Study: If We Could Fly, We Would All Be Superheroes

People who went through a virtual reality flying simulation emerged ready to save lives.

 

PROBLEM: The world needs more superheroes, but science hasn't caught up. No jetpacks or invisibility cloaks, that we know of, and we all know how performance enhancing drugs turn out. So how might we use the technology we do have to spread good?

METHODOLOGY: Researchers at Stanford University's Virtual Human Interaction Lab designed a virtual reality game that simulated flight. Some players rode as passengers in a helicopter, while others were granted the power to fly like Superman. Then they were either assigned a mission -- to help find a "young, lost diabetic child in need of life-saving insulin immediately" -- or invited to tour a virtual city. 

For the rest of the story: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/study-if-we-could-fly-we-would-all-be-superheroes/272696/

Brain Basis for Why Petting Feels Good

The research team was able to identify in mice a specific class of skin sensory neurons that responds to massage–like stroking of the skin. Data were obtained by in-vivo imaging of the specific neurons in the spinal cord while the mice were stroked with a paintbrush. Image courtesy of D. Anderson lab, Caltech

Petting feels good. You can see it in a cat’s slowly closing eyes or the contented panting of a dog getting his belly rubbed. In fact, all mammals enjoy being caressed, including humans. Researchers looked at this phenomenon in lab mice and found that stroking stimulates a very specific set of neurons that have to do with hair.

For the rest of the story: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/?p=42682#.UQxoBvIu1LU

Is New York Times Hacking Just the Beginning?

Hackers in China breached the paper’s computers for months. But even the security consultant who found the culprit says the West just doesn’t get the unbridled enemy it’s facing. 

 

On Wednesday night, The New York Times announced it had been the target of attacks from hackers in China for the past four months. The attacks followed an investigation by Times reporter David Barboza into the personal wealth of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. Times officials said the Chinese government had warned that the piece on Wen’s relatives would “have consequences,” which triggered the newspaper’s executives to ask AT&T to watch their network for unusual activity.

The hackers were able to steal the corporate passwords of every Times employee, as well as break into the personal computers of 53 employees.

For the rest of the story: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/01/is-new-york-times-hacking-just-the-beginning.html

Brain Tricks - This Is How Your Brain Works

For the rest of the story: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JiTz2i4VHFw

Should people be off on Fridays?

 

The Gambia has shortened the work week, making Friday a day of rest. Is this the perfect pattern for a working week?

In the tiny African nation of The Gambia, public sector workers will now clock in at 8am and clock out at 6pm, Monday to Thursday. They'll still do a 40-hour week but have the luxury of Friday off.

President Jammeh wants the extra rest day to "allow Gambians to devote more time to prayers, social activities and agriculture".

In the dark days of the 19th Century, many workers in industrialised nations considered themselves lucky if they got Sunday off. The achievement of a 40-hour week with Saturday and Sunday off for many was a major landmark for the labour movement. 

For the rest of the story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21242782

Holding the steering wheel at 10 and 2 o'clock is no longer recommended

For the rest of the story: http://boingboing.net/2013/01/31/holding-the-steering-wheel-at.html

Is Your Mind for Sale? Inside the Allure of Digital Sweatshops

 

The original Mechanical Turk -- a fake chess playing machine -- is one of the more notorious hoaxes in history in that it fooled a lot of smart people for a long period of time. Designed to impress a Habsburg Empress, the "machine" beat many famous human opponents in chess, including Napoleon and Benjamin Franklin. It was revealed in the 1820s, however, that the Mechanical Turk was not a machine at all. A human chess master was hidden inside, doing all of the work. 

Amazon's Mechanical Turk, a "tiny arm of the Amazon octopus," as Jonathan Zittrain puts it, aspires to the same goal. This crowdsourcing platform is described as artificial artificial intelligence. In other words, it aims to use human intelligence to do the work that one day a computer might do. Mechanical Turk assigns HITs, or Human Intelligence Tasks, out to the world, often priced at a penny. A task might involve labeling a photograph. Amazingly, there are thousands of people who "turk," and these micro-laborers tend to turk for many hours. 

For the rest of the story: http://bigthink.com/collective-intelligence/minds-for-sale-digital-sweatshop?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+bigthink%2Fmain+%28Big+Think+Main%29