Wins for kids
Spectator sports are good for children 鈥� good for creating children, that is 鈥� according to data in a study by Gwinyai Masukume at University College Dublin, Ireland, and his colleagues.
That data pertains to major American football, Association football (soccer) and rugby union tournaments in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America.
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鈥淲ith a few exceptions,鈥� say the researchers, these popular contests 鈥渨ere associated with increases in the number of babies born and/or in the birth sex ratio 9(卤1) months following notable team wins and/or hosting the tournament鈥�.
Sports events on this level seem to work that way for winners 鈥� but not for losers, says the study, which was published in the journal PeerJ. The downside is, no kidding, substantial: 鈥渦nexpected losses by teams from a premier soccer league were associated with a decline in births 9 months on鈥�.
Celebratory sex
That spectator-sports study begins with a seductive sentence: 鈥淢ajor sporting tournaments may be associated with increased birth rates 9 months afterwards, possibly due to celebratory sex.鈥�
Not many researchers focus on the topic of celebratory sex. But four scholars at the University of South Dakota did, in a 2017 paper called 鈥溾��.
The foursome write candidly about their observations: 鈥淸Some people] would plan ahead for days or weeks for a leisurely, lengthy parking session of 鈥榗elebratory鈥� sex for birthdays, holidays, graduations, proms, or 鈥榖reaking in鈥� a new car鈥� sex while parked was primarily a positive sexual and romantic experience for both men and women.鈥�
The study鈥檚 abstract climaxes with a simple thought: 鈥淭he future study of sex in parked cars in urban environments is recommended.鈥�
Timeliness of time
The eternal question 鈥淲hat is time?鈥� has staggered doubly to centre stage 鈥� first in a Finnish report about Russian time zones, second in a shifty action by the nation of Kazakhstan.
Nelli Piattoeva and Nadezhda Vasileva at Tampere University in Finland wrote a 20-page assessment called 鈥溾��.
Russia has 11 time zones. Piattoeva and Vasileva instruct us that: 鈥淭he presence of multiple time zones evidences the lack of a unified spatio-temporality.鈥� And they express a thought that no one has ever quite put into clear words: 鈥淏ureaucratically, the desire for simultaneity and synchronicity takes the form of a meticulous ordering of a sequence of actions through prescriptive documentation.鈥� They reveal that there is a hinge to everything: 鈥淚n our analysis, we reverted repeatedly to the most difficult question of all: what is time?鈥�
Independently, the government of Kazakhstan added clarification, wonder and, maybe, confusion to the general timely mix. On 1 March, Kazakhstan rendered its two time zones down into a solitary, nationwide time zone.
The Times of Central Asia reported, two weeks prior to the big day, that 鈥渘ot all citizens are happy about it, with some arguing it will impact their health鈥�. The Times interviewed Sultan Tuleukhanov at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, who warned: 鈥淭here is such a concept as desynchronises, a type of inconsistency. In particular, it鈥檚 a change to the chrono-structural parameters of biological rhythms of the human organism.鈥�
Feedback salutes the boldness, if nothing else, of anyone who dares monkey with the chrono-structural parameters of biological rhythms of the human organism.
Unread, un-existent
How many research studies that nobody had read鈥� eventually just disappeared? And how many studies that have disappeared鈥� had never been read by anybody, even before disappearing? Rough answers to both questions 鈥� they are not quite the same question! 鈥� now exist.
The first question got addressed almost two decades ago, when Lokman I. Meho at Indiana University Bloomington published a paper (which hasn鈥檛 yet disappeared) called 鈥溾��.
Meho wrote: 鈥淚t is a sobering fact that some 90% of papers that have been published in academic journals are never cited. Indeed, as many as 50% of papers are never read by anyone other than their authors, referees and journal editors.鈥�
The second question got a good going-over by Martin Paul Eve at Birkbeck, University of London. His new study (which also hasn鈥檛 yet disappeared) is called 鈥溾��. The study did an 鈥渁ppraisal鈥� of 7,438,037 scholarly citations that have unique identification codes called DOIs. Well, the study attempted to do an appraisal. Eve reports that 2,056,492 (27.64 per cent) of those items appear to be missing.
Eve also says that 32.9 per cent of the organisations responsible for digitally preserving documents 鈥渟eem not to have any adequate digital preservation in place鈥�.
Feedback celebrates and laments that this deepens the meaning of an : that research should raise more questions than it answers.
Marc Abrahams created the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony and聽co-founded聽the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Earlier, he worked on unusual ways to use computers. His website is聽.
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