Scientists say they’ve found a way to slow ice cream’s melting
Criminal investigations often use photographic evidence to identify suspects. Here we combined robust face perception and high-resolution photography to mine face photographs for hidden information. By zooming in on high-resolution face photographs, we were able to recover images of unseen bystanders from reflections in the subjects' eyes. To establish whether these bystanders could be identified from the reflection images, we presented them as stimuli in a face matching task (Experiment 1). Accuracy in the face matching task was well above chance (50%), despite the unpromising source of the stimuli. […] In a test of spontaneous recognition (Experiment 2), observers could reliably name a familiar face from an eye reflection image. For crimes in which the victims are photographed (e.g., hostage taking, child sex abuse), reflections in the eyes of the photographic subject could help to identify perpetrators. [PLOS]
Dr. Jack Berdy has just introduced "Pokertox," a program of Botox and facial fillers designed to enhance a player's "poker face," their ability to hide any sign of facial emotion that might tip off other card players on whether they have a good or bad hand. [Huffington Post | Thanks Tim]
Forget body language or eye movements. There are much better ways to detect lies
Eyelashes divert airflow to protect the eye and the ideal eyelash length is about one third the width of an eye. And that goes for 22 different animals, not just humans
Passionate kissing is not a human universal
How to Flirt Best: The Perceived Effectiveness of Flirtation Techniques
The sex life of the American teenager is apparently far less busy than it was in generations past
Ashley Madison created more than 70,000 female bots to send male users millions of fake messages
Meet a man who has been dating a crowdsourced Internet girlfriend for the last three months
We don't look like we think we look, study
Researchers help identify neural basis of multitasking
How rudeness spreads like a contagion
Most acts of aggression by toddlers are unprovoked
Hospitality is always a matter of urgency, always a question of speeds. The unexpected guests arrive and there is always a rush of activity: a hurried welcoming at the door, a quick cleaning up, a surreptitious rearranging or putting back into order, a preparing of food and drink. But even when the guest is expected, has been expected for a long time, there is a sense of urgency. The guests arrive — always too early or too late, even if they are ‘on time.’ Coats are taken; tours are given of the immaculate, impossibly ordered home; drinks are served, food presented. For there to be a place for hospitality, for hospitality to take (the) place, the host must hurry. [Sean Gaston | via Austerity Kitchen/TNI]
There is a widespread consensus amongst psychologists that tyranny triumphs either because ordinary people blindly follow orders or else because they mindlessly conform to powerful roles. However, recent evidence concerning historical events challenges these views.
New research finds that sarcasm is far more nuanced, and actually offers some important, overlooked psychological and organizational benefits. “To create or decode sarcasm, both the expressers and recipients of sarcasm need to overcome the contradiction (i.e., psychological distance) between the literal and actual meanings of the sarcastic expressions. This is a process that activates and is facilitated by abstraction, which in turn promotes creative thinking” […] “Those in the sarcasm conditions subsequently performed better on creativity tasks than those in the sincere conditions or the control condition. This suggests that sarcasm has the potential to catalyze creativity in everyone. That being said, although not the focus of our research, it is possible that naturally creative people are also more likely to use sarcasm, making it an outcome instead of [a] cause in this relationship.” […] “While most previous research seems to suggest that sarcasm is detrimental to effective communication because it is perceived to be more contemptuous than sincerity, we found that, unlike sarcasm between parties who distrust each other, sarcasm between individuals who share a trusting relationship does not generate more contempt than sincerity.” [Harvard Gazette]
Effect of climate and seasonality on depressed mood among twitter users
Two options for dealing with climate change — reducing greenhouse gas emissions through a global agreement, and geoengineering proposals such as injecting sulfur into the stratosphere — tend to dominate current thinking. But there is a “third way” that is almost entirely neglected in political negotiations and public debate. It involves capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it or using it to create things we need. [NY Times]
"having few social connections is equivalent to tobacco use” Study shows that the quantity of social interactions a person has at 20—and the quality of social relationships that person has at age 30—can benefit her well-being later in life.
You see a man at the grocery store. Is that the fellow you went to college with or just a guy who looks like him? One tiny spot in the brain has the answer. Neuroscientists have identified the part of the hippocampus that creates and processes this type of memory, furthering our understanding of how the mind works, and what’s going wrong when it doesn’t. [Lunatic Laboratories]
Sleep not just protects memories against forgetting, it also makes them more accessible
Why you should never make your bed
In this study, 100 percent of the participants remained HIV-free.
Why does "schizophrenia" persist?
A mezuzah is a small case affixed to the doorframe of each room in Jewish homes and workplaces which contains a tiny scroll of parchment inscribed with a prayer. It is customary for religious Jews to touch the mezuzah every time they pass through a door and kiss the fingers that touched it. However, kissing the mezuzah has also become customary for many secular Jews who think of the mezuzah as a good luck charm. In view of a recent revelation that kissing the mezuzah entails a health hazard, the present paper inquires whether it also has some observable benefit. In an experiment conducted among non-religious mezuzah-kissing economics and business students confronted with a logic-problem exam, some were allowed to kiss the mezuzah before taking the exam, whereas the others were asked not to do so or could not do so because it had been removed from the room doorframe. The experiment revealed that participants who did not kiss the mezuzah performed worse than those who kissed it, and that the stronger is one's belief in the mezuzah's luck-enhancing properties, the better he performs when he kisses it but the worse he performs when he does not. [Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization]
One woman reported having 8 car accidents in one 150 mile journey. She was also unlucky in love. After joining a dating agency, her first date fell off his motorcycle and broke his leg. The second date walked into a glass door and broke his nose. Eventually she met her future husband and the church they were going to get married in burned down the day before the wedding. […] In total, 80 percent of people who attended Luck School said that their luck had increased. […] Lucky people just try stuff. [Barking Up The Wrong Tree]
"Despite the common belief that remembering our mistakes will help us make better decisions in the present," says the study's lead author, "we actually find that thinking about our failures at self-control leads us to repeat them and indulge in the present, so it's not helpful at all.” [EurekAlert]
How Google Could Rig the 2016 Election [Thanks Tim]
Scientists have discovered why running makes you happy
People's "coming out" experiences are related to their psychological wellbeing years later
Fatherhood at young age linked to greater likelihood of mid-life death
We present participants with coherent and incoherent narratives. When presented to coherent narratives participants remember plots. When presented to incoherent narratives participants remember facts. Plot formation modulate activity in the Default Mode Network of the brain. [NeuroImage]
In daily life, we frequently encounter false claims in the form of consumer advertisements, political propaganda, and rumors. Repetition may be one way that insidious misconceptions, such as the belief that vitamin C prevents the common cold, enter our knowledge base. Research on the illusory truth effect demonstrates that repeated statements are easier to process, and subsequently perceived to be more truthful, than new statements. The prevailing assumption in the literature has been that knowledge constrains this effect (i.e., repeating the statement “The Atlantic Ocean is the largest ocean on Earth” will not make you believe it). We tested this assumption. […] Contrary to prior suppositions, illusory truth effects occurred even when participants knew better. […] Participants demonstrated knowledge neglect, or the failure to rely on stored knowledge, in the face of fluent processing experiences. [Journal of Experimental Psychology]
We meta-analyzed the effects of sexual media, violent media, sexual ads, and violent ads on the advertising outcomes of brand memory, brand attitudes, and buying intentions. The meta-analysis included 53 experiments involving 8,489 participants. Analyses found that brands advertised in violent media content were remembered less often, evaluated less favorably, and less likely to be purchased than brands advertised in nonviolent, nonsexual media. Brands advertised using sexual ads were evaluated less favorably than brands advertised using nonviolent, nonsexual ads. There were no significant effects of sexual media on memory or buying intentions. There were no significant effects of sexual or violent ads on memory or buying intentions. As intensity of sexual ad content increased, memory, attitudes, and buying intentions decreased. When media content and ad content were congruent (e.g., violent ad in a violent program), memory improved and buying intentions increased. Violence and sex never helped and often hurt ad effectiveness. [Psychological Bulletin/American Psychological Association | PDF]
Allegation that ad-serving companies deliberately slow down web pages to maximise profit
A new study from Duke University finds that adolescents ages 10 to 16 can be more analytical in their economic choices than many slightly older young adults. […] Scott Huettel, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke: “The new results point to the idea that we should not think of adolescents as being irrational. What’s different about them is they don’t use simple rules as effectively.” Such simple rules are the mental shortcuts people take in decision-making—often to their benefit—as they age and gain more experience. Most adults apply the “don’t drink and drive” rule, for example, to avoid getting in a car with someone who’s been drinking. In contrast, teens may more carefully weigh this decision. “Adolescents are going to be more likely to use cost-benefit analysis than the (simple rules) that adults use.” […] Other research has shown that adolescents aren’t necessarily more risk-seeking but that they are more sensitive to good outcomes compared with adults. [Science Beta]
MIT graduate skips shower for 12 years, uses bacterial spray to keep clean
The "hygiene hypothesis" […] suggests that people in developed countries are growing up way too clean because of a variety of trends, including the use of hand sanitizers and detergents, and spending too little time around animals. As a result, children don't tend to be exposed to as many bacteria and other microorganisms, and maybe that deprives their immune system of the chance to be trained to recognize microbial friend from foe. That may make the immune system more likely to misfire and overreact in a way that leads to allergies, eczema and asthma, Hesselmar says. […] In their latest research, the researchers took a look at how people wash their dishes. […] In families who said they mostly wash dishes by hand, significantly fewer children had eczema, and somewhat fewer had either asthma or hay fever, compared to kids from families who let machines wash their dishes. [NPR]
Animals eject fluids for waste elimination, communication, and defense from predators. These diverse systems all rely on the fundamental principles of fluid mechanics, which we use to predict urination duration across a wide range of mammals. […] Using high-speed videography and flow-rate measurement obtained at Zoo Atlanta, we discover that all mammals above 3 kg in weight empty their bladders over nearly constant duration of 21 s. […] Smaller mammals are challenged during urination by high viscous and capillary forces that limit their urine to single drops. [PNAS]
An experiment was carried out in a French bar. A waitress briefly touched (or not) the forearm of a patron when asking him/her what he/she want to drink. Results show that touch increases tipping behavior although giving a tip to a waitress in a bar is unusual in France. The familiarity of tactile contact in France was used to explain our results. [International Journal of Hospitality Management]
London bar where you absorb equivalent of large drink through lungs and eyes in 40 minutes
Intravenous garlic juice herpes treatment (Self-tested!)
Restaurant food not much healthier than fast food
Why Do So Many Hot New Restaurants Have Names That Sound the Same?
Evaluation of environmental impacts: The case of pasta
Mediterranean Diet Plus Olive Oil Associated with Reduced Breast Cancer Risk
Fat should be considered the sixth taste, study
There’s been a ton of news recently about how awesome coffee can be for many aspects of your health – heart disease, longevity, depression, Type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s. The scientific data has been so strong that the nation’s top nutrition panel recommended earlier this year that people might even want to consider drinking a bit more. Now comes a sobering report. In a study evaluating 1,445 people, scientists found that consistently drinking one to two cups of coffee each day is associated with a significant reduction in the risk of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) — a precursor to dementia and Alzheimer’s — compared to those who never or rarely consumed coffee. That supports previous work, published in 2010, that showed that caffeine may have a neuroprotective effect. The surprise was that participants who increased their consumption over time saw their risk of mild cognitive impairment shoot up significantly. Those who went from one cup to more than one cup had twice the rate of MCI as those who reduced their drinking to less than one cup and 1.5 times the rate of MCI as those who continued to drink one cup a day. [Washington Post]
Queuing on the basis of last-come-first-served may sometimes be more efficient
What’s the best length for online news videos? People liked longer videos better than shorter ones. Long videos averaged 2.08 minutes in duration. Short videos averaged 24 seconds.
Between 1999 and 2009, the French Full Scale IQ declined by 3.8 points. Results are inline with 7 studies showing a Negative Flynn Effect in Europe.
Around 1930, the director of an evening newspaper had hired Georges Simenon as an advertising attraction. He'd had a cage constructed in the hall of his newspaper where Simenon, under eyes of the public, was to write a serial, non-stop. But on the eve of the big day, the newspaper went bankrupt. Simenon wrote the book in his room. [Paris Match] In 1927 the publisher of Paris-Soir proposed to place Simenon in a glass cage, where he would spend three days and three nights writing a novel in public. [NY Times]
State-of-the-art forensic technology from South Africa has been used to try and unravel the mystery of what was smoked in tobacco pipes found in the Stratford-upon-Avon garden of William Shakespeare. Residue from clay tobacco pipes more than 400 years old from the playwright’s garden were analysed. […] Results of this study (including 24 pipe fragments) indicated cannabis in eight samples, nicotine in at least one sample, and in two samples definite evidence for Peruvian cocaine from coca leaves. [The Independent]
Artificial-intelligence researchers have long struggled to make computers perform a task that is simple for humans: picking out one person’s speech when multiple people nearby are talking simultaneously. It is called the ‘cocktail-party problem’. Typical approaches to solving it have either involved systems with multiple microphones, which distinguish speakers based on their position in a room, or complex artificial-intelligence algorithms that try to separate different voices on a recording. But the latest invention is a simple 3D-printed device that can pinpoint the origin of a sound without the need for any sophisticated electronics. [Nature]
Thousands of Apps Secretly Run Ads That Users Can't See Advertisers lose $895 million per year to invisible fraud within mobile apps
Researchers perfect technique that profiles people based on unique keystroke traits.
Finnish schools phase out handwriting classes, in favour of keyboard skills
Archillect's curation process works like a simple neural network [archillect.com] [Thanks Tim]
A password cracker that steals bitcoins from your brain
How to Charge $1,000 for Absolutely Nothing
By definition, exponential growth means the thing that comes next will be equal in importance to everything that came before. […] this exponential growth has given us terrible habits. One of them is to discount the present. [Idle Worlds]
Google to Start Testing Grocery Deliveries This Year
CrossFit mascot is a homicidal-looking shirtless monstrosity called Pukie the Clown. Thirty days in a gay CrossFit cult
Here’s a mystery: below 8,400 meters there are no fish. At 8,370 meters? There are fish.
Mysterious, blood-sucking fish fall from the Alaskan sky
Dogs can infer the name of an object and have been shown to learn the names of over 1,000 objects. Dogs can follow the human pointing gesture; even nine week old puppies can follow a basic human pointing gesture without being taught. New Guinea Singing dogs, a half-wild proto-dog endemic to the remote alpine regions of New Guinea, as well as Dingoes in the remote outback of Australia are also capable of this. These examples demonstrate an ability to read human gestures that arose early in domestication and did not require human selection. “Humans did not develop dogs, we only fine-tuned them down the road.” Similar to the chimpanzee, Bonobos are a close genetic cousin to humans. Unlike the chimpanzee, bonobos are not aggressive and do not participate in lethal intergroup aggression or kill within their own group. The most distinctive features of a bonobo are its cranium, which is 15% smaller than a chimpanzee’s, and its less aggressive and more playful behavior. Dogs mirror these differences relative to wild wolves: a dog’s cranium is 15% smaller than an equally heavy wolf’s, and the dog is less aggressive and more playful. The guinea pig’s cranium is 13% smaller than its wild cousin the cavie and domestic fowl show a similar reduction to their wild cousins. Possession of a smaller cranium for holding a smaller brain is a telltale sign of domestication. Bonobos appear to have domesticated themselves. In the “farm fox” experiment, humans selectively bred foxes against aggression which caused a domestication syndrome. The foxes were not selectively bred for smaller craniums and teeth, floppy ears, or skills at using human gestures but these traits were demonstrated in the friendly foxes. Natural selection favors those that are the most successful at reproducing, not the most aggressive. Selection against aggression made possible the ability to cooperate and communicate among foxes, dogs and bonobos. Perhaps it did the same thing for humans. [Wikipedia]
Four Centuries of Development Surprises on a Single Stretch of a New York City Street [PDF]
Largest of the Five Mass Extinctions Caused By Microbes
Panspermia is a process where life is somehow transplanted from planet to planet.
You can now listen to NASA Voyager’s ‘Golden Record’, intended for aliens & future humans
How to get rid of a satellite after its retirement
Meet the Man Who Flies Around the World for Free
Angola was the most difficult of all the countries I visited. Man who traveled to every country on earth explains the most difficult places to visit
Why Britain has secret “ghost trains”?
A night in Japan's robot hotel
Robot applyed for Screen Actors Guild card. Acceptance into SAG would give the robot health insurance and a pension.
A golden sex toy that contains your partner's ashes
How Far Can the Human Eye See a Candle Flame?
3D Printed Guided Missiles are Now a Reality
Police in North Dakota can now use drones armed with tasers
After London’s 2011 riots, the superrecognizers combed through thousands of hours of footage; Collins alone identified an incredible 190 faces among the rioters. Today, Neville heads London’s central forensic image team, which has tested thousands of police officers and identified 152 super-recognizers. These face-spotting stars normally work in their local stations, building up a mental library of the area’s criminals, and periodically attach to New Scotland Yard to solve crimes. [National Geographic]
“Asking drug dealers to turn in other drug dealers,” Sheriff Melton said. “It’s comical, and it’s working.” [NY Times]
The Effect of Country Music on Suicide [PDF]
Russia’s lost punks [via Nils Runeberg]
Xiao makes a living by imitating US president Barack Obama
Homeopathy conference ends in chaos after delegates take hallucinogenic drug
RIP Jamiroquai [Thanks Tim]
The US Navy is working on AI that can predict a pirate attack