Triple-Decker Weekly, 141

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People don’t remember changing their minds
People don’t remember changing their minds People avoid learning the calories in a tempting dessert to protect their preferences to eat the dessert. People sometimes choose to remain ignorant. Enormous emotional support peacock denied seat on flight, owner not pleased Passenger turned away from two flights after wearing 10 layers of clothing to avoid luggage fee She was told all bags had to go through the X-ray machine, but she refused to part with her handbag Hairdresser Arrested for Giving a Bad Haircut You can now buy “premium” water that’s not only free of GMOs and gluten but certified kosher and organic. Never mind that not a single drop of water anywhere contains either property or is altered in any way by those designations. A man who claims to be a time traveller has reportedly passed a lie-detector test while… Read More...

Triple-Decker Weekly, 140

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Detroit police officers fight each other in undercover op gone wrong Chinese restaurant offers discounts to women depending on their bra size Participants rated women…
Detroit police officers fight each other in undercover op gone wrong Chinese restaurant offers discounts to women depending on their bra size Participants rated women in less revealing and less tight clothing more positively. Males were perceived as being more likely to be creepy than females. Only four occupations were judged to be significantly higher than the neutral value of “3” on the creepiness rating scale: Clowns, Taxidermists, Sex Shop Owners, and Funeral Directors. [On the nature of creepiness | PDF] Teen Girl Posed For 8 Years As Married Man To Write About Baseball And Harass Women Strange-face illusions are produced when two individuals gaze at each other in the eyes in low illumination for more than a few minutes. Usually, the members of the dyad perceive numinous apparitions, like the other’s face deformations and perception of a stranger or… Read More...

Triple-Decker Weekly, 139

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On the Inability to Ignore Useless Advice
On the Inability to Ignore Useless Advice Multiple arrested after fight inside Berkeley’s ‘empathy tent’ Senate map gerrymandered for senator’s house Entrepreneurs are finding profits turning human waste into fertiliser, fuel and even food. The new economy of excrement 16 Ways QR Codes are Being Used in China Chinese sex doll rental service suspended amid controversy Chang et al. investigated the well-known asymmetry of the scrotum in man and showed that in right-handed subjects the right testis tended to be higher, whereas the converse applied in left-handed subjects. [Nature | PDF] Do Men Overestimate or Women Underreport Their Sexual Intentions? Eye movements of 105 heterosexual undergraduate students (36 males) were monitored while viewing photographs of men and women identified as a potential mate or a potential friend. Results showed that people looked at the head and chest more when assessing potential mates… Read More...

Triple-Decker Weekly, 138

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There is an alarming increase in demonic activity being reported by those who work in exorcism ministry, said the exorcist for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis
The idea behind power poses, that if you stand in a "powerful" position, broad posture, hands on hips, shoulders high and pushed back, you will suddenly feel psychologically and physiologically stronger, is intuitively appealing, especially for people without much confidence. The problem is that it's simply not true, according to University of Pennsylvania researchers. [...] "We did find that [...] if you're a loser and you take a winner or high power pose, your testosterone decreases." In other words, Smith said, "people might not be able to 'fake it until they make it,' and in fact it might be detrimental." [EurekAlert] Human brain is predisposed to negative stereotypes, new study suggests When judging other people, first impressions last Another classic finding in psychology—that you can smile your way to happiness—just blew up. Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute… Read More...

Triple-Decker Weekly, 137

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Overall, most U.S. men were satisfied with their genitals
Families sue US sperm bank after 'genius' donor turns out to be felon with mental health issues. Fortune cookies are often served as a dessert in Chinese restaurants in the United States and some other countries, but are absent in China The Longest Word in the World (189,819 letters) [disputed whether it is a word] The best day and time to hold a meeting: Tuesday, 2:30pm, according to a study People who talk for more than roughly half minute at a time are boring and often perceived as too chatty Psychologists have identified the length of eye contact that people find most comfortable (just over three seconds) Study Shows Mediums Are Wrong 46.2% of the Time People who made detailed predictions about sporting events (e.g., how many hits each baseball team would get) made worse predictions about more general outcomes… Read More...

Triple-Decker Weekly, 136

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We feel more authentic when we're with other people and behave as they expect us to
Why is there something rather than nothing? […] No experiment could support the hypothesis ‘There is nothing’ because any observation obviously implies the existence of an observer. [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy] Percentage of scientific paper titles containing “observations” or “data” in the past century Test subjects followed instructions from an “Emergency Guide Robot” even after the machine had proven itself unreliable — and after some participants were told that robot had broken down People spend too much time on problems in which the reward difference between the options is low When people choose not to reveal personal information — to be "hiders" — they are judged negatively by others. Observers rate those who reveal even questionable behavior more positively. We feel more authentic when we're with other people and behave as they expect us to The classic argument is that… Read More...

Triple-Decker Weekly, 135

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The authors identify customers, termed “Harbingers of failure,” who systematically purchase new products that flop
The authors identify customers, termed “Harbingers of failure,” who systematically purchase new products that flop. Their early adoption of a new product is a strong signal that a product will fail—the more they buy, the less likely the product will succeed. Firms can identify these customers through past purchases of either new products that failed or existing products that few other customers purchase. The authors discuss how these insights can be readily incorporated into the new product development process. The findings challenge the conventional wisdom that positive customer feedback is always a signal of future success. [Journal of Marketing Research] Military importance of diarrhea: lessons from the Middle East By one estimate, as many as 40 percent of people experience constipation while they’re away from home Man fails to get penis drawing recognized as his signature Airbnb removes New York igloo… Read More...

Triple-Decker Weekly, 134

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What else is possible if space and time can change?
Court tells millionaire yoga troll Bikram Choudhury that poses can't be copyrighted The practice by some Chinese parents of adopting girls and raising them as future wives for their biological sons A growing body of literature has shown that environmental exposures in the period around conception can affect the sex ratio at birth through selective attrition that favors the survival of female conceptuses. Glucose availability is considered a key indicator of the fetal environment, and its absence as a result of meal skipping may inhibit male survival. We hypothesize that breakfast skipping during pregnancy may lead to a reduction in the fraction of male births. Using time use data from the United States we show that women with commute times of 90 minutes or longer are 20 percentage points more likely to skip breakfast. Using U.S. census data we show… Read More...

Triple-Decker Weekly, 133

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People mistake access to information for their own personal understanding of the information
Baby Born Pregnant with Her Own Twins Disabling parts of the brain with magnets can weaken faith in God and change attitudes to immigrants, study finds Can people differentiate what they know from what they do not? Several lines of research suggest that people are not always accurate judges of their knowledge and often overestimate how much they know. Research on overconfidence finds that people commonly judge the accuracy of their judgments too favorably and typically overestimate how well they perform everyday tasks relative to other people. Work on the illusion of explanatory depth demonstrates that participants tend to think they have a better understanding of how objects work (e.g., a ballpoint pen) than they can demonstrate when that understanding is put to the test. At times, people even claim knowledge they cannot possibly have, because the object of their… Read More...

Triple-Decker Weekly, 132

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We don't look like we think we look, study
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… Read More...

Triple-Decker Weekly, 131

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Facebook algorithm can recognise people in photographs even when it can't see their faces
Catalogue of entrances to Hell in and around the UK After the near?collapse of the world’s financial system has shown that we economists really do not know how the world works, I am much too embarrassed to teach economics anymore, which I have done for many years. I will teach Modern Korean Drama instead. Although I have never been to Korea, I have watched Korean drama on a daily basis for over six years now. Therefore I can justly consider myself an expert in that subject. [Uwe E. Reinhardt, Princeton University | PDF] New research shows that, for most of us, the last experience we’ve had can be the defining one when it comes to taking a decision, coming at the expense of other experiences we’ve accumulated further back in time [ScienceBlog] Study finds people -- even teenagers -- unconsciously… Read More...

Triple-Decker Weekly, 130

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Would you pay for transparently useless advice?
Films with a female presence earn less at the box office Research shows more sex does not mean more happiness The relation between sexual orientation and penile dimensions in a large sample of men was studied. […] Penile dimensions were assessed using five measures of penile length and circumference from Kinsey’s original protocol. On all five measures, homosexual men reported larger penises than did heterosexual men. Explanations for these differences are discussed, including the possibility that these findings provide additional evidence that variations in prenatal hormonal levels (or other biological mechanisms affecting reproductive structures)affect sexual orientation development. [Archives of Sexual Behavior] Worker fired for disabling GPS app that tracked her 24 hours a day New Zealand-based company is building a very, very angry robot to help companies deal with angry customers Big brands said to want models with at least 10,000… Read More...

Triple-Decker Weekly, 129

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Algorithm recovers speech from vibrations of potato-chip bag filmed through soundproof glass
Algorithm recovers speech from vibrations of potato-chip bag filmed through soundproof glass. [Phys.org | Thanks Tim] Back in 2009, researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara performed a curious experiment. In many ways, it was routine — they placed a subject in the brain scanner, displayed some images, and monitored how the subject’s brain responded. The measured brain activity showed up on the scans as red hot spots, like many other neuroimaging studies. Except that this time, the subject was an Atlantic salmon, and it was dead. Dead fish do not normally exhibit any kind of brain activity, of course. The study was a tongue-in-cheek reminder of the problems with brain scanning studies. Those colorful images of the human brain found in virtually all news media may have captivated the imagination of the public, but they have also been… Read More...

Triple-Decker Weekly, 128

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People prescribe optimism when they believe it has the opportunity to improve the chance of success—unfortunately, people may be overly optimistic about just how much optimism can do
US researchers are investigating ways to extract the gold and precious metals from human faeces. It’s hard to read the old-fashioned way, slowly and deliberately. Few of us have the patience, the concentration, or the time. When we do read, we skim, trying to get a quick “take” on the topics of the day, often conveniently served up as prepackaged excerpts by our modern media machine. We flit from one thing to the next, never pausing to think about what we’ve just read, because in our media-saturated, technology-obsessed age we just don’t have time. Worse, our bad reading habits are symptomatic of a deeper malaise. Real learning, real knowledge, and real culture have been supplanted by the shallow, utilitarian instrumentalism of modern life. The evidence is mounting. Humanities departments are losing students to the sciences and other more useful majors,… Read More...

DNA-based prediction of Nietzsche’s voice

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The result is presented in audio format and illustrates the first attempt at simulating the voice of a deceased person.
download PDF | full study Abstract This paper presents a protocol for the accurate prediction of an individual’s voice based on genotype data, specifically from single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). We collected trace amounts of cellular material (Touch DNA) from books that belonged to the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). DNA was extracted and amplified using DOP-PCR technique. Five different genomic DNAs were generated. Nietzsche’s genotype was singled out after comparison to genotype data from one living relative of the Nietzsche family. Nietzsche’s genotype data was analyzed using a DNA-based phenotyping assay, termed VoiceRator, that incorporates the 24 most informative voice SNPs based on their association with genes related to the phenotypic expression of the vocal tract and larynx structure and function. An SNP-based voice profile of Nietzsche was inferred. The profile data was converted into bio-measures that were used to 3D-print… Read More...