A failure to regret "regrettable sexual situations": Bonus Weird Science points for this paper's title, which includes the phrase "rose-colored beer goggles." The phrase came out of a survey on the drinking habits of college students and their negative consequences, "such as hangovers, fights, and regrettable sexual situations." Unless something really severe had happened, most people who had experienced negative consequences wrote them off as a one-time experience that was unlikely to recur. But students who had positive social experiences while drinking heavily seemed to think good things would happen again next time they hit the bottle.
Women aren't faking it (or at least not as often as men do): Those of us who follow international football have also had the opportunity to become acting critics, as elaborate dives and apparent agony follow from the slightest of touches. As it turns out, researchers are right there with us, quantifying the rate at which players hit the ground: 11.26 incidents a game. But, with the Women's World Cup in progress, a group of researchers from North Carolina decided to have a look at their games, producing a paper entitled "Estimation of Injury Simulation in International Women's Football." For starters, women hit the ground at only about half the rate of men, with only 5.74 apparent injuries a game. Definite injuries, which were defined as bleeding or sufficient to knock a player out of a game, only accounted for 0.78 of those, however, suggesting there is some faking going on. On the plus side, these questionable injuries weren't associated with a win on the field.
Some folks from the Technische Universitaet Muenchen also ran some comparative numbers on the women's game, and found that they only take half the amount of time that men do when celebrating a goal, and get themselves back off the ground 30 percent faster after being knocked down.
Cloudy, with a chance of death from above: Researchers are starting to get a handle on how aviation affects cloud cover, but it turns out they could have figured it all out over 50 years ago. That's when, in the absence of significant civilian aviation, large formations of planes gathered over southern England on their way to bomb Germany. Thanks to good records in the MET office and US Air Force, it was possible to determine the impact: a "marked difference" in the amount of high cloud cover, and a drop in the daytime temperature of nearly a full degree Celsius.
Inspired to quit via SMS: This is good news, given that the quitting in this case is abstaining from smoking. In a randomized trial, smokers received either inspirational quitting messages via texts, or a series of unrelated texts. (The trial was only single-blind, instead of the ideal double-blind, simply because participants could easily tell which of the two groups they ended up in.) Those who got support via SMS quit at about double the rate of their control peers.
Corked bats a waste of time: The Sport Science Laboratory at Washington State University has a "bat and ball testing facility," and they've put it to such good use that their results appear in the American Journal of Physics. Their ball cannon and bat pivot have now discovered that all the players who have gotten into trouble by corking their bats were wasting their time. "We actually draw the opposite conclusion, namely that corking almost always results in a lower vhit and therefore a shorter fly ball distance," the authors conclude. Putting baseballs in a temperature or humidity controlled environment, however, can affect the distance travelled by a fly ball—a question addressed in a section entitled "What's The Deal With The Humidor?" Keep your balls humid and cool if you want to up the chances of hitting it out of the park.
Obvious result of the week—people stay inside when the weather sucks: We have to caution that this was only tested on Canadians, but we suspect it's widely applicable. Seven months of observing pedestrian traffic was enough to show that cold weather, rain, and snow keep people off the streets. Rain and snow drop foot traffic by about 30 percent; lower temperatures had a smaller effect, while a bit of sunshine got a few more people out on the streets.
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