Missing boy existed only on Facebook

Norway’s adult literacy rate is 100% Is Norway paradise for publishers?

New research shows people are thinking about their health early in the week

The more alcoholic drinks customers consumed, the more attractive they thought they were

Uniter of Sperm and Egg Is Found

Scientists discover brain’s anti-distraction system

The researchers were interested in how people jump to conclusions based on limited information. The key part of the experiment was that the participants were fully aware of the setup. [via Mind Hacks]

Syncopation, Body-Movement and Pleasure in Groove Music

Yawning as a brain cooling mechanism

Study suggest that having an increased familial morbid risk for schizophrenia may be the underlying basis for schizophrenia in cannabis users and not cannabis use by itself.

These observations indicate that even causal cannabis use can lead to significant structural changes in key areas of the brain during development, including disruption of how the neurons themselves are organised.

Criminals Using Drones To Find Illegal Cannabis Farms and Steal Crops

Method and apparatus for preserving human and animal remains

Firing a shotgun to calculate the approximate value of π

How the stock market became “rigged”

Dark patterns are deliberate acts of manipulative design whose intent is to push users toward choices that harm their interests.

Google pays Apple $1 billion a year in commissions so that it is the default search engine for iOS devices

Bill Gates vs. Google Glass: Pending patent would thwart video snooping

This isn’t an abnormal use of Google Glass

Bitcoin Creator ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’ Unmasked–Again?

He won the IgNobel Award in 2000 for levitating a live frog with magnets—and then [won the Nobel] for isolating graphene 10 years later

Jesus in Interaction: The Sociology of Micro-charisma

The Art of Antarctic Cooking

Looks Like Pharrell Ripped Off Brooklynites’ ‘Girl Walk All Day’ Video

Just the thing for a cosy night in

In humans, as in many other animals, the appetite prioritizes protein over carbohydrate or fat. The evolutionary explanation is straightforward: eating too little protein compromises growth, development and reproduction.

Many processed food products are protein-poor but are engineered to taste like protein. Many people therefore eat far too much fat and carbohydrate in their attempt to ingest enough protein. In this way, engineered foods subvert the appetite control systems that should be helping to balance the consumption of macronutrients. The results are striking. In the United States, the typical diet saw a 0.8% decline in protein concentration between 1971 and 2006. During this same period, the consumption of calories from carbohydrates and fats increased by 8%, a trend reflected in the rising prevalence of obesity, but protein intake remained almost unchanged.

{ Nature | Continue reading }

What do you want to hear first: Good news or bad news?

Our answer to this question is different depending on whether we’re the one delivering the news or we’re the one receiving the news.

{ Jeremiah Stanghini | Continue reading }

photo { Anna Grzelewska }

The XM-25 denies cover to the enemy in that the operator fires a laser at the target, then selects how close to that impact point he wants the shell to explode.  Once he fires the weapon the 25mm shell explodes over or near where the laser was pointed, rendering most forms of cover ineffective.

{ Quora | Continue reading }

Vein geometry is just as unique as irises and fingerprints. The serpentine network of your vascular system is determined by many factors, including random influences in the womb. The result is a chaotic, singular print. Even twins have different vein structure in their hands. Vein patterns don’t change much as you age, so a scan of your palm can serve as biometric identification for the rest of your life.

{ Quartz | Continue reading }

The average person misplaces up to nine items a day, and one-third of respondents in a poll said they spend an average of 15 minutes each day searching for items—cellphones, keys and paperwork top the list, according to an online survey of 3,000 people published in 2012 by a British insurance company. […]

In a recent study, researchers in Germany found that the majority of people surveyed about forgetfulness and distraction had a variation in the so-called dopamine D2 receptor gene (DRD2), leading to a higher incidence of forgetfulness. According to the study, 75% of people carry a variation that makes them more prone to forgetfulness.

{ WSJ | Continue reading }

related { Processing new information during sleep compromises memory }

photo { Daniel Bejar, The Visual Topography of a Generation Gap (Brooklyn, NY, #1), 2011 }

Man sues hospital and doctor after they allegedly forgot to remove his appendix during his appendectomy

The Italian Tourist Board spends 98 percent of its budget on salaries, with basically nothing left for its actual job of tourism promotion. [NY Times]

A British ice cream maker has created a flavor that includes 25 mg of Viagra per scoop. The flavor, titled “The Arousal,” also includes champagne as a key ingredient.

Physicists have confirmed the existence of an exotic particle that cannot be explained by current theories.

How CERN’s discovery of exotic particles may affect astrophysics

Bioengineers created nanoscale robots from DNA strands, injected them into live cockroaches and watched as the bots got to work.

How Neuroscientists in the 1800s Studied Blood Flow in the Brain

Humans can learn new information during sleep (associations between tones and odors)

How to Detect Criminal Gangs Using Mobile Phone Data

How Social Media Users Avoid Getting Turned Into Big Data

Blogger Pulls Off $30,000 Sting to Get Her Stolen Site Back

Writing revealing stories based on unreliable sources

Cindy Sherman on James Franco’s New Show: ‘I Don’t Know That I Can Say It’s Art’

The first emoticon may have appeared in 1648

The Insider Vocabulary of the Art World

Suicides & churches in Seattle, 1928

New visual illusion

Missing flight MH370: Robotic submarine to begin search

Safely Immobilize Children

An Italian man was sentenced to 6 months in jail because his girlfriend made too much noise during sex.

A 2008 study found that women showed signs of arousal watching pretty much anything: masturbation, straight sex, girl-on-girl, guy-on-guy, bonobo chimps, everything—except pictures of naked men, which did not float a woman’s boat.

Uncontacted Tribes Die Instantly After We Meet Them

Solar power is already so cheap that it competes with oil, diesel and liquefied natural gas in much of Asia without subsidies.

Between a fifth and a third of the wild-caught seafood imported into the United States is caught or trafficked illegally

Australia rules homeopathic remedies useless for human health

New research reveals that lifespan could be affected by how people deal with stress. People who forgive themselves for mistakes are physically healthier than those who obsess over them.

Magnifying the visual size of one׳s own hand modulates pain anticipation and perception, reducing experienced pain

People That Think Social Media Helps Their Work Are Probably Wrong

Too many ‘friends’, too few likes? Evolutionary Psychology and Facebook Depression and Understanding Factors Influencing Users’ Retweeting Behavior [via Bookforum]

44% of Twitter accounts have never sent a tweet

Quora raised $80 million so it can avoid monetization forever… or at least the next two years

Of all the words in the English language, which one has the most meanings? Run.

The Remarkable Self-Organization of Ants

Wassily Kandinsky, Dance Curves: On the Dances of Palucca, 1926

Eli Broad: I Would Not Hire Jeffrey Deitch Again

Robert Mapplethorpe having his nipple pierced

‘I want to prove that you can make art with nothing,” Abramovic explained to BBC

He decided to live inside a bear carcass for thirteen days and thirteen nights.

Lets Get Social 2014 [Thanks Tim]

Partnerships are situations in which two or more persons join to pursue a common project. Being together increases the chances of success of the project, whether the project aims at raising children, establishing a business or writing a scientific article. Much has been written about the issue of free riding in such situations: one of the partners may rely on the others to do most of the work while keeping on enjoying its benefits. This issue can lead to inefficient situations where both partners contribute very little. A comparatively small part of the academic literature deals with the dissolution of partnerships and why partners decide to stop working together. Both low contribution levels and dissolution indicate failure in a partnership, but the distinction between those two types of failures is important; it is akin to the distinction between a dysfunctional marriage that keeps on going, and a marriage that ends in a divorce.

This paper deals with the inner dynamics of partnerships, in particular with how success and failure determine the probability a common project will break down. […]

Subjects underestimated the pay-off from staying, in large part because they had an exaggerated fear of being left alone in the collaborative project. This led to lower overall welfare when exit was easy.

{ SSRN | Continue reading }

Spinoza is quoted approvingly […] to the effect that the free man is the one who thinks about, or fears, death the least. Such fear he considers to be a passive emotion, or affection, which is a bondage to pain, symptomatic of our impotence and servitude. Spinoza writes,

Hope is nothing else but an inconstant pleasure, arising from the image of something future or past, whereof we do not yet know the issue. Fear, on the other hand, is an inconstant pain also arising from the image of something concerning which we are in doubt. If the element of doubt be removed from these emotions, hope becomes Confidence and fear become Despair. In other words, Pleasure or Pain arising from the image of something concerning which we have hoped or feared.

The free man, in this light, is one who has not only cultivated the stronger active emotion of acquiescence to the univocal chorus of necessity, but has also learned to disengage external factors which are coincident with such passive emotions.

{ James Luchte | Continue reading }

Young, sexually mature humans Homo sapiens sapiens of both sexes commonly congregate into particular but arbitrary physical locations and dance. These may be areas of traditional use, such as nightclubs, discotheques or dance-halls or areas that are temporarily commissioned for the same purpose such as at house parties or rock festivals etc.

This type of behaviour is seen in a variety of animals although there are no apparent attempts to monopolize particular areas within these locations as is often seen in species that lek.

The present studies were conducted in order to investigate this phenomenon in a commercial nightclub environment. Data revealed that more than 80% of people entering the nightclub did so without a partner and so were potentially sexually available. There was also an approx. 50% increase in the number of couples leaving the nightclub as compared to those entering it seen on each occasion this was measured, indicating that these congregations are for sexual purposes.

Within the nightclub itself more than 80% of bouts of mixed sex dancing were initiated by a male approaching a female, demonstrating that males are stimulated to approach females rather than vice versa. In consequence, females are placed in competition with each other to attract these approaches.

Various female display tactics were measured and these showed that whilst only 20% of females wore tight fitting clothing that revealed more than 40% of their flesh/50% of their breast area and danced in a sexually suggestive manner, these attracted close to half (49%) of all male approaches seen. These data reveal the effectiveness of clothing and dance displays in attracting male attention and strongly indicate that nightclubs are human display grounds, organised around females competing for the attention of males. Females with the most successful displays gain the advantage of being able to choose from amongst a range of males showing interest in them.

{ Institute of Psychological Sciences | PDF }

photo { Camilla Åkrans }

A computer has solved the longstanding Erdős discrepancy problem. Trouble is, we have no idea what it’s talking about — because the solution, which is as long as all of Wikipedia’s pages combined, is far too voluminous for us puny humans to confirm.

A few years ago, the mathematician Steven Strogatz predicted that it wouldn’t be too much longer before computer-assisted solutions to math problems will be beyond human comprehension.

{ io9 | Continue reading }

photo { Taryn Simon }