Friday, 6 March 2009
Woman wakes up after a loooong time.
Kate suffered from what was probably brain stem encephalitis at the age of 23. She was the first patient to be scanned by Adrian Owen as part of his research into the mental lives of those in persistent vegetative states. Findings from this research support what Kate herself is able to say in the video: we need to be very careful before making life and death decisions on behalf of people who appear unresponsive.
Read the rest of the article here for free.
Soldiers disappointed at losing the chance to kill more people.
Dang, he done took our war ‘way. Gobama.
Just the Apple App Facts, Jack
If you tried to buy every app in the App Store at once, it would cost you $71,442.69
The most popular price? You might assume it would be free, it’s actually $0.99 — by a long shot.
The most popular category by far is “games” with 5,263 apps,
followed by “entertainment” with 3,497 apps.
The third most popular category is Books
The least popular app category? Weather.
Check out the rest of the article for free, here
Amazon Gets Into the Used-Game Business
After enjoying a virtual monopoly in the used videogames market, videogame specialty retailer GameStop Corp. faces a threat from a potentially formidable rival, Amazon.com Inc.
The Seattle Internet retailer launched a service Thursday in which it will allow customers to trade in used videogames for store credit, taking aim at a key portion of GameStop's business.
Check it out here.
Visual Cues Help People Understand Spoken Words
New research from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and the City College of New York shows that the visual information you absorb when you see can improve your understanding of the spoken words by as much as sixfold.
Check it out here.
Thursday, 5 March 2009
Brain Differences Found Between Believers In God And Non-believers
Believing in God can help block anxiety and minimize stress, according to new University of Toronto research that shows distinct brain differences between believers and non-believers.
Check out the full article here
The precision of remote context memories does not require the hippocampus
Although the clarity of many memories fades with time, some memories may maintain their original precision. Here we used a context discrimination procedure to evaluate whether the hippocampus is important in maintaining precision as memories mature. Spared discrimination in hippocampal-lesioned mice indicated that precise, remote context memories may be supported by extra-hippocampal brain regions.
Check out the paper here
Listen to your DNA
The folks behind the DNA-Rainbow project (discussed on Slashdot before) apparently have some time to play around with genome data. After creating amazing pictures from the human DNA code they are now transforming all chromosomes to audio and streaming them to the Internet
Check it out here
Via slashdot
Global Warming gets it's own top level domain name
Al Gore is partnering with this company to help secure ICANN approval for a new .ECO top level domain name for Environmentally friendly companies and websites.
Wednesday, 4 March 2009
Mind Hacks Archive - Psychology & Advertising -
A roundup of Psychology & Advertising articles from Mind Hacks: Enjoi
Is there a science of advertising?
Decoding adverisements
Cognitive psychology & advertising
Music, wine and will
Advertising influences familiarity induces
preference
Neuroscience and advertising
Where do implicit associations come from?
Does advertising erode free will
The price is right regardless of the cost
When choice is demotivating
Experimental psychology of advertising resources
Why can't we choose what makes us happy?
The endowment effect & marketing
A quick and miscellaneous list of advertising links
Take pill. Remember bad memory. Bad memory gone.
Animal studies have shown that fear memories can change when recalled, a process referred to as reconsolidation. We found that oral administration of the -adrenergic receptor antagonist propranolol before memory reactivation in humans erased the behavioral expression of the fear memory 24 h later and prevented the return of fear. Disrupting the reconsolidation of fear memory opens up new avenues for providing a long-term cure for patients with emotional disorders.
Check it out here
Drawing with your voice
Want to try something hard? Performance artist and all-round smart guy Ze Frank has created this experimental flash application that will allow you to draw with your voice. Needs a microphone.
Check it out here
Twistori: How do you feel?
Twistori is a social experiment using Twitter that searches for any tweets with emotion words in them and then streams them to your computer. If you're home alone, it's nice to have it playing in the background. It's also pretty funny to read what people hate and how MUCH they hate it.
Check it out here.
Monday, 2 March 2009
Top Scientists say which technologies will change everything.
The world's greatest thinkers have revealed the ideas and technologies they think will change the world forever.
"Through science we create technology and in using our new tools we recreate ourselves." So says the intro to edge.org's annual New Year challenge to the world's greatest thinkers.
This year it is asking "What will change everything – What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?" and as ever, the great and the good have responded to the call.
Geneticist Craig Venter, psychologist Steven Pinker, novelist Ian McEwan, philosopher Dan Dennett, physicist Paul Davies and cloning pioneer Ian Wilmut are just some of the overwhelmingly male-dominated list of more than 110 respondents.
Check it out here.
Sunday, 1 March 2009
Reasons to get into advertising.
"...and I think it's the end that makes it worth starting, because the best reasons for starting in advertising are the countless opportunities you've made for yourself when you leave. British adland may have lost much of its glamour and its preeminence in the pantheon of global creativity but it's still the best training you'll ever get for most of the things you might dream of doing. It's like a gateway drug for interesting jobs; a never-ending, always-changing training scheme. You're constantly moving from one client, one problem, one opportunity, to another. No project ever lasts that long, you rarely do exactly the same thing twice and you bump into all sorts of other experts, industries and professions. Which means ad people have the best collections of odd and arcane jargon you'll ever come across, picked up from various clients. I was over the moon when I found out about yellow fats, stationality and anthem jackets. But all this flitting from one thing to another isn't just pointless dilettantism, you're building up a tremendous body of experience; expertise in some broader creative endevour. You learn how to work with talented artists and monstrous egos. You're obliged to consider what everyone in the country might want and what a few CEOs and cabinet ministers might want. You get good at explaining the complicated and the intangible to the unwilling and ill-informed. You come to understand the peculiar and different demands of images and words, briefs and ideas, traffic and production. You find out when to brainstorm, whether to workshop and how to take things to the next level. And, eventually, at some point, most advertising people take these ineffable, unteachable skills and go and do something else. They pursue some private passion or quieter life".
from Russell Davies.
from Russell Davies.
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