In this article we propose a simple and low-cost experimental set-up through which science educators can demonstrate the Seebeck effect using a thermocouple and an instrumentation amplifier. The experiment can be set up and conducted during a 1-hour laboratory session. (Contains 3 tables and 3 figures.)

Purpose: The present study was designed to investigate the relation of formant transitions to place-of-articulation for stop consonants. A speech production model was used to generate simulated utterances containing voiced stop consonants, and a perceptual experiment was performed to test their identification by listeners. Method: Based on a model…

Many concepts depend on negation and on relations such as conjunction and disjunction, as in the concept: "rich or not democratic". This article reports studies that elucidate the mental representation of such concepts from descriptions of them. It proposes a theory based on mental models, which represent only instances of a concept, and for each…

In two experiments using a decision-making game, we investigated children's thinking about regret and relief. In Experiment 1 (N = 43, 31 children [5 years 4 months to 8 years 2 months of age] and 12 adults), participants chose between two boxes containing different numbers of stickers. They rated their happiness before learning that the other box…

We investigated whether performing a task with a co-actor shapes the way a subsequent task is performed. In four experiments participants were administered a Simon task after practicing a spatial compatibility task with an incompatible S-R mapping. In Experiment 1 they performed both tasks alongside another person; in Experiment 2 they performed…

The hydromonochord is a horizontal vibrating string that just makes contact with the surface of a water bath. The motion of the string sets up a pattern of swirls on the surface of the water, thus complementing the usual pattern of nodes and antinodes. The device is based on the traditional monochord. A water basin (Fig. 1) has two slits in the…

A mirage can occur when a continuous variation in the refractive index of the air causes light rays to follow a curved path. As a result, the image we see is displaced from the location of the object. If the image appears higher in the air than the object, it is called a "superior" mirage, while if it appears lower it is called an "inferior"…

In the "The Science Study Series" book "The Physics of Television", it is stated that persistence of vision lasts for about a tenth of a second. This will be a notional figure just as 25 cm is taken to be the least distance of distinct vision. Estimates range from 1/8 to 1/16 s.

An in-store experiment was performed to investigate the effects of a point-of-purchase display on unit sales of dishwashing liquid. The experimental conditions consisted of periodically placing two copies of the same display in convenience stores and supermarkets. The results were unanticipated; point-of-purchase displays did not change relative…

In "Photobacterium," the flavin reductase encoded by "lux"G regenerates the reduced form of flavin mononucleotide (FMN). Reduced FMN is one of the substrates of the luciferase enzyme that catalyzes a light-emitting reaction. A set of experiments, that employs a "lux"G-expression plasmid construct (pGhis) and is suitable for an undergraduate…

The aim of the present experiment was to directly assess the role of the glutamatergic hippocampal-lateral septal (HPC-LS) neurotransmission in tone and contextual fear conditioning. We found that pretraining infusion of glutamatergic acid into the lateral septum promotes tone conditioning and concomitantly disrupts contextual conditioning.…

The ability to discover groupings in continuous stimuli on the basis of distributional information is present across species and across perceptual modalities. We investigate the nature of the computations underlying this ability using statistical word segmentation experiments in which we vary the length of sentences, the amount of exposure, and…

In the current study, we tested the embodied cognition theory (ECT). The ECT postulates mandatory sensorimotor processing of words when accessing their meaning. We test that prediction by investigating whether invisible (i.e., subliminal) spatial words activate responses based on their long-term and short-term meaning. Masking of the words is used…

A substantial amount of research has demonstrated the importance of reference frames in organizing memory of object locations in both small and large environments. However, to date, little research has examined how the object locations represented in one reference frame are specified relative to object locations represented in another. In a series…

Great scientists in the past have experimented with coils and magnets. Here we have a variation where coupling occurs between two coils and the oscillatory motion of two magnets to give somewhat surprising results. (Contains 6 figures and 1 footnote.)