The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research, now in all-pdf form. Get a subscription now for only $25 a year!

Research about physics, phonetics, and expulsion
compiled by Bertha Vanatian, Improbable Research staff

(Image credit: Mojpe)

Pressures Generated During Nose Blowing
“Pressures Generated During Nose Blowing in Patients With Nasal Complaints and Normal Test Subjects,” Peter Clement and Hana Chovanova, Rhinology, vol. 41, no. 3, 2003, pp. 152-158.

The authors compared nasal resistance and pressures generated during breathing and nose blowing in patients with chronic sinusitis, septal deviations and a control group consisting of normal test subjects. The chronic sinusitis group generated pressures during nose blowing that were significantly higher (898 daPa for the left side and 913 daPa for the right side) than in the other two groups. The decongestion didn’t change the generated pressures very much. Pressures generated during nose blowing with both nostrils closed are much higher than pressures generated during nose blowing with one nostril open.

You might think you're weird because you have trouble falling asleep, but insomnia is way too common. To know how to fix it, you have to know what's causing the problem. And to understand the problem, we need to learn something about sleep itself.

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You already knew about caffeine, but who knew that bacon and eggs for a late super could interfere with sleep? taking time to wind down is a problem for me. When it's already the wee hours of the morning when I finish work, and I know I'll be back up at five, who wants to take time to wind down? That's because I don't have trouble falling asleep; I just having trouble finding time for sleep. -via Laughing Squid

The Odd Cat Sanctuary in Massachusetts focuses on finding homes for odd cats: feral, disabled, neglected, elderly, or otherwise hard to place cats. They heard about Maya, a cat with a chromosomal abnormality that was headed for euthanasia at another shelter. Maya has a flattened snout and vision issues, but the more you look at her pictures, the cuter she becomes. The sanctuary placed Maya in a foster home, and now she has a forever home where she lives the life of a normal house cat and is quite pampered. Maya is also doing her part for other cats by being the unofficial face of the Odd Cat Sanctuary and drawing attention to other cats who need homes. See more Maya at her Instagram page.

(Image credit: meetmayacat)

The picture may not be any help, but you can see the video of this creature at Imgur. The moving picture will eventually reveal the type of animal to you, but try out your detective skills by guessing what it is during the first ten seconds or so. Were you correct? Me, neither. -via TYWKIWDBI

Did Chewbacca really become a vegetarian because the porgs are so cute? We may never know, but if you want to chow down on the little critters without the fishy taste, then check out this bento box version made completely of rice! Yeah, it's more art than food, but it will make a decent lunch for some Star Wars fan.

This Porg doesn’t require contemplating the roasting of Ahch-To’s cutest critters, and instead requires artfully shaping together heaping piles of delicious sushi rice—before presumably admiring your artistic talents for a few seconds and proceeding to devour it.

Watch how it's made at io9. -via Everlasting Blort

The 2010 film Black Swan is about ballerinas, played by Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis, competing for the lead role in a New York City ballet company production of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. It is not only a dance movie, but a look into the psyche of a performing artist reaching for perfection in a cutthroat world. It's also been described as a horror film. Black Swan was a box office hit, and was nominated for five Academy Awards. Natalie Portman won for Best Actress. Some amazing things went on behind the scenes, too.

10. Natalie Portman is a big reason why this film was made.

Portman trained for a year in ballet and did so in the hope that this movie would be made. She even paid for the lessons out of her own pocket.

5. Portman suffered an injury during filming.

She dislocated a rib during a lift and had to give up her trailer in order to pay for the treatment she needed. It took a while to recover and they lifted her from the armpits afterward.

Read more about Black Swan at TVOM. 

Pioneering journalist Eliza Scidmore was the magazine's first official female writer, photographer, and board member. In the 1890s, the organization that is now the Smithsonian Institution gave Scidmore a Kodak camera to document her travels across India, Japan, China, and the Indonesian island of Java.

In celebration of the magazine's 130th anniversary, National Geographic posted a gallery of photographs that broke new ground from the span of its publication history. Check out images from the first successful expedition to the North Pole, their first wildlife photo, their first camera trap photo, through a "first" from 2017.

Medical cure-alls and scams are nothing new. The traveling medicine show was a popular way to advertise snake oil and other quack cures in the 19th century, and then there were radium treatments for everything in the early 20th century. Many of us recall copper bracelets, Laetrile, and other "alternative medicines." There's a long tradition of getting rich by taking advantage of the gullible. In the 1920s and '30s, these marketers took advantage of a wonderful new medium to reach consumers: radio.

In 1932, the Federal Radio Commission (later supplanted by the Federal Communications Commission), banished from the airwaves fortune-tellers, mystics, seers, and other people peddling dubious claims, but concern remained about what was fit to air and how to enforce rules about truth in advertising. A 1936 edition of Hygeia, a publication of the AMA, lamented that “no adequate and prompt measures are as yet available to curb venal radio stations from selling ‘time’ to anyone who pays the price.”

And when regulators did catch up with fraudsters, enterprising quacks got creative. By setting up towers and transmitters in small towns south of the United States/Mexico border, a phalanx of fabulists launched their own stations, beyond the reach of many regulations.

These Mexican radio stations broadcast with up to a million watts of power, reaching across the US and beyond. That's how John R. Brinkley advertised his surgery to implant goat gonads in humans, and made a fortune. Of course, the marketing of dubious quick cures continues on the internet. Read about the era of quack cures on the radio at Atlas Obscura.

The old story about the blind men who touched an elephant is a way of teaching us how we should look at the big picture instead of the individual parts. You have to wonder why they didn't just ask a sighted person to settle their argument for them. At least that was my question. The elephant has a completely different take on the tale. Or tail, as the case may be. This comic is from Zach Weinersmith at Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. The moral of this story is, always ask permission before you touch someone. Especially if that someone is an elephant in therapy.  

David Graham of Charleston, South Carolina, was simply trying to discard the Christmas tree. His plan was to dump it over the backyard fence into the woods. His wife Erin wondered why it was taking so long, so she peeked out the window and then had to grab her camera.  

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Their two dogs weren't making things easy at all! Did they consider it a game of tug-of-war? Or were they just upset that the wonderful tree was going away? I would bet the former, as the dogs seem to be having a great time. David, not so much.  -via Tastefully Offensive

(Image credit: Orange County Fire Authority)

A speeding car hit the median and launched into the second floor of a building in Santa Ana, California, early Sunday morning. The vehicle caught fire, and the driver was dangling out of it for a few minutes until police moved underneath to catch him. The driver, who admitted being under the influence of drugs, sustained minor injuries, as did a passenger. The building is a dental office, and was unoccupied when the crash occurred. After sunrise, the car was removed by a fire department crane.

OCFA on scene in SANTA ANA of a vehicle into a building. One person still trapped inside the vehicle. pic.twitter.com/sWmtovu0Kd

— OCFA PIO (@OCFA_PIO) January 14, 2018

-via Uproxx

UPDATE: There is some surveillance video of the crash.

You can use liposuction to move body fat from your belly to your butt, but that won't change the way your body works. Sooner or later, it will start replenishing its fat storage in the areas it did that to begin with. That's due to your hormones -or lack of them.

Specifically, your sex hormones. Testosterone and estrogen are two of the biggest drivers of fat storage—they’re the whole reason that men and women tend to have different body shapes when it comes to chub. Biologically female bodies stash the stuff in thighs and butts, whereas male bodies tend to pack pounds onto the stomach. This is also partly why men tend to have more cardiovascular problems. Abdominal fat exacerbates metabolic issues and triggers all kinds of metabolic changes that have a negative impact on your cardiovascular system.

The way your body does this is way more complicated than just that. For example, too little testosterone has the same effect as too much testosterone! To learn the effects of hormones on body fat, scientists study the ways hormones change, specifically, at puberty and menopause, during gender reassignment therapy, and under abnormal genetic conditions. Read about the role of hormones in distributing your body fat at Popular Science. -via Digg

(Image credit: Flickr user Bard College at Simon's Rock)

Bruce Lee was the most badass martial arts movie star ever. How could you possibly make his moves any cooler? Maybe with a lightsaber! Inspired by a digital artwork by DeviantART member Ameeeeba, Patrick Nan altered a scene from the 1972 movie Fist of Fury to include lasers in dangerous places- like nunchucks.  

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Yeah, that could leave you with some serious armpit burns, but it looks good. -via Tastefully Offensive 

This is why I am reluctant to tell people what I do for a living. It sounds like a hobby, something that people fill their time with, but don't necessarily make money from. Even the IRS has a hard time with the word "blogger." Reposting cat pictures is a legitimate career -believe me, believe me! But if I try to deflect by saying I'm a writer, no one believes that, either. This comic is from Poorly Drawn Lines. -via Geeks Are Sexy

If you happen to be in Albuquerque on January 20th, you'll be able to dine at Los Pollos Hermanos, the notorious restaurant featured in the TV series Breaking Bad. Twisters Burgers and Burritos will be transformed for one day only to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the TV show, which premiered on January 20, 2008.

Super fans Edward Candelaria and Marq Smith, of Albuquerque, are paying to transform a Twisters Burgers and Burritos restaurant, 4257 Isleta Blvd., into the iconic Los Pollos Hermanos as it appeared during filming years ago. The outside will be updated with a Los Pollos Hermanos sign and the two already made the employee uniforms.

“We’re going to look like Los Pollos Hermanos. We’ll have the sign. All the cashiers will be wearing yellow shirts, the aprons and hats,” general manager Reuben Zaragoza said.

Breaking Bad fans will want to visit, but Candelaria and Smith would really like the cast and crew of Better Call Saul, who are now filming in the city, to show up. They'll get a free burrito if they do. -via Uproxx