This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Wins for kids — Spectator sports are good for children – good for creating children, that is – according to data in a study by Gwinyai Masukume at University College Dublin, Ireland, and his colleagues…. “With a few […]
“Anchovy Sex Is a Force of Nature” is the headline on a Hakai magazine report by Christina Crouch, on February 7, 2024. The report says, in part: …But Castro’s study—which was published in 2022 and won a 2023 Ig Nobel Prize for humorous, thought-provoking scientific achievement—shows that within ocean layers, anchovy spawning causes significant, if subtle, […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has three segments. Here are bits of each of them: The Kármán sutra — … The paper is almost Victorian in its voluminous discussion of possible regulatory mechanisms, but nearly complete avoidance of mentioning fornication. The highest moment of titillation comes in the following passage: “The […]
“Does the Sex of a Simulated Patient Affect CPR?” [by Chelsea E. Kramer, Matthew S. Wilkins, Jan M. Davies, Jeff K. Caird, and Gregory M. Hallihan, published in Resuscitation, vol. 86, 2015, pp. 82-87] is a featured study in “Medical Research: Rescuers’ Hands, Ponytail Headache, Elevation for Nursing“, which is a featured article in the special Women […]
A new study about erosion might attract more attention than most studies about erosion. It is: “Sand, Sun, Sea and Sex with Strangers, the “five S’s.” Characterizing “cruising” activity and its environmental impacts on a protected coastal dunefield,” Leví García-Romero, Carolina Pena-Alonso, Patrick A. Hesp, Antonio I. Hernández-Cordero, and Luis Hernández-Calvento, Journal of Environmental Management, […]
The [A] drive to consume chocolate and the [B] drive to have sex are linked anew, in a published study, by the [C] drive to define and explain a relationship between chocolate and sex. The study is: “Chocolate Consumption and Sex-Interest,” Beatrice A. Golomb and Brinton K. Berg, Cureus, vol. 13, no. 2, February 12, […]
“SHIPWORMS’ COMPETITIVE SEX FRENZY CAUGHT ON FILM” is the headline on a press release from the University of Portsmouth. Below the heated headline, the body of the text begins: A competitive sexual frenzy in which bigger appendages have the most success of reproducing might sound like the briefing for a porn film, but instead, it’s […]
French medical journalist Marc Gozlan reminds us that the most viewed article in the history of the British Medical Journal led to the creation of what became “The most viewed medical video in the world“. Here is that video: Where did that come from? Here’s the story of how that video came to be, and […]
An editor of the British Medical Journal (The BMJ) told us a few years ago that one particular BMJ paper, published in 1999, has—from the moment that paper was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize in the year 2000— consistently drawn more web visitors—many, many more—than anything—anything—else published in the history of The BMJ. Everything every […]
This insect-sex-reversal-centric profile of 2017 Ig Nobel Biology Prize co-winner Yoshitaka Kamimura appeared a year ago in the Keio Times: Sex-Role Reversal Research in Insects Wins Ig Nobel Prize for Keio Professor Yoshitaka Kamimura …In 2012, Prof. Kamimura was first invited to join a research team led by Kazunori Yoshizawa, an associate professor at Hokkaido […]