This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: A jerk and a creep — “Hidden jerk in universal creep and aftershocks” may sound like the name of a Hollywood movie – and maybe some day it will be. But for now, it is exclusively […]
What might be the advantages of “square” cigarettes? In 1999, the US tobacco company R.J Reynolds employed the Opinion and Marketing Research firm Delta Research to investigate. Participants of two “Consumer Idea Generation” (CIG) focus groups from Indianapolis were paid $35 each (plus dinner) to list (amongst other things) possible advantages of “Square” cigarettes. The findings : […]
A number of countries have passed laws which require cigarette manufacturers to show ‘denormalising’ images on their packaging. To take things a step further, why not make the cigarettes themselves more unappealing? This was the question tackled by a joint Australian – New Zealand research team in 2015. A set of potentially unpleasant cigarette designs […]
A project in The Netherlands aims to train crows to habitually clean up discarded cigarette butts. The cigarette buts were presumably discarded by humans. The project describes itself this way: Cigarette filters, you find them in the park next to you in the grass, in dirty ditches and under your shoes. What if we could […]
Phillip Morris International (PMI) has received (Oct. 7th 2014) its US patent for an ‘Electrically Heated Smoking System’ Unlike many currently available ‘vape’ sticks, the new device can heat actual tobacco rather than evaporating a nicotine-based liquid. And, unusually for a cigarette, it can ‘communicate’ with a host computer/ tablet etc via a USB plug. […]
Cigarettes have become less popular for use by doctors on the job, but they still serve, on occasion, as inspiration. Here is one cigarette-inspired idea: “Bleeding wound? Relax and roll a cigarette,” Stuart G. Williams and Cara Connolly, Injury Extra, epub April 30, 2014. The authors, at Raigmore Hospital, Inverness, Scotland and Springfield Hospital, Essex, England, […]
This cigarette-lighting device, built by German artist Daniel Kühn, was owned by conductor Leonard Bernstein, and plays Bernstein’s theme from the musical Candide. (Thanks to investigator Jim Cowdery for bringing it to our attention.)