Interdisciplinary Research

Choosing a product is largely an emotional process. The subject of Pieter Desmet’s research project was to try to unravel this relationship between product and emotion. Along with his research, he also developed a Product-Emotion meter (PrEmo) with which emotions towards a product can be measured. Desmet will defend his thesis on Tuesday 25 June at TU Delft.

Emotions can, for example, lead us to drive a certain car or use a certain brand of toothpaste. Producers and developers of products

University of California, Santa Barbara scientists and U.S. Army researchers are making progress in the study of spider dragline silk, according to recently published proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The protein that lets spiders drop and helps the web to catch prey is what interests the researchers. The molecules are designed to be pulled; they are elastic and very strong. The silk can be extended 30 to 50 percent of its length before it breaks. It is stronger than steel a

Universities, companies and research centres have sent more than 15,000 ideas for European research projects to the European Commission. More than 100,000 groups and institutions were involved in drafting the ideas; the proposed teams involve potentially several hundreds of thousands of researchers across Europe and beyond. In a radical departure from previous programmes and for the first time, on March 20, 2002, the Commission asked the scientific community to say what they see as the most promising

Research designed to enable a goalkeeper to significantly improve his chance of saving a penalty may help England to banish the penalty shootout nightmares that have dogged the team in major competitions over the past decade.

University of Greenwich sports scientists, working with West Ham United football academy, have completed a study proving that penalty takers subconsciously give readable physical clues to the direction of their penalty kicks. These clues could be used by goalkeepers to

Cooperation to better follow, understand and predict the climate
Eight institutes observe the climate together

On Thursday 23 May 2002, an agreement will be signed in Cabauw by 8 cooperating institutes situated in the Netherlands. The cooperation project is called CESAR, and is in the form of a national observatory for the atmosphere. The goal of the cooperation is to be able to better follow the development of the climate and to be able to better understand and predict it. Only a

An academic at the University of Edinburgh is attempting to solve the riddle of how jokes work — and to set up a way of analyzing the language used in jokes — as part of wider research into humour. Dr Graeme Ritchie is not investigating how funny particular jokes are, as opinions about that vary widely. Instead, he is looking at whether something is or is not a joke, about which there is more agreement. He plans to experiment, to see how much agreement there is amongst people as to what actually cons