In Italy, all cargo containers carrying scrap metal get checked for radiation, by hand, before they’re allowed off the docks. At Voltri, this job falls to Montagna, a 49-year-old independent consultant certified as an expert in radiation detection by the Italian government. By the time he arrived that morning, longshoremen had gathered eleven 20-foot-long, 8-foot-wide containers from across the terminal, relying on manifests to determine which ones needed to be scanned. The boxes were lined up in two neat rows near the terminal’s entrance. (…)

He plugged in a heavy sensor wand and set the device on the ground 20 yards away from the containers. The Model 3 emits a high-pitched beep every time it detects a radioactive particle; Montagna turned it on, and the meter’s needle swung hard to the right, burying itself past the maximum reading of 500,000 counts per minute. Instead of its usual staccato chirps, the machine was whining continuously and frantically. (…)

Montagna realized that one of the containers in front of him held a lethal secret. But was that secret merely a slow-motion radioactive industrial accident—or a bomb, one that could decimate the Italian city’s entire 15-mile waterfront? Montagna ran back to his car to get a less sensitive detector. He didn’t give much thought to protection; at those radiation levels, he would have needed lead armor 5 inches thick to stand within a couple of feet of the source for very long.

Montagna took the new meter and walked up to the sealed boxes, circling each one in turn. Halfway down the second row, a crimson 20-footer with “TGHU 307703 0 22G1″ emblazoned in white on its side jerked the dials. As he passed a few feet from the box’s left side, Montagna was absorbing radiation equivalent to six chest x-rays per minute.

There are millions of containers just like TGHU 307703 0 22G1. The only thing that distinguished it from the steel boxes stacked in your local port or hitched to a truck one lane over during your morning commute—besides radiation a million times above normal background levels—was the painted-on identification number. (…)

Under the right conditions, just 20 milligrams of cesium-137—roughly the amount found in gadgets that hospitals use to calibrate their radiation therapy equipment—could contaminate 40 city blocks. (…)

The team then brought in one of the most sensitive portable detectors on the market, an $80,000 Ortec HPGe Detective DX-100T.

{ Wired | Continue reading }

{ 1. Steen Larsen | 2. Caitlin Teal Price }

{ A Mystery: Why Can’t We Walk Straight? }

Abu Dhabi — A dramatic fall in traffic accidents this week has been directly linked to the three-day disruption in BlackBerry services.

In Dubai, traffic accidents fell 20 per cent from average rates on the days BlackBerry users were unable to use its messaging service. In Abu Dhabi, the number of accidents this week fell 40 per cent and there were no fatal accidents.

On average there is a traffic accident every three minutes in Dubai, while in Abu Dhabi there is a fatal accident every two days.

{ The National | Continue reading }

photo { Richard Prince, Untitled (Upstate), 1995-99 }

Jealousy has often been considered a dangerous emotion because it motivates a wide range of behavior including spousal violence and abuse. It is therefore a major task of jealousy research to identify potential determinants of jealousy-motivated behavior. One such potential determinant is the intensity of the jealousy feeling. It appears reasonable to assume that mild jealousy feelings promote rather innocuous mate retention tactics such as heightened vigilance. In contrast, very intense feelings are more likely to evoke ferocious reactions including violence and abuse.

Several determinants of jealousy intensity have been identified. First, sneaking suspicions of a partner’s infidelity appear to result in mild, anxious-insecurity like jealousy feelings, whereas the certainty of actual infidelity is associated with intense, rage-like jealousy feelings.

Secondly, based on evolutionary psychological considerations, Buunk and his colleagues provided substantial empirical evidence that rival characteristics affect jealousy intensity. These authors found that a (potential) rival’s high physical attractiveness elicits more jealousy in women than in men. In contrast, a (potential) rival high in social and physical dominance and social status evokes more jealousy in men than in women.

Third, a fundamental factor contributing to the intensity of jealousy concerns the infidelity type the partner engages in. Empirical evidence continues to accumulate confirming the evolutionary psychological hypothesis that men respond with more intense jealousy than women to a mate’s sexual infidelity whereas, conversely, women respond with more intense jealousy than men to a mate’s emotional infidelity.

As the unfaithful partner most likely tries to conceal his or her infidelity, the jealousy mechanism often needs to rely on indirect evidence from which a mate’s infidelity can be inferred. An important source of such indirect evidence consists of sudden and conspicuous changes in the partner’s behavior. (…) However, the sudden and conspicuous changes in the partner’s behavior as factors contributing to jealousy intensity and thus determinants of jealousy-motivated behavior have several limitations. First, these behavioral changes are often ambiguous with respect to the infidelity type (e.g., the clothing style suddenly changes; he or she stops returning your phone calls), thus presumably requiring complex inference processes that are prone to errors. Second, some if not most of these behavioral cues to infidelity were certainly not available during our ancestors’ past, (e.g., the clothing style suddenly changes; he or she stops returning your phone calls). As a consequence, they could not have shaped the jealousy mechanism during its evolutionary history. (…)

These considerations raise the question whether there are possible additional cues to infidelity that do not suffer from the limitations mentioned above. The present study picks up this question and examines a hitherto neglected but fundamental proximate contextual factor in jealousy research: The spatial distance between the persons involved in the “eternal triangle” (Buss, 2000), that is the partner, the potential rival and the jealous person. Spatial distance between the three persons (a) was recurrently available to our ancestors and thus could have been exploited by the jealousy mechanism throughout our evolutionary past, (b) can be clearly detected, (c) is not ambiguous and thus does not require complex inferential processes, (d) informs rather directly about appropriate mate guarding behavior (e.g., moving closer to the partner; increasing the distance between the partner and the potential rival or stepping between the partner and the potential rival).

{ Evolutionary Psychology | Continue reading | PDF }

painting { Fragonard, The Stolen Kiss, c. 1786-1788 }

He is one of New York’s busiest casting directors, yet very few know of his work. (…)

For some 15 years, Mr. Weston has been providing the New York Police Department with “fillers” — the five decoys who accompany the suspect in police lineups.

Detectives often find fillers on their own, combing homeless shelters and street corners for willing participants. In a pinch, police officers can shed their uniforms and fill in. But in the Bronx, detectives often pay Mr. Weston $10 to find fillers for them.

A short man with a pencil-thin beard, Mr. Weston seems a rather unlikely candidate for having a working relationship with the Police Department, even an informal one. He is frequently profane, talks of beating up anyone who crosses him, and spends quite a bit of his money on coconut-flavored liquor.

But Mr. Weston points out that he has never failed to produce lineups when asked, no matter what time of night. “I never say no to money,” he said.

Across the nation, police lineups are under a fresh round of legal scrutiny, as recent studies have suggested that mistaken identifications in lineups are a leading cause of wrongful convictions, and that witnesses can be steered toward selecting the suspect arrested by the police.

But for all the attention that lineups attract in legal circles, Mr. Weston’s role in finding lineup fillers is largely unknown. Few defense lawyers and prosecutors, though they spar over the admissibility of lineups in court, have heard of him.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

follow-up to { UC Berkeley scientists developed a “decoder” that can reconstruct our visual experiences }

Back in the day, when bad guys used telephones, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies would listen in with wiretaps. As long as phone companies cooperated—and they had to, by law—it was a relatively straightforward process. The Internet, however, separated providers of communications services—Skype, Facebook, Gmail—from those running the underlying infrastructure. Thus, even if the FBI obtains a suspect’s traffic data from their Internet service provider (ISP)—Comcast, Verizon, etc.—it may be difficult to make sense of it, especially if the suspect has been using encrypted services. This loophole has not been lost on child pornographers, drug traffickers, terrorists, and others who prize secret communications.

To catch up with the new technologies of malfeasance, FBI director Robert Mueller traveled to Silicon Valley last November to persuade technology companies to build “backdoors” into their products. If Mueller’s wish were granted, the FBI would gain undetected real-time access to suspects’ Skype calls, Facebook chats, and other online communications

{ Boston Review | Continue reading }

An Australian technology expert has discovered Facebook tracks the websites its users visit after they leave the social networking site. Nik Cubrilovic said his tests showed Facebook did not delete its tracking cookies when you logged out but modified them, maintaining account information and other unique tokens that could identify you.

So whenever you visited a web page containing a Facebook button or widget, your browser was still sending the details back to Facebook, said Mr Cubrilovic. “Even if you are logged out, Facebook still knows and can track every page you visit,” he wrote in a blog post. “The only solution is to delete every Facebook cookie in your browser, or to use a separate browser for Facebook interactions.”

{ Sydney Morning Herald | Continue reading }

Facebook filed paperwork today to start FB PAC, a political action committee that will support candidates dedicated to protecting the online privacy of ordinary Americans at any cost. Kidding! The PAC will fund candidates who support “giving people the power to share,” i.e. stripping them of what few government privacy protections remain.

{ Gawker | Continue reading }

In the famous equation E=mc² that equates mass with the energy contained within it, the “c” represents the speed of light. If particles go faster than light, things become troublesome.

Under such a scenario, an observer in a rocket ship traveling near the speed of light who was watching the Gran Sasso experiment taking place, “would detect the neutrino before it was emitted—they’d see it going backwards in time,” said Dr. Turok.

{ WSJ | Continue reading | More: Measurement of the neutrino velocity with the OPERA detector in the CNGS beam | PDF }

{ mysterious letters }

An Italian experiment has unveiled evidence that fundamental particles known as neutrinos can travel faster than light. (…)

Neutrinos are fundamental particles that are electrically neutral, rarely interact with other matter, and have a vanishingly small mass. But they are all around us—the sun produces so many neutrinos as a by-product of nuclear reactions that many billions pass through your eye every second.

{ Scientific American | Continue reading }

Paranormal experiences – whether it’s a psychic or an out-of-body experience or seeing a ghost – may not tell you anything about the world of the supernatural, because that world doesn’t exist, but those experiences still tell you about how your brain and mind operate. (…)

Tell us about his $1 million prize.

He has a long-standing financial reward if anyone can prove under test conditions that they’re psychic. There are various people who act as testers for him in various countries – I’m one of them in the UK. I’ve tested a few people. And it probably says something about the psychic world that in the 10 years that the prize has been up for grabs, no-one has come even close to claiming it. I tested a woman called Patricia Putt who was convinced she could give psychic readings for people, and that they would recognise their past and present in those readings. So we had lots of people come in, she would write down her readings, then we showed them to people and said you had to choose yours out of all of them. And suddenly they were at a loss. That’s because when you go for a psychic reading you know it’s meant for you. You’re sitting there, there are all these ambiguous comments, you can read into them and suddenly be impressed. Once you take away that mechanism everything collapses. (…) A million dollars – quite a large sum of money – is sitting there waiting for the first psychic who can prove they have these abilities. (…)

Does the soul weigh 21 grams?

That is where the movie title comes from. This was an American psychologist around the turn of the 20th century who put dogs onto scales, trying to weigh their souls leaving. He had some success with that, then tried the same with humans – putting very old people on the scales and waiting for them to die. But what he didn’t control for is sweating, moisture leaving the body. So 21 grams is probably much closer to the amount of moisture you lose when you die than your soul.

What exactly is a near-death experience?

A near-death experience is very similar to an out-of-body experience, which is where people think they’re floating away from their body, turned around seeing their body lying there. In a near-death experience, there is often a tunnel of light you go down towards meeting your maker. The gods you see depend very much on the culture you live in. Then the god turns you back, you return into your body and you wake up.

As we know more about how the brain creates a sense of where it is, we know more about how these experiences can be created. Now there are experiments where we can create an out-of-body experience fairly rapidly. Other researchers – and Mary Roach talks about these – write target numbers or words on pieces of cardboard and place them on top of cabinets and wardrobes in hospital wards, in the hope that somebody having a near-death or out-of-body experience will look down and see them. To date they haven’t. Which again suggests that this is an illusion rather than a genuine experience.

{ Richard Wiseman/The Browser | Continue reading }

artwork { Alex Grey, Kissing, 1983 }

{ Thanks Glenn! }

{ Going to the store by David Lewandowski }

{ via Copyranter }

In 2009, a nine year-old Brazilian girl became pregnant with twins after being raped by her stepfather. With advice from doctors, her mother opted for her to have an abortion. After pleading with Brazil, which outlaws abortions except when the mother’s life is in danger or when she has been raped, her daughter was granted one. Then things got really ugly. When the Archbishop of the city of Recife heard the news he invoked Canon law and excommunicated the mother and daughter and the members of the medical team who performed the abortion; the stepfather, meanwhile, remained a loyal and accepted member of the church. (…)

The question is: why do humans remain so steadfast to their beliefs, sometimes even in the face of overwhelming opposing evidence?

The answer rests in a few psychological tendencies that when mixed together form a potent recipe for ignorance. The first is confirmation bias – the propensity for people to look for what confirms their beliefs and ignore what contradicts their beliefs while not being concerned for the truth. (…)

Then there’s cognitive dissonance, which describes a “state of tension that occurs whenever a person holds two cognitions that are psychologically inconsistent.” (…)

Finally, there’s motivated reasoning, which describes our tendency to accept what we want to believe with much more ease and much less analysis than what we don’t want to believe.

{ Why We Reason | Continue reading }

What makes up 95 percent of the universe?

The answer to the most basic of questions—what’s out there?—has been undergoing constant revision for millennia. (…) It turns out that atoms and other particles we know and understand only make up about 5 percent of the whole shebang. (…)

Why do we need sleep?

Two prevailing theories argue that sleep either restores the energy we need to thrive, or it helps us adapt to threats. Both concepts turn on the idea that evolution made us sleep for a reason. (…)

How do we come to make decisions?

Like all matters relating to gray matter, the answers aren’t clear. “We probably don’t know 99 percent about how the brain does what it does,” says Charles “Ed” Connor, a professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins Brain Science Institute. Still, researchers are making great inroads in understanding things at the cellular and molecular levels, he adds. They understand that the brain collects information delivered by the senses, and when that data reaches a critical mass, parts of the prefrontal cortex act as judge and jury, leading us to come to a conclusion. (…)

When will an earthquake strike? (…)

Are we alone?

{ Johns Hopkins Magazine | Continue reading }

For most people, the term art crime invariably brings to mind images of daring museum break-ins, the theft of million-dollar paintings, and the stylish, sexy thieves who mastermind them.

In reality, high-value museum thefts are the exception rather than the rule. As retired FBI Art Crime Team Special Agent Bob Wittman recounts in his memoir, “art theft is rarely about the love of art or the cleverness of the crime, and the thief is rarely the Hollywood caricature. (…) Nearly all the art thieves I met in my career had one thing in common: brute greed. They stole for money, not beauty.”

{ Crime, Law and Social Change | Continue reading }

In a bizarre repeat of a high-profile incident last year, an Apple employee once again appears to have lost an unreleased iPhone in a bar.

Last year, an iPhone 4 prototype was bought by a gadget blog that paid $5,000 in cash. This year’s lost phone seems to have taken a more mundane path: it was taken from a Mexican restaurant and bar and may have been sold on Craigslist for $200. Still unclear are details about the device, what version of the iOS operating system it was running, and what it looks like.

{ CNET | Continue reading }