Charles Spence (Ig Nobel Prize winner for the electronically-modified-sound-of-a-potato-chip experiment) and a colleague have a new study that explores an unexplored aspect—smell—of what’s known as “inattentional blindness.’ Inattentional blindness became widely noticed because of the “invisible gorilla experiment” that won an Ig Nobel Prize for Chris Chabris and Dan Simons. The new study asks, in essence, […]
Tag: Coffee
Many People Look at Many Other Looks at Other People Who May Have Been Drinking Coffee and Thinking
The mystery of whether drinking coffee affects people’s minds is still mysterious, thanks to the results of a new, complex academic study of many old, complex academic studies: “Habitual coffee consumption and cognitive function: a Mendelian randomization meta-analysis in up to 415,530 participants,” Ang Zhou, Amy E. Taylor, Ville Karhunen, et al., Scientific Reports, epub […]
Moving Chairs in Starbucks: Rice-Wheat Cultural Differences in China
The famed Chinese cultural divide — wheat-centric in the north, rice-centric in the south — plays out even in today’s coffee shops, suggests this new study: “Moving Chairs in Starbucks: Observational Studies Find Rice-Wheat Cultural Differences in Daily Life in China,” Thomas Talhelm, Xuemin Zhang, and Shigehiro Oishi, Science Advances, Vol. 4, no. 4, April […]
Some Kinds of Coffee Are More Fragrantly Attractive to Ants
Humans are not the only animals that (in many cases) are attracted by the smell of coffee. This study focuses on ants’ attraction to coffee smells: “Olfactory behavior and response of household ants (Hymenoptera) to different types of coffee odor: A coffee-based bait development prospect,” Abdul Hafiz Ab Majid, Hamady Dieng, Siti Salbiah Ellias, Faezah […]