Archive for the ‘Science’ Category

Philips unveils latest wake-up light campaign

Business, Climate, Design, Film, Marketing, Media, Miscellaneous, Offbeat, Science, Society, Swedish Life, Technology, Tourism: October 29th, 2010 by VT

Philips’ advertising campaigns for the wake-up light have historically challenged the prestige of the product, testing the wake-up light’s mettle in real life. In this latest campaign, the test is on an epic scale.

Watch the clip for the trailer here.

Philips travels to Longyearbyen, Norway, where winter lasts for four months and the sun doesn’t rise at all in this period. A town where the local people look with dread to the winter months: a time of little enjoyment and confusion. A period when, without the differentiation of day and night, time itself is without meaning.

Enter Philips and the wake-up light with a simple mission: to restore residents Longyearbyen’s daily routine and help them combat the negative impact of living without natural light for four months.

The wake-up light simulates sunrise, allowing users to, perhaps not surprisingly, wake up in an environment similar to a bright summer’s day. The theory behind the experiment is that this will combat the negative effects of waking, living and then going to sleep in darkness and should help the user readjust to a more natural cycle.

The full footage for the experiment will be released in November. Will it work? Wait and see.

‘Finnish girls have big breasts’ – Linnaeus

Science: June 19th, 2007 by PO

The Guardian is pointing its readers in the direction of Carl Linnaeus’s little known Notes from Lapland.

Keeping a record of his five-month trip to the far north of Sweden, the renowned botanist mixed observations on rare plants with reflections on the wider society.

He noted for example a hole in a church wall used by monks “to judge the glans penis of men who had been rejected by their wives.”

As for the female form, the Swedish scientist had plenty to say. For instance:

Finnish girls have big breasts, Lapp girls have small ones of a sort a girl keeps unspoilt for her future husband.

It’s the 300th anniversary of Linnaeus’s birth this year and he’s still stirring things up.