Love stories are dynamic processes that begin, develop, and often stay for a relatively long time in a stationary or fluctuating regime, before possibly fading. Although they are, undoubtedly, the most important dynamic process in our life, they have only recently been cast in the formal frame of dynamical systems theory.

In particular, why it is so difficult to predict the evolution of sentimental relationships continues to be largely unexplained. A common reason for this is that love stories reflect the turbulence of the surrounding social environment. But we can also imagine that the interplay of the characters involved contributes to make the story unpredictable—that is, chaotic.

In other words, we conjecture that sentimental chaos can have a relevant endogenous origin. To support this intriguing conjecture, we mimic a real and well-documented love story with a mathematical model in which the environment is kept constant, and show that the model is chaotic. The case we analyze is the triangle described in Jules et Jim, an autobiographic novel by Henri-Pierre Roché that became famous worldwide after the success of the homonymous film directed by François Truffaut.

The results fully support our conjecture and also highlight the genius of François Truffaut.

{ Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science | PDF }

photo { Man Ray, Rayograph, 1925 }

She also learned an old cop trick: If you’re recovering a body in an apartment building, ask every tenant to make coffee — it covers the smell. “Oldest trick in the book,” one officer told her. […]

She began, as all autopsies do, by inserting a needle into the side of each eye to collect fluid — a delicate procedure Melinek perfected after once popping out a cadaver’s glass eyeball. […] Then she removed Booker’s testes, took a samples from each, and put them back in the scrotum. […]

There was the subway jumper at Union Square, for example, whose body was recovered on the tracks of the uptown 4 train with no blood — none at the scene, none in the body itself. She’d never seen anything like it, and only CME Hirsch could explain: The massive trauma to the entire body caused the bone marrow to absorb all the blood. […]

In one case, a man was shot in the chest, but the bullet was found in his liver.

{ NY Post | Continue reading }

photo { Hiroshi Sugimoto }

{ How MH17 Came Apart Over Ukraine }

Some people can handle stressful situations better than others, and it’s not all in their genes: Even identical twins show differences in how they respond.

Researchers have identified a specific electrical pattern in the brains of genetically identical mice that predicts how well individual animals will fare in stressful situations.

The findings may eventually help researchers prevent potential consequences of chronic stress — such as post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and other psychiatric disorders — in people who are prone to these problems.

{ EurekAlert | Continue reading }

UK to allow driverless cars on public roads in January

Giraffe Dies After Hitting Its Head on Highway Bridge

The voices heard by people with schizophrenia are friendlier in India and Africa, than in the US

Total darkness at night key to success of breast cancer therapy, study shows

Psychologists investigate a major, ignored reason for our lack of sleep - bedtime procrastination

If we can bend and shape our own memories, can a false memory be implanted by another?

Our findings corroborate prior research showing that people who implicitly think of relationships as a perfect unity between soul mates have worse relationships than people who implicitly think of relationships as a journey of growing and working things out.

Blood test can predict risk of suicide [via gettingsome]

A recommendation to eat or skip breakfast for weight loss had no discernable effect on weight loss.

A 2013 study suggests that if one is going to be shot with a bullet, one might be better off naked. On the other hand, different study suggests that if one is going to be shot with shotgun pellets, one might be better off wearing clothing.

Practice Does Not Make Perfect: No Causal Effect of Music Practice on Music Ability

Google’s Effort to Trademark ‘Glass’ Clears Hurdle

Spanish physicist invented a ‘magical’ ice cream that changes colour as you lick it.

A quarter of all auction sales were made to first time art buyers this year. An inside look at Sotheby’s and Christie’s global quest to identify and recruit more.

According to French Elle, women have stopped sunbathing topless in France.

Is it possible that an alien civilization has completely different mathematics than ours?

The Cyanometer Is a 225-Year-Old Tool for Measuring the Blueness of the Sky

Human pissbucket Justin Bieber and fucking Legolas got into a fight last night [video]

I accidentally started a Wikipedia hoax

Introverts, unite

Recent theoretical developments in evolutionary psychology suggest that more intelligent individuals may be more likely to prefer to remain childless than less intelligent individuals.

Analyses of the National Child Development Study show that more intelligent men and women express preference to remain childless early in their reproductive careers, but only more intelligent women (not more intelligent men) are more likely to remain childless by the end of their reproductive careers. […]

Because women have a greater impact on the average intelligence of future generations, the dysgenic fertility among women is predicted to lead to a decline in the average intelligence of the population in advanced industrial nations.

{ Social Science Research | PDF }

photo { Richard Kern }

Everybody knows that men are women have some biological differences – different sizes of brains and different hormones. It wouldn’t be too surprising if there were some neurological differences too. The thing is, we also know that we treat men and women differently from the moment they’re born, in almost all areas of life. Brains respond to the demands we make of them, and men and women have different demands placed on them. […]

They report finding significant differences between the sexes, but don’t show the statistics that allow the reader to evaluate the size of any sex difference against other factors such as age or individual variability. […] A significant sex difference could be tiny compared to the differences between people of different ages, or compared to the normal differences between individuals.

{ The Conversation | Continue reading }

The most important thing to take from this research is – as the authors report – increasing gender equality disproportionately benefits women. This is because – no surprise! – gender inequality disproportionately disadvantages women. […] But the provocative suggestion of this study is that as societies develop we won’t necessarily see all gender differences go away. Some cognitive differences may actually increase when women are at less of a disadvantage.

{ Mind Hacks | Continue reading }

Everybody knows that real blurry photos can’t be made sharp after the fact. But that’s exactly the premise of the new Illum camera from a startup called Lytro.

Instead of snapping a solitary image, the Illum captures a whole moment—known as the light field—so you can change focus and shift perspective after you’ve taken the shot.

Just by clicking around a screen, the viewer can focus on a birthday cake candle, the person blowing it out, or partygoers in the background.

{ WSJ | Continue reading }

art { Gerhard Richter, Frau Niepenberg, 1965 }

Automatically detecting human social intentions from spoken conversation is an important task for dialogue understanding. Since the social intentions of the speaker may differ from what is perceived by the hearer, systems that analyze human conversations need to be able to extract both the perceived and the intended social meaning.

We investigate this difference between intention and perception by using a spoken corpus of speed-dates in which both the speaker and the listener rated the speaker on flirtatiousness.

Our flirtation- detection system uses prosodic, dialogue, and lexical features to detect a speaker’s intent to flirt with up to 71.5% accuracy.

{ Stanford | PDF }

related { First Impressions Count, But How? }

What you order may have less to do with what you want and more to do with a menu’s layout and descriptions.

After analyzing 217 menus and the selections of over 300 diners, a Cornell study published this month showed that when it comes to what you order for dinner, two things matter most: what you see on the menu and how you imagine it will taste.

{ Cornell | Continue reading }

Robots replace cheering fans at South Korean baseball games

Beyoncé and Jay Z both change their cellphone numbers every two weeks.

“We basically show that people want to feel good at the right time — that is, when a goal is achieved and not before then.”

High-frequency traders are investing in microwave technology to shorten transmission times

How To Spot A Social Bot On Twitter

Math Twitter Bots, Reviewed and Rated

Lawsuit Filed To Prove Happy Birthday Is In The Public Domain; Demands Warner Pay Back Millions Of License Fees

How Secret Societies Stay Hidden On the Internet

From the way the Santa Cruz cops talk about it, the security camera video that captured a reputed high-price call girl injecting the 51-year-old tech veteran with a fatal dose of the drug aboard his yacht in Santa Cruz was surely horrific. Use of illicit drugs becomes part of Silicon Valley’s work culture

This Is How You Make Selfie Toast

This paper examines whether demands for bribes for particular government services are associated with expedited or delayed policy implementation. […]

[F]irms confronted with demands for bribes take approximately 1.5 times longer to get a construction permit, operating license, or electrical connection than firms that did not have to pay bribes and, respectively, 1.2 and 1.4 times longer to clear customs when exporting and importing.

{ World Bank | PDF }

Since The Fed’s extension of Operation Twist (and subsequent unveiling of QE3) in 2012, the stocks of “weak balance sheet” companies are up over 100%. In that same period, the stock prices of “strong balance sheet” companies are up a mere 43%.

{ ZeroHedge | Continue reading }

The last 5 days saw “strong” companies outperform “weak” companies by the most in 3 years - something appears to be changing.

{ ZeroHedge | Continue reading }

In Japan, the U.K., and, to a lesser extent, around the world, golfers buy insurance to protect themselves from the potentially bankrupting consequences of sinking a hole in one.

The concept of hole in one insurance may baffle the uninitiated, but to many it is a wise precaution as golf tradition holds that anyone who scores a hole in one should buy drinks back at the clubhouse for his playing group — if not everyone present. In Japan, many give extravagant gifts to friends and family after scoring a lucky ace.

{ Priceonomics | Continue reading }

Noise cancellation is a traditional problem in statistical signal processing that has not been studied in the olfactory domain for unwanted odors.

In this paper, we use the newly discovered olfactory white signal class to formulate optimal active odor cancellation using both nuclear norm-regularized multivariate regression and simultaneous sparsity or group lasso-regularized non-negative regression.

As an example, we show the proposed technique on real-world data to cancel the odor of durian, katsuobushi, sauerkraut, and onion.

{ IEEE Workshop on Statistical Signal Processing | PDF }

A millionaire cross-dressing NY real estate ​​heir was busted for peeing on the candy display at a CVS

Robot With Broken Leg Learns To Walk Again In 2 Minutes

Autonomous Sea-Robot Survives Massive Typhoon

Black holes aren’t black after all

A particularly advanced civilization might intentionally pollute the atmosphere to high levels and globally warm a planet that is otherwise too cold for life.

Danish DNA Could be Key to Happiness

Research: When it hurts to think we were made for each other

Thinking about romantic relationships increases positive affect and blood glucose levels

Do men perceive responsive women as more attractive, and does the same hold true for women’s perceptions of men?

These adventurous single men and women are at a “pheromone party”

The age at which girls reach sexual maturity is influenced by ‘imprinted’ genes, a small sub-set of genes whose activity differs depending on which parent passes on that gene, according to new research

We’re more likely to spend money when we’re feeling nostalgic, study

Previous research shows the existence of a height premium in the workplace with tall individuals receiving more benefits across several domains (e.g., earnings) relative to short people.

There’s little correlation between company performance and CEO pay.

The longer individuals were exposed to socialism, the more likely they were to cheat on our task.

Where Do Cocktail Prices Come From?

Why Are Books Getting Longer?

Behind the Scenes in Putin’s Court: The Private Habits of a Latter-Day Dictator

After Drugs and Guns, Art Theft Is the Biggest Criminal Enterprise in the World

A story so incredible it may even make you feel sorry for the phone company [published in the October 1971 issue of Esquire Magazine]

Besides health tracking, contact lens technology under development could enable drug delivery, night vision, and augmented reality.

“never show a husband the apartment without his wife.” NYC Real Estate Agent Secrets REVEALED

New York is the unhappiest city in he U.S.

Squirrels have adapted to New York City’s human behaviour, allowing them to thrive just as well, if not better, than their fellow squirrels in the woods

A new, extremely persistent type of online tracking is shadowing visitors to thousands of top websites

The fascinatng… frustrating… fascinating history of Autocorrect

The Inventor of the High Five

L.A.’s Skid Row Through the Eyes of Pimps, Prostitutes, Dealers and Dope Fiends

Jeff Koons cleaning New Shelton Wet/Dry acrylic case, c. 1985

Enduring Freedom Jesus Christ

“Emotions such as anger and contempt can seem very threatening for couples. But our study suggests that if spouses, especially wives, are able to calm themselves, their marriages can continue to thrive,” Bloch said.

While it is commonly held that women play the role of caretaker and peacemaker in relationships, the study is among the first to reveal this dynamic in action over a long period of time, researchers point out. Results show that the link between the wives’ ability to control emotions and higher marital satisfaction was most evident when women used “constructive communication” to temper disagreements.

{ UC Berkeley | Continue reading }

Astronauts debate provenance of turd floating in Apollo 10

Nude Beach Blow Job Jet Ski Fight Leads to Wife’s Death

Collector Gets 422 Million AmEx Points With Cup Purchase

How Becoming a Father Changes Your Brain

We only use 10% of our brains? That’s 100% wrong.

Sweet taste liking is associated with impulsive behaviors in humans

Many individuals, and even entire cultures, fear happiness

A gene responsible for stopping the movement of cancer from the lungs to other parts of the body has been discovered by researchers

Unlike any other living thing on Earth, electric bacteria use energy in its purest form

What if Bertrand was suffering from a disorder that was not just extremely rare but entirely unknown to science?

The Polar Bear on Prozac, The Gorilla Who Got Thorazine in His Coca-Cola, The Gorillas Who Got Haldol, Valium, Klonopin, Zoloft, Paxil, Xanax, Buspar, Prozac, Ativan, Versed, Mellaril, and Beta-Blockers…

Using bees that have been genetically modified to 3D-print concrete

Mr. Rose is one of about 50 pickpockets whose mug shots are on flash cards studied by plainclothes subway officers. They call the thieves the “Nifty 50.” [NY Times]

Brands are succeeding largely because of consumer ignorance.

How much are curators really paid?

Touching the Art - Episode 1 [via A new web series that aims to demystify the art world]

Backmasking

If you’re looking for love, and you’re dead, Ghost Singles is the site for you.

People loved for their beauty and cheerfulness are not loved as irreplaceable, yet people loved for “what their souls are made of” are. Or so literary romance implies; leading philosophical accounts, however, deny the distinction, holding that reasons for love either do not exist or do not include the beloved’s distinguishing features. […]

I defend a model of agency on which people can love each other for identities still being created, through a kind of mutual improvisation. […]

I draw another analogy to jazz, this time relating the attraction and concern constitutive of interpersonal love to the reciprocal appreciation and responsiveness of musicians who improvise together as partners. Musicians who improvise together as partners recognize each other to be trying to express the same musical idea, even though the contents of their ideas are still being worked out.

{ PhilPapers | PDF }