What’s common to country music

Jim Gundlach of the University of Alabama said he got hate mail when he first published his study showing that people who listen to country music have higher rates of suicide. He said it does not hold true any more. ‘‘The country music that we have today is not the same kind of country music that was related to suicide back when we did this,’’ he said. ‘‘When we did that, there were songs like D-I-V-O-R-C-E,’’ he added. ‘‘It was predominantly tears in the beer types of music.’’ Country music today is peppier, Gundlach said.

Jillian Clarke was a high school student when she investigated the ‘‘5-second rule’’ that states if food falls to the floor for fewer than 5 seconds, it is safe to pick it up and eat it. She found, in a survey, that 76 per cent of US women and 56 per cent of men were familiar with the rule, and used it to justify picking up and eating dropped treats. Clarke swabbed floors at the University of Illinois and found them surprisingly clean of microbes, thus justifying the rule.

Frank Smith of Orlando, won his engineering IgNobel posthumously for patenting his peculiar combover — a way of covering up a bald spot with hair. ‘‘He actually had a diagram to the method,’’ Smith’s granddaughter, Heather, said.