Enhance Experience

Researchers continue to investigate the effects of carbon dioxide levels on human thinking and behavior.  Karnauskas, Miller, Schapiro have determined that “As the 21^st century progresses, rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentrations will cause urban and indoor levels of the gas to increase, and that may significantly reduce our basic decision-making ability and complex strategic thinking. . . .

Beier and colleagues researched how culture influences responses to music.  They report on “measure[ing] chill responses, sudden increases in emotional arousal, through self-report and skin conductance measures. Excerpts of Western classical, traditional Chinese, and Hindustani classical music were presented to 3 groups of participants, each familiar with one of these styles. Participants felt a similar number of chills to both familiar and unfamiliar musical styles, but significantly fewer chills to scrambled music, which acted as a control.

Virtanen and colleagues investigated the criteria used to evaluate image quality.  They report that “Various image elements, such as sharpness or naturalness, can impact how observers view images and, more directly, how they evaluate their quality. . . . we conducted a study with a large set of images with multiple overlapping distortions, covering a wide range of quality variation. Observers assigned a quality rating of the images on a 0–10 scale and gave a verbal description explaining the elements on which their rating was based. . . .