“To quantify the potential cost of hopelessness on electricity consumption, we regressed the preference of the ideal wattage for a ceiling fixture onto the hopelessness scale and found that it costs participants on average 20.6% more electricity to feel 1 point less hopeful toward the economy and career prospect.” – explain Ping Dong and Chen-Bo […]
Tag: electricity
The Artificial Tree Electric Generator (patent)
HRL Laboratories – formerly the (Howard) Hughes Research Laboratories – have just been granted a US patent for their ‘Power generation through artificial transpiration ‘ invention. The power system – which could perhaps be described as an ‘artificial tree’ – generates power by drawing water through a turbine, driven by pressure differences caused by transpiration […]
Profiling Professor Persinger – part 1
Human brains and lightning-discharges – what might they have in common? Could there be potentially congruent scale-invariant quantitative properties connecting the two? These questions have been examined by professor Michael A. Persinger of the psychology dept. at Laurentian University, Ontario, Canada. The professor presents his findings in the May 2012 edition of the scholarly journal […]
The taste of electric currents (part 2 of 2)
Improbable recently profiled the work of the Miyashita Laboratory at Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan, where research is underway into the possibilities offered by ‘electro-gustation’. The lab has not only invented the electric chopsticks but has also investigated a possible way of encouraging diners to use less salt on their potato chips – with the aid […]