All posts tagged: Science

Decisions Are Like Coffee: How to Brew the Perfect Balance Between Time Pressure and Quality

Published by Trotzendorff

Part 1: Extract­ing the Essence The cof­fee I make at home tastes far bet­ter than most of the cof­fees I drink in the city. Even those from top-notch roas­t­er­ies some­times don’t com­pare to mine. This isn’t about arrogance—I’m not a supe­ri­or barista, nei­ther do I have high­­er-qual­i­­ty beans. And even though my espres­so machine is an excel­lent Ital­ian portafil­ter mod­el, it does­n’t quite match most pro­fes­sion­al machines. So, why does my cof­fee taste so much bet­ter? It comes down to one sim­ple rea­son: time. I have the lux­u­ry to weigh my beans to the near­est tenth of a gram every time and grind them accord­ing to their spe­cif­ic type and roast. I can thor­ough­ly clean the portafil­ter, even­ly dis­trib­ute the cof­fee grounds, break up clumps with a spe­cial­ized tool, and care­ful­ly tamp down. I can close­ly observe the flow rate and stop the extrac­tion at the per­fect moment. Most baris­tas in roas­t­er­ies and cafes don’t have this luxury—they’re under con­stant time pres­sure, as cus­tomers don’t like wait­ing for their hot bev­er­ages. Con­se­quent­ly, they can’t work as meticulously …

A formula for essential questions in our everyday lives

Published by Trotzendorff

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic was a sad but per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty to engage with math­e­mat­ics. Sud­den­ly, we were all con­front­ed with inci­dence rates, over­whelmed with sta­tis­tics, and had to deal with prob­a­bil­i­ties. On a very per­son­al lev­el, with the like­li­hood of get­ting infect­ed or the ques­tion of how reli­able the new­ly devel­oped COVID-19 tests were. Ques­tions that could decide on free­dom, health, and for some even on life and death.

A man is sitting in a grainfield practicing breathing techniques.

A method worth exploring?

Published by Trotzendorff

It’s been a strange irony that I, lying in my bed, should stum­ble upon a book that deals so inti­mate­ly with the very thing that had brought me low. Covid had robbed me of my strength and left me short of breath, and yet it was in the midst of this strug­gle that I found dis­trac­tion and, yes, a tune up.

Woman eating french fries.

The Palatability Theory

Published by Trotzendorff

There are clear and unan­i­mous fig­ures that obe­si­ty has increased over time, espe­cial­ly in rich nations like the Unit­ed States. On aver­age peo­ple today weigh more and have high­er body fat per­cent­ages than their recent ances­tors at sim­i­lar ages. But why is that the case? One wide­spread assump­tion is the palata­bil­i­ty the­o­ry. It posits that the pri­ma­ry cause is an increase in reward sig­nals in the mod­ern envi­ron­ment from processed food, medi­at­ed by the moti­va­tion sys­tem in the brain, caus­ing us to overeat.

People sitting in a coffee bar.

Protective Effects against Asthma

Published by Trotzendorff

I was just hav­ing my first cup of cof­fee in the morn­ing, when an arti­cle on sprudge.com popped up in my feed read­er. As an asth­mat­ic and cof­fee enthu­si­ast it nat­u­ral­ly caught my atten­tion. It reports about a study by med­ical pro­fes­sion­als from Korea’s Hal­lym Uni­ver­si­ty, Hanyang Uni­ver­si­ty, and Kang­dong Sacred Heart Hos­pi­tal, with research find­ing that mod­er­ate cof­fee con­sump­tion can low­er the fre­quen­cy of symp­toms asso­ci­at­ed with asthma.