Humans tend to do this thing where they think they're in control of their own thoughts.
Red attire's competitive edge has faded in combat sports, new study finds
Dec 2024, phys.org
The team looked at results from seven Summer Olympic Games (1996–2020) and nine World Boxing Championships (2005–2021). With over 6,500 individual competition outcomes assessed, the team then focused on close contests, with a narrow points difference. These were where red was expected to tip the balance between winning and losing.Up to 2005, when the original study was published, there was some advantage to red clothing, with 56% of victories between closely matched competitors going to the athlete in red.However, more recent data up to 2020 show that the advantage disappeared, even in close contests.Before 2005, combat sport referees played a larger role in assigning points, whereas today, scoring is increasingly supported by technology. Also, clarification of rules in recent times means that there is less room for interpretation when awarding points.
via Durham University Department of Anthropology: Leonard S. Peperkoorn et al, Meta-analysis of the red advantage in combat sports, Scientific Reports (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-81373-3
Image credit: AI Art - A Crowd From View - 2025 - you have to zoom in on these images to see the real value they hold
Simple mathematical model predicts development of cultural structures observed in human societies
Jan 2025, phys.org
RIKEN killing it as usual:
Two parameters of population size and cultural mutation rate (difference between parents' and children's traits) affect the development of social structures.
via RIKEN Center for Brain Science: Kenji Itao et al, Formation of human kinship structures depending on population size and cultural mutation rate, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2405653121
Spanish 'running of the bulls' festival reveals crowd movements can be predictable, above a certain density
Feb 2025, phys.org
Crowd dynamics - They used cameras and a mathematical model where people are so packed that crowds can be treated as a continuum like a fluid, and found the density of the crowds changed from two people per square meter in the hour before the festival began to six people per square meter during the event, and that crowds could reach a maximum density of 9 people per square meter, above which pockets of several hundred people spontaneously behaved like one fluid that oscillated in a predictable time interval of 18 seconds with no external stimuli (such as pushing).They compared the San Fermín festival in Spain to that from the 2010 Duisburg Love Parade in Germany, and found the same oscillations were observed.
via ENS de Lyon, CNRS: François Gu et al, Emergence of collective oscillations in massive human crowds, Nature (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08514-6
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