method for tracking drop bears. This involves tracking the prey rather than the predator in order to map the population of drop bears in a particular area. The method can be used to effectively estimate the number of drop bears in the study area. Analysis of the collected data provides valuable insights into the hunting behaviour of drop bears and has implications for a better understanding of the geographical distribution of other rare species, including hoop snakes and bunyips.”

The orchestrator of this performance writes:

While following on the coat tail of my first popular video “Queen Bohemian Rhapsody Old School Computer Remix” I tried to change the venue and built a couple of robot bands (yeah! machines that play actual instruments). These videos didn’t fair as well so i decided to go back to the basics and create another video utilizing old computer equipment. For this video i recorded each instrument separately with a decent stereo mic and i also used a mixer to adjust the audio levels. i would like to point out that absolutely no sampling or audio effects were used.

Instruments: 

Over the course of the last year Improbable has attempted to address the question of whether the number of new patents for golfballs might or might not be used as a continuous gauge for human ingenuity. With the recent publication of December’s figures, The full results are now in. 

Statistics :

Highest monthly level  : 11 golfball patents

Lowest monthly level : 2 golfball patents

Yearly total : 98 golfball patents

Arithmetic mean (per month) : 8.17 (approx.) golfball patents

Median : 8 (monthly) : golfball patents

Mode : 7 (monthly) : golfball patents

Rate per day : (bearing in mind that 2012 was a leapyear) : 0.2678 (approx.)

Days per golfball :  1 new golfball patent every 3.7347 days (approx.)

Questions :

[1] Is the rate likely to increase or decrease?

• • • • Based on the need for new golfball designs.

• • • • Countered by the increasing difficulties in perfecting such a (relatively) simple device.

• • • • Observing the facilitating effects of technological progress.

• • • • Standing on the shoulders of previous inventors.

[2] Are there a finite number of conceivable golfballs?

[3] With sufficient effort, might we oneday arrive at the best of all possible golfballs?

• • • • Or instead develop a branching taxonomy of gofballs?

[4] Drawing on post-constructural interpretations of materiality, can we meaningfully contrast golfball epiphenomena manifested in transformational causal renderings of co-occurrent assemblages with the corresponding contextual modalities of their spatiotemporal articulated relatedness – or not?

Caution :
With regard to forward-looking statements: Historical data should not be taken as an indicator of future performance. The Golfball Index may go down as well as up.

Disclaimer :
While every reasonable effort has been made to ensure that the information provided is accurate(ish), no guarantees for the currency or accuracy of the information are made. Representations of data are provided ‘as-is’ without express or implied warranty of any kind, including but not limited to fitness for a particular purpose, or warranties regarding satisfactory quality, security, compatibility, security or accuracy.

Many thanks to all the resourceful golfball inventors across the globe, without whom none of this would have been possible.

Note: “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future”  Niels Bohr (1885-1962)