The scholars set out to examine the folk wisdom that moon cycles affect human behavior, especially abnormal behavior around full moons. They turned to stock markets to get a big enough sample, as millions of people make billions of trades on a regular basis.

They gathered data on major U.S. stock markets over the past 100 years, and on the markets of 24 other nations going back 30 years.

"Taken as a whole, this evidence is consistent with popular beliefs that lunar cycles affect human behavior," the researchers concluded.

The Harvard Business Review, reporting the research in its current issue, says that while these findings "are a bit off the beaten path, they're the product of rigorous research."

"So even though we might not be ready just yet to consult lunar cycles for guidance on all our stock trades and other major decisions," the Harvard Business Review says, "we should keep in mind that unexpected sources can beget robust data and analysis, and that correlation and causality must be carefully examined."

Long list of indicators

Indeed, lunar cycles are not the only phenomena that investors have consulted over the years for a leg up in the market. Many bizarre and sometimes seemingly logical schemes have emerged, either for general or specific guidance.

Generations of astrologers have probed the planets and stars for clues to which way the market will go. Others advocate various versions of cycle theory - the idea that stocks move in regular and predictable up-and-down patterns.

The most famous cycle theorist, perhaps, was a Russian, Nokolai Kondratieff, who saw the markets moving in long waves of about 50 years. Unfortunately, he was arrested and sent to the Soviet Gulag, where he apparently was executed in 1938.

There are other principles:

- There's the "skirt length theory," which holds that the market rises and falls in tempo with the ladies' hemlines. Shorter skirts appear when times are good, according to the theory, reflecting confidence and leading to bullish markets.

- And, of course, there's the "Super Bowl theory," which holds that a win by a team from the old American Football League (now the AFC) foretells a declining market for the coming year, while a win by an old National Football League team (the NFC division) means stocks will be up.

- The "presidential election cycle" actually has considerable credibility on Wall Street. This is the thesis that the market is weakest in the first two years of a presidential term, when the White House occupant is most likely to make enemies. The last two years of the term are the strongest, as the president promotes policies aimed at boosting the economy and the markets at election time.

Behavioral psychology has also contributed theories of market movements.

A pair of psychologists at Princeton University in New Jersey recently concluded that stocks with names that are easy to pronounce consistently outperform those with more confusing names.

Adam Alter and Daniel Oppenheimer asked undergraduates to grade the fluency of 89 stock names on a sliding scale. The professors then checked the stocks' performances.

As expected, "the more complex a share's name, the poorer it performed on the first day of trading." This effect appeared to wane over time, however, as more information about the companies became available to investors.

The professors warned, however, that name alone shouldn't be used to predict the performance of an individual stock.

Watching the Fed chief

Everybody knows, of course, that when the Federal Reserve speaks, everybody listens. Remember Alan Greenspan?

"Any remark, whether expected or surprising, can send the bond and equity markets soaring or falling," Lord Abbett senior analyst Kathleen Madigan says in a recent study. "New Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke found this out when in the spring a remark he made to a reporter at a dinner party caused a sharp sell-off in equities and bonds."

Can a savvy investor watch the news and move fast enough to gain an advantage on comments by Fed officials, especially the chairman?

To be sure, Fed-speak causes the markets to squiggle, but it's likely to be a short-term event, Madigan says. At least 25 percent of the time stock and bond movements are one-day affairs.

"The lesson here is that keeping an eye on the long term remains the best investment strategy," Madigan writes. "The examination of market performance and Fed speeches suggests that market fundamentals such as the outlook for profits, economic growth and inflation still are the best drivers of market performance."

The conclusions, published in the current issue of Nature magazine, have confirmed 30 years of work into the subject by Joseph Nagyvary, professor emeritus of biochemistry at Texas A&M University, who was the first to theorize that chemicals - not necessarily the wood - created the unique sound of the two violins. Nagyvary teamed with collaborators Joseph DiVerdi of Colorado State University and Noel Owen of Brigham Young University on the project.

"This research proves unquestionably that the wood of the great masters was subjected to an aggressive chemical treatment and the chemicals - most likely some sort of oxidizing agents - had a crucial role in creating the great sound of the Stradivarius and the Guarneri," Nagyvary says.

"Like many discoveries, this one could have been accidental. Perhaps the violin makers were not even aware of the acoustical effects of the chemicals. Both Stradivari and Guarneri wanted to treat their violins to prevent worms from eating away the wood. They used some chemical agents to protect the wood from worm infestations of the time, and the unintended consequence from these chemicals was a sound like none other," he adds.

The team tested several instruments, including violins and cellos, produced by Stradivari and Guarneri from 1717 to around 1741, using spectra analysis and other methods.

The results and those previously reported by Nagyvary showed that two specific areas of the instruments accounted for their unique sound - chemicals used in the varnish and fillers of the instruments, and the overall wood treatment process used by Stradivari and Guarneri.

"This is highly gratifying for me, because it proves what I first proposed 30 years ago - that the chemicals used to treat instruments and not the unadulterated wood itself - were the reasons for the great sound of these instruments," Nagyvary explains.

The conclusions, published in the current issue of Nature magazine, have confirmed 30 years of work into the subject by Joseph Nagyvary, professor emeritus of biochemistry at Texas A&M University, who was the first to theorize that chemicals - not necessarily the wood - created the unique sound of the two violins. Nagyvary teamed with collaborators Joseph DiVerdi of Colorado State University and Noel Owen of Brigham Young University on the project.

"This research proves unquestionably that the wood of the great masters was subjected to an aggressive chemical treatment and the chemicals - most likely some sort of oxidizing agents - had a crucial role in creating the great sound of the Stradivarius and the Guarneri," Nagyvary says.

"Like many discoveries, this one could have been accidental. Perhaps the violin makers were not even aware of the acoustical effects of the chemicals. Both Stradivari and Guarneri wanted to treat their violins to prevent worms from eating away the wood. They used some chemical agents to protect the wood from worm infestations of the time, and the unintended consequence from these chemicals was a sound like none other," he adds.

The team tested several instruments, including violins and cellos, produced by Stradivari and Guarneri from 1717 to around 1741, using spectra analysis and other methods.

The results and those previously reported by Nagyvary showed that two specific areas of the instruments accounted for their unique sound - chemicals used in the varnish and fillers of the instruments, and the overall wood treatment process used by Stradivari and Guarneri.

"This is highly gratifying for me, because it proves what I first proposed 30 years ago - that the chemicals used to treat instruments and not the unadulterated wood itself - were the reasons for the great sound of these instruments," Nagyvary explains.

"An interesting question is, 'What will happen if a living animal is put into the acoustic field?' Will it also be stably levitated?" researcher Wenjun Xie, a materials physicist at Northwestern Polytechnical University, told LiveScience.

Xie and his colleagues employed an ultrasound emitter and reflector that generated a sound pressure field between them. The emitter produced roughly 20-millimeter-wavelength sounds, meaning it could in theory levitate objects half that wavelength or less.

After the investigators got the ultrasound field going, they used tweezers to carefully place animals between the emitter and reflector. The scientists found they could float ants, beetles, spiders, ladybugs, bees, tadpoles and fish up to a little more than a third of an inch long in midair. When they levitated the fish and tadpole, the researchers added water to the ultrasound field every minute via syringe.

The levitated ant tried crawling in the air and struggled to escape by rapidly flexing its legs, although it generally failed because its feet find little purchase in the air. The ladybug tried flying away but also failed when the field was too strong to break away from.

"We must control the levitation force carefully, because they try to fly away," Xie said. "An interesting moment was when my colleagues and I had to catch escaping ladybugs."

The ant and ladybug appeared fine after 30 minutes of levitation, although the fish did not fare as well, due to the inadequate water supply, the scientists report.

"Our results may provide some methods or ideas for biology research," Xie said. "We have tried to hatch eggs of fish [during] acoustic levitation."

The research team reported their findings online Nov. 20 in the journal Applied Physics Letters.

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