The week in higher education – 10 December 2020

Gone are the days when a child’s best bet for a dose of mega-violence was a clandestine visit to Dad’s collection of Arnold Schwarzenegger VHS tapes. According to a new study, there are “shocking” levels of violence in children’s films and television shows, including Peppa Pig. Psychologists who carried out the study in the UK and Canada said the programming – which also included Finding Dory and Octonauts – could give children a warped view of violence. Abbie Jordan of the University of Bath, who was one of the study’s researchers, said: “These programmes could do much more to help by modelling it in different ways and, crucially, by showing more empathy when characters experience pain,” according to The Independent. Come to think of it, the episode where Daddy Pig leads an elite paramilitary rescue team into a confrontation with a relentless intergalactic killing machine in the jungles of Central America might have been a bit much.

Researchers are usually not averse to adding a bit of humour into the titles and abstracts of academic studies, and this predisposition appears to have been richly rewarded by one of the literary world’s most prestigious awards – the Diagram prize for oddest book title of the year. Two academic studies vied for the top slot of this year’s award, with A Dog Pissing at the Edge of a Path pipping Introducing the Medieval Ass to win, The Guardian reported. The winning book is a study by University of Alberta anthropologist Gregory Forth that looks at how animal metaphors have been used by indigenous people in parts of eastern Indonesia. The runner-up, meanwhile, looks at “the ass’ enormous socio-economic and cultural significance in the Middle Ages”. Tom Tivnan, managing editor of The Bookseller, which runs the award, said the winner had managed to combine “the three most fecund Diagram prize territories”: university presses, animals and bodily functions.

Former British prime minister Clement Attlee might be credited as the architect of the modern welfare state, but students at University College, Oxford were a little short on compassion when asked to adopt a cat named after the Labour politician. “Clement Cattlee” was found on the college grounds and a motion was put before the junior common room to adopt him, The Oxford Student reported. However, the proposal was defeated, with undergraduates raising concern about spending £650 on caring for a cat when they felt that student well-being was not being given sufficient priority. However, this cat’s tale has a happy ending, with the college itself stepping in to cover the costs. Second-year student Hannah, who proposed the motion to adopt Clement, said that she was “overjoyed”. “He is such an affectionate cat and [this] truly is the good news we all needed at the end of what has been an awful year,” she said.

A renowned physics professor has provoked an angry online backlash in Asia after making a lewd – and incredibly obvious – joke about black holes during a lecture, according to Sixth Tone. Li Miao was speaking at the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Shenzhen campus when he said: “The French thought of the concept of black holes in an amusingly different way”, before asking “the boys in the room − not the girls − to think about this a bit more”, which most have taken as a clear reference to vaginas. The professor appears to have been referencing, incorrectly, an age-old joke in French physics that plays on the fact that “trou noir”, the French for “black hole”, is used as slang for “anus” in the country. Even after being challenged over the sexism of the remark, Professor Li refused to back down or apologise, prompting an outpouring of vitriol, including one Weibo post that read: “Instead of telling dirty jokes, he should really work on his lectures.”

Lab access during the pandemic has, of course, been difficult but it has led some university teachers to go back to basics in the search for more home-grown ways to explain complex concepts. Some of these methods were on display at the latest annual meeting of the American Physical Society’s division of fluid dynamics, where researchers showed just how much can be taught by using materials available in most kitchens. They include investigating viscosity by observing pancake batter expanding on a flat surface; studying “hydraulic jumps” by looking at running taps in a kitchen sink; and using the stability of foam in beer and bread to look more closely at the behaviour of “thin films”. Beer bubbles in particular make for a rich research environment, according to one of the event’s attendees, among other obvious compensations.