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When astronauts first began flying in space, NASA worried about "space madness," a mental malady they thought might arise from humans experiencing microgravity and claustrophobic isolation inside of a cramped spacecraft high above the Earth. Now Megan Garber writes in The Atlantic that NASA is hoping to find out what life on Mars does to the human emotional state by putting three men and three women in a 1,000-square-foot habitat shaped like a dome for four months. The volunteers in the second HI-SEAS mission - a purposely tiny group selected out of a group of 700 applicants - include, among others, a neuropsychologist, an aerospace engineer, and an Air Force veteran who is studying human factors in aviation. "We're going to stress them," says Kim Binsted, the project's principal investigator. "That's the nature of the study."

That test involves isolating the crew in the same way they'd be isolated on Mars. The only communication they'll be allowed with the outside world-that is to say, with their family and friends-will be conducted through email. (And that will be given an artificial delay of 20 minutes to simulate the lag involved in Mars-to-Earth communications.) If that doesn't seem too stressful, here's another source of stress: Each mission member will get only eight minutes of shower time ... per week. The stress will be compounded by the fact that the only time the crew will be able to leave their habitat-yurt is when they're wearing puffy, insulated uniforms that simulate space suits. In the Hawaiian heat. Throughout the mission, researchers will be testing the subjects' moods and the changes they exhibit in their relationships with each other. They'll also be examining the crew members' cognitive skills, seeing whether-and how-they change as the experiment wears on. Binsted says the mission has gotten the attention of the TV world but don't expect to see much inside-the-dome footage. "You wouldn't believe the number of producers who called us," says Binsted. "Fortunately, we're not ethically allowed to subject our crew to that kind of thing."

The LA Times reports on the passing of Jeremiah Denton, the US Navy pilot held by the Viet Cong, who let the world know in a TV interview that POWs were being tortured by blinking out the word "torture" in Morse code. From 1965 to 1973, Denton was held at the "Hanoi Hilton" and several other infamous Vietnamese prisons and was held in isolation for lengthy periods totaling about four years. At points, he was in a pitch-black cell, a cramped hole crawling with rats and roaches. His beatings opened wounds that festered in pools of sewage. Frustrated that Denton would not confess to alleged American war crimes or reveal even basic details of US military operations, jailers subjected him to horrific abuse.

Taking command of fellow POWs he usually could not see, Denton fashioned a secret prison communication system using the sound of coughs, hacks, scratching, spitting and throat-clearing keyed to letters of the alphabet. "When you think you've reached the limit of your endurance, give them harmless and inaccurate information that you can remember, and repeat it if tortured again," he told his men. "We will die before we give them classified military information." Thinking they'd broken him, Denton's captors allowed a Japanese TV reporter to interview him on May 2, 1966. "The blinding floodlights made me blink and suddenly I realized that they were playing right into my hands," he wrote. "I looked directly into the camera and blinked my eyes once, slowly, then three more times, slowly. A dash and three more dashes. A quick blink, slow blink, quick blink." While his impromptu blinks silently told the world that prisoners were being tortured, he was unabashed in the interview, which was later broadcast around the world, in his denial of American wrongdoing. "Whatever the position of my government is, I believe in it - yes, sir," said Denton. "I'm a member of that government and it is my job to support it, and I will as long as I live."

Michele Chabin reports that the possible US decision to free spy Jonathan Pollard, an American Jew convicted in 1987 of spying for Israel, has politicians, settlers and activists on all sides in an uproar over whether the price is too high. Israel's news media reported Monday that the Obama administration is weighing the release of Pollard in return for Israeli concessions to the Palestinians on settlement building and freeing of Palestinian prisoners. Pollard was arrested on November 21, 1985 after the conclusion of an investigation into suspicion he was spying for Israel. He was convicted in 1987 to a life sentence for one count of espionage.

Pollard is the only person in US history to receive a life sentence for spying for an ally and the only American citizen convicted of such a crime to be sentenced to more than 10 years in prison. Pollard is considered by many in Israel and the American Jewish community to be a national hero. Supporters of his release argue that his sentencing was disproportionately harsh and that he was acting out of loyalty to Israel, not mal-intent against the U.S., and that the documents he handed over to Israel were about Arab countries and the Soviet Union, not US intelligence methods. US officials claim the damage done by Pollard's spying is far worse than people realize. In an interview with Foreign Policy, retired Adm. Thomas Brooks, the former director of naval intelligence, said Pollard's actions have been "exceeded only by Edward Snowden," the NSA whistleblower. The last time US officials considered releasing Pollard during the Clinton administration, CIA Director George Tenet told Clinton he would resign if Pollard were released.

Brayden King and Jerry Kim write in the NYT that a team studying more than 700,000 pitches into the strike-zone during major league baseball games found that umpires frequently made errors behind the plate - about 14 percent of non-swinging pitches were called erroneously. Using pitch-location data compiled by high-speed cameras , the team found that many of those errors occurred in fairly predictable ways. For example, umpires tend to favor the home team by expanding the strike zone, calling a strike when the pitch was actually a ball 13.3 percent of the time for home team pitchers versus 12.7 percent of the time for visitors. Other errors were more surprising. For example, analysis suggests that umpires were 13 percent more likely to miss an actual strike in the bottom of the ninth inning of a tie game than in the top of the first inning, on the first pitch.

However the research team also observed that there are other errors that are not deliberate that may reflect an unconscious and biased decision-making process. In general umpires tend to make errors in ways that favor players who have established themselves at the top of the game's status hierarchy (PDF). For example, an umpire was about 16 percent more likely to erroneously call a pitch outside the zone a strike for a five-time All-Star than for a pitcher who had never appeared in an All-Star Game and an umpire was about 9 percent less likely to mistakenly call a real strike a ball for a five-time All-Star. Finally pitchers with a track record of not walking batters - like Greg Maddux - were much more likely to benefit from their All-Star status than similarly decorated but "wilder" pitchers like Randy Johnson.

"This season Major League Baseball is allowing its officiating crews to use instant replay to review certain critical calls, including home runs, force plays and foul balls. But the calling of the strike zone - determining whether a pitch that is not swung at is a ball or a strike - will still be left completely to the discretion of the officials," conclude the authors. "Technologically, Major League Baseball is in a position, thanks to its high-speed camera system, to enforce a completely accurate, uniform strike zone. The question is whether we, as fans, want our games to be fair and just, or whether we are compelled to watch the game because it mimics the real world, warts and all."

The Christian Science Monitor reports that Costco will dump almost one million jars of peanut butter into a New Mexico landfill and bulldoze over them after retailer Costco refused to take shipment of the peanut butter and declined requests to let it be donated to food banks or repackaged or sold to brokers who provide food to institutions like prisons. The peanut butter comes from a bankrupt peanut-processing plant that was at the heart of a salmonella outbreak in 2012 and although "all parties agreed there's nothing wrong with the peanut butter from a health and safety issue," court records show that on a 19 March conference call Costco said "it would not agree to any disposition ... other than destruction."

Despite the peanut butter being safe, Curry County landfill employee Tim Stacy says that no one will be able to consume the peanut butter once it's dumped because it was immediately rolled over with a bulldozer, destroying the supply. Stacy added more trash will then be dumped on top of the pile. Sonya Warwick, spokeswoman for New Mexico's largest food bank, declined to comment directly on the situation, but she noted that rescued food accounted for 74% of what Roadrunner Food Bank distributed across New Mexico last year. "Access to rescued food allows us to provide a more well-rounded and balanced meal to New Mexicans experiencing hunger." No word yet on where anyone was going to find a million jars of jelly.

Mark Prigg reports on a smartphone app for recovering alcoholics that sounds an alert when they get too close to their favorite bars. The app, nicknamed A-CHESS for the Center for Health Enhancement Systems Studies, has been deemed a success in initial trials as adults who got free sober smartphones reported fewer drinking days and more overall abstinence than those who got the usual follow-up support. The app contains a range of support facilities, including GPS that triggers when the person gets near a favorite bar. If it seems that they are contemplating entering (such as if they stay near the area), the app will play a pre-recorded confessional video of the patient recounting their experience with alcoholism or a recording of one of their children pleading with them not to drink. The app also includes a panic button that can be programmed to notify peers who are nearest to the patient when the button is pushed. "It does seem a little intrusive, but for people who are really battling with alcoholism, they need a lot of this type of monitoring and ongoing support," says Dr. Scott Krakower. "They do well in controlled settings, but when they leave the center and go back into their environment, they are at risk for relapse."

A clinical trial observed 350 participants recently released from rehabilitation centers, with 52 percent using A-CHESS remaining alcohol-free for the following year. Of those participants who received only traditional support methods, only 40 percent remained alcohol-free. Users of A-CHESS also experienced half the risky drinking days of those who did not. A company is being formed to commercialize the app and A-CHESS could soon become available to the public through Android and Apple stores. Dr. Gail Basch says proven methods for helping prevent relapse include patient monitoring and support from family and peers. "A stand-alone mobile app may not be the answer, but one can see how it could fit in nicely. A real-time tool, as well as reminders throughout the day, could be very helpful for a recovering brain."

Nate Swammer writes at Slashgear that with Facebook's purchase of Oculus for a cool $2 billion, the fervor surrounding virtual reality headwear quickly turned to disdain while betrayal, confusion, and anger became the response of contributors who gave Oculus $2.4 million through its Kickstarter campaign. But looking at the factors dispassionately, the Facebook acquisition may turn out much better than anticipated for users. Oculus wasn't flush, and there were strong indications they had been beaten at their own game. In their official announcement of the Facebook deal, gaming was barely a blip on the radar. It wasn't until the very end that gaming was even mentioned, with the bulk of the post discussing "culture" and driving virtual reality forward. There was little to indicate any big titles were coming for Oculus, and the most notable in Minecraft has pulled support altogether. The headwear also famously suffered from a supply chain issue not long ago, which actually stopped it dead in its tracks.

The fact is, Oculus needed help. Not technical advisory, but someone who could be their Sony, more or less. John Carmack says he has "a deep respect for the technical scale that FB operates at. The cyberspace we want for VR will be at this scale." Perhaps Facebook isn't the most popular choice, but they are the partner Oculus chose for their future says Swammer. "Like Google purchasing Android in 2005, it all seems so strange right now -- but we see how that turned out. If VR really is the next frontier, Facebook just staked their claim to a big slab of land in the heart of some virtual country they'll likely let us see someday - via Oculus."

For two weeks after this place launched, I decided I wouldn't visit Slashdot. I'd try to comment on at least one story each day and so on. After two weeks, I started visiting Slashdot again.

Now we're a few weeks in, and most stories when I come here are re-treads of things that I read on Slashdot a few days earlier. There's no point commenting on them, because I've already commented on the ones I'm interested in on Slashdot. Everyone else seems to feel the same way, because I rarely see a story with more than 10 comments. For a site that is meant to be all about the comments, that's an abject failure.

How could this have been solved? Well, as I proposed around launch time, the editors could have made a point of commenting on each story to prime the pump. When a story scrolls off the bottom of the front page with fewer comments than there are editors, then it's a failure. It means that either editors are posting stories that they're not interested in (in which case, why are they posting them?) or that they don't actually visit the site (in which case why are they editors?).

The only stories currently on the front page with more than 12 comments are 'people opting for dumb phones instead of smartphones' (which I'm just about to read - sounds like a typical rehash of the 'I have no self control so I'm going to use crappy technology to limit my exposure to stuff' story) and 'SCOTUS Signals Support for Corporate Religion?'. Where's the tech news? Are there any people here interested in discussing tech stories?

It feels like the staff gave up after the public temper tantrum between two of them and the community followed.

Urine is sterile, and chlorine is sterilizing. At least that's the justification swimmer offer themselves, to counter their shame and what's more, decorated Olympic swimmers Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte admit they do it too. "It's kind of a normal thing to do with swimmers," says Phelps. "You know, when we're in the water for two hours we don't really get out, you know, to pee."

It turns out that it's a pretty bad idea, for more reasons than just the ick factor as Julie Beck writes that a new study published in the American Chemical Society's journal Environmental Science & Technology, has looked at the chemistry of what happens when urine meets chlorine, and it's not pretty. When researchers mixed uric acid, found in both urine and sweat, with chlorine, they found that both trichloramine and cyanogen chloride form within an hour. "We know that there are associations between some of these chemicals and adverse human health outcomes, so we're motivated to understand the chemistry behind their formation and decay," says Ernest Blatchley III.

Exposure to trichloramine has been linked to respiratory problems (PDF), and cyanogen chloride can adversely affect the lungs, central nervous system, and cardiovascular system. Another issue is if a lot of people are peeing in the pool, there's the potential for a lot of cyanogen chloride to form, depleting the chlorine in the pool. While the cyanogen chloride would normally decay quickly, less chlorine means it might stick around longer, and that could be a real problem. All of this is to say that peeing in the pool is not harmless, despite Phelps' and Lochte's claims that it's normal and everybody does it. "There's a lot of people in the swimming community who look up to these people and listen to what they have to say," says Blatchley "[Phelps and Lochte] are not chemists and shouldn't be making statements that are that false."

The Washington Post reports that a group of evolutionary biologists looked at the science of bump and grind, and say they have figured out exactly which dance movements catch a woman's eye. Researchers set up the experiment as follows: they recruited 30 men to dance to a core drum beat for 30 seconds. The dancers were given no specific instructions on how to dance beforehand, and their movements were recorded via a sophisticated motion-capture system. Each dancer's 30-second routine was then used to animate a "featureless, gender-neutral" computer-generated avatar. Researchers then asked 37 women to view each of the dancing avatars and rate their performance on a seven-point scale. The results: Women rated dancers higher when they showed larger and more variable movements of the head, neck and torso (PDF). Speed of leg movements mattered too, particularly bending and twisting of the right knee. Going beyond the dance floor, these findings could demonstrate that mens' dance moves could carry "honest signals of traits such as health, �tness, genetic quality and developmental history." No word yet on whether similar findings hold true for mens' assessments of womens' dancing ability as an indication of their genetic quality and fitness.