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Watch a "Lovotics" introductory video on Pulse:
http://nhne-pulse.org/love-robotics-lovotics/
---------------
'LOVOTICS': THE NEW SCIENCE OF ENGINEERING HUMAN, ROBOT LOVE
By Christopher Mims
Technology Review
June 29, 2011
http://nhne-pulse.org/love-robotics-lovotics/http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/26953/?p1=blogs
If you think the debates between fans of various mobile and computing
platforms are tiresome, just wait until fanboys are actually,
romantically in love with their devices.
Bi-directional love between a human and a robot -- realistic, genuine,
biologically-inspired love -- is the goal of Hooman Samani, an
artificial intelligence researcher at the Social Robotics Lab at the
National University of Singapore. He calls this new discipline Lovotics.
Across nearly a dozen papers, he has developed a comprehensive
artificial intelligence simulation of the emotional and endocrine
systems underpinning love in humans, allowing his robots to be "an
active participant in the communicative process, [adjusting] its
affective state depending on its interactions with humans."
Samani's robots are equipped with both an emotional and a hormonal
climate. They display a spectrum of emotions, from happiness to disgust.
Based on the videos Samani has produced, they appear to experience
something akin to jealousy, and are only content when being stroked by
their human companions.
For simplicity's sake, these robots resemble over-size Tribbles. They
trill like R2D2, vibrate, move about and flash LED lights in order to
qualify their moods.
Whether or not this work "could lead to a revolution in the way humans
and robots interact and love each other," it's fascinating to watch a
researcher pole-vault right over the question of whether or not humans
can ever accept robots into the realm of whether or not we will find
them as indispensable as pets, friends and -- dare we say it -- lovers.
----------------
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Thanks to Susan Perry. Watch two video clips on Pulse:
http://nhne-pulse.org/national-geographic-doomsday-preppers/
---------------
DOOMSDAY PREPPERS
National Geographic Channel
July, 2011
http://nhne-pulse.org/national-geographic-doomsday-preppers/
Unique in their beliefs, motivations and strategies, explore the lives
of four families preparing for the end of the world as we know it. From
bunkers to fortified off-the-grid locations, these doomsday preppers
will go to whatever lengths they can to make sure they are prepared for
any of lifes uncertainties. And with our experts assessment, they will
find out their chances of survival if their worst fears became a reality.
----------------
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FINAL NASA SHUTTLE MISSION CLOUDED BY RANCOR
By Joel Achenbach
The Washington Post
July 2, 2011
http://nhne-pulse.org/nasa-in-disarray/http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/us-space-program-approache\
s-end-of-an-era-what-next/2011/06/29/AGeBAWtH_print.html
CAPE CANAVERAL - The last shuttle, Atlantis, sits on Pad 39A, ready for
its valedictory flight.
It is the nature of a shuttle to look kind of lonely out there on the
pad, kept at a safe remove from the control room, the hangars, the
observation platforms. The pad is not far from the beach, one of the
last stretches of Florida coastline unblemished by hotels and condos.
Beach houses were torn down years ago when the federal government showed
up with rockets. Old-timers talk of 11 graveyards and an old schoolhouse
lurking somewhere out there, the remnants of the era before the coming
of the spaceport.
Now the U.S. space program itself is middle-aged, facing a painful
transition. Atlantis will blast off, if all goes as planned, at 11:26
a.m. Friday for a 12-day mission to the international space station. And
then . . . what?
Then a lot of uncertainty. The only sure bet is that thousands of people
here will be out of a job.
NASA’s critics say the human spaceflight program is in a shambles. They
see arm-waving and paperwork rather than a carefully defined mission
going forward. NASA has lots of plans, but it has no new rocket ready to
launch, no specific destination selected, and no means in the near term
to get American astronauts into space other than by buying a seat on one
of Russia’s aging Soyuz spacecraft.
The space agency’s leaders say everything’s on track, that the private
sector will soon launch astronauts into orbit and let NASA focus on the
hard work of deep-space exploration. There is a new heavy-lift rocket in
the works, one capable of going far beyond the stamping grounds of the
shuttle. President Obama has picked a destination, a near-Earth
asteroid, though he did not say which one.
“We have a program. We have a budget. We have bipartisan support. We
have a destination,” NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver said. “We are
just putting finer points on the rocket design.”
But Garver and other administration officials are getting heat from some
of the most famous astronauts on the planet, not to mention members of
Congress and aerospace industry executives. Neil Armstrong, the first
man on the moon, and someone never known to be a rabble-rouser, recently
co-wrote with fellow Apollo astronauts Jim Lovell and Gene Cernan an
op-ed in USA Today declaring that the space policy of the Obama
administration is in “substantial disarray.” The astronauts protested
the decision to kill the Constellation program, the George W. Bush-era
plan for a new lunar mission with new rockets and spacecraft.
Here’s Bob Crippen, who was the pilot of the first shuttle mission,
STS-1, back in 1981: “I’ve never seen NASA so screwed up as it is right
now. . . . They don’t know where they’re going.”
Even one of NASA’s senior people here at the Kennedy Space Center, Mike
Leinbach, the launch director who will supervise the final countdown and
launch of Atlantis, has blasted his agency for the lack of direction.
“We’re all victims of poor policy out of Washington, D.C. -- both at the
NASA level and the executive branch of the government,” Leinbach said
recently at a news conference here. He said he was “embarrassed” about
the lack of guidance.
NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden Jr. said he respects Crippen and
Leinbach but “could not disagree more” with their comments. “Our future
is bright, and the U.S. will continue to be a world leader in space
exploration for many years to come,” he said.
Garver suggested that the agency’s critics fail to recognize the dire
condition of the human spaceflight program when Obama took office.
“We have brought the program back from the brink,” Garver said. “We
inherited a program that was in disarray.”
And so the shuttle era comes to an end amid acrimony. To some extent,
the pain and hurt and recrimination go with the territory -- because, as
Garver said repeatedly, “change is hard.”
But if the critics are right, the final flight of Atlantis will be a
flare for a space program in trouble.
‘More left in them’
On a recent morning, NASA let reporters take a peek into the retired
space shuttle Discovery, which is headed to the Smithsonian. Right now
it’s in a customized hangar, or processing bay, here at the space
center. Technicians are “safing” it, stripping it of explosive charges
designed to blow hatches in an emergency. A shuttle won’t need those
when it’s on display in a museum.
Surprise: It’s cramped inside. Seven astronauts had to pack into a
modest crew compartment and, just above it, the flight deck. All the
spaciousness is in the rear, in the payload bay, where the shuttle
hauled jumbo telescopes and satellites and chunks of the international
space station. So when people called it a “space truck,” they were not
joking. It’s a pickup. A space pickup.
Discovery first flew in 1984 and has logged 148 million miles in space,
which is equivalent to flying to the sun and most of the way back.
“It’s sad. There’s a lot more left in them. The airframes are certified
for 100 flights. This one had 39 flights,” said senior mechanical
technician Bill Powers, 58, who works for United Space Alliance, the
primary contractor for the shuttle. USA already has laid off thousands
of shuttle workers across the country. On July 22, the contractor will
lay off about 1,900 more people here in Florida.
“It’s not wore-out. It’s just broke-in,” said Tim Keyser, lead mechanic
for the orbiters. “It could fly another 20 years. We get into the guts
of this thing, it’s pristine.”
The fleet was small, just five spaceships, plus a prototype, named
Enterprise, that was used in low-altitude tests but never made it to
orbit. Collectively they have flown 537 million miles (but, because it’s
NASA, there’s an exact number: 537,114,016). Discovery, Endeavour (also
parked in a processing bay here) and Atlantis are the three surviving
orbiters. Two of the shuttles met disaster. Challenger blew up in 1986
as it soared into the Florida sky, and Columbia disintegrated over Texas
as it returned to Earth in 2003.
The tragedies are recorded in various NASA documents with an identical,
to-the-point phrase: “Loss of vehicle and crew.”
A versatile performer
The space shuttle goes into the history books with a mixed record. It
was never truly loved. It was confined to low-Earth orbit -- LEO -- and
never flew higher than 384 miles above the surface.
But in twilight, it has flowered into something attractive. It can do
things that the next generation of spacecraft won’t be able to do.
Bolden, the NASA administrator and former shuttle commander, speaks for
many, “We are going to miss this incredible flying machine,” he said.
Versatile is the word that the engineers use. The space shuttle could
not only carry 50,000 pounds of cargo into orbit; it could house seven
astronauts, dock with orbiting space stations, grab satellites and
telescopes and pull them into the payload bay for repairs, and haul
enormous amounts of cargo back to Earth for a soft landing.
In retrospect, that was arguably too much spaceship for most of what was
needed for missions in low-Earth orbit. NASA wants to get away from
using a single vehicle to carry humans and cargo. It’s safer and cheaper
to send cargo separately.
Cost will always tarnish the shuttle’s reputation. Once sold to Congress
with promises of weekly flights for just $7 million a pop, the shuttle
program never managed to make spaceflight routine or inexpensive. The
shuttle program, in its totality, has cost more than a billion dollars
per flight.
The historians will also note that the shuttle had a fundamental design
flaw. The shuttle’s components at launch were arrayed side by side
rather than stacked, as in Apollo-era rockets. The orbiter (the
spaceship itself) was adjacent to a huge external fuel tank and two
solid rocket boosters. That configuration meant the failure of one
component could cause the failure of an adjacent one.
Which happened twice. In the Challenger accident, a jet of flame
destabilized a solid rocket booster, which slammed into the fuel tank
and caused a catastrophic eruption that blew apart the orbiter. In the
second, foam falling during lift-off from the external tank damaged a
protective tile on the leading edge of one wing of Columbia. That damage
proved fatal when the orbiter disintegrated upon reentry.
After Columbia, NASA needed to make a fundamental change. President
George W. Bush signed his name to the Vision for Space Exploration in
2004. The new strategy called for retiring the shuttle and using the
freed-up money to go to deep space again. The new program,
Constellation, featured plans for two rockets, a new crew capsule and a
lunar lander. The agency vowed to put astronauts on the moon by 2020 and
develop the tools and techniques for an eventual mission to Mars.
But the administration and Congress never funded the Constellation
program at the level that NASA managers had envisioned. A new rocket,
Ares I, ran into technical issues and fell behind schedule. By the time
President Obama took office, it was clear that the United States faced a
major gap, five years minimum, between the shuttle’s retirement and the
availability of Ares I.
A presidential review panel led by retired aerospace executive Norman
Augustine concluded that, without an extra $3 billion a year,
Constellation would not be able to get astronauts to the moon until 2028
at the earliest, and there’d be no money left in the program for the
lunar lander. In essence, NASA could afford only to crash astronauts
into the moon. The Augustine report said NASA was “perpetuating the
perilous practice of pursuing goals that do not match allocated resources.”
Big eyes, little funding.
Obama zeroed out Constellation in the president’s 2011 budget request.
Under the NASA authorization act passed by Congress, Constellation is
officially dead, though some major elements are still lurking,
rebranded. Constellation’s crew capsule, Orion, has been retained and
was given a different, clunkier name. It’s the multi-purpose crew
vehicle (MPCV).
Constellation envisioned a heavy-lift vehicle known as Ares V, capable
of taking astronauts to the moon. NASA is replacing that with the “Space
Launch System,” a heavy-lift rocket that is supposed to be ready to fly
in an initial configuration by 2016 and evolve into something larger.
The agency has pondered myriad designs and is seeking final approval for
its preferred architecture from the frowning officials of the Office of
Management and Budget.
The shortest path to orbit for NASA is likely to come via “commercial
crew,” a program advanced by the Obama administration in which private
contractors, with upfront government assistance, are developing
spaceships that could take astronauts to the space station by the middle
of this decade. The dream is for spaceflight, at least in low-Earth
orbit, to become akin to commercial aviation. Buy a ticket, blast off.
For example, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, currently in a hangar on the cape
just a few miles from Atlantis, could carry astronauts to orbit inside a
reusable capsule named Dragon.
Here at the Kennedy Space Center, NASA managers say they plan to build a
“21st-century spaceport,” but the effort has a cart-before-horse
problem. NASA is trying to get infrastructure in place for rockets that
haven’t been approved and destinations that haven’t been selected.
The space center has a new half-billion-dollar mobile launcher, soaring
355 feet into the air and designed for Constellation’s Ares I rocket.
But with Ares I defunct, the launcher is an expensive piece of hardware
searching for a purpose.
Among those most displeased with the state of NASA is former
administrator Mike Griffin, who masterminded the Constellation program.
“What they did was abandon a plan for no plan,” Griffin said. “We are
retiring the shuttle in favor of nothing.”
Bolden, Griffin’s successor, is pushing back against the critics. In a
message to NASA employees delivered Friday morning, he wrote: “Some of
my best friends died flying on the shuttle. I’m not about to let human
spaceflight go away on my watch. And I’m not going to let it flounder
because we pursued a path that we couldn’t sustain.”
Relics of a bygone time
One of the powerful impressions of the Kennedy Space Center is how
antiquated the place has become in certain respects. It’s not digital,
it’s analog. The Kennedy Space Center wants to be a 21st-century
spaceport, but there are places where it looks like the Rust Belt of the
Space Age.
On a recent day, an 87-year-old former NASA employee, Charlie Parker,
volunteered to give a reporter a tour of the abandoned pad where the
three Apollo 1 astronauts died in a fire in 1967. Pad 34, on the Air
Force side of the cape, is a forlorn place surrounded by weeds and
scrub. Two plaques and three stone benches honor the martyred astronauts.
Just to the north, one pad away, stood the Delta IV rocket, privately
owned and operated, and primarily used for lifting military cargo into
space. The massive structure housing the Delta IV is a reminder that the
space program is hardly dead. The U.S. military spends more on space
than NASA does. The future promises many rockets, big and small,
civilian and military, public and private.
Pad 34 is the past, draped in silence, its only obvious inhabitant a
lumbering gopher tortoise that dives into his burrow at the approach of
visitors. Two rusting structures, flame deflectors that look like
skateboard ramps, have been parked at the edge of the vacant concrete
pad. In the center is a monolithic platform that once held rockets. A
pillar has three words stenciled on it: Abandon In Place.
“We call this Stonehenge West,” Parker said. “It just costs too much to
tear down.”
----------------
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APE GENIUS
NOVA
First broadcast in February, 2008
Winner of the 2009 George Foster Peabody Award
http://nhne-pulse.org/nova-ape-genius/
At a research site in Fongoli, Senegal, a female chimpanzee breaks off a
branch, chews the end to make it sharp, and then uses this rudimentary
spear to skewer a tasty bush baby hiding inside a hollow tree. Its an
astonishing breakthrough for primate researchers -- the first time
anyone has documented a chimpanzee wielding a carefully prepared,
preplanned weapon. But it's only the latest in a slew of extraordinary
new findings about ape behavior.
The more researchers learn about the great apes -- chimpanzees, bonobos,
gorillas, and orangutans -- the more evidence they find of creative
intelligence. What, then, is the essential difference between them and
us? "Ape Genius," a NOVA-National Geographic special, explores that
provocative question and examines research that is illuminating the ape
mind. Bit by bit, investigators are finding an explanation for why the
non-human great apes never made the breakthrough into a human-style
culture that builds on the achievements of previous generations.
----------------
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---------------
WIKILEAKS VIDEO: WHAT DOES IT COST TO CHANGE THE WORLD?
What do MasterCard, Visa, Bank of America, Paypal and Western Union all
have in common? They help you pay for what you want? Well, yes... that
is unless you want to help WikiLeaks make the world a better place. To
see the shocking details, please go to here:
http://nhne-pulse.org/wikileaks-video-what-does-it-cost-to-change-the-world/
Then here:
http://wikileaks.org/Banking-Blockade.html
Then here:
http://wikileaks.org/support.html
...............
BANKING BLOCKADE
Wikileaks
June 28, 2011
http://wikileaks.org/Banking-Blockade.html
WikiLeaks releases advertisement coinciding with the six month unlawful
banking blockage against it
Censorship, like everything else in the West, has been privatized.
For six months now, five major US financial institutions, VISA,
MasterCard, PayPal, Western Union and the Bank of America have tried to
economically strangle WikiLeaks as a result of political pressure from
Washington. The attack has blocked over 90% of the non-profit
organizations donations, costing some $15M in lost revenue. The attack
is entirely outside of any due process or rule of law. In fact, in the
only formal review to occur, the US Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy
C. Geithner found, on January 12, that there were no lawful grounds to
add WikiLeaks to a financial blockade.
The fact is, the blockade is not just against WikiLeaks. It is against
the associative rights and economic rights of every VISA, MasterCard,
PayPal and Bank of America account holder, who have been prevented from
supporting the organization of their choice. We call on regulators
around the world to investigate and de-license these banking
institutions. They are not politically neutral and are not obeying the
rule of law. When VISA and MasterCard will happily provide services to
the Klu Klux Klan, but not to WikiLeaks, it is time to act.
The issue received previous prominence, but the unlawful blockade
continues, on Christmas day, the Dec 25 New York Times editorial wrote:
"The whistle-blowing Web site WikiLeaks has not been convicted of a
crime. The Justice Department has not even pressed charges over its
disclosure of confidential State Department communications. Nonetheless,
the financial industry is trying to shut it down A handful of big banks
could potentially bar any organization they disliked from the payments
system, essentially cutting them off from the world economy. The fact of
the matter is that banks are not like any other business. They run the
payments system. That is one of the main reasons that governments
protect them from failure with explicit and implicit guarantees. This
makes them look not too unlike other public utilities."
There are still some ways around the blockade. Direct bank transfers
that do not use the Bank of America network still work. We also accept
Bitcoin donations or you can send a donation via postal mail. To find
out further details on how to bypass the illegal banking blockade
against us and donate to WikiLeaks read further information [at the link
below] or on our donate page:
http://wikileaks.org/Banking-Blockade.htmlhttp://wikileaks.org/support.html
----------------
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---------------
Watch two videos about Nim on Pulse:
http://nhne-pulse.org/project-nim-a-chimp-raised-like-a-human/
--------------
PROJECT NIM: A CHIMP RAISED LIKE A HUMAN
By Rowan Hooper
New Scientist
July 4, 2011
http://nhne-pulse.org/project-nim-a-chimp-raised-like-a-human/
Poor old Carolyn. Six of her previous babies have been taken away from
her, and, as this film opens, men are coming to take her seventh. Her
son, a chimpanzee named Nim, is two weeks old and is about to be
transplanted from his birthplace at a primate research centre in
Oklahoma into -- wait for it -- a large brownstone on the upper west
side of Manhattan. There he will live with a human family and be raised
as a human child.
Thus begins the stranger than fiction true story that's explored in
James March's new documentary, Project Nim <http://www.project-nim.com/>.
What on earth were they thinking of? Nim was put in diapers and dressed
in clothes. He was breastfed by his human surrogate mother, Stephanie
Lafarge. "It seemed natural," she says.
Lafarge's daughter, Jenny Lee, has a better explanation: "It was the
seventies". Jenny was 10-years-old when Nim came to live with her
family. The film, assembled from archive footage shot at the time,
recreated scenes and interviews with the main characters, tells the
story of Nim's chaotic life.
In the mid 1970s a scientific debate was raging over the origin of
language. There were two camps: those who held that human language was
part of a continuum, in which case we'd expect other primates to have
the rudiments of language, and those who thought language was uniquely
human and there would be no evolutionary trace of it in other apes.
Herbert Terrace, a psychologist at Columbia University in New York and
one of the central figures in this film, believed in the continuity
arguments. He started "Project Nim" to try and show that a chimp could
learn language -- in this case American Sign Language -- and thereby
tell us what he was thinking.
But Terrace's project was a shambles. For a start, none of Nim's
surrogate family knew how to teach sign language. More seriously, no one
had considered the consequences of raising a powerful wild animal in a
human environment.
Laura-Ann Petitto says it best. She was a perky psychology undergraduate
who took over responsibility for Nim after Lafarge was forced to give
him up. "You can't give human nurturing to an animal that could kill
you," she says. To drive home the point, Pettito shows a scar on her arm
caused by a bite from Nim. She needed 37 stitches.
This documentary from James March, who also directed the Academy Award
winning Man on Wire, is ultimately remarkable for two reasons: the
touching, sometimes comic, yet ultimately heartbreaking story of Nim
himself; but also, inevitably, the insight it gives us into human
behaviour and folly. Nim, we are told, mastered more than 120 words in
sign language. But as the film makes clear, his true talent was for
grasping the intentions of the humans around him, and using that
understanding to manipulate them.
Terrace eventually realises this, and in 1979, after cancelling the
project and sending Nim back to a prison-like primate centre, he
published a paper in Science dismissing the idea that chimps can sign
complete sentences.
Though the depth of language may not have been what Terrace anticipated,
there was clearly deep understanding and emotion between Nim and his
carers. Perhaps no more so than with Bob Ingersoll, who was working at
the Institute for Primate Studies in Oklahoma when Nim was returned
there. One of the most touching moments of the film is when Bob is
reunited with Nim after a few years of separation. Nim immediately signs
to Bob his favourite word, "play", made by clapping his hands together,
and the two start cavorting around together. Ingersoll, a dope-smoking
Grateful Dead devotee, sums up the strength of their bond with the
highest praise he can muster: "I'd rather be with Nim than with Jerry,
and for me that's saying something."
The lasting impact of this film doesn't come from some insight into the
debate over nature-nurture or the origins of language. It is simply from
the range and depth of human emotions showed by the characters --
including Nim.
.....................
RELATED LINKS:
Wikipedia on Nim Chimpsky
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nim_Chimpsky
Project Nim Documentary
http://www.project-nim.com/
Wikipedia on Washoe (another chimpanzee raised as a human)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washoe_(chimpanzee)
----------------
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---------------
SPECS THAT SEE RIGHT THROUGH YOU
By Sally Adee
New Scientist
July 4, 2011
http://nhne-pulse.org/eye-glasses-that-see-whats-really-going-on-with-another-pe\
rson/http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128191.600-specs-that-see-right-through-\
you.html?full=true
Rosalind Picard's eyes were wide open. I couldn't blame her. We were
sitting in her office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's
Media Lab, and my questions were stunningly incisive. In fact, I began
to suspect that I must be one of the savviest journalists she had ever met.
Then Picard handed me a pair of special glasses. The instant I put them
on I discovered that I had got it all terribly wrong. That look of
admiration, I realised, was actually confusion and disagreement. Worse,
she was bored out of her mind. I became privy to this knowledge because
a little voice was whispering in my ear through a headphone attached to
the glasses. It told me that Picard was "confused" or "disagreeing". All
the while, a red light built into the specs was blinking above my right
eye to warn me to stop talking. It was as though I had developed an
extra sense.
The glasses can send me this information thanks to a built-in camera
linked to software that analyses Picard's facial expressions. They're
just one example of a number of "social X-ray specs" that are set to
transform how we interact with each other. By sensing emotions that we
would otherwise miss, these technologies can thwart disastrous social
gaffes and help us understand each other better. Some companies are
already wiring up their employees with the technology, to help them
improve how they communicate with customers. Our emotional intelligence
is about to be boosted, but are we ready to broadcast feelings we might
rather keep private?
We project many subtle facial expressions that mirror our feelings. In
the 1970s, US psychologist Paul Ekman identified a basic set of seven:
happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, contempt and surprise. They
became the foundation for a theory of lie detection, which posited that
involuntary micro-expressions can briefly unmask deception before the
liar restores a facade of honesty to their face. Though the theory was
later debunked, the principle wasn't entirely unsound.
In conversation, we pantomime certain emotions that act as social
lubricants. We unconsciously nod to signal that we are following the
other person's train of thought, for example, or squint a bit to
indicate that we are losing track. Many of these signals can be
misinterpreted - sometimes because different cultures have their own
specific signals.
More often, we fail to spot them altogether. During a face-to-face
conversation, thousands of tiny indicators on a person's face - arching
the brow, puckering or parting the lips - add up to a series of
non-verbal hints that augment our verbal communication. Blink, and
you'll miss them.
The idea that technology could amplify these signals was first explored
by Rana el Kaliouby at the University of Cambridge, UK. She wanted to
help autistic people, who find it particularly hard to pick up on other
people's emotions.
El Kaliouby realised that the "Ekman seven" would not be particularly
helpful for enhancing the average conversation: after all, how often do
you expect to see expressions of contempt or disgust? So in 2005, she
enlisted Simon Baron-Cohen, also at Cambridge, to help her identify a
set of more relevant emotional facial states. They settled on six:
thinking, agreeing, concentrating, interested -- and, of course, the
confused and disagreeing expressions with which I had become so
uncomfortably familiar in my conversation with Picard. To create this
lexicon, they hired actors to mime the expressions, then asked
volunteers to describe their meaning, taking the majority response as
the accurate one.
To build the prototype glasses that could exploit these signals, el
Kaliouby worked with Picard, who is an electrical engineer. Inside the
glasses is a camera the size of a rice grain connected to a wire snaking
down to a piece of dedicated computing machinery about the size of a
deck of cards. The camera tracks 24 "feature points" on your
conversation partner's face, and software developed by Picard analyses
their myriad micro-expressions, how often they appear and for how long.
It then compares that data with its bank of known expressions.
While I spoke with Picard in her office, a computer screen coached me
about her evolving facial expressions. But I could also get a summary of
this information via an earphone and the glasses with the light on the
lens. "If I were smiling and nodding, you'd get the green light," Picard
said. I cringed a little when I realised how often the red light had
appeared during our conversation.
The prototype proved popular with autistic people who were invited to
test it. "They approached people and tested out new facial expressions
on themselves and tried to elicit facial expressions from other people,"
Picard says. Eventually, she thinks the system could be incorporated
into a pair of augmented-reality glasses, which would overlay computer
graphics onto the scene in front of the wearer.
When Picard and el Kaliouby were calibrating their prototype, they were
surprised to find that the average person only managed to interpret,
correctly, 54 per cent of Baron-Cohen's expressions on real, non-acted
faces. This suggested to them that most people -- not just those with
autism -- could use some help sensing the mood of people they are
talking to. "People are just not that good at it," says Picard. The
software, by contrast, correctly identifies 64 per cent of the expressions.
Picard and el Kaliouby have since set up a company called Affectiva,
based in Waltham, Massachusetts, which is selling their expression
recognition software. Their customers include companies that, for
example, want to measure how people feel about their adverts or movie.
And along with colleague Mohammed Hoque, they have been tuning their
algorithms to pick up ever more subtle differences between expressions,
such as smiles of delight and frustration, which can look very similar
without context. Their algorithm does a better job of detecting the
faint differences between those two smiles than people do. "The machines
had an advantage over humans in analysing internal details of smiles,"
says Hoque.
Affectiva is also in talks with a Japanese company that wants to use
their algorithm to distinguish smiles on Japanese faces. The Japanese
have given names to 10 different types of smile -- including bakushu
(happy smile), shisho (inappropriate giggle), and terawari (acutely
embarrassed smile).
Picard says the software amplifies the cues we already volunteer, and
does not extract information that a person is unwilling to share. It is
certainly not a foolproof lie detector. When I interviewed Picard, I
deliberately tried to look confused, and to some extent it worked.
Still, it's hard to fool the machine for long. As soon as I became
engaged in the conversation, my concentration broke and my true feelings
revealed themselves again.
Subconscious Cues
Some of the cues we give off during conversations are much harder to
fake. In addition to facial expressions, we radiate a panoply of
involuntary "honest signals", a term identified by MIT Media Lab
researcher Alex Pentland in the early 2000s to describe the social
signals that we use to augment our language. They include body language
such as gesture mirroring, and cues such as variations in the tone and
pitch of the voice. We do respond to these cues, but often not
consciously. If we were more aware of them in others and ourselves, then
we would have a fuller picture of the social reality around us, and be
able to react more deliberately.
To capture these signals and depict them visually, Pentland worked with
MIT doctoral students Daniel Olgun Olgun, Benjamin Waber and Taemie
Kim to develop a small electronic badge that hangs around the neck. Its
audio sensors record how aggressive the wearer is being, the pitch,
volume and clip of their voice, and other factors. They called it the
"jerk-o-meter". The information it gathers can be sent wirelessly to a
smartphone or any other device that can display it graphically.
It didn't take the group long to notice that they had stumbled onto a
potent technology. For a start, it helped people realise when they were
being either obnoxious or unduly self-effacing. "Some people are just
not good at being objective judges of their own social interactions,"
Kim says. But it isn't just individual behaviour that changes when
people wear these devices.
In a 10-day experiment in 2008, Japanese and American college students
were given the task of building a complex contraption while wearing the
next generation of jerk-o-meter -- which by that time had been more
diplomatically renamed a "sociometric badge". As well as audio, their
badge measured proximity to other people.
At the end of the first day they were shown a diagram that represented
three things: speaking frequency, speaking time, and who they interacted
with. Each person was indicated by a dot, which ballooned for loquacious
individuals and withered for quiet ones. Their tendency for monologues
versus dialogue was represented by red for Hamlets and white for
conversationalists. Their interactions were tracked by lines between
them: thick if two participants were engaged in frequent conversation
and hair-thin if they barely spoke.
"We were visualising the social spaces between people," Kim says. The
results were immediately telling. Take the case of "A", whose massive
red dot dominated the first day. Having seen this, A appeared to do some
soul-searching, because on the second day his dot had shrivelled to a
faint white. By the end of the experiment, all the dots had gravitated
towards more or less the same size and colour. Simply being able to see
their role in a group made people behave differently, and caused the
group dynamics to become more even. The entire group's emotional
intelligence had increased (Physica A, vol 378, p 59).
The first test of the badges in the real world revealed that there was
money to be made from these revelations. Pentland and his team upgraded
the sociometric badges to analyse the speech patterns of customer
service representatives at Vertex Data Science in Liverpool, UK, which
provides call centre services for a number of companies. This revealed
that it is possible to identify units of speech that make a person sound
persuasive, and hence to teach them how to sound more persuasive when
talking to customers (International Journal of Organisational Design and
Engineering, vol 1, p 69). The team claims that the technology could
increase telephone sales performance by as much as 20 per cent.
With results like these, it's not hard to see why businesses are taking
a keen interest in the badges. Last month, Kim and Olgun used the
results of their doctoral research to found a start-up called
Sociometric Solutions that already has several customers, including Bank
of America, a bank in the Czech Republic and a consulting firm.
Some of our body's responses during a conversation are not designed for
broadcast to another person -- but it's possible to monitor those too.
Your temperature and skin conductance can also reveal secrets about your
emotional state, and Picard can tap them with a glove-like device called
the Q Sensor. In response to stresses, good or bad, our skin becomes
clammy, increasing its conductance, and the Q Sensor picks this up.
Physiological responses can now even be tracked remotely, in principle
without your consent. Last year, Picard and one of her graduate students
showed that it was possible to measure heart rate without any surface
contact with the body. They used software linked to an ordinary webcam
to read information about heart rate, blood pressure and skin
temperature based on, among other things, colour changes in the
subject's face (Optics Express, vol 18, p 10762).
It's not too much of a stretch to imagine that these sensors could
combine to populate the ultimate emotion-reading device. How would the
world change if we could all read each other's social signals
accurately? Baron-Cohen has already seen the benefits in his studies of
people with Asperger's syndrome at the Autism Research Centre in
Cambridge, UK. "It's not a miracle cure," he says, but people equipped
with Picard's technology were learning extra social skills. Baron-Cohen
says the wearers retained some ability to read emotions accurately after
they removed the glasses. Such enhancements for the rest of the
population might increase emotional intelligence through the generations.
But giving people unfettered access to each other's emotions has dangers
too, Baron-Cohen warns. "The ability to read someone's emotions doesn't
necessarily come with empathy," he says.
Picard is keen to stress that her technologies should not be used
covertly, and that people should always be asked whether they wish to
use them, rather than being forced to do so. Use of her gloves is by
their very nature voluntary -- you have to choose to wear them -- but
remote heart-rate monitoring does not require consent. Pentland takes a
similar view on the need for privacy. Data generated by the sociometric
badge data should only be visible to an employee, he says, and not be
shared with an employer without the employee's consent.
I got a taste of how it can feel to have my most private thoughts
exposed when I slipped on one of Picard's Q Sensor gloves to measure my
skin conductance. A purple neoprene band pressed two electrodes into the
palm of my hand, measuring subtle moisture changes on my skin when my
stress levels changed. I watched a trace on Picard's screen, reminiscent
of a seismogram. "OK, now just think about anything that will make your
heart beat faster," she told me. I immediately suppressed my first
intrusive thought because I found it just too embarrassing -- and stared
in horror as the scribble nevertheless exploded into a vertical spike.
"Wow," Picard said, her eyes widening. "What was that?" I felt my face
go beetroot red.
Picard considered my reaction for a second. She didn't need a headset to
know that if I aired this particular thought it might make our
conversation rather awkward.
"Never mind," she said, "I don't want to know."
....................
NEW REALITY GOOGLES
Augmented-reality glasses already make it possible to visualise what was
once unseeable, by overlaying graphics onto your field of view. Add the
right sensors and apps, and here are some of the things you might one
day see through those specs:
That Guy's Name
In Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo, police officers can decide whether
someone is a criminal just by looking at them. Their glasses scan the
features of a face, and match them against a database of criminal
mugshots. A red light blinks if there's a match.
So far, tech like this is available mainly to governments, but that
won't last. Facebook has recently turned on face recognition for its
automatic photo tagging. AR software will likely soon interface with
social networks, so that you will never again forget a name at a party
-- but anonymity in a crowd may become a thing of the past.
Digestive Danger
The recent E. coli outbreak in Germany shows how important it can be to
know exactly what you are eating.
One way to analyse food could be via "hyperspectral" imaging, which uses
special sensors to image far more of the electromagnetic spectrum than
the small window visible light normally allows. Bacteria and spoilt food
give off specific signatures. And the proper sensors can identify
bacteria, insect repellent, mysterious smells or contaminants on the
chopping board. "It's like doing CSI on the fly," says Paul Lucey, who
works on hyperspectral vision at the University of Hawaii.
The Past
Thad Starner at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta wears a small
device he has built that looks like a monocle. It can retrieve video,
audio or text snippets of past conversations with people he has spoken
with, and even provide real-time links between past chats and topics he
is currently discussing. In principle, it could also be used to view
other people's conversations, if that person allowed them to be shared.
See Through Walls
The US military has built a radar-imaging device that can see through
walls to capture 3D images of people and objects beyond. In similar
vein, Yaser Sheikh of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, is building an augmented-reality system for cars that lets
drivers see round a blind corner. Taking video from a camera focused on
the part of the road hidden from the driver, it distorts the image so
that it appears on the AR display, letting the driver essentially see
through the obstacle.
Subtitles
You could use microphones and speech-recognition technology to convert
the voice of someone you are conversing with to scrolling, real time
subtitles. Thad Starner uses a basic version of this technology on his
wearable set. A more sophisticated app would include subtitles that
appear under specific people in the form of speech bubbles.
----------------
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STUDY: ANTIDEPRESSANTS MAY PLAY A ROLE IN AUTISM
Consumer Reports
July 5, 2011
http://nhne-pulse.org/10249/http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2011/07/study-antidepressants-may-play-a-r\
ole-in-autism.html
Antidepressants may play a role in autism, researchers say. A
preliminary study by researchers at Kaiser Permanente found a doubling
in the risk of autism among mothers who had filled a prescription for
antidepressants at any point in the year before delivery.
The risk tripled if the prescription was filled during the first
trimester of pregnancy.
Researchers said the study indicates a new for more research and
cautioned that patients should not make any change in their drug
regimens without discussing it with their physician.
The study was published in the Archives of General Psychiatry and was
accompanied by a second study that looked at identical and fraternal
twins and concluded that environmental factors play a greater role in
the development of autism than had been previously believed.
The Kaiser Permanente study, which was funded by the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, looked at 1,805 children in an attempt to
measure the effects of prenantal exposure to the class of
antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI).
Widely-used SSRIs include Prozac, Zoloft and Celexa.
In utero exposure to antidepressant medications was reported in 6.7
percent of cases and 3.3 percent of controls.
Possible, though small, risk
Our results suggest a possible, albeit small, risk to the unborn child
associated with in utero exposure to SSRIs, but this possible risk must
be balanced with risk to the mother of untreated mental health
disorders, said Lisa Croen, PhD, director of the Autism Research
Program at the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland, Calif.
Researchers conducted a population-based, case-control study among 298
children with ASD and 1,507 randomly selected control children drawn
from the Kaiser Permanente Northern California membership. Information
on maternal use of antidepressant medications, maternal mental health
history, autism and demographic characteristics was collected from
medical records.
After adjusting for maternal age, race/ethnicity, education and childs
birth weight, gender, birth year, and facility of birth, mothers of
children subsequently diagnosed with ASD were twice as likely to have at
least one antidepressant prescription in the year prior to delivery of
the study child, and over three times as likely to have a prescription
in the first trimester of pregnancy.
Earlier studies
Prior studies have indicated that abnormalities in serotonin levels and
serotonin pathways may play a role in autism.
Collectively these studies suggest the possibility that prenatal SSRI
exposure may operate directly on the developing brain, perhaps
selectively in fetuses with abnormalities in serotonin-related genes,
explained Croen. She adds that physiologic changes related to maternal
stress or depression during pregnancy, in combination with SSRI
exposure, may contribute to changes in fetal brain development leading
to later-diagnosed ASD.
----------------
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---------------
MOVIE: HOW TO LIVE FOREVER
http://nhne-pulse.org/movie-how-to-live-forever/
Director Mark Wexler embarks on a worldwide trek to investigate just
what it means to grow old and what it could mean to really live forever.
But whose advice should he take? Does 94-year-old exercise guru Jack
LaLanne have all the answers, or does Buster, a 101-year-old
chain-smoking, beer-drinking marathoner? What about futurist Ray
Kurzweil, a laughter yoga expert, or an elder porn star?
Wexler explores the viewpoints of delightfully unusual characters
alongside those of health, fitness and life-extension experts in this
engaging new documentary, which challenges our notions of youth and
aging with comic poignancy. Begun as a study in life-extension, How To
Live Forever evolves into a thought-provoking examination of what truly
gives life meaning.
..................
RELATED LINKS:
How To Live Forever Website
http://www.liveforevermovie.com/
Pulse on Aging & Anti-Aging
http://nhne-pulse.org/category/aging-category/
NHNE On Aging & Anti-Aging
http://www.nhne.org/tabid/1029/Default.aspx
----------------
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---------------
NINE REASONS TO SWITCH FROM FACEBOOK TO GOOGLE+
By Mark Sullivan
PCWorld
July 4, 2011
http://www.macworld.com/article/160895/2011/07/googleplus_facebook.html
When people ask can Google+ <http://www.google.com/+> beat Facebook?
theyre misstating the question. Its not about one site versus another
site. Google+ is bigger than that. The reason Google calls it the
Google+ Project is that Google+ will become a central part of Googles
whole identity. It will reshape the company. So the real question is
can Google beat Facebook? Put that way, the contest seems a lot more even.
Facebook, of course, has a huge head start, but there are good reasons
for people to seriously consider dumping Facebook for Google+.
1. Integration with Google Services
The biggest wedge Google has for driving people toward using Google+ is
integration. That is, Google will build Google+ social networking
features and tools into almost all of its existing online services from
Search to Documents to Video. Google+ is already integrated into the
navigation bar at the top right of almost all Google products; this lets
you monitor all Google+ events (updates, messages, etc.) as well as
share content with friends without ever leaving the Google service you
happen to be using. Millions and millions of people use Googles free
services (Gmail, Docs, Search, etc.), and with Google+ bound so tightly
to them it may start to seem silly to jump out to some other site
(Facebook) to do your social networking.
2. Better friend management
Google is right that the Circles concept is more in line with the way
we make friends in real life. We have many different kinds of friends,
and we interact with them and communicate with them in very different
ways. Facebooks Groups feature lets you form ad hoc groups of friends,
but compared to the way its done in Google+ it seems cumbersome. After
all, Facebooks Groups feature is pretty new; it was built on, while
friend circles are the bedrock of the Google+ platform.
3. Better mobile app
If youre an Android user, you may find that getting content from your
phone to your social platform is easier, cleaner more functional with
the Google+ mobile app. The app is already great, but Google will seek
more and more ways to make your Android phone a seamless appendage of
your Google+ social platform. Google hopes to use its huge Android user
base as a wedge against Facebook, whose mobile app, while nice-looking,
is a little clunky to use.
4. Easier to find stuff to share
Google+s Sparks feature is another important differentiator from
Facebook. Spark is Google leveraging its search engine to do something
Facebook cant dogive users an instant wellspring of relevant
information to share with friends. Because Facebook has no search
engine, its users must leave the site to find shareable data or wait for
their friends the share it with them. The question how do I find stuff
to share is immediately answered with Sparks.
5. You can get your data back
Facebook is notorious for its poor stewardship of personal data. You are
forced to make certain parts of your personal data public for example,
and It is very hard to permanently delete your Facebook profile. Google,
on the other hand, makes it possible for you to pick up all the data
youve banked at Google+ and walk away. This is done through a Google+
tool called Data Liberation. With just a few clicks you can download
data from your Picasa Web Albums, Google profile, Google+ stream, Buzz
and contacts.
6. Better photo tagging
When viewing photos in Google+ you can tag the people in them similar
to the way you do in Facebook. You draw a little square around a
persons face, then type in their name in the box below it (or choose
one of the names Google+ guesses). But theres a big difference in the
way Google handles the privacy aspect of photo tagging. When you tag
someone, you see this note: Adding this tag will notify the person you
have tagged. They will be able to view the photo and the related album.
Facebook, on the other hand, does not make an effort to warn people the
theyve been tagged (possibly in an unflattering or compromising photo)
and give them an immediate chance to remove the tag.
Also, Google has wisely decided to shy away from using facial
recognition software, which Facebook now uses to automatically identify
people in photos uploaded to user albums.
7. Strong Group Chat Features
Google+ has Facebook beat out of the gate in the area of chat. Forming
ad hoc group video chats using the Hangouts feature in Google+ is easy,
and forming ad hoc groups for a little chat seems like a natural and fun
thing to do in a social networking setting. Similarly, the new Huddle
mobile app makes it easy for mobile (Android) users to start up group
text chats. Facebook simply doesnt offer these tools.
8. Safer content sharing
Privacy advocates have long called for social networking sites to let
users assign a privacy level to each piece of content they share,
instead of using a pre-set list privacy settings to govern all shares.
Google obviously heard those calls, and built the capability into
Google+. For instance, when I share an article or upload a camera image,
Google+ gives me choices of which friend circles Id like to share that
content with. Advantage Google+.
9. Google is a better steward of your personal data
Running a social network is all about responsible stewardship of users
personal information. Facebook is a young, fast moving company that has
proved itself to be cavalier in its movements, lacking in respect for
user data privacy, and accident prone. Google on the other hand, is a
far more mature company that is, I would argue, seen as more trustworthy
than Facebook. For the most part, Google has lived up to its Dont Be
Evil slogan. Which company would you rather have as the steward of your
personally identifiable information?
...................
RELATED LINKS:
Google+
http://www.google.com/+
The Google+ Project
http://nhne-pulse.org/the-google-project/
Google+: The Pros & Cons
http://mashable.com/2011/07/01/google-the-pros-cons/
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---------------
Watch the Kickstarter video that describes this innovative project on Pulse:
http://nhne-pulse.org/woman-seeks-support-for-mobile-breastfeeding-truck/
--------------
LOCAL WOMAN ENVISIONS MOBILE BREASTFEEDING TRUCK
KDKA
July 6, 2011
http://nhne-pulse.org/woman-seeks-support-for-mobile-breastfeeding-truck/
PITTSBURGH - A local artist and teacher at Carnegie Mellon University
has come up with an idea to support mothers who are harassed for nursing
in public.
Jill Miller envisions something she calls The Milk Truck. She wants to
buy an ice cream truck and outfit it with a giant breast on the roof.
When a woman is made to feel uncomfortable or told to leave a public
place for breastfeeding, she could contact The Milk Truck. The truck
would respond and park in front of the restaurant or other
establishment, along with followers of the program through Twitter and
Facebook.
Project manager Tara McElfresh says they will lay down a rug, set up
chairs under an awning on the side of the truck, and if the mother still
needs to, she can nurse outside in an environment of support.
McElfresh says shes heard stories of women who have encountered
problems breastfeeding in public in Pittsburgh, including a woman who
says she was told to leave a restaurant in Squirrel Hill.
Miller is trying to raise $10,000 to make the project a reality through
pledges at a site called Kickstarter.com. Shes already raised $4,300
and gotten responses from around the world.
Once completed, the truck is scheduled to be part of an exhibit starting
in September at the Andy Warhol Museum.
McElfresh says the truck will also make appearances at events.
Miller says the truck is supposed to be an attention-grabber when it
responds to a call for help.
Thought the nursing mother created a spectacle? Meet The Milk Truck!
she said.
....................
ABOUT THE MILK TRUCK PROJECT
September 17 - December 10, 2011
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jillmiller/the-milk-truck
Part performance art, part public service.
Yes, we will buy an ice cream truck and attach a giant boob to the top!
Yes, we will become superhero-like in our vigilant support of nursing
mothers! And yes, we take our mission very seriously. But we know (from
being mothers, perhaps) that words are most effective when accompanied
by a friendly smile and a wink. Mary Poppins had it right: a spoonful of
sugar does help the medicine go down. So we are using The Milk Truck to
start a conversation in our community about a basic human right: feeding
a baby. (With sugar on top, of course.)
We're tired of hearing stories about women being asked to leave
restaurants or "cover up" with a blanket while doing something as simple
as feeding a baby. But we're not the type to complain; we're the type to
take action. Which leads us to...The Milk Truck.
When a woman finds herself in a situation where she is discouraged,
harassed, or unwelcome to breastfeed her baby in public, she summons The
Milk Truck. The truck arrives to the location of the woman in need and
provides her with a shelter for feeding her baby. The woman feeds her
child, the shopkeeper who harassed her feels like a dweeb, and the truck
does what it does best -- creates a spectacle. (Which is, incidently,
the very thing that the shopkeeper thought he was trying to avoid. Alas,
some people have to learn the hard way.)
How the truck works
Not only will The Milk Truck provide "urgent" services to moms in need,
but we will also visit public events throughout the city and provide a
much-needed nursing space: art openings, concerts, fairs, sporting
events and more. Invite us --well do our best to be there.
You don't have to be a "yinzer" to support The Milk Truck
We've got some great incentives for everyone regardless of your
location: stickers, T-Shirts, limited edition works of art.
International Backers -- Pretty please add $10 to your pledge if you're
getting a T-shirt or a print. It really helps with shipping costs and
packaging.
----------------
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---------------
SURVEY SHOWS MEN NEED TO CUDDLE, WOMEN VALUE SEX
By Meredith Melnick
Time
July 7, 2011
http://nhne-pulse.org/older-men-value-cuddling/http://healthland.time.com/2011/07/07/survey-shows-who-really-wants-to-cuddle-it\
s-men/
That old chestnut about women always wanting to cuddle? Myth, according
to a Kinsey Institute study, which finds that kissing and hugging were
more important to the happiness of men than of women.
The study involved 1,009 heterosexual middle-aged and older couples in
long-term (average 25 years) committed relationships in five countries.
Researchers asked participants to fill out questionnaires about their
satisfaction with their relationships and sex lives, revealing some
surprising truths: for instance, men who reported frequent kissing or
cuddling with their partners were on average three times as happy with
their relationships as men who reported limited snuggling. For women,
such shows of tenderness didn't have much impact on relationship
satisfaction.
However, both men and women who reported frequent touching, kissing and
hugging, as well as higher sexual functioning and more sex, were more
likely to be sexually satisfied. For women, sex got better over time:
they reported significantly more sexual satisfaction after being with
their partner for 15 years.
"Possibly, women become more satisfied over time because their
expectations change, or life changes with the children grown," Julia
Heiman, director of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and
Reproduction and lead author of the study, said in a statement. "On the
other hand, those who weren't so happy sexually might not be married so
long."
Both men and women became happier with their relationships the longer
they stayed together. But, in a reversal of stereotype, men were more
likely than women to report being happy in their relationships, while
women were more likely to report being satisfied with sex.
The couples in the survey hailed from Japan, Brazil, the U.S., Germany
and Spain. The study found that Japanese couples were significantly
happier with their relationships than American couples, who were in turn
happier than couples from Brazil and Spain. The Japanese were also more
likely to report sexual satisfaction than Americans: Japanese men in
particular were 2.61 times more sexually satisfied than American men. As
for women, Japanese and Brazilian women were more likely to report
sexual satisfaction than their American counterparts.
What predicted overall satisfaction? For women, key factors were
relationship duration and their own good sexual functioning. But for
men, there seemed to be a larger variety of contributors to happiness:
longer relationships, good physical health (healthy men were 67% more
likely to report being happy with their relationships than men in poor
health), good sexual functioning and their wives' sexual satisfaction: a
man's happiness rose 17% with each additional point he rated the
importance of his partner's orgasm.
"This study on heterosexual couples provides a basis for future research
on sex and gender, such as how same-sex couples may or may not show
similarities and differences in relationship and sexual satisfaction,"
said Heiman.
The study [PDF] was published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior:
http://nhne-pulse.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Heiman-couples-midlife-and-olde\
r-5-countries.pdf
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---------------
MUST WATCH: 3D PRINTER AT WORK
Star Trek's "replicator" is almost here. Watch an amazing video of this
technology in action here:
http://nhne-pulse.org/3d-printing/
3D printing is a form of additive manufacturing technology where a three
dimensional object is created by laying down successive layers of
material. 3D printers are generally faster, more affordable and easier
to use than other additive manufacturing technologies. 3D printers offer
product developers the ability to print parts and assemblies made of
several materials with different mechanical and physical properties in a
single build process. Advanced 3D printing technologies yield models
that can serve as product prototypes.
----------------
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Published by David Sunfellow
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
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P.O. Box 2242
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---------------
CHILDREN'S MEMORIES OF PREVIOUS LIVES
By Jim B. Tucker, MD
IONS
Issue 12, July 2011
http://nhne-pulse.org/childrens-memories-of-previous-lives/http://noetic.org/noetic/issue-twelve-july/childrens-memories-of-previous-lives/
.....................
In the following dialogue, excerpted and edited from the Institute of
Noetic Sciences teleseminar series Essentials of Noetic Science, IONS
Senior Scientist Dean Radin talks with Jim Tucker, associate professor
of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences at the University of Virginia
who also works in the Department of Perceptual Studies, started by Ian
Stevenson in 1967. Stevenson was a psychiatrist best known for his
studies on reincarnation with children; Tucker has been continuing the
work that Stevenson began. His most recent book is Life Before Life: A
Scientific Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives. In it
he challenges the notion that consciousness is only the result of a
functioning brain and suggests that consciousness can be considered
separately from the brain, which provides a basis for claims of
reincarnation.
.....................
Radin: Jim, would you begin by telling us how you became involved in
this unusual and compelling area of research?
Tucker: You mentioned that Ian started the vision in 1967, but he
actually started this work in 1961, when he took his first trip to study
these cases. Ian was a psychiatrist with a successful academic career;
he was chairman of the Department of Psychiatry here at the University
of Virginia while still in his late thirties. But Ian had always had an
interest in parapsychology and the question about survival after death.
Over the years, he collected forty-four cases of people reporting
memories of previous lives, from various sources, such as newspapers,
magazines, and journals. When he pulled them all together, he found many
similarities, including the fact that many of them were young children
reporting these memories. Ian wondered if current cases of such children
could still be found and wrote about all of this in an article.
Soon after, Ian heard about some cases in India and took his first trip
there in 1961. He heard about five cases, but once he got to India, he
found twenty-five cases. Ian discovered that memories of past lives were
much more common than anyone had ever known before. He became more and
more interested and eventually stepped down as chairman of the
Department of Psychiatry to form the Department of Perceptual Studies
and to work on these cases full time. Ian did this for several decades
and published numerous academic books and articles about it.
When I trained here at the University of Virginia in psychiatry in the
late 80s and early 90s, I heard about Ian's work, but at the time I
wasnt intrigued by it. After my training, I went into private practice
and remarried. My wife was very intrigued by reincarnation, psychics,
and things that I had never really given much thought to, and because of
her interest, I began doing a lot of reading. I happened to be reading
one of Ians books when I learned that his division had received a new
grant to study the effects of near-death experiences on the lives of
those who had them. Looking for sort of a hobby in addition to my
practice, I called him up, and for a couple of years, I helped with
interviewing patients. Eventually, Ian asked me if I would be interested
in taking a trip to Asia with one of our colleagues to study some of
these cases. I was very interested, and after that, I joined the
department half time and in 2000 came on full time. Ive been doing it
ever since.
Radin: Given your involvement for so many years now, Im guessing that
you continue to find something compelling in the stories you hear. What
can you say about either your first trip to Asia or subsequent trips
that gave you the sense while studying these cases that there is
something real going on?
Tucker: Well, the phenomena certainly have been very impressive. These
children make statements about somebody who died before they were born
that turn out to be remarkably accurate. Some kids talk about being
deceased family members. Others describe being strangers in other
locations and share details that people who go there find match --
somebody had lived and died there just as the child described.
Ive also been impressed by the emotional component: it is clear that
for many of these kids this is not a game of make-believe but very
important and meaningful for them. They talk about the people they miss.
Some of the children cry daily to be taken to someone they say is their
real family. I recently studied an interesting American case in which
the mother had heard about these phenomena years before she had her
child; she thought then that it would be neat to have a child with
past life memories. But when she had a child who actually remembered his
past life, she discovered it wasnt neat at all, because it is traumatic
for the child to talk about the people and the places he misses. Her son
cries every night about the life he used to have. This case has actually
been filmed for a documentary.
Radin: Say more about this case.
Tucker: There are other American cases that are just as strong. In one,
the child talked about a life in Hollywood, which of course might sound
like a fantasy. The boy was four-years-old at the time. He gave a lot of
details about his previous life: dancing on stage, then becoming an
actor, then an agent, having a big swimming pool, traveling around the
world on a big boat, and on and on. His mother tried to get more
specific memories, so she got some old Hollywood movie books for the boy
to look through to see if any more memories would be stirred. When they
came across a picture from an old George Raft movie, the boy looked at
it and said, Oh, thats the movie I made with George. He then pointed
to the man in the picture and said, That was me, mom. Thats who I
was. It turned out that the guy he pointed to was an extra who had no
lines in the movie. It was quite a process to identify who that person
was, but he turned out to be a guy who had been a dancer on stage before
going to Hollywood to become an actor. He did eventually have a big
house and a swimming pool, he did become an agent, and he did travel the
world on a big boat, the Queen Elizabeth -- weve got pictures of him on
that boat. Not all of the details panned out in this case, but a lot of
them did. The critics say its just coincidence.
Radin: What do you do with or how do you interpret the things a child
says that do not match? Or was it that those details could not be confirmed?
Tucker: There were a lot of things that couldnt be confirmed in this
case because not a lot of people are still around who knew this guy. We
were able to talk to his daughter, who was quite young when he died but
still knew the essentials of his life. Many details remain that may or
may not be true, and, as with most of the cases, the child shared some
things that were simply incorrect. But then, when any of us talks about
our early, early childhood from this life, we may well come up with
things that are incorrect. So maybe we shouldn't expect 100 percent
accuracy with past-life details.
This boy in particular also seems to have some psychic ability. He has
come out with some specific predictions about people, such as when he
told his grandmother she was going to get chicken pox, and then a couple
of weeks later she had an outbreak of shingles. So it may be that he can
access material from a variety of places beyond just this one persons
past life. He certainly connected emotionally to that one life.
Radin: Its unfortunate that psychic abilities and reincarnation
memories overlap because it makes it more difficult to know or to
interpret the information thats coming out.
Tucker: Thats right. There are some arguments against it being purely
psychic material. For one thing, its certainly not the childrens
present experience; they are reporting not just information but previous
experiences from one persons point of view. Beyond that, most of the
children dont show any psychic abilities other than all these details
about one specific person. This doesnt disprove that it could be
psychic, super-psi, or whatever you want to call that stuff, but I think
it does, on the face of it, make more questionable the cases that appear
to be a child remembering a past life.
Radin: So, if you, a child psychiatrist, were to ask young children to
make up the best story they could about being reincarnated, is it
possible to tell by their emotional response or something else whether a
child is making the story up?
Tucker: The parents often say they can tell the difference -- that its
not the same as the sort of sing-songy, make-believe-type stories that
kids tell. The stories are much more serious, matter-of-fact, and, at
times, emotional. As with near-death experiences, you have to look at
the effect the story has on someone, and certainly these apparent
memories can have quite an emotional effect on the child having them.
Radin: Originally, these cases were reported in India because of the
cultural support for reincarnation, but there are cases in every country
in the world.
Tucker: Yes, in every country where cases have been sought, they have
been found -- all the continents except Antarctica, where no one has
looked. Theyre certainly easiest to find in cultures that believe in
reincarnation, so there are many cases from India, Sri Lanka, Thailand,
Burma, and places like that. But cases are also found in cultures
without a popular belief in reincarnation, such as the United States,
and now with the Internet, people can easily find us at the university.
We hear from parents all the time whose kids are reporting these things.
Some of the cases are a lot stronger than others, more detailed than
others, but certainly these phenomena go beyond places with a belief in
reincarnation. Most of the families in the United States say they did
not believe in reincarnation before the children started reporting these
things.
Radin: What has been learned about the demographics of where the
reincarnation came from? Im thinking specifically of the geographic
location; for example, I dont know of any cases from India where
someone reported a previous life in another country.
Tucker: Well, there are some, but they usually have a connection with
that country. For instance, in India there were what Ian called the
blonde bomber cases, in which kids talked about having been, say, a
British pilot who was killed during WWII or something like that. Ian
also found a couple of dozen cases in Burma; Burmese children said they
had been Japanese soldiers who had been killed in Burma during WWII. The
Japanese were despised in Burma, so its hard to imagine that the
parents would be egging the kids on to say what they were saying. Also,
the children exhibited Japanese inclinations: for instance, complaining
about a spicy Burmese food and asking to eat raw fish instead. Burmese
men wear a particular outfit that is essentially a skirt, but these kids
refused and wanted to wear pants instead. Its somewhat easier to see
the behavioral features of these cases when there is an international
distinction.
But youre right: its unusual for a child to talk about life in another
country -- and often we dont pursue those cases. Say were studying a
child in Thailand who says, I used to live in Africa. Theres not a
whole lot we can do to research that claim unless the case provides very
specific details. We do get some reports like that from American
children, but again theres little we can do.
The other thing to keep in mind is that our cases tend to involve recent
previous lives. The median interval between the death of the previous
person and the birth of the child is only sixteen months. In these are
cases of reincarnation, the person comes back quickly and fairly close
by. Yes, there are exceptions, such as the boy I talked about earlier;
there were fifty years between the lives in that case. But its much
more common for them to be more recent. Unfinished business is a
subjective term; nonetheless, a lot of these cases do seem to involve
unfinished business. About 70 percent of them will involve a death by
unnatural means, usually a violent death. A lot of them involve young
people, children or very young adults. There may have been a strong
impetus to return -- which gets into how reincarnation might work. So,
for whatever reason, they seem to come back quickly, and they come back
with intact memories. But these cases may not generalize to the rest of
the population. That the vast majority of children talk about a life in
the same country does not mean that other people necessarily would have
the same constraints.
Radin: It does imply that if its true for a couple of kids, its
probably true for everyone whether we remember or not.
Tucker: I go back and forth on that, to tell you the truth. These cases
provide evidence that there can be survival after death, but I dont
think these cases necessarily require, maybe do not even imply, that
survival after death has to be in this same world that were in now. It
shows that it can happen, but if our world is essentially created out of
consciousness -- which I believe -- then I dont see any reason why
other worlds couldnt be created out of consciousness as well. So, the
consciousness that each of us has would continue in some fashion but not
necessarily back in this world.
Radin: You believe that the world is made of consciousness?
Tucker: Not necessarily made out of, but it grows out of consciousness.
Radin: Describe that in a little more detail.
Tucker: Well, this gets into quantum physics, which I confess I dont
fully understand.
Radin: Nobody does.
Tucker: I don't know how much detail to go into, but theres the idea
that observation is necessary for wave function collapse -- basically,
events dont occur until they are observed. And this is true on the
quantum level not just for current events but for past events, too. The
past has to be observed before it comes into reality. They say that
there are as many interpretations of quantum theory as there are quantum
physicists. My interpretation is if observation is necessary for
physical events to exist, then something has to be doing the observing.
I think the case can be made -- and people such as physicist Henry Stapp
have more or less made it -- that consciousness is necessary for wave
function collapse, or essentially for events to occur. The idea that
events from the past dont exist until theyre observed is similar to
the dream world, where people dont exist in that world until we observe
them. Its more or less the same in our physical universe: things dont
really exist until they are observed. I think a pretty strong argument
can be made that the physical world may well be a creation of the mind
as well.
Radin: Not necessarily of the personal mind but of something larger than
that?
Tucker: Well, thats a question. The William James idea is that
consciousness flows through our individual minds, that our brains dont
create the consciousness that flows through them. So it is as beings of
consciousness that each of us serves as a portal. And do we all come
from one source? Theres no way of knowing that for sure. Here is
another: Underneath the surface, are we all connected even though we
appear to be separate? Getting involved in this work has made me curious
about a lot of things. Ten years ago, I knew almost nothing about
quantum physics; now I know enough to have an opinion. Also, the more
you look at the various aspects of parapsychology -- near-death
experiences, reincarnation cases, mediums, mystics, apparitions -- it
sure looks as though consciousness can survive without a physical
container, that is, the body and the brain.
Radin: When did past-life cases with marks on a body corresponding to a
previous life come about, and do those occur in children as well?
Tucker: They do occur in children as birthmarks or birth defects which
match wounds, usually the fatal wound, on the body of the previous
person. As a medical man with a particular interest in psychosomatic
medicine, Ian was quite intrigued by this connection between the mental
and the physical. So when he started hearing about these cases back in
the sixties, he became very interested in them. It took him about twenty
years to finally write them up, but he eventually published a 2000-page
magnum opus covering incarnation biology for more than two hundred of
these cases. Many of them are not the usual blemish or birthmark that a
lot of people have but fairly horrific cases of missing limbs, gnarled
fingers, and things like that. There are also distinctive cases, for
example, where the previous person was shot and killed and then the
child is born with both a small round entrance wound in the right place
and a larger irregularly shaped exit wound in the right place. Such
distinctive birthmarks or birth defects match the statements a child
makes about the previous person. When he could, Ian would get autopsy
reports to confirm a match, and when those werent available, as they
often werent, he would get eye-witness reports to determine just how
well the marks matched the wounds the previous person suffered.
Radin: If we take those cases at face value, how do we even begin to
interpret what body-mind connection means? It makes the body extremely
fluid in terms of how its going to be constructed.
Tucker: When I first got involved in this work, I had trouble swallowing
this idea. But the way that I think of it now is we know from other work
that mental images can have specific effects on the body -- for
instance, in stigmata or in some hypnosis cases. There is a famous case
youre probably aware of in which a guy relived a traumatic event where
his arms had been tied up, and in reliving the event, he developed what
looked like rope marks on his arms. So there are times when you get
these very specific effects on the body from mental images. Well, if a
consciousness that experiences being shot survives, it may carry that
mental image with it to a developing fetus, and the developing fetus may
be a particularly susceptible physical body that can be affected by the
mental image. So when the child is born, the birthmarks come with it.
Radin: Is it also the case that children who report previous lives
retain a talent that the previous person had -- some identifiable skill
in music or dance, for example?
Tucker: That tends to be a more subjective matter. There is the
question, of course, of where child prodigies get their abilities. But
Im not aware of any cases of Mozart-like prodigies who also have
past-life memories. In our cases, the children are not prodigies, though
they tend to learn things more quickly than their peers, such as a
musical instrument or another language. There are a few cases where kids
seem to speak a language they havent learned. Unfortunately, sometimes
theres no one around who would know if it is an actual language -- in
Burma, for example, there would be no one who could speak Japanese who
would know that a child is really speaking it. But there have been a few
well-documented cases of children speaking in an unknown language.
Anyway, these skills can come, but not in full force. Its like if you
dont play basketball for forty years and you take it up again; you
shoot better than if youd never shot, but its going to take a lot of
practice to get good at it again.
Radin: So given that were coming up next year on fifty years since Ian
started his research, whats on the horizon other than continuing to
collect more compelling cases?
Tucker: One thing Ive been trying to do, and recently have had more
success with, is to collect American cases, because I think its too
easy for people to dismiss the Asian ones as cultural phenomena. I think
that American cases can be harder to ignore.
The other thing that were working on is a computer database. For each
of our cases, we code them on 200 variables and then put them into a
database. Unfortunately, 200 variables take a lot of time to code. So,
this is a multiyear study, and weve got about 1,800 of them in the
database out of a total of 2,500 that have been studied. With this sort
of database, you can identify patterns that you cant really see in an
individual case. For instance, one thing that weve looked at is the
criticism that overenthusiastic parents create cases. Weve examined the
coding for parents initial reaction to a case to see how well it
corresponds to how strong the case is, and weve seen that it doesnt
correspond at all. Once we get the whole collection in, we can run stats
on basically any area of these cases that intrigues us.
....................
RELATED LINKS:
NHNE On Past Life Research
http://www.nhne.org/tabid/1057/language/en-US/Default.aspx
Summary Of 'Life Before Life':
40 Years Of Research Into Young Children's Reports Of Past-Life Memories
http://www.nhne.org/news/NewsArticlesArchive/tabid/400/articleType/ArticleView/a\
rticleId/2340/Summary-Of-Life-Before-Life.aspx
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PIXARS EX-DESIGNER CREATES STUNNING INTERACTIVE BOOK FOR IPAD
By Aaron Saenz
Singularity Hub
July 15th, 2011
http://nhne-pulse.org/pixars-ex-designer-creates-book-for-ipad/http://singularityhub.com/2011/07/15/pixars-ex-designer-creates-stunning-interac\
tive-book-for-ipad-blurs-lines-between-reading-film-and-video-games/
What do you do after conquering Pixar, Disney, and Dreamworks? You
revolutionize tablet reading, of course. Designer William Joyce created
a name for himself at the top animation studios with his one of a kind
creative story telling, and hes now taking that skill and making the
next generation of interactive experiences on the iPad. He and his
colleagues at Moonbot Studios created the short film The Fantastic
Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, an amazing story inspired by
Hurricane Katrina, The Wizard of Oz, and Buster Keaton movies.
Unsatisfied with a simple film, however, Joyce and Moonbot transformed
Morris Lessmore into a critically acclaimed iPad book that embodies
all the marvelous advantages afforded in e-reading. Watch the trailer
for the interactive app below. With embedded voice-overs, music, games,
lessons, and playful widgets to explore, Morris Lessmore blurs the
lines between film, video games, and traditional reading, creating a
shared story-telling experience that may represent where ebooks are headed.
As you can see in the trailer for the iPad app version of Morris
Lessmore every page of the ebook is full of opportunities for the
reader(s) to participate in the story. Yet no interaction has to be
used. Parents and children can choose which options (voice-overs, games,
etc) to turn on and off, allowing each to customize the experience as
they see fit.
Watch the trailer on Pulse:
http://nhne-pulse.org/pixars-ex-designer-creates-book-for-ipad/
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INDIA'S 'GODMEN' FACE QUESTIONS ABOUT WEALTH
By Simon Denyer
Washington Post
July 12, 2011
http://nhne-pulse.org/indias-godmen-face-questions-about-wealth/http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/indias-godmen-face-questions-about-wealth/20\
11/07/06/gIQA30iMAI_print.html
PUTTAPARTHI, INDIA - For centuries, their image was as barefoot ascetics
who spent their lives in solitary Himalayan meditation.
But now Indias gurus, miracle workers and spiritual leaders, often
collectively known as godmen, have become savvy, powerful figures who
control vast philanthropic and business empires, dabble in politics and
manipulate the media.
With that power and wealth, however, have come questions about the
business of religion, fueled in recent months by the discoveries of
hoards of gold, silver, diamonds and cash, the declaration of assets
running into hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars, and
accusations of money laundering.
The godmen range from miracle-workers and living gods, such as
Sathya Sai Baba, the diminutive holy man with a black Afro who left
behind a secret trove of gold, silver and cash when he died in April, to
yoga gurus including Baba Ramdev, a television star who joined a popular
campaign against official corruption, only to be investigated for tax
evasion.
The rising wealth and prominence of the godmen in the past two decades
has accompanied rising incomes in India and the liberalization of the
media. To an extent, it also mirrors the rising political popularity of
the Hindu nationalist movement, with its assertion of pride in Hindu
traditions and values.
But their popularity is more an expression of the extraordinary
religiosity of the Indian people, which has withstood the forces of
education and modernization, said historian Ramchandra Guha. Its
manifestation is the offering of money and jewels to a deity, whether
living or frozen in stone.
Often their most devoted followers come from the middle classes, and
donations also stream in from Indians abroad. The flood of money is
partly a function of the huge rise in disposable income that many
Indians now enjoy, but some sociologists say it reflects a need to
balance newfound wealth with old-fashioned values.
The Indian middle classes are a very schizophrenic bunch of people,
said Meera Nanda, author of The God Market: How Globalization Is Making
India More Hindu, who argues that it is time the religious trusts were
properly regulated, audited and taxed. They look at renunciation,
asceticism, a life of simplicity as a higher ideal, but that is an ideal
hardly anyone can live up to with this growing wealth. Giving ends up
doing the balancing act for them.
And give they certainly have.
When Sai Baba died in April, his personal chambers were found to contain
$2.8 million in cash, along with gold and silver worth about $5 million.
Cupboards contained cloth bags filled with diamonds, hundreds of robes,
more than 500 pairs of shoes and dozens of bottles of perfume and hair
spray.
While his followers insist Sai Baba never even had a bank account, the
trust in his name is thought to be worth about $10 billion.
Modern Celebrity Culture
While Sai Baba generated mystique by limiting his private audiences, the
black-bearded and bare-chested Ramdevs popularity owes more than a
little to modern celebrity culture.
Like television evangelists in the United States, Ramdev is one of a new
generation of gurus skilled at manipulating modern media. At least 30
million people tune into his daily TV program, and he said last year
that television had made him a hundred times more powerful.
But when he joined a popular movement against official corruption with a
brief fast in June, Ramdevs supporters were beaten and tear-gassed by
police and he was forced to declare his assets.
His trust alone was found to be worth $250 million, a figure that
probably includes his yoga university but not his Scottish island --
renamed Peace Island -- or global business interests that include a
pharmaceutical company producing ayurvedic medicine and herbal products.
The government, seeing Ramdev as a political rival, first accused him of
money laundering and then opened an income-tax investigation.
The numbers are staggering, but the ideas that fabulous wealth resides
in these places is not a surprise, said social commentator and
columnist Santosh Desai, who says that followers often take pride in the
wealth of their chosen gurus. It is curious in a way, for something
ostensibly about a distance from things material and closeness to things
spiritual, the two sit side by side very comfortably.
Spiritual Succor
While some of the self-styled godmen are crooks or charlatans, many
provide immense spiritual succor to their followers. When Sai Baba died
of heart failure, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called it an
irreparable loss, describing him as a spiritual leader who inspired
millions.
Sai Babas philosophy of love, social service and the universality of
all religions proved both appealing and powerful, with his motto of
Love all, serve all, and his message that more merit could be gained
through service to humanity than through religious observance.
Once a tiny, impoverished Indian village, his birthplace of Puttaparthi
in southern India is now a small city, boasting an airport, a four-lane
highway, a free hospital, a university, a music college, a space
theater, a stadium and an international sports hall, all painted in
pastel shades of yellow, orange, blue and pink.
But with the vast wealth have come, almost inevitably, questions about
whether that money was being properly accounted for, and whose pockets
it was ending up in. Those questions were fueled when police stopped a
car leaving Puttaparthi shortly after the gurus death that contained
nearly $1 million in cash.
Police say they and the income tax department are carrying out parallel
investigations, and some Puttaparthi residents took to the streets this
month to call for more transparency in the way Sai Babas estate is run.
Yet few of his devotees, who include some of Indias leading politicians
and industrialists, as well as Goldie Hawn and Hard Rock Cafe founder
Isaac Tigrett, seem to care. Indias most famous cricketer, Sachin
Tendulkar, wept openly at Sai Babas funeral.
You can see all the buildings and you can go there, so at least part of
the money was spent on something good, Michiel Vanaerschot, 24, of
Belgium said with a slight shrug. People who dont believe, they just
cant handle it.
At Prashanti Nilayam, or Temple of Peace, the sprawling ashram at the
heart of his empire, devotees talk of how Sai Baba appeared in their
dreams, of miracles he had performed to heal them or their family
members, or, like Marie Duffy, 25, of Ireland, just of the extraordinary
energy of the place.
But his record was also deeply controversial. Allegations of sexual
abuse of teenage boys surfaced repeatedly, although no charges were ever
brought; video evidence seemed to show that some of his trademark
miracles, regurgitating a golden egg or producing a Rolex watch out of
thin air, were merely sleight of hand.
...................
RELATED LINK:
Pulse on Sai Baba
http://nhne-pulse.org/sai-baba/
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---------------
GOOGLE IS MAKING US ALL DUMBER
NBC Bay Area
July 15, 2011
http://nhne-pulse.org/the-google-effect/http://www.nbcbayarea.com/blogs/press-here/Google-Is-Making-Us-All-Dumber-125648\
288.html
Struggling to remember street names or basic math? Blame Google.
A new study by Columbia University psychologists does just that. A new
type of amnesia, called the Google Effect, is impacting how humans
remember facts because we rely too much on search engines to remember
small details or facts.
The study was published Friday in the journal Science. The full report
can be read on the journal's website.
The study finds that when we know where to find information online, we
are less likely to remember it or recall that information. Instead we
just rely on a quick Google or Yahoo search.
But the authors are quick to point out that the study does not prove
search engines are making us idiots.
"We're not thoughtless empty-headed people who don't have memories
anymore," the study's lead psychologist Betsy Sparrow Sparrow told the
San Jose Mercury News. "But we are becoming particularly adept at
remembering where to go find things. And that's kind of amazing."
Instead the study suggests that human memory is reorganizing how it
retrieves information and adjusting to a digital age, where computers
can assist how we process information.
Participants in the study often showed that they did not bother to
retrieve information when they thought they could easily find it online.
For example, when asked how many countries only have on color in their
flag, people did not think about it but instead their brains turned to
where on the Internet they could find that information.
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---------------
HERE BE MONSTERS
By Carole Jahme
The Guardian
July 15, 2011
http://nhne-pulse.org/undiscovered-monsters/http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2011/jul/15/here-be-monsters-cryptozoolog\
y
I'm not sure who or what is more monstrous: the smug sceptics or the
scant cryptids.
Let me explain. Having interviewed Debbie Martyr (research
conservationist with Flora and Fauna International) 12 years ago about
her apparent sighting of the primate cryptid the orang pendek in Sumatra
and more recently interviewing ape expert Ian Redmond on his research
into sasquatch/big foot (supported by David Attenborough and Jane
Goodall), over the years I have acquired a fascination for primate
cryptids. So I was eager to attend a recent lecture at the Zoological
Society London entitled "Cryptozoology: science or pseudoscience?".
Henry Gee, a senior editor at Nature looking and behaving like a jovial,
off-duty roadie dressed in grubby T shirt and ruby crocs, chaired the
event in which Drs Michael Woodley, Charles Paxton and Darren Naish
presented their crypto data.
Paxton reminded us that atmospheric electrical disturbances such as
sprites, blue jets and elves were only identified in the 1980s and 1990s
when they were photographed. Until then, anecdotal reports of flashes of
light above the clouds were frequently ignored. Scientists used to
dismiss accounts of meteorites as paranormal fantasy and poured scorn on
eyewitness descriptions from lucky survivors of rogue waves until
satellite images in the 1990s confirmed their existence. The mountain
gorilla wasn't believed to exist by Western science until two were shot
dead in 1902, and the bonobo was not credited with being a unique
species until 1930. In the past 20 years, 70 species of primate have
been newly described, including a Vietnamese gibbon and the Bili ape: a
large, sub-species of chimp from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
In 2009, a Papua New Guinean crater yielded up a cat-sized species of
woolly rat, among other previously undiscovered creatures.
In an age of satellites and robotic submersibles, it's easy to assume,
with a "been there done that" attitude, that we know all there is to
know about Earth. Clearly nature is far from being fully understood by
science, and yet some sceptics persist in contemptuously sneering at
almost everything outside of their immediate knowledge. With their
high-systemised inability to tolerate newness, they stymie open
scientific debate, bully original thinkers and drive away those with
fascinating new data on unknown species.
I was sad to witness this and their non-reflective guffawing at ZSL?
Paxton and Naish seemed particularly conscious of this spiked criticism
and made a point of distancing themselves from misleading and bad
science. Nothing wrong with that, but they were so ardent in this
respect that the friend I was with mistakenly thought the panel were
themselves anti-cryptozoology.
The three speakers focused their statistical analysis on sea monsters,
Paxton saying that he prefers the term monster to cryptid. He also
wanted to assure the audience that, "taxpayers have no fear, your money
is not spent on crypto research, scientists do this in their spare
time." Paxton's talk underscored the fact that anomalies should be
actively pursued and science should be about wonderment.
But how should science deal with low-frequency phenomena that might well
be real? One approach is to break witness reports down and analyse
interesting properties. To illustrate, Paxon used his data of "initial
reported distance" from sea monsters given by witnesses aboard boats.
Significantly, initial sighting are usually reported close to the boat.
Paxton wasn't sure why this might be. I would suggest that it is because
witnesses do not know what they do not know they have to see it
close-up to be confident they are witnessing something unexpected. An
unknown creature seen at a distance could be dismissed as a dolphin or a
piece of wood. Initial sightings of terrestrial cryptids also tend to be
at close proximity, and again the same factor may well apply.
Naish addressed the "prehistoric survivor paradigm". Some 65m years ago,
during the late cretaceous, the coelacanth, the plesiosaur and many
other species disappeared from the fossil record during a mass
extinction. But in 1938 and again in 1999 two species of coelacanth were
discovered. This Lazarus-like survival of the coelacanth gives
confidence to those who suggest a long-necked surviving plesiosaur swims
in our lochs and oceans. As a palaeontologist Naish was able to explain
how the vertebrae of plesiosaurs could not move in the flexible,
swan-like motion often described in reported sightings. But he believes
this is a case of wrong classification rather than an indication that
sea monsters do not exist. We were reminded of the new Indonesian
species of ray and shark and the two recently identified (1991/2002)
species of beaked whale, inhabiting a deep-sea niche: the deep sea and
its inhabitants are barely understood.
During the Q&A an elderly sceptic quipped: "Some people say they've seen
aliens and have even talked to them!" The panel trod an uneasy path as
they attempted to accommodate these sorts of jibes while keeping on track.
The three speakers confirmed that their modelling indicates there are
between 10 and 50 large species of marine animals yet to be described.
They were also in agreement that marine sampling methods for cryptids
must be established and remain constant.
For those readers left wanting more, the Weird Weekend
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weird_Weekend> is the biggest
gathering of cryptozoologists in the world, held in Devon in August.
Naish will again be speaking.
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MEDITATION MAY CHANGE BRAINS PHYSICAL STRUCTURE, STRENGTHEN CONNECTIONS
KurzweilAI
July 15, 2011
http://nhne-pulse.org/meditation-may-change-brains-physical-structure/http://www.kurzweilai.net/meditation-may-change-brains-physical-structure-streng\
then-connections
Meditation may have potential to change the brains physical structure,
researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, have found.
People who meditate have stronger connections between brain regions and
show less age-related brain atrophy, according to the researchers.
Stronger connections influence the ability to rapidly relay electrical
signals in the brain. And significantly, these effects are evident
throughout the entire brain, not just in specific areas.
The study consisted of 27 active meditation practitioners (average age
52) and 27 control subjects, who were matched by age and sex. The
meditation and the control group each consisted of 11 men and 16 women.
The number of years of meditation practice ranged from 5 to 46;
self-reported meditation styles included Shamatha, Vipassana and Zazen,
practiced by about 55 percent of the meditators, either exclusively or
in combination with other styles.
Pronounced Structural Connectivity
The researchers used a type of brain imaging known as diffusion tensor
imaging (DTI), a relatively new imaging mode that provides insights into
the structural connectivity of the brain. They found that the
differences between meditators and controls are not confined to a
particular core region of the brain but involve large-scale networks
that include the frontal, temporal, parietal and occipital lobes and the
anterior corpus callosum, as well as limbic structures and the brain stem.
They found pronounced structural connectivity in meditators throughout
the entire brains pathways. The greatest differences between the two
groups were seen within the corticospinal tract (a collection of axons
that travel between the cerebral cortex of the brain and the spinal
cord), the superior longitudinal fasciculus (long bi-directional bundles
of neurons connecting the front and the back of the cerebrum), and the
uncinate fasciculus (white matter that connects parts of the limbic
system, such as the hippocampus and amygdala, with the frontal cortex).
Meditation appears to be a powerful mental exercise with the potential
to change the physical structure of the brain at large, said Eileen
Luders of UCLA. Collecting evidence that active, frequent, and regular
meditation practices cause alterations of white-matter fiber tracts that
are profound and sustainable may become relevant for patient populations
suffering from axonal demyelination and white-matter atrophy.
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FIVE REASONS TO LISTEN TO YOUR CHILDREN'S DREAMS
By Kate Adams, Ph.D.
Psychology Today
July 16, 2011
http://nhne-pulse.org/five-reasons-to-listen-to-your-childrens-dreams/http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/childs-play/201107/five-reasons-listen-your-\
childrens-dreams
Children often tell researchers that no one listens to them when they
want to talk about their dreams. Unfortunately, pressured schedules and
a cultural disinterest in dreams mean that many parents take little
notice of their own dream life, never mind their children's. Here are
five reasons why parents might want to find a few moments to listen
carefully to their children's nightly expeditions.
1. Dreaming is part of human experience.
Scientists have shown that all mammals dream, and that as children we
spend more time dreaming than we do as adults. In fact neuroscientist J.
Allan Hobson calculated that by the age of 70, most adults will have
spent six years of their lives dreaming. That is a significant part of
our lifespan to ignore!
2. Dreams can be fun.
Children regularly dream of things they love, such as friends, family,
pets, favorite celebrities and cartoon characters and like to talk about
their dream adventures.
3. Some children may have spiritual dreams.
As psychoanalyst Carl Jung noted many 'big' or spiritually significant
dreams occur in childhood. Recent research with children shows that many
experience at least one dream which is highly meaningful and can shape
their thoughts and actions.
4. Nightmares are frightening.
Yet nightmares are a normal part of childhood sleep. Children will need
to try to make sense of them and will need your help. Whilst it is
tempting to reassure them that the monster in the nightmare isn't real,
it will certainly feel real to them and can make them fearful of going
to sleep in case it returns. Try asking them to draw the images and then
draw a different version with a happier ending.
5. Children just want to share with you.
Just as children are eager to tell you their thoughts, feelings and what
they have been doing whilst awake, they are often keen to tell you what
they have been doing in their sleep. Listening will mean a lot to them
and can help to bring you closer.
Of course, it is important not to pressure children into sharing dreams
which they may not want to, or may not recall easily. Undue pressure
will only lead to them making up something they think you want to hear.
In this busy world, it is easy to miss a child's attempts to draw
attention to their dreams. Likewise it is common to unintentionally
dismiss a child's dream as 'just imagination'. But by taking some time
to explore their dreams with them, you will be privileged to enter an
important and often unseen part of their life.
.....................
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---------------
Watch the movie trailer on Pulse:
http://nhne-pulse.org/movie-another-earth/
---------------
MOVIE: ANOTHER EARTH
http://nhne-pulse.org/movie-another-earth/
Another Earth is a 2011 American fantasy/science fiction drama film
directed by Mike Cahill in his feature film debut. The film stars
William Mapother and Brit Marling. It premiered at the 27th Sundance
Film Festival in January 2011 and will be distributed by Fox Searchlight
Pictures.
Synopsis
Rhoda Williams (Marling), a physics student at MIT, is driving when she
sees a planet and leans out for a closer look. She hits a minivan and
kills a family. She is imprisoned for four years, and upon release seeks
out the widower of the family, composer John Burroughs (Mapother). The
planet she saw is a mirror planet of Earth, seemingly to the extent that
it even has the same people on it, and an essay contest is held where
the winner can ride a space shuttle to visit it. Williams considers the
possibility of visiting it to find out what kind of life her mirror self
would have led.
Cast
William Mapother as John Burroughs
Brit Marling as Rhoda Williams
Jordan Baker as Kim Williams
Robin Lord Taylor as Jeff Williams
Flint Beverage
Production Notes
When asked why he agreed to join the cast of Another Earth, given the
"notoriously hit or miss" nature of indie movies, William Mapother
replied that he was drawn by the film's subject and by the other names
involved in it. At Mapother's insistence, he and the production team
worked extensively on the scenes of John and Rhoda in order to develop
John's character in the film.
...................
Official Movie Website
http://www.foxsearchlight.com/anotherearth/
Another Earth on Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Another-Earth/180667951973044
Soundtrack from Another Earth
http://content.foxsearchlight.com/inside/node/4903
Wikipedia on Another Earth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_Earth
Rotten Tomatoes on Another Earth
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/another_earth/
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ARTIFICIALLY GROWN TOOTH TRANSPLANTED INTO MOUSE
By Melissae Fellet
New Scientist
July 12, 2011
http://nhne-pulse.org/artificially-grown-tooth-transplanted-into-mouse/http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20682-artificial-tooth-transplanted-into-m\
ouse.html
It may be time to redefine the concept of false teeth. A tooth grown
from embryonic cells has been successfully transplanted into the jaw of
a mouse. The transplant is a step towards providing artificial
replacements for donor organs that are in short supply.
To create the tooth, Takashi Tsuji at Tokyo University of Science in
Japan and colleagues took cells destined to become teeth from mouse
embryos. The cells were implanted into an adult mouse, beneath a
membrane that surrounds the kidney.
Two months later, the cells had developed into a molar complete with a
periodontal ligament -- fibres that attach the tooth to bone. The team
extracted the tooth and implanted it into the jawbone of another mouse.
Within 30 days, blood vessels and nerves surrounded the transplant which
functioned as if it were a native tooth.
Xiu-Ping Wang at Harvard School of Dental Medicine says the work is
"very elegant". She adds that researchers may be able to recreate the
results using adult stem cells or cells found in wisdom teeth.
Growing teeth atop a kidney currently prevents this approach from being
practical for human tooth replacement, says Paul Sharpe at King's
College London. The next big advance will come when the budding tooth
cells can be cultivated outside the body, he says.
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SPACE TELESCOPE TO CREATE RADIO 'EYE' LARGER THAN EARTH
By Rachel Courtland
New Scientist
July 16, 2011
http://nhne-pulse.org/new-space-telescope-to-be-larger-than-earth/http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20705-space-telescope-to-create-radio-eye-\
larger-than-earth.html
A Russian space telescope conceived during the Cold War is set to launch
on Monday. When it reaches an orbit that will extend almost as far as
the moon, the RadioAstron mission will sync up with radio antennas on
the ground, effectively forming the biggest telescope yet built, with a
"dish" spanning almost 30 times the Earth's diameter.
RadioAstron's roots extend back more than three decades, but the mission
lost momentum when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. "For 20 years it
was always five years away," says collaborator Ken Kellermann of the
National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Now, at long last, the spacecraft is poised to launch from Kazakhstan's
Baikonur cosmodrome at 0231 GMT on Monday.
At 10-metres, RadioAstron's antenna is small compared to Earth's largest
radio telescopes, which span 100 metres or more. But when its signals
are combined with those of telescopes on the ground a technique called
interferometry, the resulting observations are as sharp as those
produced by a single telescope with a dish as wide as the maximum
distance between the component antennas.
Eagle Eye
This strategy has been used for decades to create radio telescopes the
size of the Earth, and in 1997 the Japanese Space Agency launched the
first space telescope dedicated to radio interferometry, HALCA.
With an orbit that will extend more than 10 times as far from Earth as
HALCA, out to some 350,000 kilometres, RadioAstron promises to capture
detail that is more than 10 times as fine. At its best, RadioAstron will
be able to resolve points separated by an angle of just 7
microarcseconds, about 10,000 times the resolution of the Hubble Space
Telescope.
"There has never been a radio telescope that has been sent so far from
the Earth," says Yuri Kovalev, a team leader at the Lebedev Physical
Institute's Astro Space Center in Moscow, Russia, which is managing the
mission.
Unfolding Petals
If all goes well, a Zenit-2SB rocket will help carry the spacecraft into
an oblong orbit that will extend from 10,000 kilometres to more than
300,000 kilometres from Earth. Once in orbit, 27 "petals" made of carbon
fibre will unfold to create the 10-metre-wide antenna. Over the course
of the telescope's five-year mission, the moon's gravity will tug on the
telescope, pulling it up to 390,000 kilometres from Earth.
After a few months of check-out, the team will begin to coordinate
observations with telescopes on the ground, including two 100-metre
radio telescopes in Green Bank, West Virginia, and Effelsberg,
Germany, and the 305-metre Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico.
RadioAstron will zoom in with unprecedented detail on objects such as
the nearby galaxy M87, which is spewing relativistic particles from a
colossal black hole at its core. By some estimates, the telescope could
be used to image near the black hole's event horizon the boundary
around which nothing can escape the black hole's gravity. This could
reveal new information about how supermassive black holes accelerate
matter to near light speed.
Precision Cosmology
The telescope will also be able to register the radio waves emitted by
water masers, clouds of water molecules that emit microwave radiation,
in the discs of galaxies. This motion can be used to study the rotation
rate of the galaxies and measure their distance from Earth. When
combined with observations of how fast the galaxies are moving,
astronomers can use the galaxy distances to calculate the present-day
expansion rate of space and the effect of dark energy. RadioAstron may
be able to pinpoint the masers' positions more precisely than previous
measurements, says Mark Reid of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The telescope will also use the lighthouse-like radio emission from
pulsars, the spinning remains of exploded stars, to reveal how dust and
gas is distributed around the stars.
The project faces some challenges, chief among them the flood of data
some 144 megabits per second that the dish will collect. "There's so
much data coming to RadioAstron that you can't store it on board. The
data needs to be transported continuously to the ground," says
Kellermann, who co-chairs RadioAstron's International Advisory Committee.
So far, only one antenna, a 22-metre dish in the town of Pushchino,
south of Moscow, has been set up to receive signals from the spacecraft.
Unless other receiver stations can be set up, a good fraction of data
the telescope will collect will be lost. The team hopes more receiving
stations will be set up as the mission moves forward.
----------------
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HISTORICAL NDE CASES
Horizon Research Foundation
http://nhne-pulse.org/historical-near-death-experiences/http://horizonresearch.org/main_page.php?cat_id=64
Looking back in the literature, there have... been many historical
accounts of near death experiences in different cultures and throughout
historical time. For example they are described in Plato's Republic.
Here, an ordinary soldier, Er, suffers a near fatal injury on the
battlefield, is revived on the funeral parlour and describes a journey
from darkness to light accompanied by guides, a moment of judgement,
feelings of peace and joy, and visions of extraordinary beauty and
happiness.
Hieronymus Bosch the Dutch painter who died in 1516 depicted a passage
down a tunnel towards a bright light in a painting entitled "ascent to
empyrean".
Another case is that of Admiral Beaufort, an admiral with the Royal Navy
who had narrowly escaped drowning in Portsmouth harbour in 1795. He had
gone on to describe his experience:
"Though the senses were deadened, not so the mind; its activity seemed
to be invigorated in a ratio which defies all description, for thought
rose above thought in rapid succession. The event just occurred the
awkwardness producing it, the bustle it must have occasioned...the
effect on my most affectionate father, the moment in which it would be
disclosed to the family, and a thousand other circumstances minutely
associated with home, were the first reflections. Then they took a wider
range, our last cruise a former voyage and shipwreck, my school and
boyish pursuits and adventures. Thus travelling backwards, every past
incident of my life seemed to glance across my recollection in
retrograde succession; not however in mere outline, as here stated, but
the picture filled up with every minute and collateral feature. In
short, the whole period of my existence seemed to be placed before me in
a kind of panoramic review, and each of it seemed to be accompanied by a
consciousness of right or wrong, or by some reflection on its cause or
consequences; indeed many trifling events which had been forgotten then
crowded into my imagination, and with the character of recent familiarity."
The first systemic series of accounts from people who had experienced a
close encounter with death were reported by a 19th century Swiss
geologist and mountaineer, Albert Heim. Heim had survived a near-fatal
mountaineering accident himself and then went on to collect 30 first
hand accounts from other survivors of near-fatal mountaineering
accidents, and found that they had similar experiences. His work was
published in 1892. His own experience is typical of those recalled by
other people in his series:
"No grief was felt nor was there any paralysing fright. There was no
anxiety, no trace of despair or pain, but rather calm seriousness,
profound acceptance and a dominant mental quickness. The relationship of
events and their probable outcomes were viewed with objective clarity,
no confusion entered at all. Time became greatly expanded."
He found that in many cases there then followed a sudden review of the
individual's entire past, and finally the person falling often heard
'beautiful music' and fell in what they visualised as 'a superbly blue
heaven containing roseate cloudlets'. It was reported that consciousness
was painlessly extinguished, usually at the moment of impact, which was
at the most heard but never painfully felt.
.......................
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---------------
LACK OF VITAMIN D LINKED TO MUSCLE INJURIES AND ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE
By S. L. Baker
NaturalNews
July 19, 2011
http://nhne-pulse.org/lack-of-vitamin-d-linked-to-muscle-injuries-and-alzheimers\
/http://www.naturalnews.com/033042_vitamin_D_Alzheimers_disease.html
Over the past few years, researchers have come up with a mountain of
evidence that vitamin D is extremely important to maintaining health and
preventing and even treating a host of health problems. For example,
studies have shown that too little vitamin D may trigger breast cancer,
rheumatoid arthritis, brittle bones, heart attacks and more.
And now there's breaking news that scientists have discovered two more
extraordinary benefits to getting enough vitamin D through sun exposure
and supplements. It turns out a lack of the remarkable vitamin could
result in sports-related muscle injuries. What's more, vitamin D may, in
a sense, help "vacuum" out plaques in the brain associated with the
dreaded, mind-robbing dementia known as Alzheimer's disease.
A recent study just presented at the American Orthopaedic Society for
Sports Medicine's (AOSSM) Annual Meeting now underway in San Diego has
linked too little vitamin D in the body to an increased risk of muscle
injuries in athletes. Specifically, the scientists studied National
Football League (NFL) football players.
"Eighty percent of the football team we studied had vitamin D
insufficiency. African American players and players who suffered muscle
injuries had significantly lower levels," said Michael Shindle, MD, lead
researcher and member of Summit Medical Group, in a statement to the press.
The researchers worked with 89 football players, average age 25, from a
single NFL team, giving them laboratory tests to measure vitamin D
levels in the spring 2010 as part of the athletes' routine pre-season
evaluations. Over the course of the season, the team provided data to
the scientists so they could document how many of players missed games
due to muscle injuries. Vitamin D levels were also classified according
to a player's race and how much playing time was lost due to muscle
injuries.
The results showed that a large number of these super fit, professional
athletes were actually seriously deficient in vitamin D. Twenty-seven
players were dramatically deficient and 45 more had levels consistent
with insufficiency. In fact, only 17 players tested had values in the
normal limits. African American players were far more likely to have the
lowest levels of vitamin D. And the 16 players who suffered muscle
injuries were found to have the lowest vitamin D levels.
"Screening and treatment of vitamin D insufficiency in professional
athletes may be a simple way to help prevent injuries," Dr. Scott Rodeo,
MD, Co-Chief of the Sports Medicine and Shoulder Service at the Hospital
for Special Surgery, noted in the press statement.
While preventing sports injuries with vitamin D is an exciting
possibility, consider this other, potentially mind blowing news about
the remarkable vitamin -- it may help prevent and even reverse the
buildup of amyloid beta plaques in the brain that are associated with
Alzheimer's disease.
That's the conclusion of new research just published in BioMed Central's
open access journal Fluids and Barriers of the CNS. A lack of vitamin D
has been suspected to play a role both Alzheimer's disease and less
serious but worrisome age-related memory problems. And now a study
conducted by scientists at Tohoku University in Japan has found that
removal of amyloid plaques from the brain depend on vitamin D.
The researchers treated mice bred to have amyloid beta plaques in their
brains with injections of vitamin D. The result? The vitamin D therapy
actually helped remove these plaques, which are the hallmark of
Alzheimer's disease, from the rodents' brains.
"Vitamin D appears to increase transport of amyloid beta across the
blood brain barrier (BBB) by regulating protein expression, via the
vitamin D receptor...These results lead the way towards new therapeutic
targets in the search for prevention of Alzheimer's disease," Professor
Tetsuya Terasaki said in a media statement.
.......................
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---------------
LIARS CAN'T COMPLETELY SUPPRESS FACIAL EXPRESSIONS
KurzweilAI
July 19, 2011
http://nhne-pulse.org/liars-cant-completely-suppress-facial-expressions/http://www.kurzweilai.net/liars-cant-completely-suppress-facial-expressions
Although liars can reduce facial actions when under scrutiny, they can't
suppress them all, says Mark Frank, who has spent two decades studying
the faces of people lying when in high-stakes situations and has good
news for security experts.
"Executing Facial Control During Deception Situations," a new study
(pdf) he co-authored with former graduate student Carolyn M. Hurley, PhD
(published earlier this year in the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior),
examined whether subjects could suppress facial actions like eyebrow
movements or smiles on command while under scrutiny by a lie catcher.
It turns out subjects could to a degree, but not completely and not always.
Poker-Faced Doesn't Work
The results are derived from frame-by-frame coding of facial movements
filmed during an interrogation in which participants, some lying, some
telling the truth, were asked to suppress specific parts of facial
expressions. Hurley and Frank found that these actions can be reduced,
but not eliminated, and that instructions to the subjects to suppress
one element of expression resulted in reduction of all facial movement,
regardless of their implications for veracity.
Despite these findings, the majority of the 60 study participants
reported believing that they had controlled all facial movement and had
remained "poker faced" during the interview/interrogation.
"Behavioral countermeasures," says Frank, "are the strategies engaged by
liars to deliberately control face or body behavior to fool lie
catchers. Until this study, research had not shown whether or not liars
could suppress elements of their facial expression as a countermeasure.
"As a security strategy," he says, "there is great significance in
observing and interpreting nonverbal behavior during an investigative
interview, especially when the interviewee is trying to suppress certain
expressions."
Lying Raises The Cognitive Load
Hurley and Frank say prior research in Ironic Process Theory (IPT) has
shown that when individuals are required to monitor their thought
patterns so as to suppress a thought or image, the process places that
thought or image into their monitoring memory, enabling it to intrude
more frequently into their regular memory.
Hurley and Frank say this is even more likely to occur when one is
telling a lie because, as research has shown, lying raises the cognitive
load and reduces the ability to successfully and naturally engage in
interaction with others.
The study involved 33 female and 27 male undergraduate subjects who were
introduced into a crime scenario in which they were randomly assigned to
either take (lie) or not take (tell the truth) a pair of movie tickets
from an envelope.
They were then interviewed about the theft of the tickets by an
experienced but neutral interrogator blind to the experimental
conditions. Participants were told they would be rewarded if they
convinced the interrogator of their honesty and punished if not. All
denied taking the tickets.
Expression Suppression
Prior to the interview some subjects were specifically instructed to
suppress upper face activity (manifested through eyebrow-raising
actions) and lower face activity (manifested through smiling).
"Although these facial movements are not necessarily guaranteed signs of
deception," says Frank, "expression suppression -- regardless of its
validity as a clue to deception -- is clearly one of the more popular
strategies used by liars to fool others. What we didn't know was how
well individuals can do this when they are lying or when they are
telling the truth.
"Based on the research literature on the nature of facial expressions of
emotion, the neuroanatomy of the face, emotional suppression research
and IPT research," he says, "we correctly predicted that in
interrogations in which deception is a possibility, individuals would be
able to significantly reduce their rate and intensity of smiling and
brow movements when requested to do so, but would be able to do so to a
lesser degree when telling a lie.
"And, since the lower face (and smile in particular) is easier to
control than the upper face, we predicted that our subjects would more
greatly reduce their rate of smiling, compared to their rate of brow
movement, when requested to suppress these actions," he says, "and that
turned out to be the case as well. We can reduce facial movements when
trying to suppress them but we can't eliminate them completely.
"Whether we are dealing with highly skilled and motivated liars who have
practiced their nonverbal expression in high-stakes scenarios, or
untrained individuals who learn from a television program about a
particular brow or lip movement that is allegedly a telltale sign of
deception," Frank says, "the findings of this study have important
implications for security settings."
----------------
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BILL GATES SEEKS TO REINVENT THE TOILET
By Zoe Fox
Mashable
July 19, 2011
http://nhne-pulse.org/bill-gates-seeks-to-reinvent-the-toilet/http://mashable.com/2011/07/19/bill-gates-reinvent-toilet/
The man who revolutionized the personal computer is putting his efforts
-- and foundation -- to revolutionizing toilets. Microsoft founder Bill
Gates said he will dedicate $42 million towards reinventing the toilet.
Water hygiene and safe waste disposal are two of the biggest causes of
infant mortality in the developing countries. Gates and his foundation
hope to create inexpensive toilets to vastly improve the living
conditions of millions of people. It may seem like a silly subject but
its one that could save lives around the world.
No innovation in the past 200 years has done more to save lives and
improve health than the sanitation revolution triggered by invention of
the toilet, said Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the president of the Global
Development Program at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. But it
did not go far enough. It only reached one-third of the world. What we
need are new approaches. New ideas.
The initiative was launched by Burwell on Tuesday in Kigali, Rwanda.
Part of the foundations plan is the Reinventing the Toilet Challenge
<http://nhne-pulse.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/wsh-reinvent-the-toilet-challe\
nge.pdf>
(pdf), which funds research at eight universities around the world to
develop a toilet that will turn waste into energy, clean water or
nutrients. The solution must be a stand-alone unit without piped-in
water, a sewer connection or outside electricity. The foundation
partnered with USAID to fix water sanitation as part of the UNs 2015
Millennium Development Goals.
Today, 40% of the worlds population does not have access to flush
toilets. One billion people defecate in the open. Each year, 1.5 million
children die each year from diarrhea, many of which are preventable with
improved sanitation.
The foundation is prioritizing convenience and affordability in the
solutions it considers. The toilets must be easy to install and cost no
more than $0.05 a day to maintain.
----------------
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Published by David Sunfellow
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