You might remember that Manoa’s own Alvin Wong was identified as “The Happiest Man In America” last year by the New York Times based on how his demographics fit into a formula called the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index.

Wong’s profile: He’s tall, Asian-American, Jewish, at least 65 years old, married, has children, lives in Hawaii, runs his own business and has a household income of more than $120,000 a year.

Now, researchers at the University of Wisconsin have a different way of determining the world’s happiest man: brain waves.

Matthieu Ricard, a Tibetan monk and molecular geneticist, apparently has produces a level of gamma waves — which deal with consciousness, attention, learning and memory — “never before reported in neuroscience,” according to the New York Daily News.

Read the full story: Buddhist monk is the world’s happiest man

— Michael Levine