From: pedregal@eternity.cs.umass.edu (Message Meister)
Date: Mon, 13 Nov 1995 10:00:12 -0500 (EST)


Greetings and salutations.  This is your regularly scheduled reminder for the
traditional Monday Morning Coffee event, at 10 in the Lounge. Today we limp
with only two coffee pots; please bring some patience.  Broadcast(*) piggyback
ad: John Greene will be discreetly hawking YeP's CDs at this morning event.
---

Trip Report: Bagels under Stress. (Co-authored with M.K. and A.K.)
    Two weeks ago we set out to settle, in the passive voice, an important
question on bagel research: how do palatable bagels hold up under severe
stress conditions?  Specifically, how do strict paper deadlines and cramped
expressway driving affect bagel consumption and its nutritional effects?

*Methodology*

=Stress= A reputable ACM conference was selected, and two papers written for
it. The researchers were deprived of sleep, and opportunities to ship the
papers in the usual way were deliberately ignored. Finally, to ramp-up the
last-day-morning stress, errors were introduced in the PostScript source of
one of the papers, forcing it to be printed page by page on a slow printer,
and imposing a tight, hard deadline to reach the paper delivery destination.

=Environment= To reduce vehicle bias, a Chevrolet Corsica was rented. It
uniformly reproduced cramped, boring driving conditions faced by bagel eaters
across the country, and eliminated any distraction caused by driving pleasure.

=Sample= A bagel supplier was randomly chosen, in Northampton, Mass., where
a sample of bagels, prepared in the usual way (w/cream cheese) was purchased.

=Experiment= The group drove to a reputable research lab in New Jersey, 
on expressways (I-91, I-287) and parkways (Conn. 15, Garden State). The
bagels were consumed during this three-hour trip, and careful records kept.

*Results*
The bagels fulfilled their essential mission of supplying nutrients to two
highly stressed investigators, and a third unstressed person (control) who
rode along.  No pernicious after-effects were reported.  Bagels are therefore
deemed appropriate nutrition for pre-exam and pre-deadline periods. On a
finer note, our taste findings concur with those reported by S. Wise [1995].

=Further Work= Quantitative measurements are planned, including comparison
with Manhattan-made bagels (HB), considered the industry benchmark.

--------------------
(*) Administrative note: Starting now, Monday Morning Messages are distributed
through a mailing list, monday-morning-coffee@cs.umass.edu.  The list
initially mirrors the broadcast list, but you can now opt out or in at will
by sending email to majordomo@cs.umass.edu (body of message: help).
Also: today's not-so-subtle advertising should not be construed as precedent.