MAY WE RECOMMEND--
Matters of Comfort
items worth a trip to the library
Ponder, if you please, these three possibly (though not probably!) disquieting research reports about matters of comfort.
All Things Oral
"Texture and Chemical Feeling Descriptors That 6-11 Year Olds and
Adults Associate With Food in the Mouth," N. Oram, Journal
of Texture Studies, vol. 29, no. 2, May 1998, pp. 185-97. (Thanks
to Grenville Rose for bringing this to our attention.) The author reports
that:
Subjects judged if 126 food words (e.g., Chewy), 10 nonfood words (e.g., Jump), and 10 nonwords (e.g., Frunp) were used to talk about food in the mouth.... A follow-up study showed that more Grade I children correctly associated Greasy and Tender with hot chips and meat than judged these descriptors to be food-words.
Buckle On Mattresses
"Mattress Evaluation
-- Assessment of Contact Pressure, Comfort and Discomfort," P. Buckle
and A. Fernandes, Journal
of Applied Ergonomics, vol. 29, no. 1, February 1998, pp. 35-9.
(Thanks to Brian A. Mellor for briging this to our attention.)
Vegetative Musical Tastes
"Heavy Metal Tolerance in Plants," J Antonovics, A.D. Bradshaw,
and R.G. Turner, Advances
in Ecological Research, vol. 7, 1971, pp. 1-85. (Thanks to Dave
Hubble for bringing this to our attention.)
© Copyright 2001 Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)
This is a HotAIR exclusive feature item. For a list of other
HotAIR featured items, see What's New.