Improbable Research

Starbucks, the widespread purveyor of coffee, announced that the work of 2008 Ig Nobel Prize winner Charles Spence (who was honored 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) inspired them to create a sort of music:

Did you know that coffee has its own musical profile? According to Professor Charles Spence at the Oxford University Psychology Department, it is possible to match particular flavours to sounds of a specific pitch, tone and even instrument. The Professor’s experiments discovered that people tend to match rich, dark tastes and flavours, such as coffee, with low pitched, woodwind and brass instruments. Click here to play VIA Alle Undici

Using these recommendations, we’ve had a special piece of music composed, called VIA Alle Undici, which complements our new Starbucks VIA^TM Italian Roast. Why listen whilst you enjoy a nice, warm cup of Starbucks VIA™?

BONUS: “The Coffee Diet” from the mini-opera “The Atkins Diet Opera”:

Martin A. Schwartz is Professor of Microbiology and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Virginia. The professor draws attention to the importance of stupidity in scientific research in his recent article for Seismological Research Letters – January/February 2011; v. 82; no. 1; p. 3-4. Entitled :

THE IMPORTANCE OF STUPIDITY IN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH.

“Science makes me feel stupid too. It’s just that I’ve gotten used to it. So used to it, in fact, that I actively seek out new opportunities to feel stupid. I wouldn’t know what to do without that feeling. I even think it’s supposed to be this way.”

“Let me explain.” – continues the professor :

“The more comfortable we become with being stupid, the deeper we will wade into the unknown and the more likely we are to make big discoveries.”

Note : A similar essay was published in the Journal of Cell Science 121, 1771 (2008)

BONUS QUOTE: from Richard Feynman.

“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”

- from ‘What is Science?’, presented at the fifteenth annual meeting of the National Science Teachers Association, in New York City (1966) published in The Physics Teacher Vol. 7, issue 6 (1969)

The May issue of mini-AIR just went out. Topics include: Imminent Events; Sad News: Professors Lipscomb & Lettvin; Cambridge Science Festival: Songs & After Dark; Worm/Fisheries Competition; Apes, Lice and Prehistory Poet; etc.

Mel [pictured here] says, “It’s swell.”

(mini-AIR is the simplest way to keep informed about Improbable and Ig Nobel news and events. Just fill in the wee form, and mini-AIR will be emailed to you every month)

The special Head & Brain issue (vol. 17, no. 2) of the magazine (the Annals of Improbable Research) is now online. It’s got lots about heads and lots about brains, and even includes the epic “Brain on Head in Brain” and much more.

The pleasing-paper version was mailed to subscribers a while ago. Click on the magazine cover (below) to download a free PDF, or buy a high-quality PDF. Or subscribe to the paper version. Mel (right) says it’s swell.

Professor Shigeru Watanabe and colleagues at Keio University, Japan, were the joint winners of the 1995 Ig Nobel psychology prize for their success in training pigeons to discriminate between the paintings of Picasso and those of Monet. Now professor Watanabe, presently Project Leader for Keio University’s Centre for Advanced Research on Logic and Sensibility has extended the study of avian art appreciation with his participation in a project probing pictorial preferences of Padda oryzivora – a.k.a. the Java Sparrow. Unlike the first study, in which the birds were trained, this time the birds were all complete artistic novices –