Economically speaking, should one look up to the businesspeople who build skyscrapers, or look down at them? Calculation is involved in reaching the answer obtained in this study: “A Game-Theoretic Analysis of Skyscrapers,” Robert W. Helsley and William C. Strange, Journal of Urban Economics, vol. 64, no. 1, July 2008, pp. 49-64. The authors explain: […]
‘The Archers’ is the world’s longest-running radio soap opera. Although the BBC has been transmitting it in the UK for more than 60 years now, it’s only recently been gaining traction in the academic world. See, for example, the 2017 “The Archers in fact and fiction: Academic analyses of life in rural Borsetshire* ” conference […]
Artists of all kinds often tend to cluster together (think Montmartre etc.) bringing the benefits of collaboration, interaction and inspiration. But what if there are just too many? For composers, in Paris or Vienna for example, there could be competition for limited resources such as concert halls. In other words they might incur high stress […]
Massive economic growth comes, in large part, from men’s competition to sexually attract women, sort of, suggests this study: “Sexual selection, conspicuous consumption and economic growth,” Jason Collins, Boris Baer, Ernst Juerg Weber [pictured here], Journal of Bioeconomics, epub May 19, 2015. The authors at the Business School, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia, and at […]
Some might say that despite their popularity, Thai dove-cooing contests, which have now been held for more than 30 years, have not received the academic attention they deserve. Either way, things changed with the 2005 (#9) edition of the journal MANUSYA:Journal of Humanities (a publication of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand) in which Professor Wanni […]
“Horses are the only species other than man transported around the world for competition purposes.” – say investigators Domingo Tortonese, Julie Townsend, Cathy Fuller, ‘Twink’ Allen and Roger Short in ‘Jetlag in the horse: Neuroendocrine mechanisms underlying the effects of transmeridian flying on equine performance.’ “Changes in the 24h light:dark cycle, such as those associated […]
With the Winter Olympics about to begin, what better time to ask, ‘Do Latvian bobsleighers have a unique advantage? Specifically, the RE21 from the Latvian Academy of Sport Education? [photo at right] Details were revealed in a 2011 paper for the LASE JOURNAL OF SPORT SCIENCE 2011/2/1 | 3 by Uģis Ciematnieks, Nauris Ķeizans, Sandis […]
Researchers in three countries went where their curiosity and/or other factors drove them, producing this study which, it says, is entirely about women: “Female Physical Characteristics and Intra-Sexual Competition in Women,” Bernhard Fink [pictured here, above], Dominique Klappauf, Gayle Brewer [pictured here, at right], Todd K. Shackelford, Personality and Individual Differences, epub November 9, 2013. […]
In a rock-em sock-em battle in a death match in Tennessee, God bounced back and triumphed over some automotive engineers, according to this February 23, 2010 Associated Press report: Also testifying were Toyota drivers, including Rhonda Smith, a Sevierville, Tenn., woman whose Toyota-made Lexus suddenly zoomed to 100 miles per hour as she tried to […]