MAY 09
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" Reality is merely an illusion - albeit a very persistent one. "
Albert Einstein
OCT in Foggia
Investigators at the University of Foggia, Italy, recently turned to the possibilities offered by a DMA ( Dynamic Mechanical Analyser ) to demystify various parameters regarding the OCT ( Optimal Cooking Time ) of spaghetti.
Would different cooking times affect the mechanical properties ( e.g. tenacity, and elongation-at-break ) of the cooked pasta ?
“
Results highlight that the mechanical parameters are related with the OCT
for all investigated spaghetti samples. “
The
research article will appear in a future edition of the Journal of Food
Engineering
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Also see :
A previous Really Magazine article from 2005 ' Why 3 ? '
28 MAY 09
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TMT in trendy sunglasses
Every political ‘ leader ‘ with more than three neurones knows that they can very significantly boost their own popularity by encouraging their subject population to be afraid of something. It took a while, but over the past 30 years or so, a new field of research - Terror Management Theory (TMT) has emerged.
As the TMT dept. at the University of Missouri-Columbia puts it :
“ The basic gist of the theory is that humans are motivated to quell the potential for terror inherent in the human awareness of vulnerability and mortality by investing in cultural belief systems (or worldviews) that imbue life with meaning, and the individuals who subscribe to them with significance (or self-esteem). “
If it wasn’t scary enough to know that various political think-tanks now tap into and utilise TMT resources quantified and refined in academia – then imagine what life would be like it the ad. agencies got a hold of it.
They already have.
A study published earlier this year describes two experiments, showing how
“ . . . researchers manipulated death anxiety by having participants consider their own deaths in detail. In both studies, participants rated their degree of connection to a variety of products including cars, microwaves, jeans, cell phones, MP3 players, and sunglasses. “
The results ?
“ individuals form strong connections to their brands as a response to existential insecurity. “
Really Magazine has not yet been able to determine if any ad agencies have actually made use of the findings – but weapons of mass deception, once discovered, will oneday surely be deployed.
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Note :
The University of Missouri-Columbia provides online various yardsticks by which ( they believe ) you can measure your own levels of ‘ terror-prone-ness ’
These include humanistic and creaturely essays, a word search puzzle, pro- and anti-American essays, and an excerpt from a scary story by Albert Camus.
( All here - .doc format )
Remembering, as Albert himself once put it
" At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face. "
26 MAY 09
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Trying to learn something difficult ?
If so, you may be interested in a new technique recently discovered at the Department of Social and Cultural Psychology, Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen, in the Netherlands.
Researchers asked a group of participants ( students ? ) to undergo a batch of semi-gruelling cognitive tests whilst at the same time engaging in various form of ‘ body locomotion ‘ ( involving stepping forwards, backwards or sideways )
The results were significant – and, to some, perhaps surprising, too :
“ . . . stepping backward significantly enhanced cognitive performance compared to stepping forward or sideways. “
The team go on to recommend a disarmingly simple strategy :
“ Thus, whenever you encounter a difficult situation, stepping backward may boost your capability to deal with it effectively. “
Intriguing though the new discovery is, Really magazine is concerned about how the strategy might work in the real world. University lectures might have to be conducted in very large arenas – say for example, the college sports grounds – and the students may also need binoculars.
The research is published in the latest issue of the journal Psychological Science
You can also read a full copy here :
Comment from reader Eamon P.
If anyone is interested, I am thinking of starting
a new module of strategic business management-empowerment classes
based on the findings - " Step
backwards towards your future " .
25 MAY 09
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!
They appear in (almost) every newspaper, on (almost) every TV channel, on (almost) every radio station, and in (almost) every www news-site, (almost) every day.
And yet they have been all-but-ignored in the annals of academic research.
Media hypes.
Now, the Department of Political Science and Public Management at the University of Southern Denmark has undertaken one of the very few studies into hyping - monitoring Danish media outlets over a period of five years.
The research paper, published in the latest issue of the European Journal of Communication points out, somewhat obviously, that :
“ . . . not every event has the potential to trigger a media hype: it must, of course, satisfy the general news values, but should also contain some violation of norms, be suitable for public debate and, finally, it must be possible for the media to cover the event from a variety of perspectives. “
But the team also discovered some more unusual aspects of hype dynamics :
“ They last approximately three weeks and come in several, usually three, waves of decreasing intensity. “
Hopefully, the new insights will help readers, viewers and listeners to ‘ spot-the-hype ‘ amongst the ‘ real ‘ news. A far from easy task given :
• The very high levels of professionalism of the PR agencies employed at the public’s expense by governments, pressure groups, and businesses.
• The exceptionally rewarding fees which they receive to covertly place, manipulate and sometimes even create ‘ news ‘ stories in almost every genre.
• The thought-free amoral complicity of chronically underfunded cut’n’paste mass media outlets.
Here is today’s helping - play spot-the-hype amongst the ‘ real ‘ news.
21 MAY 09
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Enigmatic phatics
‘ In linguistics, a Discourse Marker is a word or phrase that is relatively syntax-independent, does not have a particular grammatical function, and does not change the meaning of an utterance. ‘ [ source wikipedia ]
Take, for example ‘ Oh ’.
Broadly speaking, it’s perhaps fair to say that there has not been a great deal of academic research regarding this discourse marker in particular, nevertheless, a new paper, just published in the Journal of Sociolinguistics, examines ‘ Oh ’ in great detail, apparently going quite some way towards pinning down its varied applications. For example, ‘ Oh ’ is identified as being able ‘ to serve to signal a speaker’s stance towards quoted material.’
Yet, on the other hand, in some senses ‘ Oh ‘ still remains somewhat mysterious, for there are very many possible meanings of ‘ Oh ‘ - dependant, for instance, on the intonation, that is to say on its variant musical ‘ pitch ’. ( Though this aspect is not tackled in the new paper.)
Nevertheless, broadly speaking by and large it has to be said that ‘ Oh ‘ is now considerably more delineated than it was previously. Moreover, that’s to say, in other words, as a result, the new paper illustrates, in conclusion :
“ . . . how Bakhtin's (1984) notions of uni-directional and vari-directional double voicing articulate with information display and evaluation functions of oh identified by Schiffrin (1987), suggesting that oh (when occurring as a preface to constructed dialogue), works both to display and evaluate quoted material for the purposes of identity construction in interaction. “
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Anyway, to continue, there are many online sources for readers who may be interested in the possible meanings of ‘ Oh ‘ . But there are perhaps no better places to look than in this 2007 paper from the Catalan Journal of Linguistics
‘ The translation of oh in a corpus of dubbed sitcoms ‘
Where the author takes the trouble to list a great many of its possible functions, noting, for example, that it can flag :
Pain, disappointment, surprise, pity, admiration, annoyance, phatic*-agreement, or phatic*-disagreement, to name but a few.
* Note for non-linguists :
Phatic is an adjective
(of language) used for general social interaction rather than to convey
specific meaning, e.g. ' Nice morning,
isn’t it
squire ? ' or ‘ Gor-luv-a-duck ‘.
Comment : from reader Giles P
' Meh '.
20 MAY 09
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Gripping mate research
Of the many criteria which women might use to choose a mate, one ( according to the Department of Sociobiology and Anthropology, at the Institute of Zoology and Anthropology, University of Göttingen, Germany ) is a male’s dancing ability.
The university have taken their hunch a step further though, for they have discovered a previously unknown link between females’ ratings of males' dancing abilities, correlated with the males’ ‘ Hand Grip Strength ‘
Perhaps in the future Hand Grip Strength (HGS) tests may oneday assist in the difficult choices involved in choosing a partner ( dancing and/or amorous ) ?
More details here :
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The university is also conducting an [ online / scientific* ] test - in which anyone is encouraged to participate, into ‘ Body Height Preferences ‘.
It will ask you some probing questions – and enquires into your male / female height preferences – both for stable relationships and ‘ affairs ‘ ( one-night-stands ).
* Isn’t that an oxymoron ? Ed.
19 MAY 09
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Lack of bullseyes.
The much vaunted Wolfram|Alpha search engine – has a stated goal :
“. . . to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone “
and it has been launched.
Although the engine already ‘ knows’ “ 10+ trillion of pieces of data “ it is of course still in its ‘ learning phase ‘ at the moment – and our initial ( completely non-scientific ) tests show that it still has quite a bit to learn.
We started searching for something about as commonplace as you can get.
• Search results for “ y-fronts ”
“ Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input.- Did you mean: toronto “ *
Wondering if perhaps the field of underwear identification is perhaps ‘ off genre‘ ( after all the company is backed and fronted by the distinguished mathematician, scientist, inventor, author, business leader, and Old Etonian - Stephen Wolfram ) we tried a mathematical query instead - and looked for “ one of the oldest unsolved problems in number theory and in all of mathematics. " [ source : Wikipedia ] . . . we asked about Goldbach's Conjecture
• Results : " Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input. "
More puzzling still, the engine doesn't even seem to be aware of it's own existence - we tried the organisation's logo strapline ‘ Computational Knowledge Engine ‘
• Results : " Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input. "
We did have a little more luck though when we turned to physics – for the engine has heard of the famous ‘ Pitch Drop Experiment ‘ - but the outcome was still highly enigmatic - for the results page reveals the very first ‘ Reverse Search Engine ‘ that Really Magazine has ever encountered - asking us if we know anything about it . . .
* Note :
If anyone knows what cyber-semantic knowledge-mapped entanglements the two entities might have ( however loose ), please let us know, many thanks Ed.
Editor's note :
Reader Carmelita kindly alerts us a pair of possible reasons why the Computational Knowledge Engine might find a link between Y-Fronts and Toronto.
Firstly, the international three letter airport code for Toronto begins with a 'Y' ( YYZ ) - and secondly, it could be a truncation of a famous waterside location in Toronto known as BaYFront.
Intriguing as the ideas are, the magazine isn't yet
quite 100% convinced about the answers - and is left with the unsettling,
yet at the same time somehow
comforting feeling that The Engine knows more about the subject
than we do. Ed.
18 MAY 09 ( late edition )
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Bullseyes
“ . . . there is little research on the relationship between EW and temperament. “
The abbreviation EW in this case means ‘ Eye White ‘ and the eyes in question belong to domesticated cattle.
Is it really possible to gauge the animal’s temperament just by the amount of eye-white it habitually shows ? Can things really be that simple ?
According to the latest research, just published in the ‘ Journal of Animal Science ‘ the answer is a definite probably.
( Though countryside ramblers should note that this easy visual test - which can be of course be performed ad.hoc. from quite some distance - doesn’t seem to work so well for bulls . . . )
18 MAY 09
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Book of the month
Computer-related vision problems, shown in the starkest of ways here
Comment from reader Carmelita :
' Regarding the vision problems related to computer use, I thought that perhaps the article would appear right side up for those south of the equator. Perhaps you could enlighten us in the northern hemisphere if this is so from your location . . . ''
Editor's note :
From our point of view way down South - the answer is sadly no .'
Press-release of the month.
The Optimum Population Trust ( Patron Sir David Attenborough ) finally pins down underlying root causes of overpopulation . . .
16 MAY 09
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The math(s) of (some) fraud
In the recent past, some spectacularly large examples of ‘creative’ corporate accounting have come to light. But, until now, there has been very little scientific analysis of the cost/benefits of fraudulent accounting within a firm.
Now the situation has been rectified - and quantified - with the publication of
‘ The Economics of Fraudulent Accounting ‘
in the latest issue of ‘ The Review of Financial Studies ‘.
The authors have constructed a highly complex mathematical model which has identified the following broad trends :
“ We show that during periods of suspicious accounting, firms hire and invest excessively, while managers exercise options. “ * our italics
The authors point out that the situation is ( sometimes) reversible however – for if the mismanagement and misappropriation is detected early enough – and made public – things can ( sometimes) improve . . .
“ When the misreporting is detected, firms shed labor and capital and productivity improves. “
Perhaps future research could focus on the benefits accrued by the fraudulent individuals concerned rather than the entire firm itself ?
Especially in cases where the fraud goes completely undetected – dare we guess the majority ?
Then we will have the full picture.
Read the full paper here :
* i.e. pocket money
15 MAY 09
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Really Magazine has a new column !
Really Magazine is proud to be joined by a new columnist – J. Smackramblurdi – who will be providing us with regular measures of his uniquely pithy aphorisms - equally appropriate for business leaders, philosophers, and all those interested in the down-to-earth aspects of cosmology.
Read the first instalment here :
14 MAY 09 ( late edition )
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Too Much Sitting
Six days a week, for more than 25 years, Stanley
Green paraded up and down Oxford Street in
central London - selling his booklet which promoted his health tips.
Stanley wasn't a doctor, but nevertheless one of his core hunches - that
too much sitting is bad for health - has been completely vindicated with
the publication of a new scientific investigation in a recent issue of the British
Journal of Sports Medicine.
Rather than investigate the number of hours which people spend exercising, researchers at the University of Queensland, Australia, have focussed instead on the far longer periods when they're not - with regard especially to prolonged sitting -
" . . . the activity that dominates most people's remaining 'non-exercise' waking hours."
And Stanley was right - the results suggest that too much sitting is indeed prejudicial to health.
" The issue of too much sitting has challenging implications for future healthcare practice and will require development of new kinds of clinical and public health guidelines."
As yet though there are no internationally agreed figures on the correct levels of sitting-time, but Really Magazine will endeavour to publish them as soon as they become available.
Full
report here :
Too much sitting here :
• Comment from reader 'Twirl '
' How's that going to work in doctor's waiting rooms ? '
• Comment from reader ' David F.'
' I think it's called Nonxercise isn't it ?'
14 MAY 09
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Core questions
" I eat an apple. Bite, chew, swallow. Where has it gone "
Many philosophers
must have eaten apples – but perhaps not so many have
wondered ( at least in print ) what exactly happens when we do ? And what does
' Eating
an Apple ' actually ' Mean ' ?
And, by the way, are Braeburns better than Granny Smiths ? Why can we not control our intestinal linings ? How did cats become pets ? And would aliens be mystified by wheatfields ?
All these enigmas, and more, are explored in detail by Annemarie Mol , part-time Socrates Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Twente, the Netherlands, in the original article
' I EAT AN APPLE. ON THEORIZING SUBJECTIVITIES '
to be found in the latest issue of the journal 'Subjectivity '.
13 MAY 09 ( late edition )
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Hunks in Galway
" . . . the prevalence of muscularity and the ways in which this body is coded characterologically in motion pictures have not been investigated. "
Until now. For the situation has recently been reversed thanks to researchers from the Psychology dept at the National University of Ireland, Galway.
The team carefully studied a random sample ( n = ? ) of top-grossing action films from 1980 to 2006, to check the degree of visible muscularity in the action heroes - and determine if their roles and fortunes were mutable.
Results show that, yes, things are changing.
The heroes have become more muscle-y and leaner. Not only that, it seems they are more likely to become romantically involved, and their film personas experienced more positive outcomes.
Unfortunately, they also experienced higher levels of aggression, and were more likely to be objectified.
Really Magazine has not been able to fully decipher the implications of the study though, and notices that sadly, heroines were not examined in the same detail. Perhaps suggesting opportunities for future work ?
The research is published in the latest edition of 'The journal of Men's Studies '
[ Um, is that apostrophe in the right place ? Ed. ]
13 MAY 09
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It’s the move stupid
A new ‘ Conceptual paper ‘ in the latest edition of the journal ' Strategy & Leadership ' alerts us to a suite of techniques which may simplify the task of distinguishing ‘ Smart big moves from stupid ones ‘.
The authors don’t pull any punches with regard to recent and fairly spectacular ‘ stupid moves ‘ at the highest levels of the business world's ‘ leadership ‘ ranks :
As Cornell University's Professor Strebel explains :
" The shortcomings at companies such as Citi Group, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch can be traced back to a firm controlled by a dominant personality, a docile top team and boards with a glaring lack of financial expertise . . . Obviously, the blame can be shared with regulators and rating agencies that didn’t do their job properly, risk managers who didn’t raise the red flag high enough, the Federal Reserve that threw money at the party and the yes-men that made up a majority of those boards."
It’s not all criticism of stupidity and yes-man-ism though - for positive advice is on hand in the form of a video produced by the authors – packaged in an easy-to-understand animation format which hopefully even the stupidest of business ‘ leaders ‘ should be able to digest..
It features Erik ( a former software consultant ) who breaks free from his contract with his old boss Stan to become a ' Yummy Oat Milk ' consultant instead . . .
12 MAY 09
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Hoops in Hamilton
Until we
learn otherwise, Really Magazine is minded to believe that Ramesh
Balasubramaniam, PhD ( Associate Professor & Canada Research
Chair in Sensorimotor Neuroscience at McMaster University, Ontario )
is perhaps the world’s
leading authority on the kinematics of Hula-Hooping.
As such, he has recently published what must be the most thorough scientific investigation of Hula-Hooping to-date - in the journal ‘ Human Movement Science ‘ [ link below ]
Countering the regrettable largesse which has left the art/science of Hula Hooping ( which can be traced back more than 2000 years to the ancient Greeks ) all but entirely neglected in the academic literature until now.
“ A lower extremity inverse dynamics model that incorporated kinematic input and force platform data was developed to compute the angular velocities, moments about and powers produced at the lower extremity joints. The abductor moments and powers were discovered to be paramount in maintaining hoop oscillations, as demonstrated consistently in the three study participants. “
Read the full paper here :
11 MAY 09
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Dummy-ettes
New research, underway at Rowan University, New Jersey, is investigating the possibility of making more accurate child-sized crash test dummies.
The Mechanical Engineering dept has teamed up with the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) to improve child crash-test dummies by simulating vehicular frontal collisions.
" If you ever play with a child, you would know that it's almost like they're made of rubber. This flexibility isn't represented in current crash test dummies,"
They have taken a direct line of approach –
“ A child volunteer is seated in a sled the size of a bumper car and fastened with a car seat belt. Using air pressure, the sled is then fired backward on the track at 3.1 Gs “
Photo courtesy university press release
Caption : ' In a controlled and safe environment, Dr. Eric Constans, chairman of the Mechanical Engineering program at Rowan, and Terry Hopely, a graduate researcher, launch Constans’ son, Nathan, backward on a 15-foot track. '
09 MAY 09
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Concept of the week
Invasive species pre-vention
As the University of Wisconsin-Madison points out :
“ Research shows music can influence how people respond to messages “
For this reason they have decided to harness music’s influential power - perhaps for the first time – in a drive to help prevent the spread of aquatic invasive species.
Three songs, especially commissioned by the university’s Department of Life Sciences Communication, are intended :
“ to promote simple behaviors that can protect the quality of our lakes and rivers for future generations. “
Surely not an easy task for the songwriters though, perhaps more accustomed to writing about love, and summer rain rather than ‘ Curly Leaf Pond Weed ‘ , ‘ Eurasian Water-Milfoil ‘ and even worse ( from a rhyming and verse-metre point of view) ‘ Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia ‘.
They managed it though, you can hear the songs ( in .mp3 format ) here :
The Ballad of Aquatic Invasive Species
Note :
“ The songs have been vetted by natural resource professionals to
assure they are scientifically accurate and recommendations are consistent
with current
laws. “
07 MAY 09
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I can’t believe it’s not thixotropic
Although various edible non-Newtonian pseudoplastic fluids have been in commercial production for more than 100 years now, there are still many unknown factors in the fabrication processes which may cause the manufacturers headaches.
Some of these have recently been addressed by the Powder and Paste Processing Group ( a subsection of the Department of Chemical Engineering ) at Cambridge University in the UK.
Where 
they
have been investigating the highly complex and unusual rheology of
a specific edible non-Newtonian pseudoplastic fluid known as Marmite ™ -
focussing in particular on its irreversible thixotropy.
The group recently published their findings In the Journal of Food Engineering.
Although their discoveries will be of undoubted value to the process-design engineers responsible for Marmite ™’s future, Really Magazine suggests that the research may well be of interest to consumers too. For the investigations have discovered :
“ the presence of both shear-thickening and shear-thinning regions within a thixotropic material that, once broken, rebuilds its structure over a timescale of hours. “
which will certainly affect the way in which Marmite ™ spreads – on, for example, toast.
Manufacturer’s (
reassuringly unorthodox ) website
here
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More on rheology : here
06 MAY 09
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Blotto in Alberta
Tracing word origins is not always a straightforward business.
Take the word ‘ Blotto ‘ ( utterly drunk ) for example. Most dictionaries assert that its first recorded use ( around 1917 ) derived from the verb ‘ Blot ‘ ( to mop up ).
If, like Really Magazine, you aren’t sure that the etymological derivation quite rings true, then turn instead to the latest research on the subject.
In which Dr. John Considine, Associate Professor of the Faculty of Arts English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta, Canada examines in detail possible alternative explanations for the word’s origin.
“ The article argues that none of the previously offered explanations of blotto is satisfactory “
See :
EARLY USES AND ETYMOLOGY OF BLOTTO
In the latest edition of the journal ‘ American Speech ‘.
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Note :
The professor also acts as a ‘ new-word ‘ consultant for the Oxford English Dictionary ( see : ' Buxomy ' ) and so we invite readers to send in alternative candidates for words meaning ‘ utterly drunk ‘ which we can forward for consideration.
Entries so far :
Brahmsandliszt
Bladdered
Trollied
05 MAY 09
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Giving Up and Harnessing Randomness
Nowadays there are a gargantuan array of choices on offer to consumers. Especially
consumers of digital media. Think : ringtone downloads etc etc etc.
But this isn’t necessarily an entirely good thing, for, as recent work at the Department of Information Systems at the University of Melbourne, Australia, has demonstrated, making these choices
“ . . . can be unpleasant and even paralysing, especially when people have no strong preference for a particular choice. “
Fortunately, there may be a solution.
Why not deliberately introduce Randomness into the mix - to relieve the consumer from some of the choice-burden ?
Thus :
“ Randomness is highlighted as a versatile resource. “
In other words, it might be better for consumers to just give up trying to make rational choices and enjoy randomised presentations instead.
See : ‘ The rewards of letting go ’ in the latest issue of the journal ‘ Digital Creativity ‘.
But perhaps this strategy can be taken further still ? In another paper, the same author not only draws attention to the possibilities offered by randomnising consumer choice – but also in the actual design of the products themselves.
For designers are now being faced with a powerful dilemma. How can the design of a product be finalised when it is clear that the consumers don’t know ( exactly ) what they want ?
Again, randomness comes to the rescue – this time at the design stage :
“ Designing for an unfinalized, random-rich device also blurs the boundary between the designer and consumer. This calls for a reexamination of the role of the designer, especially the act of professional design . . . “
We should take note however, that some design-tasks may not be appropriately randomised – as the author points out :
“ There are obvious domains in which such an approach would not be applicable, such as in safety-critical systems of an aircraft or missile guidance. “
Read ‘ Harnessing Randomness Purposefully ‘ here :
04 MAY 09
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Patent of the month
The problem(s)
“ The general public is not an appropriate occasion to take off the jacket and then take off his underwear.”
“ Above all, one can't stand the cold to take off his jacket and then take off his underwear during the winter. “
" And in public places one appears the naked body rather unsightly. "
The solution :
“ Due to the underwear according present invention is easy to take off, students or kids can change or take off their underwear anywhere.“
see European patent EP 1 929 889 A2 :
Underwear for easily taking off.
01 MAY 09
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