FEB 09
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" If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would presumably flunk it "
Stanley Garn
Supermarket trips
Tears to the ligamentum teres femoris, and the acetabular labrum are the kind of serious hip problems most usually associated with sporting trauma injuries.
Recently however, a new threat to hip health has been jointly identified by doctors at the Yamanashi University, Yamanashi, Japan, and the Wellington Hospital, London, England.
They have documented ( and successfully treated ) no less than three separate cases of Supermarket Hip - which are described in a recent issue of The Journal of Arthroscopic & Related Surgery.
Recognition of the dangers of the supermarket lead the authors to a safety recommendation.
“ We therefore suggest that shopping in a supermarket may need to be reclassified as an at-risk activity for the hip joint. “
28 FEB 09
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Supersized duh
The April 2009 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine will publish details of a new research project which analyses the possible links between literacy levels and self-administered food portion sizes.
According to the findings, people with low literacy levels are twice as likely to mis underestimate portion sizes, experiencing so-called ‘ portion distortion ‘ – with errors reaching 53% for oversized juice portions.
But those who are highly literate should also be wary : “ people with higher literacy levels have troubles estimating portion sizes, too . . . ”
Health Behavior News Service press release here :
27 FEB 09
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Invisible links
Q. When it a mobile phone more than just a mobile phone ?
A. When it’s ‘ umbilical ‘.
Researchers from the Department of Communication at the University of Haifa, have determined that mobile phones can sometimes form an important ( though invisible ) link between parents and their teenage children.
Intriguing as the discovery may be, it remains threaded-though with enigma and mystery – for, as the researchers point out :
“ It is shown that, for parents and their teenage children, the mobile phone is important more for the possibility of communication and less for the text or voice conversation it actually carries. “
See :
‘ Remote control, umbilical cord and beyond ‘ in the latest issue of the British Journal of Developmental Psychology.
Comment from reader Simon W
' I've got a cordless phone '
26 FEB 09
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“ Turn it down ! ”
“ Heckling has long been under-represented in academic discussions about popular music. “
Thankfully, this neglect has been partially mitigated with a
publication in the latest issue of the journal Popular Music and
Society
The new research, from the department of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Chester, UK, is one of the very first to undertake an in-depth investigation of heckling at pop concerts.
The author identifies and catalogues no less than five types of heckle :
• endorsement, • request, • critique, • calls for replacement, and • cries of outright opposition.
Some ( but not all ) of which can be potentially damaging .
For it is these negative heckles which, according to the author, may pose a threat to what he calls the performers’ aura :
“ Heckling can potentially damage the aura by shifting attention away from the star, condemning the content of his or her performance, and forcing him or her to make an impromptu response. “
In the end though, the conclusion is that even negative heckling may sometimes have a positive effect - by helping to partially reconfigure the music industry’s famously recalcitrant status quo.
Read the full study here :
25 FEB 09
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At last !
A
role for Segways ™
Here they are performing admirably -
as movable dance-platforms supporting Neptune’s Guardians,
in this year’s
Rio de Janeiro Carnival.
[ Low-res TV screen-grab courtesy TV Globo ]
24 FEB 09
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Celebrity Secularists
Turn to today’s issue of the Independent for an impressive list of heavyweight scientists, sportspersons, politicians, authors, comedians, film-makers, philosophers etc etc who have become celebrity atheists – or, as we like to call them, NoGodNiks.
22 FEB 09
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All together now
Armies do it, cheerleaders do it, even synchronized swimmers do it – and many people thoroughly approve - but why ?
A new study, published in the penultimate issue of the journal Psychological Science, attempts to provide a comprehensive clarification of of the allure and motivations behind Highly Organized Synchronous Activities.
The appealing phrases ‘ Muscular Bonding ‘ and ‘ Collective Effervescence ‘ sprung to previous investigators’ minds - but a truly exhaustive explanation failed to gel.
Now a new set of experiments have been conducted at the Department of Organizational Behavior at Stanford University - involving groups of experimental subjects ( students ) who were asked to : walk in step: move plastic cups around : and sing the Canadian national anthem in various synchronous and non-synchronous conditions.
“ In total, the results suggest that acting in synchrony with others can increase cooperation by strengthening social attachment among group members. “
- say the experimenters.
But sadly, again, the results of the study – and subsequent conclusions – still fall quite a way short of a once-and-for-all explanation for the appeal of things like this . . .
Or this . . .
Or this . . .
Read the full research
report here
20 FEB 09
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Research paper de la jour
For your eyes only - in the June 2009 edition of :
Food, Culture and Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research
19 FEB 09 ( late edition )
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To the Left or to the Right ?
Researchers at the Fakultät für Psychologie, Institut für Kognitive Neurowissenschaft, Abteilung Biopsychologie, at the Ruhr-Universität , Bochum, Germany, built a special experimental chamber.
Positioned in front of a black wall within the chamber was a life-sized black plastic head on a tripod.
150 participants ( students ) were asked to sign a consent form, and were then introduced to the chamber ( one at a time ) to interact with the head.
But the experiment was not as sinister as it sounds. For all the students had to do was to kiss the black plastic head on its ‘ lips ‘. *[1]
Researchers recorded whether they leaned to the right or to the left.
62% kissed to the right, and 38% to the left.
The students were also asked to provide details regarding their dominant hand, foot and eye.
These factors were then cross-referenced with their preferred kissing direction.
“ These results support the assumption that the head-turning bias in humans may be able to induce or enhance other asymmetries of perception and action “
The research paper has just been published in
the latest issue of the journal Laterality
You can read a copy of the full paper here.
* [1] Note : The paper doesn't specify for how long. Ed .
؟ ؟ ؟
Other recent studies of note from ‘ Laterality ‘
• People’s handedness correlated against their innate scalp-hair-whorl direction. ( 2008 )
• The preferred orientation of physicians’ stethoscopes around their necks ( 2006 )
• Nostil
dominance ( 2005 )
* Note [2] : It seems that the obvious study, which would be of interest to biopsychologists and gentlemens’ outfitters alike, has not yet been performed ? If anyone knows of such a study, please get in touch. Ed .
19 FEB 09
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Cup Paper.
As researchers from the Department of Industrial Design, at Delft University of Technology point out :
“ Fluid food products are always consumed from a container: a package, a cup, a bowl, and so on. “
But how does the type of cup affect the drinkers’ experience ?
Experimental participants rated different types of cup ( plastic, ceramic etc etc ) for various attributes. Robust / Fragile, Strong / Weak , Cold / Warm etc etc
Their evaluations – which were carried out with the cups either full or empty, and with either a cold drink or hot drink – didn’t show up many significant preferences.
Except for the Cold / Warm evaluations.
“ Ratings on the cold-warm item increased when hot tea was consumed from some of the cups, probably related to the increase of the outside temperature of the cup. “
The paper is
published in the April 2009 edition of the journal Food Quality
and Preference.
18 FEB 09 ( late edition )
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The meaning(s) of uh
Only a small proportion of the academic work on pragmatics has been devoted to the study of ‘ interjections ‘.
But more light has recently been shone into this grey area by investigations at Saarland University, in Germany.
Specifically, at the English Linguistics Department – which has been investigating the meanings of :
• oh
• uh
• m
• um
and
• tsk
( along with some other less savoury interjections )
The results of the study will be published in a forthcoming edition of the journal ‘ Pragmatics ‘
But, in the meantime, you can read a short introduction here [ scroll to the bottom of the page ]
Enigmatically, despite their variability ( and perhaps even their unclassifiability
? ) the author notes that :
“ . . . the pragmatic functions of ever new interjections seem always to be clear to listeners in the concrete context. “
Comment : from reader Leo W.
' Hmmmmmm '
18 FEB 09
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MissAtom 2009
If
you’re female, between the ages of 18 to 35, and work in the ( former
) USSR nuclear industry, ( power generation, research, or WMDs * ) -
then there’s
still time to enter the official 2009 ‘ Miss
Atom ‘ competition.
The first phase ( posting photos to the website ) ends on Feb 19th , then the competition enters the judging phase – and will culminate in the awards on March 5th.
First prize is a week’s tour of Cuba.
Full details ( roughly ) translated courtesy Babelfish, here.
( * note : This year the competition entry rules have been extended to include ladies who reside in the formerly non-existent weapons-research tax-haven cosed-communities such as Zheleznogorsk )
17 FEB 09
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Thanks, but . . .
Over the last few decades, very few consumer behaviour patterns have escaped scrutiny. One particular trait causes retailers and marketing academics headaches – particularly at certain dates on the calendar.
Take tomorrow for example – there are likely to be signs of the syndrome known as :
‘ Gift Resistance ‘.
Gift resistance comes under the broader umbrella of ‘ Anti- Consumption ‘ or even ‘ Anti-materialism ‘ which has roots which can be traced back more than 400 years.
The authors of a new paper
‘ Market-resistance and Valentine's Day events ‘
point out that :
“ . . . the context of Valentine's Day remains relatively under-explored in marketing journals. “
They highlight various marketing-detrimental behaviours with reference to Feb 14th :
“ In the case of gift-resistance, consumers are hesitant to participate
in traditional gift exchanges, do not give at all, and/or
encourage others not to engage in gift exchange. “
As if that wasn’t bad enough for the manufacturers, retailers and marketers
of Valentine’s gifts, the study also identified another trait :
‘ Gift Misinterpretation Fear ‘
which can often deter consumers in new(ish) relationships. Those who are concerned, understandably enough, about possible negative consequences of a misunderstood Valentine’s gift.
The results of the seven-year-long multi-method enquiry into the subject are published in the current edition of the Journal of Business Research. ( price for non-subscribers US $ 31.50 )
Or, you can read it here ( price US $ 00.00 )
13 FEB 09
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Grazing itineraries
Ask any Omani goatherd where his/her goats are at any one time, and they’ll
be able to tell you. But only down to a certain level of accuracy.
If you wanted to know exactly where a particular goat was at a given moment, you might have to resort to more scientific methods – say, GPS tracking devices.
Easy as this may sound ( given the sophistication of 2009 electronic tech ) , you would have to bear in mind that the terrain in Oman is, in many places, extremely rugged - take for example, the Hajar Mountains of northern Oman.
So which type of GPS device would be suitable in such an area ?
Thanks to the generosity of the German taxpayers, researchers from the University of Kassel, and the University of Göttingen, in Gemany were able to set up an experiment to test three types of GPS receiver for suitability in a real-world goat tracking scenario across the Hajar Mountains.
Not an easy task - as the investigators point out :
“ The extremely rugged terrain features of our study area with its steep gorges and hidden pastures poses extreme challenges to the signal reception capability of any GPS receiver. “
And sadly, in repeated tests, not one of the devices worked well enough to serve as an accurate real-time 3-D goat tracker.
“ In the topographically disrupted study environment,
recorded values of the position dilution of precision (PDOP) proved to be of
little use as indicators of position quality as they were poorly related
to the precision of latitude, longitude and altitude values obtained. “
The study is published in last month’s edition of the journal Computers and Electronics in Agriculture
12 FEB 09
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Ldquoenjoyablerdquo in Tokyo
The 12 authors, from the University of Electro-Communications (UEC), Tokyo, Japan, presented their paper at the Society of Instrument and Control Engineers (SICE) Annual Conference, in Aug 2008.
As this abstract of their paper explains, they :
“ . . . created a new entertainment called ldquoAnts in the Pantsrdquo. “
It works like this :
“ The userpsilas hand is placed into a tactile display in the form of a glove that has a matrix of small motors with brushes inside it.
When the user places their gloved hand on the visual display, the user can feel a sensation as if ants are crawling up their arm. We have tested the system with more than 500 participants. "
The researchers were keen to find out if the userpsilas enjoyed the experience of faux-insect supra-dermal activity, and so a questionaire was employed to find out.
" In response to a questionnaire, about 75% of users responded that the experience was ldquoenjoyablerdquo and 54% that it was ldquorealisticrdquo . . .
We believe our ldquoAnts in the Pantsrdquo opened the door to a new type of ldquouncomfortable, creepy but enjoyablerdquo entertainment. “
For a more straightforward look at the idea, go here
to read the full version of the paper, which is far more readily decipherable,
and has pictures of the devices in action.
Really Magazine especially draws attention to the last paragraph :
“ The method of stimulus that use a rotating stimulator with a motor has the possibility of presenting variety of tactile sensation other than just insects, by changing the material of the stimulator. For example, the gooey sensation using silicon and a smooth sensation using cloth would be possible. If we choose the material for the particular purpose, we may be able to display sensation that has never been generated before and transmit them to any parts of the body. “
Watch this space.
10 FEB 09
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Patent of the year
Wigs for ( but not necessarily limited to ) dogs & cats
see : World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) patent number 2008/016624, granted around this time last year.
09 FEB 09
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Graffiti . . . ( you decide )
You may love it, you may hate it, but how legal is it ? Suprisingly, perhaps, the answer is very far from clear . . .
A recent
article in the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice reviewed
the legality - or otherwise - of graffiti.
The author highlights the fact that although applying an unauthorised graffito onto someone’s property can be illegal, the creators of the artwork are automatically protected ( at least in the US and the EU ) by strict copyright laws.
Attention is drawn to the perplexing case of English v. BFC&R East 11th Street LLC, 1997 WL 746444 (S.D.N.Y. march 3, 1997) (97 Civ. 7466)
Court action centering around two murals which had been created by a group of New York artists - on walls which didn’t belong to them.
And which determined that : “ ... the complete obstruction of an exterior mural by a new brick wall did not constitute destruction of the mural, if the mural itself remained intact but invisible. “ [source] *
To confuse things still further, see this video from Jamaican artists The Rickards Bros. whose artwork consists of removing a 2004 graffito by a famous artist ( Banksy ) in the form of a chunk of concrete wall – and then offering the video of the operation for sale as an artwork in itself . . .
؟ ؟ ؟
* Also see : the Great Landslide Case ( Buncombe v. Hyde )( Washoe, Nevada, 1871 )
Further reading :
two previous Really Magazine articles referencing graffiti :
06 FEB 09
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Finding that adapter in Holland
“ An important role of informative advertising is to inform consumers of the simple fact that the shop that advertises sells a particular product.
This information may help consumers to save on their search activities: instead of wandering around, a consumer can simply visit the shop that has advertised, knowing that there he can find the commodity he is looking for.
The implications of this simple fact have not been studied before. “
This new marketing research paper - which will certainly be of interest to advertising agencies and retailers alike - has just been published in the journal Marketing Science.
It reveals that the right kind of advertising can considerably reduce the so-called ' search costs ' incurred by consumers ( the time a customer spends trying to find a product ).
This might be expressed by a mathematical equation of the form :
Or, in text form :
“ Since visiting an advertising firm comes with lower expected search costs than finding the product in a non-advertising firm, advertising firms have an advantage above non-advertising firms.”
You can read a full ( draft ) copy here :
05 FEB 09
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SioW ShoW PoW
Imagine that you own a grocery store, and, like many other businesses, you’re in it for the money.
How can you gauge how much your customers might be willing to spend – short of actually going around and asking them ?
The answers might be provided by a new study from the Faculty of Business and Economics, at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, in Belgium.
The paper, published in the latest issue of the journal ‘ Service Research ‘ provides a new method of estimating ' Customer Wallet ' – without asking the customers.
The researchers break down the customers’ wallet into three parts :
The Size-of-Wallet ( SioW ) - meaning the total cash which the customer has available ( which, as the authors point out, is generally unknown ).
Then there’s the Share-of-Wallet ( ShoW ) - in other words how much cash the customer might spend in your store as opposed to others. This is also unknown.
Lastly there’s the Potential-of-Wallet ( PoW ) - which is the difference between the Size-of-Wallet and the actual business volume the customer does with the your company.
The problem was mathematically analysed by applying the Generalized Binomial Model (GBM) and interior-reflective Newton method, asymptotically chi-squared distributed, with one, two or nine degrees of freedom, to a real world example - customers at a Belgian bank.
Sadly though, even after several pages of highly complex binomials the authors still caution that :
“ We should emphasize that predicting the Customer Wallet is a difficult task, and that highly accurate predictions are not to be expected. “
That’s bearing in mind of course that, as Mittal and Kamakura (Journal
of Marketing Research 38(2) 131-142 ) pointed out in 2001, consumers with
different characteristics, and from different social classes, might have wildly
different response patterns.
We should also perhaps remember that spending is likely to vary greatly according to the type and range of products on offer, and on the local competition, and the economic climate, on advertising budgets, inflation, interest rates, the time of the year, time of the month, the weather etc etc etc.
You can read the full paper here
Comment from reader Paul H.
' If it helps their research please let them know that my wallet is about 15cm x 9cm '
04 FEB 09
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‘ Leadership ‘
. . . ' is an international, peer-reviewed journal designed to provide an ongoing forum for academic researchers to exchange information, insights and knowledge based on both theoretical development and empirical research on leadership. '
And the August 2010 issue will be a special – focussing on the idea of ‘ Leadership as an Art ‘
The editors are currently encouraging the submission of academic papers on the subject ( deadline is 2nd March 2009 ).
Posing questions such as :
“ What might constitute the ‘aesthetics of leadership’, either from a theoretical or practical perspective ? “
and :
“ What are the implications for conducting research into leadership if it is seriously considered to be an art form ? ”
The editors are hoping – expecting even – to be surprised
“ . . . by submissions that take the idea of leadership as an art in directions that we had not imagined. “
Looking for insights, Really Magazine engaged the services of a leading web search engine with the phrase :
" Leadership as an art form "
and was surprised - and taken in directions we had not imagined - by immediately finding this ( from Time Magazine, Jan, 1973 )
The artist in question ? Richard Nixon.
03 FEB 09
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Envisioning the fruit bulb.
Over the centuries – if not millennia – philosophers have struggled with the classification of objects.
For instance, is ‘ a drum ‘ a container or a musical instrument ?
To complicate matters still further, there are other classes of entities which, by definition, fall outside the concept of objects : the so-called non-objects.
And researchers from the Department of Human Communication Sciences at Sheffield University in the UK have recently discovered/created no less than 84 of them.
The results have just been published in the latest issue of the journal Behavior Research Methods.
Amongst their discoveries/creations are such non-objects as :
a nut-helmet
a caterpillar-comb
a guitar-key
a violin-toothbrush
and a rhinoceros-whistle
To aid with visualization of their non-objects, the university is providing pictures of all 84. Sadly, for copyright reasons, we can’t reproduce the images here, but visualisations of the entire collection have been made available to interested parties for free download.
[ .zip file of .jpgs ( colour and B&W ) for PC and Mac ]
؟ ؟ ؟
And to round up the numbers, Really Magazine has discovered/created an 85th object, which we are making available copyright free for any useage.
the fruit-bulb
02 FEB 09
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previous month
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