Hedgehogs at a Music Festival

While others study pictures at an exhibition, Wanja Rast, Leon M.F. Barthel, and Anne Berger study hedgehogs at a music festival. They wrote this report about it: “Music festival makes hedgehogs move: How individuals cope behaviorally in response to human-induced stressors,” Wanja Rast, Leon M.F. Barthel, and Anne Berger, Animals, IX/7 [2019] pp. 2–19. (Thanks […]

Why do people go to pop concerts?

Technological innovations have facilitated widespread illegal downloading of recorded music (which points towards a decreased willingness to pay for music) nevertheless, people still go to pop concerts – which they usually have to pay for – raising the question ‘Why?’ Behavioural scientist Dr Steven Caldwell Brown [pictured] from The University of Edinburgh, Scotland, (and also […]

The King’s Birthday Vasectomy Festival: 25th Anniversary!

December 5 will be the 25th anniversary of the historic 1987 King’s Birthday Vasectomy Festival, which may have been the most biomedically intriguing King’s Birthday Vasectomy Festival of them all: “No-Scalpel Vasectomy at the King’s Birthday Vasectomy Festival,” by Apichart Nirapathpongporn, Douglas H. Huber and John N. Krieger, The Lancet, no. 335, 1990, pp. 894- 895. The […]

Face-Painting at the Festival, and Its Aftermath

This medical report suggests a possible drawback to having children get their faces painted, at least at some Dragon Boat Festivals: “A cultural practice of drinking realgar wine leading to elevated urinary arsenic and its potential health risk,” Ying-Nan Zhang, Guo-Xin Sun, Paul N. Williams, Qing Huang, Yong-Guan Zhu, Environment International, 2011 Jul;37(5):889-92. The authors, […]