65393081
submission
turning in circles writes:
Some researchers have developed algorithms that equate the way you bang the keyboard with how you are feeling at the time. They demonstrated about 87% accuracy with joy, 81% accuracy with anger, and less accuracy with other emotions. The researchers describe how this could be helpful for computer interactions with users (since computers don't identify emotions very well) or possibly online therapy sessions. But if I were an employer who had people on keyboards all day, I'd want to know their emotional state of being (especially if they were in customer service, think The Circle?). Hi employees! Here's your new keyboard.
63790457
submission
turning in circles writes:
The New York Times reported that donations to ALS topped $41.8 million. This is great for raising awareness about this horrible disease. The disease is horrible because not only does it have no cure, no one really understands the causes of it. I have heard pharmaceuticals abused for not producing a cure, but they don't know how. Sorry to throw cold water on this party (ahem), but aren't there other worthy charities that are a little closer to actually helping people right now, or soon, that would be better to donate to?
61046387
submission
turning in circles writes:
Carbon based fuel cells require carbon doped with other elements, normally platinum, for oxygen reduction reactions. Urine contains carbon with an exciting splash of nitrogen, sulfur, potassium, silicon, and so on, and you don't have to manufacture it, the stuff just comes out by itself. In an article published this week in an open journal, researchers from Korea this week reported a new nanomaterial for fuel cells, which they dub "Urine Carbon." Upon drying, and then heating at 1000C, and rinsing of salts, the resulting Urine Carbon porous nanostructures outperformed Carbon/platinum in electrodes. Now this is Gee Whiz science for you.
54080547
submission
turning in circles writes:
Those of us in boring midwest towns everybody's heard of, but nobody's visited, such as Indianapolis, take great comfort in the fact that whatever happens on the coasts, we're too small potatoes to matter. Al Qaeda won't bomb us. NSA won't snoop on us. Dull factor 100%. But maybe that's not so. Our state police just bought a device for tracking all the metadata for our cell phones whenever they like. And it was, all things considered, pretty cheap. Small town America, it's time to get scared.
52007573
submission
turning in circles writes:
Medical researchers have found that rats prefer Oreos to rice cakes about as much as they prefer cocaine or morphine. The levels of pleasure-recognizing proteins in the rats' brains actually increased more for Oreos than cocaine. More studies like this, and maybe studies with McDonald's french fries, might further open the debate about the extent to which obesity is a medical condition vs a personal preference.
50770855
submission
turning in circles writes:
For some time, physicists have used perovskites embedded in silicon in a complex nanostructure to fabricate a new class of solar cells. These were tricky to build and not much more efficient than normal silicon semiconductors. However, some of these same physicists just realized that if they build solar cells with perovskites alone, using a flat, simple process, efficiency is 50% better than silicon semiconductors and fabrication costs are about the same. Who says simplify only applies to people who shop at Whole Foods and people who write code?
