We have had excellent support from the diplomatic community here in Geneva over the past eight years when Dr. Tui was a secret general. Of course, I'm part of the team as well. And we really appreciate your confidence and your support and cooperation. On a personal level, I was encouraged by many of you during my campaign for the post of ITU secret general. It was a really very memorable period for me. To tell you a secret, your support is critical for my success. That when Chinese government talked about my candidate and asked the Chinese mission in Geneva to get some kind of feedback from you. And the Chinese ambassador told me over the last two years, they always get very good support, very good comments from all of you that, you know, that Chinese government seems to be very confident that if we have clear support from Geneva diplomat family that my chance be elected will be very, very high. So that I take this opportunity to thank all of you for your encouragement, for your confidence to me and to China to support my candidate as secret general over the last two years of campaign period. Indeed, your encouragement and support were most gratifying. And I'm looking forward to working closely with you over the next four years. You talked to me four years or eight years, I said it's better to say four years at this moment. This morning we planned about short meeting, about one hour. So I planned to have such arrangement that I give first my opening remarks, then my colleagues will each give you very short remarks, and then I will provide very short briefings on the result of PP 14. And then we show you some small video to give you idea what PP 14 look like. And finally, the video on the ITU's 150th anniversary celebration information. And in the end I hope, you know, we will have time before 11.30 some time for you to, if you wish to pick the floor to say a few words. And then after 11.30, we prepared a very closed drink. We don't call it cocktail, because he corrected me, cocktail with alcohol, without alcohol. So we have some coffee or tea and a soft drink outside of a purple room. So we would like to have this opportunity to allow you, all of my colleagues, or have a chance to talk to you, to have some kind of chat. So this is something we arranged for this one hour session. As you know, during my campaign, I had a lot of interviews. In one of the interviews, the journalist asked me to use three words to characterize my self. So I used three words, vision, action, and harmony. I was very pleased. I published this interview very late at the beginning of October. Then our Excellency Ambassador of the United States already addressed to me that she liked these three words, particularly like the word harmony. I said, how could you manage to find this word? It's just published, hide it in the magazine, very, very in the corner. She said, do you think that I'm just sitting down there? I don't know what you're doing. I have to do my work, you know, that she liked that very much. I'm very, very much pleased that I'm for this support. I consider this a support because you really want to help me to guide my action in the future. So the vision was clearly delivered by membership at the Plenary Potential Conference in Busan at the end of last year. And particularly through the strategic and financial plans. And now it is up to us to take the action necessary to make that vision a reality. So I'm confident that we will do together to reach the goal, of course, in harmony. And it is an incredible honor for me to lead the Union forwards. And you can count on me to live up to your expectations. So dear students and colleagues, as we move forward into a new mandate for ITU, over the next four years, we face significant challenges, of course, also opportunities. The challenges which include connecting those not connected yet, encouraging investment for telecommunications ICTs to help our industries sustainable in their business in a more sustainable environment. We also see, of course, incredible opportunities ahead, both in ITU itself and across the wide ICT sector, which continues to evolve and diversity at tremendous speed in the 21st century. I'm very confident that ITU will be able to continue meeting the challenges ahead as well as embracing the new opportunities delivered by the changing ICT marketplace, backed by the deep knowledge and expertise of ITU staff and membership and our proven ability over 150 years to adapt, reform, and innovate to stay in turn with market demands. So ladies and gentlemen, before giving you some more information about the outcome of a PP-14, I would like to take this opportunity to introduce the new members of the new management team. The first, I start with my deputy, Deputy Secretary General, Mr. Mark Johnson. I think that all of you know him very well because he was the director of the San Jose Bureau in the last eight years. But there is one thing you might know that. It was him who kicked me out eight years ago when I was director of the San Jose Bureau. He said he liked that seat, so he kicked me out. Now last eight years I was Deputy Secretary General, then he said he liked to have that poster again, so he kicked me out. So this is very dangerous to me. So I said to be careful that the doctor kicked me out too quickly. And he was very successful in managing TSP director over the last eight years. Now I think that according to ITU protocols, I'd like to introduce my colleague, Mr. Frans Orranzi from France, he's from UK, he's from France. I think I also, you know him very well. He was director of Radio Communication Bureau for last eight, four years. He has done a wonderful job in the past so that he was not challenged by anybody during the campaign period and during the election he was easily elected. So he will take second term from this year. And he was unlucky, he has to run four rounds last time. But anyway he successfully managed to survive. So next I'd like to introduce you to my colleague, Mr. Brachy Masano from Burkina Faso. And he was director of standardizing, not the standardizing bureau, it's not my hobby for standardizing bureau. He was the director of telecom development bureau for last four years. And he also has done one of a job and people appreciate him and his job very much so that he was easily re-elected at the last PP 14 and he will take second term from this year. Last, of course not least, it's newcomer, last upon manager of our member of tele-management team, it's Mr. Chesab Lee from Republic of Korea. And he's not very strange to us because he has been in ITU, in Geneva, in ITU for last 20 years. And he was an expert from Korea and he's well known to the standardizing world. So welcome you to join us. So after my speech, each of my colleagues will give their own speech to you. So I don't want to take too much time to introduce them further. To distinguished colleagues, let me now turn to the most important event that has happened since the last ambassador meeting here in Geneva, which of course was the 2014 Plenary Potential Conference in Busan in the Republic of Korea. The conference took place in Busan from 20 October to 7 November. And it went very, very well indeed. With record attendance, we were honored for the first time by the presence of two presidents, President of Korea, the host country president, and the president of Rwanda. As well as 76 ministers, 36 deputy ministers and many ambassadors, I think that is 56 ambassadors. PP 14 was a great success, both for membership and for the union. The conference dealt with 452 proposals from members and created 19 new resolutions via amending 51. For the first time since 1992, there was no amendments were made to the ITU constitution and ITU convention. And also it's the first time in the recent history, or over the last two decades, there was no vote for any resolution, any decision, including those very sensitive issues. We used to have vote in the past up to last time 2010. This time we managed to adopt those resolutions without vote. So we are very pleased with that one. Of course we appreciate very much your contribution, your support. And I think that this is something we really keep this as a historic event in ITU history. The strategic applying for 2016 to 2019 was backed by the Connect 2020 agenda, which has specific goals and targets for the global ICT sector. The financial applying was approved with a request to balance 13 million Swiss francs over the next four years. But management have to work hard to find ways to cover this gap. The final act was signed by 150 countries just on site. It coincided with our 150th history and we celebrate our 150th years this year. PP14 also featured a number of important innovations, including the first ever GEM tech awards for ladies, the young ICT policy leaders program, and a series of five Connect 2020 roundtables. We were very grateful for all the contributions from members and we are confident that we will meet the targets set for us. Let me close this remarks by saying once more again how much we appreciate your support and how important this will be during ITU's 150th anniversary year celebration year. This year we celebrated 150th anniversary since we were set up 150 years ago. And I would like to thank the founding members for their ongoing commitment and contributions. And you might see that at this slide there's only 16 members, not 20, there's some history behind because over the last 150 years some countries split. I think that Australia and Hungary split and Norway and Sweden split but we also have merged seven states merged to form today's Germany. So all together at this slide you see 16 national flags but in fact we are very pleased, we are very proud ITU was founded by 20 European states 150 years ago. So let me say how pleased I'm that we have the resulting 16 member states here with us today. The main celebration of 150th will be taking place here in Geneva on Sunday 17th of May with the World Telecommunication and Information Saturday happening right in the middle of the 2015 session of ITU Council which runs from 12th to 20th of May. ITU circular data number one of 2015 invites members to submit their candidates for the ITU 150 awards. This year we will not do the normal ITU award telecom and information that they award. In the past from 2006 up to now we award individuals maximum five but this time we consider this is a unique and very important moment for ITU to see the recognized contributions by individuals. So we are not limited this time for five award individuals. We invite our member states to submit their individuals and the guidelines, criteria we have you posted on the web very soon. And we also invite our sector members, associates and academy members to submit their candidate to be recognized by ITU as a distinguished individual for award as a sector award. So that one you know the guidelines criteria also may be posted on web very soon. We have deadline. We set up a deadline of 15th of March. You know that after the deadline we have to review the candidate and then ask competent bodies to establish shortlist then we have to fix the awardees. We need some fix time. So the 15th of March will be set up as nomination by our members. So this information is the first time we announced. So please take this announcement seriously and invite your capitalists to help us to prepare the nominations of individuals. And we also try to organize a very special session of celebrations in France, in Paris because we noted that in Paris, the palace where the historic document signed 150 years ago is still there, still open for their public functions. So we discussed with French authorities to see if we can organize a special session of a celebration in Paris at the same historic place where the document was signed and the document was still there, I heard, so that we are talking with French authorities to prepare this celebration. The date has not been fixed because we are waiting for the French authorities to have the dignities to be available to our meeting, so the date, most probably we are being April, but as soon as the date announced we were informing you, so we would like to invite you to join us at that celebration as well. Of course we invite all the members to help us to organize a celebration at their country and we would like to also find ways to connect those celebrations with our main celebrations here in Geneva. So always through this year we will be focusing on different ICT related themes each month and we strongly encourage ITU members to associate their ITU 150 activities to themes of particular interests of each month and please see the website for further details. Contributions from partners will help to support various global activities related to 150th anniversary, engaging members and promoting the unit. I would like therefore to highlight the contribution from our gold partners, they already committed themselves as gold partners. Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, we also have several partners already committed, Ghana, Zimbabwe and the bronze partners, Central Africa Republic, NRTV, Huawei, Imazet, NTT Group, Rout and Schwartz and Ruth Terkham. As we present very much their early commitment for partners to join us for celebrating our 150th anniversary, I also invite all of you to see some other opportunities to join us as partners or as sponsors. As well as the 150 events, we also have a busy year ahead of us this year, with major ITU events including the WISIS Forum immediately after ITU Council in May and WISIS Forum we organize annually in May in Geneva together with UNESCO, UNDP, UNCTAC, it's a very important process for us and people appreciate it very much and UN General Assembly still debate on this process so we'd like to invite you to support us for this continuation of WISIS process. The global symposium for regulators in Ghana, in Kapong, sorry, in June, ITU Telecom World 2015 will be hosted by Hungary in October, first half of October. And then the year's biggest event, the World Radio Communication Conference, WRC 15, running through the whole month of November will be held in Geneva. And also, and we will have WITIS, the World Telecom Index Conference, be hosted by Japan in December this year. And through the year, and we will also launch a campaign for small, medium-sized entrepreneurs. And I think that this is a good opportunity for us to see the SMEs, who made a lot of contribution to the national economy, could be also invited by international organizations like ITU to provide them good opportunities to networking and to form partnership and to attract a new investment. So that we'd like to also focus on these SMEs throughout this year. So we will have further information offered to you very soon. So throughout the year, we will be counting on your continued support in addressing the challenges and setting the opportunities ahead of us. As you know, I'm personally committed to strengthening cooperation with the membership and with partners. And to increase transparency is quite important for us and efficiency within ITU. Together, I'm confident that we can connect the world with a better telecommunication and ICT services and deliver a better life to all the world's people and let me invite you to continue supporting us in this endeavor.


This study aims to evaluate cotton research publishing patterns using information science methods, including bibliometrics, scientometrics, science mapping, and visualization, through the use of citation databases such as Scopus, Web of Science, WOS, and Google Scholars. The results show that the USA has the highest total record counts, while China published the most papers in the last decade. The ACE viewer was used to create network and overlay visualizations, revealing co-occurrence and clusters of connected publications, country input, author collaboration, and interrelated research topics based on titles and abstracts. These visualizations provide exploratory information on current state and potential future developments in the scientific field of cotton research. This article was authored by Carmen Stopa, Maria Makiewicz-Taleksik, and Toma Bartle.


od. You can't keep it all straight. It's just it's all tangled And in case I didn't say it enough that doesn't mean streamers doing this is okay or ethical Why are you bothering with any of this? Legal at all I am simply stating what I believe to be the truth about people who go to watch twitch streams react and Nothing though Nothing has nothing to do with the principles or the legality or anything Mm-hmm.  He's guys of Maron. He's an idiot like completely 180 personality wise Well, I would I would argue we had three different versions of her The stream the conversation with Jay and this video Yeah, well this video her tone is the same in her conversation I think this one's a bit different She holds herself as peacefully as she did in a conversation with Jay But she's almost as filled with venom as she was in the live version. Yeah, that's absolutely a snake A lot of toxic feminine in here. Oh, yeah Actually is in my humble opinion not to mention that the lack of separation between personal grievances about Hassan and General comments about react streamers on twitch as something you projected into the video Jay made sure to use Hassan as an example of a problem in twitch The whole makes the video really hard to watch I am the least biased person because I am both a react streamer on twitch and someone who makes pre-prepared content on YouTube Ah Can you believe she just said that she's the least biased least biased So weird because Bring a streams on twitch and he makes content that's reactions on YouTube and he makes prepared YouTube content Bring you by her metrics. You're the least biased, too. Do you agree with her least biased? But didn't remember she said that I would have been because I was one of the people in Jay's video Who agreed with him? Oh, right? You don't count your Jay friend, right? Yeah, right, and I mean, of course, they might be there's no bias from Denim somebody who does the thing that Jay was criticizing in the video and someone who is desperately trying to get Hassan's attention We're so close to the end. I see the light at the time. Get me out of here. Get me out of here, please Remember she is the least biased, okay? There's no reason why she would have any bias in relation to all of No, investment in legitimizing this form of content I'm biased I think personally that the coverage has been Objective there and insightful You can see her mouth moving a lot, but she's just chewing so don't worry I Know bias Next time. Can you please just end the stream? Can you please just end the stream? I am the least biased person because I am both a reaction around which and someone who makes me prepare content on YouTube Thank you for your time. I hope you had a great day Watching this and I hope I made some points. Some people agreed with thank yous agent You didn't point to you agreed with it's time But comments, okay Uh, we're here we're at comment showcase kappa. Oh Hello, what does YouTube have to say fist you got old Jay? I would suggest we talk about this again denims or not You seem pretty locked in on all of this so it might be entirely pointless ultimately considering your position beforehand I suppose you are saying there are good points in the video, but you just don't like bits of it is a relatively good result Jay still being too nice Yep, what else we got because of course, this is gonna be a nice little selection of comments Who wants to take this you are someone who spends more than two seconds writing a YouTube comment about why you dislike someone or something? So much I do not value or respect your opinion I've been hypocritical saying that in a 24-minute video about how much you dislike this video Yeah, that's what we concluded. That's an accurate observation The disability point I think is on Hassan he should have explained his point better So there's no ambiguous ambiguity as to what he was trying to communicate But of course it's Hassan and he doesn't explain himself and of course he gets a pass on everything He says because it's Hassan Mm-hmm Yeah, a lot of defense for him be the case and just adding to things he didn't say as shit All right Complaining that no streamer would ever end stream instead of grab filler content is Insanity basically what you are proposing is that instead of ending the stream? You should instead break the law by infringing on someone else's content. Yes, lots of people do it No, that does not make it okay And yes, it is illegal to simply watch someone's video if you do not make any commentary or transformative editions Yes, this can be a difficult problem for streamers to solve but that doesn't mean you should break the law to deal with it Would you tell a worker on break to just steal a candy bar from the store if they're hungry on their break? Yes, I'm will aware of a copyright infringement is not theft Yeah, but I'm trying to appeal to principles rather than the example here. Well, it is theft Pretty much trying to go under the the super uber deep technicality. Oh, I haven't stolen a thing I don't have a thing like if I download a movie illegally. I haven't deprived someone of that that thing It's I've just made an extra copy. I I'm not taking I'm making Hey guys, let's start a worldwide search because I think she lost a sense of humor when she thinks Jay saying and the stream is not a joke I think it's both.   You're like, I can't end it I can't end it. I'll lose viewers What do we have next? Hey guys, let's start. Oh, it's gone. No, that was the previous one. This is the next one He spends he spends two hours on the ten minute video if I've audience loss Nice Knows me. Well, they know us.  This is embarrassing This is your comment sector for the video This is a bafflingly diss you go ahead bring me I want to hear your impression of Yoni bligh This is a bafflingly disingenuous argument that cuts out a good bit of the footage that counteracts the majority of the criticisms You make the amount of explicitly bad faith takes you make while trying to claim their video as bad faith and quote-unquote spite-driven is insanely self oblivious, especially Because you explicitly ignore the things that ruin your own arguments like wow Don't say they're wrong.  What's that name pretty wins? Wins me wing wins my wing pretty wins Malin Thank you for making this video You articulated when I was thinking the bad faith spite in their video was hard to get through Hassan is obviously no saint and while I've enjoyed his new content. I his news content I was open to other perspective There's a spectrum of video essays and that was far from H bomber guy levels There's nuance and a gradient to transformative content.  Oh God that was a long Yeah Yes, that that is absolutely worse than our relevance absolutely. Yes, no competition at that point I think but I mean I already knew that but but yes, this is this is so much worse She's an awful streamer she's also an awful like I don't even know creative thinker She that was a horrifically bad impression She's lucky that it was Jay that she was against quote-unquote because Jay is so friendly That she didn't get caught up in all the bullshit that she was doing Unfortunately for her. I was just curiously dropping in on all of this.  That's it. Jay's like don't steal stuff.    So I don't think you get credit Okay, it balances out. I suppose I feel a little bit like we we climbed about it, but glad it's done Though I will say that that's just two of three completed we are because last but least It can't be worse. I don't believe you.  You don't know that you can't prove this could be the afterlife You're a ghost now.   Okay, I have oddly good Wi-Fi down. They do they don't It's not don't hit chat. I mean you guys got a week to recharge like I said And then my soul died. Yeah. Oh god another one Hell's got amazing Wi-Fi. Hey, I've completed the Hassan supercut already. There's no way I'm letting that go to waste, okay You shall suffer with me. It is funny though.  That's that's awful It's like the Denim's one. That's that's awful. I Think I Don't know there's something just simpler about the the irrelevant one, you know, like it's uh, it's a little less sinister At least it doesn't come across nearly as sinister to me much more quaint Yeah, especially when he's getting so mad and yelling. It's like I feel like this is just the immediate gut reaction Whereas here you you have the conversation where you backpedal on everything That you said in the stream and then you seem to make a video that is very much predicated on well look I mean it's clout It's it's all it's it's bad faith.  Yeah, she she does what I considered to be a triple dip She Uses Jay as fodder to rip into for a stream And she benefits from the perception that she's actually super reasonable and her and Jay are on great terms on chud logic stream And then she goes and makes a video to try and rip into Jay again to I guess defend the original position to some degree While hoping that it doesn't get compared to that conversation she had with Jay Just wow Just wow just wow Wow That's something else. That's something else to hear all of that in one when one's sitting, you know Hmm, literally, but to hear all of that Just this this Anyone can be a streamer It is confirmed once again Anyone can be a streamer Just gotta believe in yourself And you All of you can be a streamer. It's that easy Yeah, I'm pretty much wiped out. I'm assuming that the you three are similar We're uh, yeah, yeah, we're definitely I think I think my brain needs a rest not necessarily like my body But my brain certainly needs to just think about nothing for a while and reset My soul needs a rest after this rags. My soul is very being filled with the spirit of engines Well, you can't in stream play some videos. No Let's let's let's go to Jay and just play some episodes. Let's get some bar rescue up in here and just let it play We will do a super chest for this stream on the coming Wednesday the reason that was interrupted this week as it as it came was Specifically this this denim supercut got all fucked and I was desperately trying to get it ready before the EFAP happened I didn't want to do this because the Sun is the main event. Okay, you have no idea And I was like Denim's gotta come first.     That's it. I've got so much to live for I'm I'm young and restless and I need to flourish and I disagree after the Denim's video I want to die. No Well, you can injure stream but not mine. I'm gonna go forever But yeah, thank you to dev for joining us for good, I think it was five and a half hours that trooper Wow impressive. Yeah, what a trooper. Hey, what a chat. Hey, that's the we're trooper plus All right, we're super troopers Okay, we made it through the you know, it's not even about the time It's just that we made it through that the Denim's videos. Yeah, those were You I've aged many years Though up well, yeah, but thank you very much for hanging out with us for the time stitch I love the fact that you're like, yeah, let's take on the third boss next week If you you know you you dev at Adam are all invited. It's time to end the arc Okay, it's gonna stop Adam's not gonna be here. I don't you keep you're asking and you're barking up the wrong tree I Are you sure you wouldn't want to do one on son? Working up the wrong tree is it is fun though I told you Adam has taken a vow of celibacy until he finishes the comic. When is he gonna finish the comic? That's a great question and people are asking that question Well Adam hates efap confirmed. Yeah, that's true. That is true. He does You have to get the All of you're gonna have to tell him on the stream. I was not as class So they do tomorrow you're gonna have to tell adam to agree to go on efap. The peer pressure is the only way Remember chat if chat tell you to do something you got to do it So yeah, it works. Um, are we gonna watch the fight club video next week? Oh on the sunday maybe I was like I can't stream two days in a row say Uh, well, it's because I sometimes clash because I got catch up with the drinker for open bars sometimes on sunday So I'll have to make sure that I don't clash with you And of course, I'm assuming you want to grab a time when these two idiots are free as well when you three I'm free off sunday Watch the fight the maggie may fish fight club video Well, I'm I can uh, we need to watch fight club first. I need to re familiarize myself with the movie. I haven't seen it in years Well, we gotta have a we have a watch party and since there's four of us. That's basically transformative right there We could even stream it There you go, put the chat up. We'll meet ourselves Put the chat up every once in a while stay true And uh, try not to die. It'll be great Well, I would say that um With with the talk we just had a little bit about that show everyone should go subscribe to it Adam and sit show, right? That's what's called The sit I know you're saying this to trigger me this sitch and adam show.  Why'd you name it that the superior host's name comes first And then the sidekick's name comes second, you know batman and rob Simon and garfunkel Simon and garfunkel. There you go It's garfunkel got garfunkeld. He did Tomorrow we'll be covering highly requested bio chat for the john oliver Critical race moral and hardy video. Oh, we have a meme here. What does it say?    Just telling me to be evil It just keeps going Uh, but yeah, uh Go watch that stream tomorrow. When does that start when you guys do it 4 p.m. Eastern? What's that in human time? 4 p.m. East How about the only times of how many hours past today's start time for the stream is it It's gonna be kind of uh, it would it would be when do you guys start you start at two or three today? I get started at your your time zone Daily, oh it's almost at 9 p.m. BST Two hours after we usually start this this this bull bill bull. We're gonna have, um, joe louis That's where we start this bull Joe louis. Who is that? Is that a nazi? He's a uh a breadtuber.  We got a guest next week probably coming on kind of was the made the rounds He called an asian guy white presenting recently on twitch Okay, you see the club And he's like, what do you know you're white presenting and everyone's like he's asian. What are you talking about white present white presenting This means saturday. Oh it feels too cloud-wieldy doesn't it? But yes, that that'll be great and everyone's check it out links in the scrapsians Uh, is there anything you would like to say fringo and rugo? I'm tired of all this My head's tired and I'm worn out I'm gonna go shower and then probably take a nap Very well Thank you all so much for helping us through this. That was tough. Thank you. Yes I'm sorry.  Thank you so much for the donations and I hope you have a wonderful night We shall see you on wednesday Good night. Everybody. Goodbye. Good night. See you later Bye. Toodaloo. See ya. Ciao


I swear if all of these books are like shitty non-fiction books I've read I'm gonna, I'm gonna throw my laptop out the window. Welcome back to my channel I hope you're all good. Today we're gonna be reacting to the 10 highest rated books I've ever read on Goodreads and whether I agree that they should be the 10 highest books I've ever read. They probably won't be, it won't be like my 10 favourite books of all time.  But I am hoping that it's gonna be mostly books that I think were really good as well. I'm hoping we're not gonna have many howlers but it'll be interesting to see. I don't think I've ever looked this up but I've seen a few people do this video and it always looks really fun. I think if I had to guess, if I had to put my thinking cap on, I would guess that we're gonna see some, I feel like fantasy, like kind of classic fantasy often gets highly rated. We're gonna see series like second or third books in series I think because with series like you typically only read on if you're really enjoying it. So by the time you get to the end of a series the people who are reading that book are the people who have loved the rest of the series so I would think like later editions in series are always more highly rated. Other than that I don't really know what to expect. Maybe something like Six of Crows or Crooked Kingdom I reckon will be on there. We're gonna go from highest rated to 10th because that's like the easiest way for me to sort it but I'm gonna zoom in so that I'm hopefully only gonna be able to see one at a time. But before we get into the video I want to thank today's sponsor which is Skillshare. I absolutely love Skillshare. I've used it for years and years like way before I had my channel so I really love working with them because A it's a service I genuinely love and have used for a long long time and B it means that I can you know help you guys use it for free try out for free and hopefully fall in love with it like I do. So if you don't know Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of inspiring classes for pretty much any creative skill you can imagine. They have photography, filmmaking, editing, productivity, so many different topics which there are so many classes on. I've just started and really been enjoying the ultimate self-care playbook Discover and Nurture Your Scented Self by Jonathan Van Ness from Queer Eye because I've always thought that self-care is super duper important especially when it comes to being creative and like especially with like YouTube as well like you have to look after yourself. I think if you're gonna be creative and perform at your best but I also think it can be super easy to forget that. So this class has really been helping to remind me of that and help me kind of re-centre myself. There are no ads on Skillshare and there are constantly new classes being added so you'll always be finding something that's great for you. Now very very very very very very very very excitingly the first 1000 of you to click the link below will get one month free of Skillshare which is an amazing deal honestly you have nothing to lose my advice just go click that link get that one month free and see if you can find something that really helps you kind of like improve your creative skills and have a lot of fun. Okay let me go ahead and get Goodreads up I really don't know what to expect this is gonna be very very interesting. Well we'll just have to wait and see you are so inquisitive my darling. Okay what is book one? Oh okay yep yep I agree I agree with book one. So the highest rated book on my Goodreads that I have read is Heartstopper Volume 4 by Alice Oseman with an average rating of 4.7. Do you know how incredible that is? If you use Goodreads you know nothing ever has an average rating of 4.7 and I absolutely agree I gave this five stars I listen if you watch a lot of my videos you will know I love Heartstopper very dearly it's Nick and Charlie falling in love loving each other and it's just so cute also important to note again this is the fourth in a series so that is why it is the highest you know if you didn't like the first you know Heartstopper or the Spider-Second one you were kind of like yeah you probably haven't continued on with the series and it's a new release so the people who have read it are the people who are really excited for it to come out but I absolutely agree the best graphic novel series in the world the best maybe the best song in the entire world there's only one left to come out which I don't agree that doesn't that doesn't make sense but yeah not surprised that it is the highest rated book that I've ever read right what is number two oh okay I really really wasn't expecting to see this this is not a book I thought I would see on this list okay so number two the second highest rated book I've ever read is Whites on Race and Other Fault Hoods by Otega Uagba this has an average rating of 4.68 with 908 rating so much much less than Heartstopper I gave this four stars I really really enjoyed this this is a super short non-fiction kind of talking about their experience as a black person in the UK surrounding the death of George Floyd last year and a lot of like the performative activism and white guilt that was seen around that time it's very very short I think it's less than 100 pages and it's very very impactful but I don't it's not like my favorite non-fiction I've ever read I think the length of it meant I didn't fully fall in love with it but I think it's a great non-fiction I read it super recently and I think this book has a lot of you know things that everyone can learn from and I think it's something that everyone should read so I really liked this but I wasn't expecting it to be in the top 10 highest rated books that have ever read like I really wasn't yeah that's really surprised me okay let's see what number three is okay so I scroll down a little bit don't become allowed no I don't I don't no I'm not allowed I know I'm not allowed and number three and four are Heartstop volume three and Heartstop volume two I shouldn't be listen this is to be expected Heartstop volume three has a 4.64 average rating with 67 000 ratings and Heartstop volume two has a 4.62 average rating with 86 000 ratings so can you see how the rating is going up for each in this series that is typically what you find with series I think and listen we know that I love it I think Heartstop volume one is going to be on this list as well I don't know very rightfully on this list like nothing there's if anything's gonna be on here it should be this like literally the best books in the world literally listen what is number five next at number five with a rating of 4.59 with 333 000 ratings is Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo I gave this five stars as well I think I I did give this 4.5 but I upped it to a five I loved this this is the second obviously in the Six of Crows duology this is much better than Six of Crows in my opinion like Six of Crows was really really good it was like a four star but this one you know the the Crows staying Keterdam and I love the atmosphere there and I think the heist element and the reveals and the planning in the you know in the heist from Kaz are much more detailed if you don't I mean you know what the plot is I very much doubt if you're watching this video you don't know what the plot of Crooked Kingdom is um I don't know what a b-jork is Benny we just went on holiday and my dad read Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom while he was there I think he gave Six of Crows like a four 4.5 and then Crooked Kingdom I think was like a five he loved it and you know my dad typically reads a lot of like old white man fantasy that was typically what he's read before but um he really really loves Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom so I think that shows that they this series is so great and is really for everyone it's not just for like YA girl readers like some people like to like categorize it as it really is a book that everyone can enjoy and love yeah I can't wait to read like King of Scars and Wall of Wolves I need to read them soon I think he's gonna read them before me though I think he's he's reading Shadow and Bone trilogy now and then I think he's gonna read them before I get around to them but yeah Crooked Kingdom I think very much deserves to be on this list as of yet we haven't really had any that like I disagree with they've all mostly been five stars and won four star so let's see what's next this is number six right I think oh okay this is a good one let me go get it so coming in number six with an average rating of 4.58 and 13,580 ratings is natives ruin and class on a race and class in the ruins of empire by Akala this is non-fiction again about race and this is from Akala who's like a famous poet writer in the UK and this is particularly about the roots of empire in racism in the UK I gave this four stars as well but this is I would say I preferred this to um Atega Uragba's book I thought this was so interesting so well researched it does draw on Akala's experiences as a mixed race boy growing up in London and particularly like growing up quite poor and so bringing class into that and this was just fascinating I often recommend this as particularly live in the UK and non-fiction on race I would really really recommend if you are in UK there's sometimes a tendency to be like oh we're not as bad as the US you know what I mean or not to say that but to believe it deep down and I think that's a really troubling belief because of our history of empire and colonialism and this really brings that out and research is that okay number seven oh really oh wow okay with an average rating of 4.57 but with 833,000 ratings which is crazy so this is like the most consensus we've ever seen in a book is The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah so I think I read this in like a high Australian books on my TBR video so maybe I should have expected it so this is like a non-fiction this is a non-fiction this is a historical fiction book about World War Two and about these two sisters in World War Two here's the thing I read this four stars I did enjoy it it wasn't five stars I think I was hoping for five stars it was four stars but I kind of look back on it as maybe like a 3.75 because I think this is the kind of book that is meant to just make you feel devastated like I cried so much and sometimes I look back on it I'm like it felt a bit not exploitative but like you know when a book is just intended to make you sob and I don't know how good that makes like my rating was out of that instinctive emotion I had just experienced and now I'm removed from that emotion I don't necessarily look back on the book and feel the same way I did enjoy it though and I can see why this is such a well-loved you know popular book I can I can see that and I really did enjoy it so I don't disagree with this at all okay number eight which I've literally just read with a rating of 4.55 with 88 thousand ratings is projectile mary by andy weir so I just read this on holiday I'll leave the link to the blog where I went on holiday because it is full of filming this video and I'm like guys listen I made a nice cottage why don't you want to see that clap if you care clap if you clap if you care projectile mary by andy weir I definitely agree with this I gave this 4.5 stars this is a sci-fi by the author of The Martian where this guy wakes up on this ship in space and his crewmates are dead and he doesn't really know what he's doing or why he's there and he has to kind of piece together the puzzles there is this extinction level threat to humanity to do with the sun and these microorganisms that seem to be near the sun it's a great book but the best part of this is a spoiler like it's 100% a spoiler but I really really love this this reads so fast you look at it and it's quite big but it reads really really fast and I really recommend the orgya book as well the orgya book really comes to life about a third of the way in so I absolutely agree with this and I'm glad to see it on this list because it was it was really really good and it's made me want to reread The Martian I think I've read that like three times in my life one of the books I've reread the most but something about andy was writing is so rereadable what's number nine it's this it's heartstop of volume one with an average rating of 4.52 with 120 000 ratings so listen we're not surprised we've spoken about this I am so glad heartstopper takes up four of the top 10 I just think that's amazing I think it's so well deserved I love heartstopper so much like to the end of my days I love it okay and what is number 10 oh wow wow oh that's a great one okay let me try and get it this is a bit precarious okay let's slide you along no no no no no no no that was fucking scary my heart's going pitterpatter pitterpatter I feel sick like I could throw up no it's all gone wrong right I need to collect myself number 10 let's get it out without actually breaking everything this time with an average rating again of 4.52 with 6653 ratings is Amari and the Nightbrothers by BB Alston this is a middle grade where we follow Amari discovering this bureau of supernatural affairs that her brother used to work at who has now gone missing and she's invited for a trial at this at this bureau and it's all about like discovering magic and there's an evil magician and this was such a great middle grade one of my favorite middle grades I've ever read I'm so excited for book two to come out it was just such a magical nostalgic middle grade it really has a nostalgic feeling of you know like this magical trial that she's on and I'm I'm really happy to see on this list I think everyone should read this there's something really amazing about this book so that is the 10 highest books that I have read the highest rated books that I've read I agreed with all of them pretty much they were all four or five stars let's actually see how far I have to scroll down for one I maybe give three stars 15 okay number 15 is Skyward by Brandon Sanderson for the rating of 4.5 and I don't agree with that I didn't really like Skyward by Brandon Sanderson and I'm not going to continue on with that series so that's like how far we have to go down for one that I disagreed with but yeah the top 10 particularly the fact that four are made up by Holstover are all ones that I pretty much agree with and really really enjoyed let me know what you thought of any of these books if there's any of them you disagreed with that you really didn't like I would really be interested to know and yeah make sure you check out that one month free of Skillshare down below I actually love Skillshare there's so many courses I want to do I want to explore so yeah make sure you check out that link if you've got into the end comment any kind of spacey planet star emoji down below and yeah thank you so much for watching I will see you very very soon in another video bye


Hey, welcome, everybody. I would welcome you to our session at Orisha 2022, but Orisha 2022 isn't quite happening. This is the session that was going to be part of Orisha 2022. I'm Mark Abrams, editor of the Anals of Improbable Research. And I also founded the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, which I'll tell you a little bit about in a moment. What we're doing here is dramatic readings. We have gathered some of the finest dramatic improbable readers from around the world. They will each be reading to you from studies, research studies. These are real published studies, which you probably have not run across. And they're going to be brief readings, followed by a little bit of questions and answers. Our readers tonight, I'm going to introduce, this is the order in which they will be reading. So you'll be seeing each of these people a couple of times. I'm going to introduce each now and ask each of you at the time to please tell us in a sentence or two, a little bit about who you are speaking to a stranger. Speaking to a lot of strangers. The first dramatic reader in series will be Mason Porter. Mason? Hi, well, as you heard, my name is Mason. I am a professor of mathematics at UCLA. I research a number of things, including the spread of epidemics on networks. The last time I saw Mason was several years ago when we did a show in London in England when Mason was a professor at Oxford and he took the train in his pajamas and got up on stage in London in his pajamas. And he's not doing that tonight. The next reader in series tonight will be Sonya Tafe. Sonya? Hello. I write short stories, poetry, film criticism. I say that I tell living stories, but most of the languages that I can read are dead. Third dramatic reader in series will be Dean Grozens. Dean? I am a historian in a nice sweater. A or M? I would say A. I write on American history and I'm going to be talking a little bit about, well, you'll see, things that are sort of religion and other things, which I'm also interested in. And the final dramatic reader in series tonight will be Gary Dreyfus. Gary? Oh, good evening, Mark. Good evening, everybody. I have been associated with the eggs since the very first annual ceremony all those years ago. And for most of those years, I've been the major domo for every year that we've done a live show. And if we're all alive next year, I hope to be the major domo again. Thank you. There are two other people here. You see on the screen who are vital parts of the woodwork tonight. David Kessler has done much of the organizing for tonight. DK, please say hello. And DK will be showing you little portions of the studies that are being read. DK? Yes, hello. Nice gloves. And Michelle Ligori will be perhaps the most important person in all of this. She will be running the timekeeping of this because each reading is going to be brief. Thanks to Michelle. Michelle? Hello, everybody. Okay. A couple of words about who we are again. The magazine, The Annals of Improbable Research. We've been around for coming up on 30 years now. And we publish all sorts of reports and bits about research, real research that makes people laugh then think. And every year, in fact, every year since 1991, we put on a ceremony called the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony in which we present Ig Nobel prizes to 10 people or groups, each of whom has done something that makes people laugh and then think. We just had the 31st, first annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony. You can see lots of detail about all this stuff at our website, improbable.com. And now we're going to do the dramatic readings. Again, each of these is real. You can go and find these yourself. You're gonna see just a little smidge of it, but it's easy to go and Google and get these papers. First, we'll show you just bits of two papers that we're not gonna be reading tonight. And Michelle, could you read the title of each of these as we show them? DK, slide. The particular slides are out of order. So while Michelle reads the titles, I will be looking for them. In the first slide or the first paper is in search of preventative strategies, novel anti-inflammatory, high CBD, cannabis sativa extracts, modulate ACE2 expression in COVID-19 gateway tissues. Okay, but we're not gonna be reading to you for now. And what's the next paper that we'll not be reading to you from? What's the title of that, Michelle? The next one is possibility of disinfection of SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 and human respiratory tract by controlled ethanol vapor inhalation. Okay, we're not gonna be reading to you from that paper either. The first paper that we will be reading to you from will be read dramatically by Mason Porter. Each reading will be two minutes long. And to make it easy for the reader to understand how much time has passed, Michelle Ligori will make a sound every 30 seconds. We'll demonstrate that now. So Michelle, after 30 seconds of the reading, you will make this sound, which wasn't very loud. Try it again. Okay. Better. After 30 seconds more passes, in other words, a whole minute has gone by during the reading, she'll make the sound twice, Michelle. This is a very strange phenomenon with the sound here. Try it again. Let's see if we can get some actual sound in that sound. Mason, you are the resident physicist in the group. Any idea why there's very little sound? Is there a limiter on her volume control? Good gracious. Do you have your limiter on? I've often thought I have no limits, but we'll find out. It's only later in life that we discover truths about ourselves. If we're lucky and unlucky enough to ever to discover them. Okay. Okay. Try it again. Make a sound. I dare you. She's looking for something. That's good. Okay. Thank you, Mason. All right. After another 30 seconds during a dramatic reading, in other words, a minute and a half has gone by, Michelle will make the sound three times, Michelle. And at the end of two minutes, Michelle will make the sound again and will continue to make that sound until the reader stops reading. That's how things are going to work. Readers, when you present it, I'm going to ask you to first read the title of the paper and the names of the people who wrote it and tell us where it was published. So here's Mason Porter. Mason, what's the title of this paper you'll be reading? This paper is called Influence of Perceived Threat of COVID-19 and Hexico Personality Traits on Toilet Paper Stockpiling. Could you read that again? One more time, please. Influence of Perceived Threat of COVID-19 and Hexico Personality Traits on Toilet Paper Stockpiling. The authors are Lisa Garb, Richard Rao, and Theo Topp, and it was published in the Journal Plus One. Okay, and you have not seen this paper until just a few hours ago, really, correct? That's right. I've heard of it before, but I had not actually looked at it. And that's true of all the readers in all the papers. They're reading from and presenting themselves in only a surface manner as experts on these papers, but they're reading to you from papers which are completely unfamiliar to them. And in fact, the general topics are probably not all that familiar to them. So here is Mason Porter. Ready, set, go. Okay, I'll start with the abstract. Following the fast spread of COVID-19 across Europe and North America in March 2020, many people started stockpiling commodities like toilet paper. Despite the high relevance for public authorities to adequately address stockpiling behavior, empirical studies on the psychological underpinnings of toilet paper stockpiling are still scarce. In this study, we investigated the relation between personality traits, perceived threat of COVID-19, and stockpiling of toilet paper in an online store in two countries. Results suggest that people who felt more threatened by COVID-19 stockpiled more toilet paper. Further, a predisposition toward emotionality predicted the perceived threat of COVID-19 and affected stockpiling behavior indirectly. Finally, conscientiousness was related to toilet paper stockpiling, such that individuals higher in conscientiousness tended to stockpile more toilet paper. These results emphasize the importance of clear communication by public authority, and at the same time, transmitting a sense of control. Introduction. Within a few weeks, the output of the COVID-19 pandemic has turned into a severe global health crisis in spring 2019. The resulting scarcity of toilet paper in some households has led to problematic consequences, such as the clogging of outfill fall pipes after people started using products other than toilet paper. Which individual difference variables can account for toilet paper hoarding? Another explanation that has been properly featured in the media revolves around an overgeneralization of disgust. According to this notion, people experience an increased sensitivity to disgust in times of disease spread. However, even the most, instead, even the most humble and moral individuals might stockpile toilet paper as long as they feel sufficiently threatened by a pandemic. It's also been interpreted in terms of classical psychoanalytical theory. In this line of reasoning, individuals with a marked pattern of orderliness and self-discipline or an anal-visual personality are happy to be particularly blinded. Thank you, Macy Porter. And now we have time for just a few questions. When we do this in a large room full of people, the audience, which is the way we normally do this, the audience asks the questions, but of course the issue is canceled so we don't have a room full of anything. We're all sitting here pretty much, each of us by ourselves. So the readers who are not reading are free to ask questions of the reader who did read. Let me remind you who are watching this that the reader has not even seen this paper until a few hours ago. And the people who are asking the questions probably haven't either. So you've got people who don't know anything about the subject, asking questions of somebody who also doesn't know anything about the subject. When you're answering questions, there's only one rule. You can answer any way you like, but no bullshitting. Don't pretend to know something. It's fine to say you don't know something. It's fine to speculate, but if you speculate, make it clear that's what you're doing. Are there any questions for Mason on this? Sonia. Does the paper address the related phenomenon of once the toilet paper to hoard has run out the people who clear other paper products off the shelves, i.e. why can I never find any Kleenex nowadays? I do not remember seeing that, but there was as you heard in a sentence, issues of people using other products other than the paper when they ran out. Okay, Michelle, question. Are the conscientious members of this study more likely to have the paper rolled this way over the roll or that way over the roll? I do not believe that that was addressed, but that does in terms of speculation get into core psychology of people. Okay, and we want to keep things moving, so we'll limit it to about three questions. Gary, a question. The title mentioned something called a hexaco. Yes, it does. I don't know what that is, and I was wondering if you did. That is definitely defined in the paper. Now all I have to do is find where in the paper and actually remember it. That's a very good answer. Thank you very much, Mason Porter. The next paper will be read by Sonia Tafe. Sonia, what is the title of this paper? Students have become invisible again. The title of the paper is Melody in Human Cat Communication, Miaoziq, Origins Past, Present, and Future. It was written by Suzanne Schutz, Robert Echlin. Excuse me, DK, that's not what you're showing us on the screen. Oh dear. Would you like me to repeat the paper's title? Please. Melody in Human Cat Communication, Miaoziq, Origins Past, Present, and Future by Suzanne Schutz, Robert Echlin, and Just van der Weijer, whose name I have probably just mangled on account of not speaking Dutch. It was presented in 2016 at the Phonetic Conference in Stockholm. Okay, and we're okay. And here we go. Ready, set, go. The recently funded five-year project, Melody in Human Cat Communication, Miaoziq, has received vast media attention both nationally and around the world. The purpose of the project is to study the communication between humans and domestic cats. Specifically, we will investigate how prosody, including voice, melody, intonation, and speaking style in human speech as well as cat vocalizations and influences vocal communications. As we speak by Burnham Kitamura and Valmar Khanna, pet-directed speech shows many of the characteristics of infant-directed speech. However, we do not know whether pets like infants are also more drawn to this kind of speech than to speech that lacks these characteristics. In order to investigate this question, we will carry out a discrimination experiment in which we expose cats to audio samples of pet-directed and adult-directed speech, natural as well as synthesized stimuli and record their reactions to these samples. These are the characteristics of two purposes. First, we want to explore which behavioral responses and cats may be used in an experimental setting as preliminary candidates for such responses. We consider head and eye turns, ear and body movements, and exploring behavior. Second, we want to investigate whether any of these responses are suggestive of a preference for either a pet-directed or adult-directed speech. Children's or adult voices, familiar, unfamiliar voices to minimize the stress level of the cat participants, the experimental sessions will be carried out in the cat's home environment. Further inspiration from certain language learning comes from both ancient and recent sources. Already, Aristotle observed that birds exhibited both learning and dialectal variation. Moreover, recently it was discovered that the Norwegian fin whales have at least six different dialects, which does not come as a surprise since the literature is replete with reports of dialects and animal vocalizations. Thus, we hypothesize to find dialectal variants of domestic cats. And another issue is to what extent if at all vocal learning can be observed. This is, as already, Aristotle- Is it correct with dialectal variations without learning? Thank you, Sonia. Are there any questions? Raise your hand, please, if you have a question. Mason, your hand was up first. Yeah, so some human dialects are much easier for listeners to understand than others. Does the same occur with cats? The paper actually didn't get as far as studying dialect. It just talked about proposals in order to study them. This was admittedly in 2016, but with a limited time between being presented with the paper and being permitted to present it with the kind help of my assistant, Etolicus. I didn't actually go looking to find out if they found cat dialects. Dean, question. So do cats like being addressed like children or being addressed like adults? Personally, since I talked to this one, like an adult, I think the baby talks just confused them. Dialects. Any further questions? Okay, DK. I think I heard you say in that paper that part of this study was taking place in the cat's own environment. What part of the world is not the cat's own environment? I mean, according to the cat, it is indeed all cats all the time. So, you know, where there is a cat, there is a home environment. Thank you, Sonia. I should mention that the authors of that paper were awarded an Ig Nobel Prize this past fall for that work and also for related work, a whole series of papers about cat human communications. You can see that the presentation of the prize and some discussion by the authors on our website, improbable.com. Now we move on to our next reader, Gary Dreyfus. Gary, what's the title of this paper? And you seem to be muted. Yeah, the wasted chewing gum bacterium. Could you, DK, could you show that? And Gary, would you mind reading that title again? Yeah, the wasted, I think they mean disposed of, but I don't know, the wasted chewing gum bacterium. And it was written by Lila Satari, Alba Guillen, Angela Vidal Verdu and Manuel Porcar. And it was appeared in scientific reports of nature research. Okay, and I'll mention this paper also was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize. All set, here we go. On your mark, get set, go. The wasted chewing gum bacterium. Here we show the bacterium of wasted chewing gum from five different countries and the microbial successions on wasted gums during three months of outdoor exposure. Our results reveal that the oral microbiota of gums after being chewed, characterized by the species in the blah, blah, evolved in a few weeks to an environmental bacterium. Our findings have implications for a wide range of disciplines including forensics, contagious disease control or bioremediation of ways to chew gum residues. Chewing gums have been with us, have been used for thousands of years since wood tar from the mesolithic and neolithic periods have been found with tooth impressions which suggests a role in teeth cleaning as well as its usage in early adhesives. The first modern chewing gum was introduced in the market in the late 19th century and chewing gums today are vastly consumed worldwide. It is estimated that Iran and Saudi Arabia are the countries with the highest chewing gum consumption where 80% of the population are regular gum chewing consumers. The value of chewing gum trade has been estimated at more than 30 billion US dollars in 2019. The colonization process of wasted chewing gums. A specific experiment was carried out to shed light on the microbial succession taking place in the waste and chewing gum once discarded. 13 gums were chewed and placed on an outdoor pavement over a period of up to 12 weeks and a high throughput RNA sequencing was carried out to follow the dynamic changes of the bacterial content. It is interesting to compare the bacterial profile of the chewing gums exposed outdoors for several weeks in the controlled experiments we performed with that of old wasted chewing gums. We have sampled it from different locations around the world. Thank you, Gary. Questions, raise your hand if you have a question. Yes, yes. Oh, Dean. Experiment or 2D fruity? They use different gums in different places around the world. Culture-dependent experiments, characteristic. I don't know. Other questions? Michelle. Did any of this research take place in Singapore and were any of the researchers tamed as a result of this research? There's a graphic. And Singapore is on the graphic, actually, but I think so. It's hard to read the graphs, they're little. There's no mention of physical punishment to the researchers. I think when they put it on, oh, yes, when they put it on pavements, it was like their own pavement set up for these. They didn't just, yeah, that's in here. It was in a laboratory, not in the wild. They found gum in the wild in as many cities as they could and compared them to see the differences. But you're right, in Singapore, I would think they would just have to do the laboratory kind. And before Sonya asked the next question, I should mention that Lee Kuan Yew, who was for a long time the leader of Singapore, won an Ig Nobel Prize many years ago for a whole series of achievements, one of which was banning the chewing gum. Sonya, you have a question. Would I be correct in interpreting from the focus of chewing gum left on the pavement and in the wild that the all important question was not answered in this paper, namely, does your chewing gum lose its flavor on the bed post overnight? You are correct. There is no mention anywhere in here of old chewing gum being retasted to ascertain whether it retains flavor. They just, they sampled, there's a lot of stuff in here about how they did the RNA sequencing and tested to parse out exactly what bacteria were growing on it at different periods of time, but at no point did anyone actually retaste the gum. I don't normally do what I'm about to do here in these kinds of events, but Sonya and Gary, you were both noted and accomplished musicians. I wonder if you would mind joining in to perform just the first few lines of the song. I've never performed it, but if you start, I'll join in. Sonya? I've never performed this one either. I have to think of actually no the melody or if I just see it quoted incessantly. Does your chewing gum lose its flavor on the bed post overnight? If your mother says don't you have to swallow it in spite and it catches on your tonsils and you swing it left and right, does your chewing gum lose its flavor on the bed post overnight? Post overnight. Hey, Nani. Thank you very much. That's the first round of readings and now the second and final round. We have one more question that's pressing, Michelle. I would like to request before we go on to the next round that we return to the first round. We have skipped one of our readers and I would really like to find out which saint are we supposed to be saint? I'm sorry. Dean, I apologize greatly. That's not a problem. I was so mesmerized by your questions that I have no excuse. Mesmerized by the song. Okay, Dean Grodzins. Dean, what is the name of the paper you're going to be reading from? Which saint to pray for fighting against COVID infection a short survey? Okay, could you read that little again for us, please? Which saint to pray for fighting against COVID infection a short survey by A. Piercia Conte, A. Coralee, and P. Charlier. It appeared in ethics, medicine, and public health. Okay, here we go on your mark. Go. In the absence of a treatment still considered universally effective, we wanted to know which Catholic saint the European Christian community turned to in the event of infection with COVID-19 to request miraculous healing. We conducted a survey on two of the most used social networks, Twitter and Facebook. This survey was conducted in the United States on Twitter and Facebook. This survey was conducted between August 21st and 25th, 2020. A total of 1150 adult anonymous participants, mainly from France, and Natalie answered our question. Who did you pray to? Analyzing the results in more detail from the survey, it emerges that the majority saint is St. Rita. From a young age, Rita of Caskia dreamed of consecrating herself to God in a difficult situation that she faced in her life as wife, mother, and nun. Today she's considered the patron saint of lost causes. And she is invoked in the most difficult situations. Therefore, St. Rita's first place clearly reflects the pessimistic and fatalistic nature of the current situation and the lack of credit given to the therapeutic offer in the face of COVID-19. The second and the third place we find respectively, St. Roque and St. Sebastian who based on Catholic tradition or the two principal saints consider protectors against the plague whose epidemic pattern has been compared to that of COVID-19. Interestingly, we note the presence of some saints whose choice may have been dictated by linguistic proximity with charismatic personalities linked to the fight against disease, St. Didier and St. Roque in reference to now famous professor Didier Roque from Marseille with a name linked to the taxonomy of the infectious agent, St. Corona. With the place of the emergence of the viral strain, St. Jean Gabrielle. I love you and you're more than on China. Thank you, Dean. Questions, raise your hand if you have one. Michelle. Michelle. How does one beseech St. Rita or any of these? Are you supposed to like bury a statue upside down in your backyard? Are you supposed to wear a medal? What does one do? They don't specify what one does. I assume one... I would speculate because I'm not Catholic that you go to a church and you light a candle at the appropriate site and you do those kinds of things. I don't know of any little statue that people carry around, but maybe they have them now. Next question? Any other question? Sonja. And I also want to... Another, I cannot resist Sonja since you have such a deep and extensive knowledge of the world's music. I'm wondering if any old traditional piece of music leaps to mind pertaining to this. I mean, I could always do your ring around the rosies, but I think that one's a folk etymology. Otherwise, I've just gone straight to the DA Cirae as featured in the seventh seal. A couple of bars of that. We read a meter maid. Could you perform a couple of bars of that? A couple of bars of that. At the DA Cirae? Yes. Oh, okay. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. So, the second in body, tested at it, conceived. Thank you very much. Now you have a question. Thank you. That was wonderful. Now you had a question. Oh, yeah, right. Does the paper... I'm genuinely interested in this one. Does the paper address current popularity of plague saints against historical popularity of plague saints? I would have expected Saint Sebastian, for example, to be much higher up the current list than he is, but he appears to have been displaced by a significantly more depressive saint, which I find really interesting. So is there any historical cross-section in the paper or is it basically does not go straight for the lost causes? Well, they don't quite explain it. They just say that Saint Rita gets the most. The next is Saint Roque, who actually suffered from the plague and had to go out into the woods and a dog attended to him and then a nobleman followed the dog and then attended to him. And anyway, he became, and then Saint Sebastian, who of course got all those arrows and therefore became symbolically, those are the top three and then it goes on, but then goes on from there. I personally like Saint Corona myself, but that was, the associations, the associational saints appealed to me. Thank you. And now... It makes it very important to Ashley the Crumb-Tinies poster if all 26 letters are died from the plague. And now it's time for round two, our final round, in which each of the readers will read from a different paper. Not all of them reading from the same paper. Four readers, four papers. Mason Porter, what's the title of this paper you're going to be reading for? I'm going to switch my character, my headpiece here. And what is that on your head? That is a knit beholder, which is a character from Dungeons and Dragons, with, in this case, lots of different colors. And surprisingly comfortable, I didn't think it would be comfortable, but it turns out that it is. How often do you wash it? Well, Dungeons and Dragons is something that I play. It's just I happen to... This is something that was a targeted advertisement. So that tells you all you need to know about me as a target and what gets to be targeted advertisements. But then I liked it and an individual was making these, and they normally sell them at conventions, but a lot of those people actually have much less of an income source in the last couple of years. So I was happy to buy it. The question was, how often do you wash the hat? Oh, how often do I wash it? Well, I hardly ever actually wear it because I usually tend to not wear hats. So I have not tried to wash it yet, but I've not actually worn it in public before, except for videos and stuff like that. So good. Thank you for honoring us tonight. Yeah. What is the title of this paper? The title of the paper, Pandemic Practice. Horror fans and morbidly curious individuals are more psychologically resilient during the COVID-19 pandemic. Great. Could you repeat that title again, please? Yes. Pandemic Practice. Horror fans and morbidly curious individuals are more psychologically resilient during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors are Colton Scrivener, John A. Johnson, Jans, Jell guard Christensen, and Matthias Clayson. Okay. And it was published where? In Personality and Individual Differences. This is the name of the journal. Okay. And here we go. On your mark, get set, go. One explanation for why people engage in frightening fictional experiences is that these experiences can act as simulations of actual experiences from which individuals can gather information and model possible worlds. Conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study tested whether past and current engagement with thematically relevant media fictions, including horror and pandemic films, was associated with greater preparedness for and psychological resilience toward the pandemic. We found that fans of horror films exhibited greater resilience during the pandemic and that fans of prepper genres, alien invasion, apocalyptic and zombie films exhibited both greater resilience and preparedness. Intentionally exposing oneself to fearful situations is, on its face, a peculiar phenomenon. In a simulated experience, such as an oral story, a novel or a film, one can explore possible futures or phenomena, gathering information about what the real and learn how to prepare for analogous situations in the real world. The most important part of many stories may not be their literal similarity to real life, but the meaning that can be extracted from them and applied to real world situations. Although zombies do not exist and thus represent no real threat to humans, situations that occur in zombie movies may be analogous to situations that would occur in real world events. In line with simulation account, Scrivner found that individuals high and severe morbidity became much more interested in pandemic themed films in the early weeks of the COVID-19 outbreak than less morbidly curious individuals. Though a greater propensity to gather information about dangerous phenomena, through a greater propensity, morbidly curious individuals may accrue a larger repertoire of knowledge and emotional coping strategies that would be useful in dangerous situations. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that morbidly curious individuals and horror fans exhibit greater psychological resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic. We also investigated, I don't know what they also investigate. Was that three or four, Michelle? It was the end. That was a four. I just had a better stopping point than last time if I stopped. Good. All right, questions. Raise your hand if you have a question that you'd like to ask. Mason. About this. Gary. I think you read a section where it says that zombie movies are unrealistic because there aren't actually zombies in the real world. Yes, they did write that in the paper. So the authors believe that there aren't actually brain-eating zombies in the real world. Well, yes. And they actually even made that statement without citing a single paper in support of it. Thank you. Yeah, that was, I was curious about that. Next question. There is one. Raise your hand if you have a. Sonja. Does the paper address the widening gap of reality if one is using fictional stories as a way to prepare for real world horror when it arrives? Does the paper go into the fact that we have been conditioned by years of zombie movies to take an example, to assume that people will say, resist zombies or shoot them or run away rather than walk toward them declaring that the zombies are a liberal hoax? So I have not seen, I don't remember seeing that in the paper. I know of not with zombies, but other studies of misinformation. I don't remember if any of those brought up zombies per se. But yes, it is a good point and it could be addressed in a paper along these lines. OK, time for one more question. If anybody has one, Sonja, have another question.  Doing the only way I can mute and unmute my tablet. Ah, you're just muting. OK, all right. Well, thank you very much, Mason Porter. Our next dramatic reader is again, Sonja Tafe. Sonja, what is the title of this paper? I'm reading sneezing in times of a flu pandemic. Public sneezing increases perception of unrelated risks and shift preferences for federal spending. It's a long title. Could you read that again, please? Sneezing in times of a flu pandemic. Public sneezing increases perception of unrelated risks and shifts preferences for federal spending. It is like W. S. Lee, nor Daniel Tellman on how it was published in 2010 in Psychological Science. Here we go. On your mark, get set, go. The public's perception of a given health risk increases with coverage of the risk in the news media. Laboratory experiments further suggest that the heightened perception of the risk posed by one hazard fosters heightened perception of the risk posed by other unrelated hazards. Accordingly, minor everyday events that bring a current effectively charged threat to mind may influence risk perception in unrelated domains. We present a naturalistic test of this possibility. To instantiate the threat of contagion, we arranged for. Feel under a sneak increase, the perceived risk of contract. A serious disease, which might include flu, as well as the perceived risk of unrelated threats, namely having a heart attack and dying from a crime or an accident. Moreover, sneezing elicited more negative evaluations of the country's health care system. On May 26th to 30th, 2009, an experimenter asked pedestrians in shopping malls in downtown business areas in Ann Arbor, Michigan to participate in a one minute survey. Sneezing was manipulated after respondents agreed to participate. Holding the questionnaire in her right hand, the experimenter coughed and sneezed once while covering her mouth with her left forearm before handing the questionnaire to participants in the sneezing condition in the control condition. The same experimenter did not sneeze. Compared to participants in the control condition of study one, those who had just passed a sneezing confederate perceived the average American is more likely to contract a serious disease to have a heart attack before age 50 and to die from a crime or an accident. The experimenter said that a few participants in the sneezing condition were more likely than those in the control condition to favor federal spending on production of flu vaccines rather than on the creation of green jobs. Finally, participants general evaluation of whether the country was going in the wrong direction was unaffected by the manipulation, which suggests that sneezing did not elicit a general negativity bias. Debriefing suggests that people have no insight into these processes. They assume that exposure to a sneeze may influence their perception of the risk, but not their perception of unwavering risk. Future research may quickly attend to having mediation of the abhorred effect of the symptoms over time. Thank you, Sonia. Questions? Thank you. Thank you. Questions? Questions? Comments? How's about rage? So so could we substantially change public opinion just by having all the pollsters sneeze beforehand if you choose the right choose the right topic? We can substantially change public opinion. This paper suggests about things that people already worry about. This paper does not suggest that it is possible to reassure people by sneezing on them. OK, and if there are no further questions, we will move on to the next reader. Thank you, Sonia. The next reader is Dean Grozens, who I'm not forgetting this time around. I apologize again for skipping over you in that first round. Dean, what's the title of this paper? Why methodology is important? Coffee as a candidate treatment for COVID-19? Question mark. OK, and please read the title one more time. Why methodology is important? Coffee as a candidate treatment for COVID-19? Question mark. I'm not going to read all the names, because there are so many of them, but of the author's names. So I'll say Yanis Belruci at all. And it appeared in the Journal of Clinical Medicine. OK, and here we go on your mark. Get set, go. We evaluate the effect of coffee's active part. T137 triethylxanthine, if I pronounce that correctly, TMX on patients with COVID-19. A cohort of 93 patients with a diagnosis of COVID-19 is analysed. The patients from two centres, the Centre hospitalier universitaire, la PTA Sainte-Petrière-Pérée-France, and Centre hospitalier universitaire de Poitiers-Poitiers-France were included during an April 2020. They were assessed for eligibility at the hospital admission in the same centre. All patients with confirmed COVID-19 infection were assessed for the following inclusion criteria, 18 or greater, no TMX contraindications before inclusion. All patients had to give their consent. And the result was that they found a cohort of patients that received the TMX treatment at a significantly shorter hospital stay, 9.5 days versus 15 days. In fact, however, we cannot conclude to a direct effect on TMX on COVID-19 because of a huge lack of methodological considerations. The aim of this study is not to prove the efficacy of coffee, but to reveal how anyone can prove anything with an on-rigorous study. For instance, the multiple bias, the selection criteria, the clinical relevance of the end point, the methodological structure of our study weakened the external and internal validity. We cannot conclude any association with the efficacy of caffeine and horse dewormer. No, no, they just stuck to caffeine. Next question. Sonya, are you stretching or? Was as much of that paper written in all caps as it sounds metaphysically like it should have been? Only TMX and COVID-19 are in all caps. One last question, anybody? OK. Michelle? I thought you said something about the authors saying that methodology and conscientiousness were important. Yes. I think they did say that. Were these the same conscientious researchers who were hoarding the toilet paper in the earlier study or is this a different conscientious group? I think that would be worth itself a survey, perhaps using social media. You could make that determination, but it's not in this paper. Thank you, Dean Brodsons. And now it's time for the final dramatic reading of the evening or morning, whenever it is, you're listening to this and watching this. Gary Dreyfus, what is the title of this paper? Oh, oh, the title of this paper is impact protection potential of mammalian hair, testing the pugilism hypothesis for the evolution of human facial hair by E.A. Basteris, Essie Nellouay, and D.R. Carrier, University of Utah. And it was in integrative organismal biology, a journal for the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology. And for ultra-clarity, could you repeat the title of it? I'll try. Impact protection potential of mammalian hair, testing the pugilism hypothesis for the evolution of human facial hair. And here we go to commence the final dramatic reading. On your mark, get set, go. Because facial hair is one of the most sexually dimorphic features of human and is often perceived as an indicator of masculinity and social dominance, human facial hair has been suggested to play a role in male contest competition. Some authors have proposed that the beard may function similar to the long hair of a lion's mane, serving to protect vital areas like the throat and jaw from lethal attacks. This is consistent with the observation that the mandible, which is superficially covered by the beard, is one of the most commonly fractured bones in interpersonal violence. We hypothesize that beards protect the skin and bones of the face when human males fight by absorbing and dispersing energy of blunt impact. We tested this hypothesis by measuring impact force and energy absorbed by a fiber-apoxy composite, which served as bone analog when covered with skin that had a thick hair referred to here as furred versus skin with no hair referred to here as sheared and plucked. For example, peak force was 16% greater and total energy absorbed was 37% greater in the furred compared to the plucked samples. Introduction, as in the case in other species of great apes, human males perpetrate the vast majority of violence and most of these acts of aggression are directed at other males. And over here, and over here it says, thus the extent to which the mane of lions is protective remains unresolved. So there's that. There's a photo and this is a scientific paper because there's a diagram where it says diagram and also there are numbers where it says numbers. So this was an important scientific paper and in conclusion, their conclusion. Thank you, Gary Dreifers. What questions have you for Gary? Mason. Yes. Yes, Mason. So the amount of hair that many males have in the human societies is sort of cyclical, the 70s, 80s, 90s are all different. Have they done a longitudinal study to look at the different protections that people might have had back then versus now? You should write to these guys because that is like, they're so into this and they did the thing where they made bones out of epoxy and then they put sheepskin, they actually sheared, they put sheepskin, the actual skin and then they put the hair on it and they really got into details and they spent a lot of time, but they didn't even know if the lion main thing was just crap, it's unresolved. So they have a lot more questions than answers and I think adding a longitudinal vector into that would thrill them. And they won an Ig Nobel Prize for publishing this paper. Sure, because they don't know anything actually. Gary. Another question? Yeah. So I need a question. I was just wondering how the coffee methodological people would feel about this paper. The coffee people. Oh, well, I mean. Does this paper have methodology or does it just have a really, really fancy replica of somebody's jaw with fur on it? No, but this thing here is a machine. It has a striker and an anvil and there's the hair and the substrate. So they're actually like measuring stuff. And if you have enough hair and you get hit, they prove that it's gonna spread it out by almost by a little more than a third, which is probably good, but you'd have to have a lot of fleece, a big fleecy beard, I think from the picture, but they have numbers and diagrams. Good, thank you. Michelle, it must be true. You have a question, Michelle. I was just wondering if maybe the reason it has no conclusion is because the guy who was supposed to write the conclusion got injured in the whole lion plucking incident? They talk a lot about the lions. They really spend a lot of time on the lions. Can you read between the lions and let us know if there's more? Others have proposed that the beard, blah, blah, blah, blah, human beard specific to males. Well, we know that, grab and hold the beard, links, baboons, sea lions, bison, elk, provide physical protection and mail to mail fights. Darwin speculated that the beard was merely an ornament that it was a sexual display. So I don't think anybody got hurt in the lion thing, but they don't mention it. They just say, who wants to bite a lion in the mane anyway? Basically it was the question. That's not what they're trying to bite. So they don't know. I am reluctant to ask, but does anyone else have a question about this for Gary? Mason. Mason. I can ask another question. So does this explains easy top? If I was going to be in a bar fight, I would totally not try to hit ZZ top in the beards. I'd find something like clean shaving guy to hit in a bar fight. And I'm afraid we don't have time. Not the two guys with the beard. We don't have time for any further questions. I'm afraid this has been another session. This has been the improbable research dramatic reading session at Arisha, which happened despite Arisha not happening here in the year 2022. We hope that next year Arisha will be back and we hope to be doing a lot more of these readings. If you'd like to be exposed, and I guess that is the right word to a lot more studies that have this flavor, things that we think anyway, make people laugh and then think subscribe to the magazine. The Annals of Improbable Research. We go to a lot of trouble to collect stuff from around the world. People around the world go to a lot of trouble to send us stuff they discover. And comes out six times a year. Every issue is a special issue on a different topic. One issue a year is a special issue about the Ig Nobel Prize winners and Ig Nobel Prize ceremony from that year. And all of this stuff you can find at improbable.com, which is on a thing called the World Wide Web, which is on a thing called the Internet, which is on a thing whose name I can't think of, or even birth. That's it. And I think that's the end of that. Thank you very much to all of our participants tonight, to our timekeeper, Michelle Ligori, to David Kessler, DK for organizing all this, to our dramatic readers. I ask you to take a bow now. As I mentioned your name, Mason Porter, Sonia Tafe, Dean Grazins, and the bearded Gary Dreyfus. Thank you all for joining us. Thank you all again, participants, and we'll either see you or not see you when we see you or not see you. Thanks.