People often conduct visual searches in which multiple targets are possible (e.g., medical x-rays can contain multiple abnormalities). In this type of search, observers are more likely to miss a second target after having found a first one.

{ PsyArXiv | Continue reading }

The streetlight effect, or the drunkard’s search principle, is a type of observational bias that occurs when people only search for something where it is easiest to look.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

Modern scientific instruments can extensively process “observations” before they are presented to the human senses, and particularly with computerized instruments, there is sometimes a question as to where in the data processing chain “observing” ends and “drawing conclusions” begins. This has recently become an issue with digitally enhanced images published as experimental data in papers in scientific journals. The images are enhanced to bring out features that the researcher wants to emphasize, but this also has the effect of supporting the researcher’s conclusions.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

related { Errors/Biases in Clinical Decision Making }

photo { Richard Avedon, Christy Turlington for Revlon, 1990 }

Professional mermaids say ‘merverts’ are making their lives a hassle

Restaurant owner murders man, serves his remains to vegetarian diners

Woman who had sex with 20 ghosts is now engaged to a spirit

Researchers found a way to “see” through walls using ambient Wi-Fi signals and an ordinary smartphone

Canada installs Chinese underwater monitoring devices next to US nuclear submarine base

scientists developed a tool that seems remarkably accurate at judging written falsehoods

In a landmark study, 20 top US corporate lawyers with decades of experience in corporate law and contract review were pitted against an AI. Their task was to spot issues in five Non-Disclosure Agreements.

Emotions are frequently thought of as reactions to events in the world. However, many of our emotional experiences are of our own making, coming from thoughts and memories. These different origins mean that these endogenous emotions are more controllable than exogenous emotions.

Loneliness increases a person’s risk of dementia by 40 percent

Curiosity is associated with well-being

Study: Tetris is a great distraction for easing an anxious mind

Oral contraceptive use is associated with greater mood stability and higher relationship satisfaction

Human saliva as a cleaning agent for dirty surfaces

Exploring the effect of microdosing psychedelics on creativity

Psychedelic psilocybin therapy for depression granted Breakthrough Therapy status by FDA

Tolaas also invented 1,500 “smell memory kits” — abstract odors that have never been smelled before. When you want to remember an event, you open the amulet and inhale, sealing the moment in your emotional core.

Swiss experiment with sound to make cheese tastier

Record labels’ study shows performances of Bach are almost 30 percent faster than they were 50 years ago

The shopping mall would have been inconceivable without air conditioning, as would the deep-plan and glass-walled office block, as would computer servers. An inversion of nature: how air conditioning created the modern city

Why Do Mosquitoes Bite Some People More Than Others? (Blood type, metabolism, exercise, shirt color, drinking beer…)

a special fifth state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC)

20 “Rules for History of Philosophy”

NYC Municipal Archives Collections

What happened to the Sphinx’s nose?

Map of Roman Air Bases in 2nd Century AD and US governors by eye color and if you’re asked to “put your hands up” and have trouble identifying the situation

For the past three months, a team of 150 people using 100 trap cameras, drones, hang-gliders, sniffer dogs, elephants, sharp shooters, and expert trackers struggled through a forested area in central India’s Maharashtra state to hunt down a man-eating tigress. On Friday night, after an alleged attempt to tranquilize the animal, a bullet from the gun of a controversial hunter killed the big cat. 

The 6-year-old tigress, officially named T1 but dubbed “Avni” (which means Earth in Hindi) by conservationists, was linked to at least 13 human deaths over the last two years.

{ CBS | Continue reading }

oil on canvas { Peter Paul Rubens, The Tiger Hunt, 1615—1616 | Jeff Koons for Louis Vuitton, 2017 }

Brooklyn-based blockchain software technology startup and Ethereum development studio ConsenSys has acquired asteroid mining company Planetary Resources, Inc. through an asset-purchase agreement. […]

ConsenSys is a production studio that creates enterprises in a wide range of business areas based on the Etherium platform for cryptocurrency and other blockchain applications. It has spawned 50 ventures, or “spokes,” including an online poker site, a legal services site and a “transmedia universe integrated with blockchain technology” called Cellarius. […]

Planetary Resources was founded in its present form in 2012, with initial backing from billionaires including Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, Ross Perot Jr. and Charles Simonyi. Its original mission was to identify and mine near-Earth asteroids for valuable resources, ranging from water that could be converted into rocket fuel to platinum-group metals that could conceivably be sent back to Earth.

Over the course of six years, the venture raised tens of millions of dollars and explored other potential revenue streams, including space telescope manufacturing, space selfies and an Earth-observation constellation called Ceres. […] But an anticipated funding round failed to come together, leading to a wave of staff cutbacks.

{ GeekWire | Continue reading }

related { Cryptocurrency Pump-and-Dump Schemes }

photo { Model of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, 1936 }

The Principia Mathematica (PM) is a three-volume work on the foundations of mathematics written by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell and published in 1910, 1912, and 1913.

was an attempt to describe a set of axioms and inference rules in symbolic logic from which all mathematical truths could in principle be proven.

PM has long been known for its typographical complexity. Famously, several hundred pages of PM precede the proof of the validity of the proposition 1+1=2.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

Previous studies have shown that male attractiveness can be enhanced by manipulation of status through, for example, the medium of costume. The present study experimentally manipulated status by seating the same target model (male and female matched for attractiveness) expressing identical facial expressions and posture in either a ‘high status’ (Silver Bentley Continental GT) or a ‘neutral status’ (Red Ford Fiesta ST) motor-car. […]

Results showed that the male target model was rated as significantly more attractive on a rating scale of 1–10 when presented to female participants in the high compared to the neutral status context. Males were not influenced by status manipulation, as there was no significant difference between attractiveness ratings for the female seated in the high compared to the neutral condition.

{ The British Psychological Society | PDF }

unrelated { Sweden plans to make sex toys safer because so many people get them stuck in their rectum }

a non-comprehensive list of the ways your sleep deprivation is personally harming you:

Your overall cognitive performance — particularly your visual attention and ability to form memories — deteriorates. (More colloquially, this is that “brain fog” we all experience after a late night.)

Your ability to learn new information is impaired, both by sleep deprivation before you learn new information and afterward.

You’re less likely to correctly read facial expressions, even interpreting some expressions — even neutral ones — as threatening.

You’re likely to be more cranky and react worse when presented with obstacles.

Beyond your severely impaired mental abilities, your body is affected,

too: A lack of adequate sleep can contribute to weight gain, puts you at a higher risk of diabetes and heart disease, and makes you far less resistant to the common cold. […]

So what are we to do? […]

First, learn how much sleep you need […] the gold standard of eight hours per night might not be right for you […] The only real guideline is to get as much sleep as you need to feel refreshed and energized the next day, and then do that every single night. […]

Fall asleep and wake up at the same time every day (including weekends) […] And don’t forget to keep your bedroom cool.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

photo { Brooke Shields photographed by Richard Avedon, New York, January 26, 1988 }

related { Zzzz Poster }

In 2017, the United States imported approximately 10.14 million barrels per day (MMb/d) of petroleum from about 84 countries. Petroleum includes crude oil, hydrocarbon gas liquids, refined petroleum products such as gasoline and diesel fuel, and biofuels including ethanol and biodiesel. Crude oil accounted for about 79% of U.S. gross petroleum imports in 2017 and non-crude oil petroleum accounted for about 21% of gross petroleum imports.

In 2017, the United States exported about 6.38 MMb/d of petroleum to 186 countries, of which about 18% was crude oil and 82% was non-crude oil petroleum.

The resulting net imports (imports minus exports) of petroleum were about 3.77 MMb/d.

The top five source countries of U.S. petroleum imports in 2017 were Canada (40%), Saudi Arabia (9%), Mexico (7%), Venezuela (7%), and Iraq (6%).

The top five destination countries of U.S. petroleum exports in 2017 were Mexico (17%), Canada (14%), China (7%), Brazil (6%), Japan (5%).

{ EIA | Continue reading }

still { The Oily Maniac, 1976 }

30 years ago, Spy magazine sent “refund” checks for $1.11 to 58 rich people.

The 26 who cashed those got another check, for $.64.

The 13 who cashed those each got a check for $.13.

Two people cashed the $.13 checks—Donald Trump and Jamal Khashoggi’s arms-dealer uncle Annan.

{ Kurt Andersen | Spy, July, 1990 p. 84 + full issue }

Sex doll rental company will make a replica of your dead lover

Man run over by lawn mower while trying to kill son with chainsaw

Assessing the calorific significance of episodes of human cannibalism in the Palaeolithic (This paper presents a nutritional template that offers a proxy calorie value for the human body)

How to Order a Beer — Cultural Differences in the Use of Conventional Gestures for Numbers

Toilet Flushing System Bursting Prompts Massive Recall

Kansas City police looking for stolen inflatable human colon

some down-for-anything fans have also reported post-slushy poop that ranges from blue to green

The Secretive Business of Facial-Recognition Software in Retail Stores

We explored personality inferences made from body shapes … Personality-trait profiles were predicted reliably from a subset of the body-shape features

Do women’s preferences for masculine voices shift across the ovulatory cycle?

A “Need for Chaos” and the Sharing of Hostile Political Rumors in Advanced Democracies

we often forget about the fact that the frontal lobes – the most developed part of the brain – are at the same time our greatest weakness, exposed to the action of damaging factors in our evolving environment. Is depression the cost of evolution? The Evolutionary Theory of Depression

Can Moons Have Moons?

Scientists Create Artificial Wood That Is Water- and Fire-Resistant

The band Chic wrote a song in 1978, “Le Freak”, after being refused entry to Studio 54 on New Year’s Eve 1977, despite being invited by Grace Jones.

at least 20 percent of Manhattan’s street retail is vacant or about to become vacant. (The city government’s estimate is lower.)

The man who has eaten at more than 7,300 Chinese restaurants, but can’t use chopsticks and doesn’t care for food

Interviews with elederly people (1929)

Shredding Banksy’s the Girl and Balloon - The Director’s Cut

Restaurant reviews

Case of Tetanus, in Which a Large Quantity of the Tincture of Opium Was Administered by Mistake (1819)

On the Cure of Tetanus by Opium and the Warm Bath (1812)

{ PubMed }

Because more and more young people are constantly presented with the opportunity to access information and connect to others via their smartphones, they report to be in a state of permanent alertness. In the current study, we define such a state as smartphone vigilance, an awareness that one can always get connected to others in combination with a permanent readiness to respond to incoming smartphone notifications. We hypothesized that constantly resisting the urge to interact with their phones draws on response inhibition, and hence interferes with students’ ability to inhibit prepotent responses in a concurrent task. […]

Results show that the mere visibility of a smartphone is sufficient to experience vigilance and distraction, and that this is enhanced when students receive notifications. Curiously enough, these strong experiences were unrelated to stop-signal task performance. These findings raise new questions about when and how smartphones can impact performance.

{ PsyArXiv | Continue reading }

Machine-vision systems can match humans at recognizing faces and can even create realistic synthetic faces. But researchers have discovered that the same systems cannot recognize optical illusions, which means they also can’t create new ones.

{ Technology Review | Continue reading }

50% of human experience has happened after 1309 AD. 15% of all experience has been experienced by people who are alive right now. […]

{ Eukaryote Writes Blog | Continue reading }

inkjet and acrylic on canvas { imp kerr, looped breathing tubes, 2018 }

A missing man who was murdered more than 40 years ago has been found - after a seed from a fig in his stomach grew into a tree

Seeking advice lowers mortality risk

We watched 216 episodes of five popular television series on Netflix and identified 333 separate driving scenes, of which 271 (81.4%) portrayed at least one risky driving behaviour.

This paper compares mortality between Gold and Silver medalists in Olympic Track and Field to study how achievement influences health. Contrary to conventional wisdom, winners die over one year earlier than losers.

Zurich crematorium starts to trade precious metals filtered from people’s ashes

Music training does not enhance non-music cognitive skills or academic achievement

Why Determinism in Physics Has No Implications for Free Will

Sixteen healthy volunteers without gastrointestinal disease and normal faecal calprotectin baseline values ingested their own blood twice, either by drinking or via nasogastric tube. Ingestion of blood resulted in an increase in faecal calprotectin-positive tests.

All participants were engaged in a steady heterosexual relationship. Women reported a masturbation frequency of about once per two weeks. Men reported a masturbation frequency of about twice per week. PDF

Three scholars spent 10 months writing 20 hoax papers

Salt not as damaging to health as previously thought, says study (involving more than 90,000 people people in more than 300 communities in 18 countries)

Randy Gardner is the holder of the scientifically documented record for the longest a human has gone without sleep (11 days 25 minutes).

A new mathematical model suggests that signs of extraterrestrial intelligence could be common

Scientists Use DNA to Expose the World’s Top 3 Illegal Ivory Cartels

Effects of the replacement of wheat flour with cricket powder on the characteristics of muffins

Last year, across the globe, more than 100 billion servings of instant noodles were eaten. That’s more than 13 servings for every person on the planet.

History of art paintings through the lens of entropy and complexity

artnet Intelligence Report

Who was in on Banksy’s ’self-destruct’ art stunt? [previously: Banksy’s Girl With Balloon (2006) self-destructed at the end of a Sotheby’s auction]

Self-driving homes

Putin at the photocopier

Dancing in the Streets

Nauru is an island country in Micronesia, a subregion of Oceania, in the Central Pacific.

With 11,347 residents in a 21-square-kilometre (8.1 sq mi) area, Nauru is the third-smallest state by area in the world, behind only Vatican City and Monaco.

The Nauruan economy peaked in the mid-1970s to early-1980s, when the phosphate deposits that originate from the droppings of sea birds began to be depleted. At its peak, Nauru’s GDP per capita was estimated to be US$50,000, second only to Saudi Arabia.

In anticipation of the exhaustion of its phosphate deposits, substantial amounts of the income from phosphates were invested in trust funds aimed to help cushion the transition and provide for Nauru’s economic future. However, because of mismanagement, including some wasteful foreign investment activities, the government is now facing virtual bankruptcy.

The phosphate reserves on Nauru are now almost entirely depleted. Phosphate mining in the central plateau has left a barren terrain of jagged limestone pinnacles up to 15 metres (49 ft) high. Mining has stripped and devastated about 80 per cent of Nauru’s land area leaving it uninhabitable, and has also affected the surrounding exclusive economic zone; 40 per cent of marine life is estimated to have been killed by silt and phosphate runoff.

In the 1990s, Nauru became an illegal money laundering centre, a tax haven and offered passports to foreign nationals for a fee. During the 1990s, it was possible to establish a licensed bank in Nauru for only US$25,000 with no other requirements. Under pressure from FATF, Nauru introduced anti-avoidance legislation in 2003, after which foreign hot money left the country.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

drone photo { Aydın Büyüktaş }

Procrastination is a familiar and widely discussed proclivity: postponing tasks that can be done earlier. Precrastination is a lesser known and explored tendency: completing tasks quickly just to get them done sooner.

Recent research suggests that precrastination may represent an important penchant that can be observed in both people and animals.

{ Learning & Behavior | Continue reading }

art { Vogue, June 1972 | Tom Wesselmann, Smoker #9, 1973 }

We suggest that advanced civilizations could cloak their presence, or deliberately broadcast it, through controlled laser emission.

Such emission could distort the apparent shape of their transit light curves with relatively little energy, due to the collimated beam and relatively infrequent nature of transits.

We estimate that humanity could cloak the Earth from Kepler-like broad-band surveys using an optical monochromatic laser array emitting a peak power of ∼30 MW for ∼10 hours per year.

{ Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society | Continue reading }

50.43% of women considered it very important that the partner ejaculates during intercourse.

18.3% of women preferred that the partner ejaculates before they reach orgasm, whereas for 53.5% this did not matter.

22.6% of women stated that they experienced a more intense orgasm when their partner ejaculated during vaginal intercourse. […]

13.1% of women regarded the quantity of expelled ejaculate as an expression of their own sexual attractiveness.

{ The Journal of Sexual Medicine | Continue reading }

[W]hy are some societies more religious than others? One answer is religious coping: Individuals turn to religion to deal with unbearable and unpredictable life events. To investigate whether coping can explain global differences in religiosity, I combine a global dataset on individual-level religiosity with spatial data on natural disasters. Individuals become more religious if an earthquake recently hit close by. Even though the effect decreases after a while, data on children of immigrants reveal a persistent effect across generations.

{ J. S. Bentzen | PDF }

acrylic on canvas, in four parts { Keith Haring, Untitled, 1984 }