Distantly descended from the Time and Motion Men, Ben Waber [pictured here] writes, in Technology Review: A new line of research examines what happens in an office where the positions of the cubicles and walls—even the coffee pot—are all determined by data. …For instance, what if office coffee machines moved around according to the social context? […]
Tag: Coffee
Demand for Luak Coffee Drives Demand for the Animal that Excretes It
Luak coffee — coffee made from beans eaten and excreted by the luak (an animal also known as the palm civet) — is becoming more popular, something that’s been happening at least since 1995, the year the foodstuff was the subject of an Ig Nobel Prize. The popularity is increasing demand for the animal, which […]
Using coffee grounds to give grip ability to a robotic hand
Folks at Cornell University figured out how to use coffee grounds and air to add gripping — grab this! grab that! — capabilities to a robotic hand. This video shows and tells how: (Thanks to investigator Margaret Tuley for bringing this to our attention.)
How to spill coffee: a science demonstration
Neuroscientist Gustav Nilsonne demonstrates how and why it’s difficult to walk while carrying a cup of coffee. This photo was taken at last night’s Ig Nobel show at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm Sweden. The physics of this led to an Ig Nobel prize being awarded year to Rouslan Krechetnikov and Hans Mayer for their study “Walking […]
The sound of the taste of your coffee
The Edible Geography blog tells of an innovatively intense, focused approach to listening to people eat: …in a paper to be published in June 2013 in the journal Food Hydrocolloids, scientist George A. Van Aken of NIZO, a Dutch food research company, reveals a new method of measuring mouthfeel: the wonderfully named “acoustic tribology.” Van Aken took a tiny […]
Calculated death (or whatever) by coffee
David Ng estimates: A calculation to see how many cups of coffee you would need to drink in order to kill yourself. I thought it might be interesting to do some back of the envelope calculations to bring to you, some information on how many cups of coffee to avoid drinking, so as to not […]
The finger-in-the-dike story, updated (with coffee)
An old fable — that a young Dutch boy stuck his finger in a hole in a dike, thereby preventing disaster — has a contemporary counterpart. Reportedly this new story is true. The 24 Oranges blog reports: Fireman saves 65 coffee containers by putting foot in ship’s leak Last Friday a diver of the Schoonhoven […]
Scary coffee headline of the week: Two cups to incontinence
This new article adds fuel of some sort to the ever-brewing debates as to whether coffee has tremendously good effects on people, or tremendously bad effects, or tremendously few effects, or all of the aforementioned, or none: “Urinary incontinence: Could two cups of coffee a day cause urinary incontinence in men?” Melanie Clyne, Nature Reviews […]
Invention: a desk for people who sit on a toilet
The toilet users rolling desk in an invention for persons who wish to work and drink coffee whilst sitting on the throne. The idea is on file with the US patent office: “Toilet users rollable desk,” US patent application #20120223627 A1, Brian Wylie and Cameron Wylie, filed March 4, 2011. Details: “A toilet users rollable […]
Coffee 101 with Prof. Merry Corky White, et al.
In this brief video, Professors Merry Corky White, Joan Salga-Blake, and Hans Kornberg elucidate aspects of the phenomenon that is coffee: BONUS: Professor White’s new book Coffee Life in Japan