SoylentNews

The Mighty Buzzard writes:

From the ever politically neutral UC Berkeley (via phys.org) comes this fun little article.

The study highlights a paradoxical consequence of the political correctness (PC) norm. While PC behavior is generally thought to threaten the free expression of ideas, Professor Jennifer Chatman of the Haas School's Management of Organizations Group and her co-authors found that positioning such PC norms as the office standard provides a layer of safety in the workplace that fosters creativity.

"Creativity is essential to organizational innovation and growth. But our research departs from the prevailing theory of group creativity by showing that creativity in mixed-sex groups emerges, not by removing behavioral constraints, but by imposing them. Setting a norm that both clarifies expectations for appropriate behavior and makes salient the social sanctions that result from using sexist language unleashes creative expression by countering the uncertainty that arises in mixed-sex work groups," says Chatman.

Personally, I'd like to see the exact same study done with "political correctness" swapped out with simply "treating others with dignity and respect". This one smells entirely too strongly of an agenda to me.

hubie writes:

One of the great mysteries of planetary science is whether Mars has harbored life in the past, and if so, what happened to it. The possibility of an advanced civilization on Mars has captured the public interest off and on for over a hundred years. Usually such speculation remains within the confines of magazine serials, radio programs, television sitcoms, or the movies. However, the thought of an advanced civilization has caught the interest of at least one scientist, the well-known astronomer Percival Lowell, he of the eponymous observatory. Lowell spent years studying and observing Mars and was convinced there existed a network of canals designed by Martians to bring water from the polar regions down to the arid regions of the planet.

Last month, at the annual meeting of the Prairie Section of the American Physical Society, a scientific take on Martian civilizations was again addressed. Plasma physicist John Brandenburg presented a paper (Evidence of Massive Thermonuclear Explosions in Mars Past, The Cydonian Hypothesis, and Fermi's Paradox) that lays out the evidence that advanced civilizations existed on at least two regions of Mars, and that they were wiped out by thermonuclear explosions in a form of a Martian Mutual Assured Destruction. He makes his case by noting the existence of certain relatively rare isotopes that are typically only seen in abundance on Earth following nuclear detonations. The 51 page paper, which will be published by The Journal of Cosmology, also presents considerable evidence supporting claims of the existence of advanced civilizations, including the well-known Face.

"gewg_" writes:

Tom's Guide reports

A volunteer group of engineers at Samsung has devised an effective and affordable method for disabled people to use computers. The Eyecan+ is a portable unit that attaches to the bottom of a monitor and detects your eye movements to launch tasks onscreen.

With the Eyecan+, those unable to move their limbs will be able to navigate their computers with their eyes via 18 built-in commands, including copy, paste, select all, zoom in, scroll, and drag and drop.

[...]Custom commands can also be created out of keyboard shortcuts [...] An initial calibration is required on setup to help Eyecan+ recognize an individual's eye movements, and the user has to be situated between 23.6 to 27.5 inches from the monitor.

This isn't Samsung's first eye-controlled mouse. The company launched its first Eyecan in March 2012, and the Eyecan+ represents an upgrade in the device's sensitivity and user experience.

The Korean electronics giant will be making a limited quantity of the Eyecan+ and donating them to charity organizations and does not intend to sell them commercially. However, it will make the technology and design of the device open source, so that those who want to make it for themselves can do so. Samsung also said the information will be "made accessible to companies and organizations that wish to commercialize the eye mouse." According to a report by The Verge, each unit will cost about $500 to produce.

tonyPick writes:

Phil Plait at the Bad Astronomy blog has an article on the short film Wanderers, by Erik Wernquist.

Seriously, stop whatever you’re doing and WATCH THIS VIDEO. And yes, you very much want to make it full screen:
...
But take a moment and let this sink in: Nearly every location depicted in this video is real. These aren’t just fanciful places made up in the head of a special effect artist; those are worlds in our solar system that actually exist. And many were based on images taken through telescopes, or probes that have physically visited these distant locales.
...
Nothing in there is impossible; no faster than light travel, no wormholes. Even the space elevator shown towering over Mars and the huge cylindrical rotating colony in space (did you notice the Red Sea in it?) are problems in engineering, not physics. We can build them.

Erik Wernquist has a page on the film, with stills and information on the data used to construct the scenes on the screen. There's also a write up at io9, with further commentary on the images.

The Mighty Buzzard writes:

Straight from the horse's (rather dry) mouth, the SCOTUS is hearing arguments today on Elonis v. United States.

Issue: (1) Whether, consistent with the First Amendment and Virginia v. Black , conviction of threatening another person under 18 U.S.C. § 875(c) requires proof of the defendant's subjective intent to threaten, as required by the Ninth Circuit and the supreme courts of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont; or whether it is enough to show that a “reasonable person” would regard the statement as threatening, as held by other federal courts of appeals and state courts of last resort; and (2) whether, as a matter of statutory interpretation, conviction of threatening another person under 18 U.S.C. § 875(c) requires proof of the defendant's subjective intent to threaten.

This would be the case where a Pennsylvania man posted violent rap lyrics to Facebook and was subsequently prosecuted for them being construed as an actual threat. A verdict isn't expected before June though, so until then watch what you quote online.

snap2grid writes:

Brian Baglow, One of the original designers of the first Grand Theft Auto, has donated his notebooks to the National Museum of Scotland. From the Daily Record:

Almost 20 years after the game’s launch his ideas for the game are to go on display at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh as part of their Games’ Masters exhibition. While the exhibition 
follows the evolution of 
gaming internationally from a niche interest to a global phenomenon, it also explores the success of Scotland’s games’ design industry. Signed original artwork for Grand Theft Auto and early sketches from Lemmings – both created by 
Dundee-based DMA Design – are among items set to go on public display for the first time.

Disclaimer: I'm one of the ex-DMA people myself and know Brian from that time. It's not the first time that Lemmings has been on display, as there has been an exhibit about DMA at Dundee's McManus Galleries for several years now. My own claim to fame is that I am mentioned in the first paragraph of the original GTA design document.

"gewg_" writes:

El Reg reports

Singapore's Land Transport Authority (LTA) has found a way to out-Uber Uber by launching a taxi-finding app of its own.

[...]Come December, the Authority will also offer a new app called "Taxi-Taxi@SG" that will "show the availability and location of taxis across the island and better match these taxis to commuters."

"Through an integrated platform map, commuters can easily locate the number of available taxis near them and broadcast their positions so taxi drivers can identify the exact locations of potential customers" the Authority says. "Similarly, taxi drivers can make use of this app to cut down the time spent on the roads looking for customers."

AnonTechie writes:

Just in time for the holidays ...

Faculty and staff in Purdue University's College of Engineering have come up with a holiday gift guide that can help engage children in engineering concepts.
The "Engineering Gift Guide" was developed through the INSPIRE Institute for Pre-College Engineering, a part of the School of Engineering Education.
It features toys, games, books, movies and apps for mobile devices for a variety of ages. In addition to the selected items, the guide includes suggestions on finding other engineering-themed gifts.
"It's important to introduce engineering to children at a very young age – even before they reach kindergarten," says Monica Cardella, associate professor of engineering education and INSPIRE director. "One way to achieve this is simply putting a puzzle together or playing with building blocks and talking with the child about what they want to design, what ways they can accomplish that, and who or what could use their creation.

http://phys.org/news/2014-11-gift-parents.html

http://inspire-purdue.org/parent-materials

mendax writes:

The New York Times has published an interesting article about what the author believes to be the upcoming cashless society:

I’ve spent the past few weeks using Apple Pay, the mobile payments app on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, as much as possible. I sought out every opportunity to press my thumb to the smartphone’s screen to make a payment at a store.

Apple Pay is revolutionary, but perhaps not for the reason most people think. It isn’t going to replace the credit card. The credit card has never been an annoyance, not to retailers, cardholders or the people behind them in the checkout line. (The greatest annoyance remains people fumbling with checkbooks at the last minute.) The credit card will stick around because it is integrated into Apple Pay. That tight integration is also one reason Apple Pay has a good chance of succeeding.

But the real reason it will succeed is that it will replace the wallet, the actual physical thing crammed with cards, cash, photos and receipts. The smartphone has a history of replacing other devices. It has killed or wounded, among others, point-and-shoot cameras, video cameras, tape recorders, MP3 players, GPS devices, wristwatches, daily organizers, maps, alarm clocks, calculators, flashlights and compasses.

Well, maybe. I thoroughly enjoy the anonymity of cash. My credit union or credit card issuing banks don't need to know what I buy or where I buy it. Will cash disappear in thirty years? I doubt it.

Hugh Pickens writes:

The price of oil is now under $70 a barrel after OPEC decided it would not cut back production significantly in the months ahead and the latest OPEC move suggests that it isn’t going to reverse course anytime soon.. Now Neil Irwin reports in the NYT that the falling price of oil looks likely to be one of the dominant forces shaping the global economy in 2015. So who wins and who loses? Winner: Global consumers as anybody who drives a car or flies on airplanes gets lower prices for gasoline and jet fuel. Loser: American oil producers - One of the big open questions is just how many of the small, independent producers in the American heartland will still be viable with oil prices in the $60s rather than the $100s. Many have relied on borrowed money, and bankruptcies are possible. Loser: Vladimir Putin - Russia’s economy is already facing its sharpest challenges in years, as Western sanctions imposed after Russian aggression toward Ukraine crimp the nation’s ability to be integrated in the global economy. Russia is a major energy producer, and the falling price of oil compounds the challenge facing its president, Vladimir Putin.

Potential Loser: The environment. As a general rule, the cheaper fossil fuels become, the more challenging it will be for cleaner forms of energy like solar and wind power to be competitive on price. But solar and wind power are sources for electricity, whereas fluctuations in oil prices most directly affect the price of transportation fuels like gasoline and jet fuel. Unless or until more Americans use electric cars, they are largely separate markets, so there’s no reason that cheaper oil should cause a major reduction in investment in renewables. The average pump price of a gallon of regular gasoline in the United States was $3.12 this week, down from $3.80 in October 2012 and down from $3.70 just four months ago. In the past, cheaper gasoline has two environmentally problematic effects: It leads people to drive thirstier cars and trucks and to drive them more miles. This time may be different. The number of miles Americans drive per capita has declined for nine straight years dropping from roughly 10,100 miles in 2004 to about 9,400 miles in 2013. A change that significant suggests a change in lifestyle—one that would be hard to upend. In addition, the average fuel economy of new cars and trucks sold in the United States has increased markedly over the past decade—in contrast to the 1990s, when new-vehicle fuel economy essentially flat-lined. Today, the average new car sold in this country goes 36 miles on a gallon of gasoline, up from 29.5 mpg in 2004. "Times have changed since the dawn of the last era of cheap oil," says Jeffrey Ball. "Even assuming low oil prices are the new normal, a cleaner energy system probably is too."

Freebirth Toad writes:

Paul Graham's latest essay posits that in the tech startup world, nice people finish first. He writes:

For most of history success meant control of scarce resources. One got that by fighting, whether literally in the case of pastoral nomads driving hunter-gatherers into marginal lands, or metaphorically in the case of Gilded Age financiers contending with one another to assemble railroad monopolies. For most of history, success meant success at zero-sum games. And in most of them meanness was not a handicap but probably an advantage.

That is changing. Increasingly the games that matter are not zero-sum. Increasingly you win not by fighting to get control of a scarce resource, but by having new ideas and building new things. (Peter Thiel would point out that successful founders still get rich from controlling monopolies, just monopolies they create rather than ones they capture. And while this is largely true, it means a big change in the sort of person who wins.)

Putting asside that he hasn't really defined what "mean" is, is Graham right? Or is this just further evidence that his techno-utopianism has completely disconnected him from reality?

mendax writes:

I may start growing 'shrooms in my dark and dank pantry and get off Celexa after reading this New York Times article about what may be the medicinal qualities of magic mushrooms:

A study published last month in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface compared M.R.I.s of the brains of subjects injected with psilocybin [the psychoactive agent in magic mushrooms] with scans of their normal brain activity. The brains on psilocybin showed radically different connectivity patterns between cortical regions (the parts thought to play an important role in consciousness). The researchers mapped out these connections, revealing the activity of new neural networks between otherwise disconnected brain regions.

The researchers suspect that these unusual connections may be responsible for the synaesthetic experience trippers describe, of hearing colors, for example, and seeing sounds. The part of the brain that processes sound may be connecting to the part of the brain that processes sight. The study’s leader [said that] his team doubted that this psilocybin-induced connectivity lasted. They think they are seeing a temporary modification of the subject’s brain function.

The fact that under the influence of psilocybin the brain temporarily behaves in a new way may be medically significant in treating psychological disorders like depression. “When suffering depression, people get stuck in a spiral of negative thoughts and cannot get out of it,” [the study's leader] said. “One can imagine that breaking any pattern that prevents a ‘proper’ functioning of the brain can be helpful.” Think of it as tripping a breaker or rebooting your computer.

aristarchus writes:

Not surprisingly, if you are using Twitter or Facebook for serious scientific research, your results may be a pile of data. Some scientists have studied the reliability of social media and decided it is not.

Social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook should not be used to gauge human behaviour or trends because they are too biased, scientists have warned.

Color me, surprised?

Horse With Stripes asks some interesting questions regarding large corporations using crowd-funding and writes:

Sony used the Japanese crowd-funding site Makuake as a test balloon for its new e-paper based watch. Both Forbes and Mashable have stories on this, though neither touches on my first reaction: why is a enormous multi-national corporation worth tens of billions of dollars using a crowd-funding site to fund new products?

One of Sony's statements claims "We hid Sony’s name because we wanted to test the real value of the product, whether there will be demand for our concept", which may be true but doesn't justify taking consumer's money up front for a product that it may never even deliver.

How many "customers" who placed pre-orders would have thought differently if they knew it was Sony who was the actual source of this yet-to-be-made product? How many would be weary of providing their personal information to a company like Sony?

Is this what we're to expect in the future from large, established, wealthy corporations? Having crowd-funders finance the development of future products, with no legal obligation of ever delivering the product? This all seems so wrong to me on so many levels. It does not surprise me that Sony would be at the forefront of this type of manoeuvre. Should crowd-funding sites do a better job of identifying the actual company or individuals behind projects posted on their sites?

hubie writes:

LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) is a remote sensing method analogous to RADAR. Pulses of laser light are sent out via a transmitter, and the detected reflected pulses are converted into a distance to target. When LIDAR systems are flown from an airplane, a topographic map of the surface of the Earth is created. One of its powerful features is that one can separate out the bare Earth data to construct an image of the ground, i.e., one can "see" through ground canopy and other vegetative cover that otherwise obscures the underlying features.

Being able to see through ground cover has opened new discoveries for archaeologists. An article in the Journal of Archaeological Science looks at the Las Médulas site in Spain, which is considered to be the largest opencast gold mine of the Roman Empire. The LIDAR observations revealed the scope of the gold mine was much larger than was previously known, and new details of the ancient mining works revealed such as the hydraulics system used as well as evidence of multiple river diversions.