This experiment perhaps applies most to people who soak their teeth (dentures, or in-jaw teeth that include artificial elements) in coffee: “Does hot coffee or cold coffee cause more discoloration on resin based composite materials?” Bilge Ersoz, Elif Aybala Oktay, and Numan Aydin, Serpil Karaoglanoglu, European Oral Research, vol. 57, no. 2, 2023, pp.103-107. The […]
Methylene blue, methyl orange, and a jug of coffee commune almost poetically, with the third of these acting attractively in opposition to the first two, in this newly published study: “Carbon Adsorbents from Spent Coffee for Removal of Methylene Blue and Methyl Orange from Water,” Inga Block, Christina Günter, Alysson Duarte Rodrigues, Silvia Paasc, Peter […]
Color Preference in the Insane, Can Consumers Recognize the Taste of their Favorite Beer?, Effect of Audience Boredom on the Power Hungry, You Never Sleep Alone, Improbable Medical Review, Extracting the Wrong Tooth, and Telephones for Animals. In episode #206, Marc Abrahams shows some unfamiliar research studies to Jean Berko Gleason, Chris Cotsapas, Maggie Lettvin, […]
Biologist Dakota McCoy, (seen here performing with a tray of drinks in hand, in “The Incompetence Opera,” part of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony) has a new study about color in birds. McCoy, together with colleagues Teresa Feo, Todd Alan Harvey, and Richard O. Prum, published “Structural absorption by barbule microstructures of super black bird of paradise feathers,” […]
A new study reports progress on an old chestnut of a question: “What Colour is Penguin Guano?” W.G. Rees, J.A. Brown, P.T. Fretwell, and P.N. Trathan, Antarctic Science, vol. 29, no. 5, October 2017 , pp. 417-425. (Thanks to Tom Gill for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at the University of Cambridge and […]
Many will recall the intense Feb. 2015 internet and media storm around the ‘is-it-black/blue’ or ‘is-it-white/gold’ Tumblr dress photo. It’s now become the focus of an international group of colour scientists, who have performed the first [we believe] laboratory-based study centering around the famous photo. The team, from the universities of Granada and Extremadura in […]
Ig Nobel Prize winner (he was honored in 2008 for electronically modifying the sound of a potato chip to make the person chewing the chip believe it to be crisper and fresher than it really is) Charles Spence and colleagues report a new, very specific advance in understanding consumers’ understanding and preference for certain aspects of packaging for crisps (known […]
This study appears to combine the brightest aspects of phrenology, Jungian psychology, painting-by-numbers, and numerous other disciplines: “Bodily maps of emotions,” Lauri Nummenmaa [pictured here], Enrico Glerean, Riitta Hari and Jari K. Hietanen, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 111 no. 2, January 14, 2014, pp. 646–651. The authors, at Aalto University, the […]
If a person insists that they are color blind, how can you prove otherwise? This was the question facing Herbert Jägle, Bettina Sadowski, Jan Kremers, Hendrik P.N. Scholl, Beate Leo-Kottler, and Lindsay T. Sharpe, who set out to devise a method. Their 2003 study was carried out as a result of a court case, in […]
Red is a color pertaining to the subject of this study: “The Effect of the Color Red on Consuming Food Does Not Depend on Achromatic (Michelson) Contrast and extends to Rubbing Cream on the Skin,” Nicola Bruno [pictured here], Margherita Martani, Claudia Corsini, Claudio Oleari, Appetite, August 31, 2013. (Thanks to investigator Neil Martin for […]