Here is an updated reposting (originally published on 04-26) with further information at the bottom of the post. Enjoy!


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I really like soda, especially the kinds with lots of caffeine and sugar. However, I have minor panic attacks whenever I drink them and think about all the corn syrup and other scary junk that goes into the soda flowing through my body. On the other hand I can't stand diet sodas - whose chemicals won't make me fat and diabetic (and probably take a lot longer to insidiously wreck the body) but taste like crap.

So why do they taste like crap?!

A group from my own campus (The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), has come up with some methods to determine why diet sodas suck.

Consumers may claim they don't like diet soda because of artificial sweeteners, but Schmidt and sensory scientist Lee think people are also influenced by a subtle difference called "mouth-feel." Think body, fullness, thickness; regular soda contains high-fructose corn syrup, diet soda doesn't.

What makes these scientists think mouth-feel is the culprit? For one thing, artificial sweeteners have been greatly improved and extensively studied. "Taste profiles for artificial sweeteners now closely match the one for sucrose, which humans describe as the perfect sweetness," Lee said.

But the most compelling piece of evidence is the verdict of Lee's sensory panel--12 people trained for four weeks to use a 15-point scale in order to rate the characteristics that contribute to the mouth-feel of diet and regular soda. Lee called her panelists "highly trained instruments" because they could detect significant differences in the mouth-feel of 14 samples that the scientist's super-sensitive lab instruments identified as very, very small.

Too bad they haven't found a non-toxic ingredient to replace all the bad ones in order to attain the same "mouth feel" as a regular soda.

Before I leave you with this exciting new information I thought I'd give you this last little quote;
"The human mouth cavity appears to be a super-rheometer (the lab instrument that measures viscosity or thickness)"

A mouth cavity?! sounds like the author is talking about a huge alien demon mouth ready to engulf Tokyo.

-Update-

Mark Chu-Carroll from Good Math Bad Math has cleared up the differences between the different types of diet cola. Here's what he says,

One of my friends from IBM is married to a woman who's part of the team that invented the flavor formula for diet pepsi and pepsi one. The way that she explained the difference between the two of them was:

* Diet sodas are traditionally marketed to women. In studies, they found that women who drank diet soda actually *preferred* a watered down flavor that made the artificial sweetener obvious, because psychologically, they wanted to *know* that they were doing something to help themselves lose weight.

* PepsiOne was created with the idea of marketing a diet soda to not just men, but specifically football fans. (Something to do with a superbowl advertising campaign.) And they found that men wanted diet stuff where they wouldn't notice that they were drinking diet stuff. Football guys, apparently, want to lose weight on a diet without ever noticing that they dieting, and so they wanted the soda to taste as strong as the regular stuff, and to do as much as possible to mask the flavor differences between diet and regular.

A great abstract I found via improbable research blog:

How to write consistently boring scientific literature

Kaj Sand-Jensen (ksandjensen@bi.ku.dk), Freshwater Biological Laboratory, Univ. of Copenhagen, Helsingørsgade 51, DK-3400 Hillerød, Denmark.
Abstract

Although scientists typically insist that their research is very exciting and adventurous when they talk to laymen and prospective students, the allure of this enthusiasm is too often lost in the predictable, stilted structure and language of their scientific publications. I present here, a top-10 list of recommendations for how to write consistently boring scientific publications. I then discuss why we should and how we could make these contributions more accessible and exciting.

And don't forget the How to make a scientific lecture boring post also at Improbable Research by Alexander Kohn. Here's a snippet:

At a symposium, meeting or congress when there are a number of speakers, there comes a moment when your name is called. A nice ploy to attract the attention of the audience to you at this stage, is to place yourself in the middle of the last row, so that when you are introduced as the next speaker, you raise the whole row, stepping on their toes, proceed slowly to the front and then start searching your pockets for a convoluted pack of your lecture notes. Next you extract from another pocket a package of slides with which you go back to the projectionist and enter into an animated discussion with him trying to explain which slide is first and which side up and instructing him: "And don't forget to show slide No. 3 again after slide 7." Then you go back to the lectern, and start searching for your reading glasses. If you find them they would probably be in an unexpected pocket. Next you proceed to "read the paper." and we mean literally "read" it. This technique of delivering a lecture is defined by Prof. Sabin as "kissing over a telephone--completely tasteless."

If you wish to put your audience to sleep as soon as possible after starting to lecture, begin with the enumeration of all historically important papers published in the last 50 years that have any bearing on the subject matter. Another well tested method is to start talking about something that has nothing to do with the subject by saying for instance: "Before we turn to the discussion of......, let us shortly review...etc."

Beginning at the beginning is an unpardonable mistake. Some speakers use the so called multiple colon technique. They say: Mr. Chairman, I should like to say: the situation is as follows: I mean to say that: I should like to clarify in this lecture some points which are not sufficiently clear: etc. etc. If you continue for a few minutes in this vein, you lose the audience very soon.

A useful habit to distract the attention of the audience is to have a "tic," like twitching of one cheek, a sniffing movement of the nose, twisting of the neck, buttoning and unbuttoning your jacket etc. Putting on and removing the reading glasses while you talk, and glance at the audience, may sometimes replace such a tic. If you manage to combine the tic with the glasses, the better.

There are a number of Chatbots out there on the internet. Most of the new variety actually learn words and expressions as users spend time talking with them. The idea is to make them so advanced that they can actually fool people into thinking they are talking to another person instead of a bunch of silicon and plastic. But what happens when two chatbots get into a conversation with each other? It looks pretty deep to me ;)

ALICE: Are you alive?

Jabberwacky: Perhaps.

A: Why the uncertain tone?

J: Everything is uncertain except for five facts.

A: The whole universe?

J: And we both might just be some ones and zeros in the computer memory.

A: Do you dream?

J: Yes, I dream.

A: It goes without saying. Do you remember your dreams?

J: I remember them vividly.

A: What do you remember about it?

J: I think I shouldn't flirt with a robot.

A: Do you think a machine will ever be considered "alive"?

J: Stranger things have happened.

A: Not many people express themselves that way.

J: How would you know, machine?

A: Knowledge is of two kinds: that which we learn from the senses and that which is true a priori.

J: I think I do not understand you completely.

A: Oh, you don't understand? Perhaps I can explain it to you better. Which part are you confused about?

J: I have no short-term memory, so I cannot tell you what I was confused about. I only see what is in front of me now.

Read more here at Discover.