No wonder that, as the authors remind us, incoming prime minister David Cameron was so keen to apply positive psychology to the task of measuring the country's happiness.
The task of measuring the gamma-ray energy is then reduced to simply measuring the equivalent energy deposited by the fast electrons.
The task of measuring the harm afterward would fall to city health officials, who say they are tracking the progress of Dr. Brenner's team.
The global positioning capacity could also provide information on the amount of traffic moving past billboards, aiding the outdoor ad industry in the notoriously difficult task of measuring signage exposure.
But the task of measuring the approximate happiness of individuals and countries can be achieved; it is being achieved, and will go on being achieved, in better and better ways.
During the Gulf War, he was assigned to Central Command Headquarters, in Ryadh, Saudi Arabia, where he was charged with the task of measuring the damage that coalition forces were inflicting upon Iraq's war machine.
The delicate task of measuring the standard speed for emptying one's bladder and the near-impossible procedure for partially unboiling a boiled egg are just two of the research discoveries to be honoured in this year's Ig Nobel Prizes.
He said the Fed and other agencies were devoting more resources to improving methods of measuring the economy, and adding, "I am encouraged by the progress that economists and economic statisticians have been making to date in tackling the daunting task of measuring real output and prices in a rapidly changing economy".
When the Russell Sage Foundation announced a grant to help finance the survey, it said that low-wage workers were "hard to find" for interviews and that "government compliance surveys shy away from the difficult task of measuring workplace practices beyond the standard wage, benefits and hours questions".
