Improbable Research

More about ‘The Slimeball’

Martin Gardiner — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 05:04:44 +0000

Here’s more about The Slimeball:

Shaving foam and baby diapers might not be the first key components to spring to mind if you were tasked with developing a gargantuan Non Lethal Weapon (NLW) for use against enemy warships.
But spring they did, however, to the mind of Lieutenant Commander Daniel L. Whitehurst of the United States Navy – for he describes just such a weapon in a 2009 research report originating from the Air Command And Staff College, Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. (“The Intellectual and Leadership Center of the Air Force.”)

That weapon is ‘The Slimeball’

“In terms of feasibility, advisability, deliverability, and applicability, the Slimeball can offer new and possibly vital options to decision makers in pursuit of our national interests.”

– explains the author, and goes on to outline how it works.

“’The Slimeball,’ consists of a sticky foam-based floating surface barrier that resists efforts to remove it, paired with a chemical gel that restricts movement below the surface.”

First, here are the details of the foamy part :

“The primary component of such a material would contain properties commonly found in shaving cream, due to its deliverability in a compressed state and high expansive capacity, estimated to be up to 850 percent of its compressed volume.”

But, readers may be wondering, how could such an ephemeral bubbly material persist for any substantial time in seawater? For, as the author himself notes:

“As commercially formulated, shaving cream is too insubstantial to create more than a nuisance to vessels.”

The solution to this puzzle was elusive until inspiration arrived from an unlikely source:

“When in doubt, consult a doctor. Doctor Seuss, that is. In his book ‘Bartholomew and the Oobleck’ a kingdom finds itself swamped and unable to function after it is inundated with a green, persistent, sticky slime.”

“Oobleck’s primary characteristic, of getting thicker and more viscous when stressed, falls into the non-Newtonian category of rheopectic fluids, and this seemed to be a step towards solving the problem.”

And, moving on, to implement the underwater component of The Slimeball – the author suggests a material called (PAM), a commercially-available flocculating agent that forms a semi-solid gel in the presence of water.

“This material is widely available for numerous commercial applications from waste management to horticulture to baby diapers.”

Thus The Slimeball takes shape – but when, where and under what circumstances could The Slimeball be successfully deployed? Unusually perhaps for an unclassified document, the author names three ‘proposed targets’ for Slimeball.

Proposed Target 1: Boossaaso, Somalia
Proposed Target 2: Bandar Abbas, Iran
Proposed Target 3: Sanya, Hainan Island, China

Suggesting that the ‘element of surprise’ might not be a very important factor for the deployment of Slimeball. Either way, given ongoing global tensions, could we see the The Slimeball in action before long? – maybe, for example’ in the strait of Hormuz? The author believes it may be deemed appropriate:

“The cumulative effects of multiple 1,000 pound Slimeball warheads [] if accurately placed, could cover much if not all of the harbor entrances with between 5 and 8 weapons.”

The full slimy details are available here from the Air University
: The Slimeball: The Development of Broad-Scale Maritime Non-Lethal Weaponry

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Bryan Boling joins LFHCfS

Marc Abrahams — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 19:26:12 +0000

Bryan Boling has joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS). He says:

I don’t own this hair, I simply coexist with it. Due to these lovely locks most of my colleagues refer to me as “the hippie”. I am currently a senior graduate researcher in the Aerospace Engineering department at Georgia Tech. I work primarily in regulatory policy for civil aviation, and plan on finishing my Ph.D. soon. I’ve been told if I want to transition to a real job I’ll need to cut this hair, but that’s just convinced me that I don’t need a “real job”.

Bryan Boling, LFHCfS
Senior Graduate Researcher
Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory
Georgia Tech
Atlanta, Georgia, USA

Eiko Fried joins LFHCfS

Marc Abrahams — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 19:06:07 +0000

Eiko Fried has joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS). He says:

In all modesty, I do believe that I was bestowed upon by our Noodly Creator with luxuriant flowing hair. The resemblance of my hair with His Noodly Grace is evident, which can be seen as proof that HE created us in his very image. I myself am an evolutionary psychopathologist, delving deep into the noodly mysteries that lie within what we consider today as the human species. My two hairiest fields of interest are:

(1) The human genome and its double-helix, closely resembling Fusilli, Gemelli, but above all Rotini.

(2) The human brain with its tangle of spaghetti-like axons and meatball-like structures. Again, I see a close resemblance to Him who created trees, mountains, midgits and probably much more.

Eiko Fried, LFHCfS
Ph.D. student in psychology
Freie Universität Berlin
Berlin, Germany

Roland Pfister joins LFHCfS

Marc Abrahams — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 18:53:01 +0000

Roland Pfister has joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS). He says:

I am pleased to be a member in the combined programme of flowing and facial hair. My latest publication is ”Effective rotations: Action-effects determine the interplay of mental and manual rotations,” Janczyk, M., Pfister, R., Crognale, M., & Kunde, W., (in press) Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

Roland Pfister, Dipl.-Psych., LFHCfS
PhD student
Department of Psychology
University of Würzburg
Würzburg, Germany

Genetics and ever so much, more or less, of choral singers

Marc Abrahams — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 18:04:50 +0000

This research study tries to encompass many worlds of knowledge or possible knowledge, or wished-for knowledge:

“AVPR1A and SLC6A4 Polymorphisms in Choral Singers and Non-Musicians: A Gene Association Study,” Andrew P. Morley, Madan Narayanan, Rebecca Mines, Ashraf Molokhia, Sebastian Baxter, Gavin Craig, Cathryn M. Lewis, Ian Craig, PLoS ONE 7(2), 2012: e31763 The authors, at King’s Health Partners Academic Health Sciences Centre in London and at King’s College London, report:

“We conducted a genetic association study on 523 participants to establish whether alleles at these polymorphisms occur more commonly in choral singers than in those not regularly participating in organised musical activity (non-musicians)…. In a related musical project involving one participating choir, a new 40-part unaccompanied choral work, ‘Allele’, was composed and broadcast on national radio. In the piece, each singer’s part incorporated their personal RS3 genotype.”

BONUS: An essay by Michael Zev Gordon [pictured here], the composer of the musical piece, and a Royal Society of Medicine press release about the music.

BONUS: Genetic Changes in a Population of Boreal Chorus Frogs

A look back at the animals, and forward to Dundee

Marc Abrahams — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 15:05:33 +0000

Here’s a video snippet from last year’s University of Dundee show on the Ig Nobel Tour of the UK. As the university describes it:

The Dundee Ig Nobel Show in 2011 opened with a parade of animals from D’Arcy Thompson‘s personal collections. Also featuring a plate of peas (explained later), Prof. Sue Black and Principal Prof. Pete Downes.

We will return to Dundee on Saturday night, March 17, on this year’s Ig Nobel Tour of the UK.

This year’s show will feature Marc Abrahams, wasabi-fume fire alarm inventor Makoto Imai, co-discoverer of fish-fart-communications Ben Wilson, Sergio Della Sala (who will describe Bulgarian cinema seating in right, mixed, and left handers), and a St. Patrick’s Day Special premiere involving William McGonagall: The modern public premiere of a poem—about Ireland—by Scotland (and maybe the world’s) most beloved bad poet William McGonagall [whose finest bad works were created, premiered and to some extent tolerated in Dundee] This poem has never been published in any book, and almost certainly has not been performed for more than a century, if ever. —TICKETS are available now.

Body parts, and then some

Marc Abrahams — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 05:16:02 +0000

This curious music video, featuring a naked woman and then some,and then less, and then more, is more or less about body parts. So is the January/February issue of the Annals of Improbable Research, but in different ways.

(via io9)

Dr. Redfield, her pink hair, arsenic life and all that

Marc Abrahams — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 22:45:05 +0000

A mini-documentary about pink-haired Dr. Redfield and her take on the much-publicized claim that a form of life in a lake in California has DNA with a curious chemical composition:

[HT @scicurious]

Food-related medical terms (food for thought)

Gwinyai Masukume — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 22:05:15 +0000

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Gwinyai Masukume is joining our gang of regular bloggers. This is his first post at improbable.com. Please welcome him!]

Besides food acting as source of energy for the brain during thinking, food (drinks, utensils, waiters, etc.) can literally be used for thought. Various situations encountered in medicine have been named after food related entities such as coca cola colored urine, bean shaped G-spot, dinner fork deformity – there are hundreds of such medical culinary terms in the literature. I write about them, in my blog Food related medical terms.

For instance seeing port-wine colored amniotic fluid could clinch the diagnosis of placental abruption – a life threatening condition in which a normally sited placenta (which incidentally means a flat cake) separates prematurely from the womb (which incidentally is pear-shaped). So, a life (or lives) can be saved by noticing port-wine amniotic fluid.

In 2012s first issue of the Croatian Medical Journal, I discuss the critical importance of food related medical analogies [here's the PDF]. I hope you find the discussion tasteful.

I guess this career in gastronomic medicine was inevitable as I come from Zimbabwe—a place that on the map is more or less shaped like a teapot. At the teapot’s snout is Victoria Falls; its other name, Mosi-oa-Tunya, means “the smoke that thunders”.

Food for thought.

BONUS: AMNIOTIC FLUID IS ALSO KNOWN AS LIQUOR

Ig Nobel winners gathering in India

Marc Abrahams — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 20:42:29 +0000

The APOGEE science festival, at BITS in Pilani, India has invited a collection of Ig Nobel Prize winners to come star in the festival on March 17 and 18. They have produced this nifty graphic, featuring the six Ig Nobellians who plan to take part:

The Ig Nobel winners themselves are excited to go—and are experiencing a different kind of excitement as each wrestles in possibly-friendly fashion with India’s government bureaucracy, which keeps tossing new, innovative paperwork hurdles (visa applications and ever-so-much-more) at them.

Will the Ig Nobellians succeed in the battle to deal with the ever-changing Indian government paperwork? Read this (one of our columns in The Guardian) for some background about the tradition and skill the bureaucrats bring to the contest.