"Imagine a vest or shirt, or even a fancy ball gown made with this technology. The antennas would be inconspicuous, and even attractive. People would want to wear them." That's John Volakis, a professor at Ohio State University, trying to convince fashionistas that radio antennae incorporated into clothing, using plastic film and metallic thread — for cell phone, Internet, and emergency care access, much like soldiers' uniforms already have — is the next wave in fashion. This, of course, gives new meaning to the term wireless bra. Looks That Kill Talk about a cold case: The Egyptian ... Read More
PBS to Show ‘Where Soldiers Come From’
November 8, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
The upper peninsula of Michigan is a sparsely populated place with its own sense of identity — something it has in common with Afghanistan. The young men at the center of the moving documentary Where Soldiers Come From — all proud UP natives — never discuss this duality, but it helps explain the perceptiveness and compassion they display when their National Guard unit is deployed to fight in America’s longest-running war. When Dominic Fredianelli’s team finds weapons on an Afghan landowner’s property, and the man is taken away in handcuffs, Dom, a promising artist from Hancock, ... Read More
Alligator River Refuge Rolls Back From Rising Sea
November 7, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Standing on a beach on the Albemarle Peninsula in North Carolina, Brian Boutin, a Nature Conservancy biologist, points to a rusted piece of rebar with a green tag a few inches from the water’s edge. “That was our original marker to show what was happening here three years ago,” he says. “It was 20 meters from the shoreline. Now, it is the shoreline.” To the south, waves hit the shore and explode into the air, little eruptions of erosion. To the north, the waves break, but more gently. Offshore, Boutin and his Nature Conservancy colleagues have built 500 feet of reefs designed to ... Read More
The Science Behind TGIF
November 4, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
As Charlie Brown has said for decades, happiness is a warm puppy. Researchers, however, say it’s really spending 1.7 hours more with family and friends. With help from Gallup, John F. Helliwell, an economist at the University of British Columbia, has discovered what seems, well, obvious: Americans are significantly happier on weekends and public holidays than during the workweek. In a recent study for the National Bureau of Economic Research, Helliwell and his colleague, Shun Wang, take a careful look at people’s daily emotions. Based on data that was collected by Gallup in a random ... Read More
Study: Ethical People More Satisfied With Life
November 2, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
“The just man is happy, and the unjust man is miserable,” Plato declares in The Republic. A noble thought, to be sure, but Socrates’ most famous student didn’t have data to back up his belief. Harvey James, on the other hand, does. The University of Missouri economist finds a relationship between life satisfaction and low tolerance for unethical conduct. He discussed his findings, first published in the journal Kyklos, with Miller-McCune staff writer Tom Jacobs. The research “I found a correlation between how people responded to ethics questions and their satisfaction with life. ... Read More
Viewing Illegal Immigration Through Desert Debris
November 1, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
We don’t see or hear the border patrol agents until they’re almost on top of us. There are two of them, both white; one older and wiry, the other young and beefy. They are dressed in olive drab uniforms. The wiry one gives our little group of four the once-over. “We thought we might get some action today,” he says, “but you guys look all right.” He sounds just a touch disappointed. “What are you all up to?” the beefy one asks. “We’re out for a hike,” says Jason De León. De León, 34, is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan and the ... Read More
Vehicle-to-Grid: A New Spin on Car Payments
October 31, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Willett Kempton is an anthropologist. And an electrical engineer. On this winter morning at the University of Delaware, both skill sets come in handy as he courts two Japanese businessmen. They’ve traveled here from Tokyo to see how much progress he’s made toward a revolutionary idea: electric cars that will make several thousand dollars a year for their owners, and speed the switch to renewable energy sources. Observing Japanese business etiquette, Kempton presents his business card to the senior visitor, Makoto Horiguchi, then the two exchange bows. He repeats the ceremony with ... Read More
Grandma’s Apple Pie Is Better Than Apple Pie
October 28, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
We don’t have time to bake for our kids, so we buy them Mother’s Cookies. We rarely dine with relatives, but we do enjoy Uncle Ben’s rice and Auntie Anne’s pretzels. Newly published research from France confirms, the emotional tug of such labels is quite effective. Even in a country renowned for its sophisticated palates, evocative names can be the difference when choosing dinner. Researchers Nicolas Guéguen and Céline Jacob of the Université de Bretagne-Sud performed an experiment at a restaurant in Brittany, a small establishment patronized primarily by traveling ... Read More
