Improbable Research

There is an Improbable Event coming at Erasmus University Rotterdam (the Netherlands): on Tuesday, April 1 (16.00-17.30h), Ig Nobel prize winner and European Bureau Chief of Improbable Research Kees Moeliker will give the 2008 ‘Lof der Zotheid-lecture’ titled ‘Is there life after a dead duck?’. In fluent Dutch, Moeliker will speak about ?Onwaarschijnlijk Onderzoek en de Ig Nobel prijzen?, highlighting the achievement that won him an Ig Nobel prize and his recent quest to acquire specimens of the rapidly declining pubic louse. As a supporting act, medical ethicist Erwin Kompanje will reveal his discovery, in the 16th century medical literature, of a remarkable but forgotten ‘urological’ device.

Click here for general information.
Location: Woudestein Campus, Zaal B-3, Burg. Oudlaan 50, Rotterdam. Entrance free. Here is a map.

Dawn Parker has joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists. She says:

I interviewed for my current highly interdisciplinary position at George Mason on a 95 degree day in April, on which my luxuriant flowing tresses were nothing short of Medusa-like, meeting with the Provost and deans of three colleges as part of the interview process. The university subsequently made me a very attractive offer well tailored to my diverse strengths and activities. I accepted the job with confidence, knowing that if my hair were acceptable to the broader university community, my ideas as a whole were likely to be as well. My research on agent-based models of land-use and land-cover change resides at the ecotone between economics and geography.

Dawn Cassandra Parker, PhD, LFHCfS
Assistant Professor, Department of Computational Social Science, Kransnow Institute for Advanced Study
Affiliate, Departments of Environmental Science and Policy, Geography, and Geoinformation and Earth Systems Science, College of Science
George Mason University
Fairfax, Virginia, USA

Research on the effects of thick versus thin bar glasses on injuries incurred in bar fights has paid off big for Professor Jonathan Shepherd of Cardiff University. The university notes:

Professor Jonathan Shepherd, Professor of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery and Director of the University?s Violence and Society Research Group, has been appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his services to healthcare and the criminal justice system…. Professor Shepherd conducted the first field research comparing injuries from toughened glasses used in bar and nightclub fights to those of glass which becomes sharp-edged. His work prompted many bars to switch to tougher glass in the late 1990s, leading to a fall in injuries. [His work] was recently recognised with the 2008 Stockholm Prize in Criminology, an international prize recognising outstanding achievement in the field of criminological research and its application.

(Thanks to investigator Betsy Devine for bringing this to our attention.)

David H. North has joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists. Carol Lucier, who nominated him, says:

In addition to having luxuriant flowing long hair, David is an analytical chemist for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, working in the Dartmouth Laboratory in Nova Scotia on the analysis of antibiotic drug residues in fish. The picture shows David at work, surrounded by the millions of dollars worth of equipment he uses. His hair is even more luxuriant and flowing today.

David H North, MS, LFHCfS
Chemist
Canadian Food Inspection Agency
Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada

Siegfried Peer has joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists. He says:

I have got luxurious flowing hair in general, but I have luxuriously flowing hair only once or twice a week. I am Professor of Radiology at the Innsbruck Medical University Department of Radiology, where I am the section head of the sections for diagnostic and interventional sonography and general radiology. When I am not scratching at the sound barrier, filling intestines with various types of sticky contrast material or reporting on piles of X-rays, I am also a semiprofessional Tango Argentino dancer and teacher.

Siegfried Peer, MD, LFHCfS
Professor of Radiology
Innsbruck Medical University, Department of Radiology
Innsbruck, Austria