HarryCaul - Slashdot User

Submission + - Human Sense of smell 'underestimated'

Submitted by

gollum123

on Monday December 18, 2006 @06:57PM

gollum123 writes: "The sensitivity of the human sense of smell has been significantly underestimated, a study suggests ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6183379.stm ). The work, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, asked people to follow scents on the ground, as a dog would do, and found they were as good. The researchers from University of California Berkley laid scent trails, including one of chocolate essential oil, in a grassy field, and asked 32 people to find the 10 metre trail and track it to the end. Those who took part were blindfolded and wore thick gloves and earplugs to force them to rely exclusively on smell. Two thirds were able to follow the scent. And while they remained slower than the animals at tracking scents, their performance improved over time. In other tests, it was found that humans required both nostrils to be working to be able to track scents."

Submission + - FTC To Investiage 'Viral Marketing' Practices

Submitted by mcflaherty on Wednesday December 13, 2006 @02:37PM

mcflaherty writes: The Federal Trade Commission(FTC)is going to investigate the use of so called 'Viral Marketing' by corporations. This is the type of advertising that seeks to start a word of mouth campaign for the product via consumers themselves. Previously, consumers themselves set the buzz. But lately advertisement firms are stepping up to the plate themselves, seeding the market with buzz that looks independent of the company, but is in fact funded by them. The crew at Penny Arcade contend that corporate generated buzz is not Viral Marketing, and perhaps Guerilla Marketing would be a more apt term. Either way, it appears to be a profitable advertising model.

Submission + - Word Virus Expands Beyond Earth

Submitted by BoredNasaGeek on Wednesday December 13, 2006 @02:23PM

BoredNasaGeek writes: According to a call from the Space Shuttle commander to the mission control center the Shuttle crew currently have a problem with Word macro viruses on their computers. This leads to a ban on sending email attachments to the Shuttle. The message from the commander went something like this: 'Do you have any news on the.. I don't know if I should say this.. virus situation with Word documents?'

Submission + - Geek Fiction: Edgy sci-fi for techies

Submitted by scuzz2 on Wednesday December 13, 2006 @12:30PM

scuzz2 writes: Geek Fiction is a new series of sci-fi stories with attitude, full of "nerdy" references: Linux gadgets, Star Trek, Babylon 5, programming/hacking and stuff like that. In the first episode, a misanthropic teen virus writer dispatches the central hero with an M-160 rocket launcher.

Classic line (from later in the series): "They stared blinkingly, as helpless and perplexed as a Web 2.0 start-up experiencing its first server crash."

But the author (who also wrote Extreme Programming Refactored) wants your comments and ideas to feed back into the story. Community-driven fiction perhaps?

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