Feb 08
![SyNAPSE2[1]](http://thegrumpyowl.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/SyNAPSE21-150x150.jpg "SyNAPSE2[1]")
Here’s something that’s pretty old –from April– but I haven’t seen much mention of it around. DARPA has announced that it is working to build electronic neural architectures that can learn, adapt and respond to situations on the battlefield. DARPA’s Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (aptly shortened to SyNAPSE) program aims to develop …
Jan 15
Female tears of grief reduce arousal in men. And not just because of the smeared makeup. Apparently, lady tears smell icky. Just a slight whiff turns men off. According to the study’s director, Noam Sobel: “We know that women tend to cry more during menstruation, when it’s not an effective time to conceive.” So ladies, …
Sep 06
pic nicked from here According to a study published in Psychological Science, daydreaming has an amnesiac effect. And the greater the difference between the daydream’s time, place and circumstance from the actual time, place and circumstance of the daydreamer, the greater the forgetfulness. So if you want to forget something, just imagine that you are very far away, doing something very …
Feb 01
Victims of Body Dysmorphic Disorder look in the mirror and see a monster looking back at them. And, when some women hear about BDD, they figure they have it. Why wouldn’t they? After all, they don’t look like the people they spend the most time with. That is, the people on television. Thinking you have …
Nov 18
IBM announced today that they have created BlueMatter — a near real-time simulation of a cat’s cerebral cortex. AP says: “The simulation, which runs 100 times slower than an actual cat’s brain, is more about watching how thoughts are formed in the brain and how the roughly 1 billion neurons and 10 trillion synapses in …
Aug 28
pic nicked from here Ever think about how you just did something and wish you could have done it differently? Well, so do rats. Scientists at MIT have discovered that rats have a mental instant replay. Furthermore, they imagine different actions, their outcomes and then act upon those thoughts. So rats must feel regret. Their …
Jul 07
Hearing a bird sing, it’s quite easy to believe that they were born knowing how to do it. But not so. They improve their songs as they grow up. A new study from MIT has shown how practise improves their performances. A baby zebra finch starts by mimicing its father. Poorly, as it produces gibberish. …
Apr 11
pic is Applicants to a Casual Ward A new Cornell study claims that: “Chronic stress from growing up in poverty can physiologically impact children’s brains, impairing their working memory and diminishing their ability to develop language, reading and problem-solving skills.” As if the Tiny Tims of the world didn’t have enough to worry about. I’m …
Mar 31
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa16ewvpunY] Honda has managed to create a brain interface that will allow a human to mentally control a robot. Basically, it uses an MRI to scan your brain, you visualize making a movement and, a few moments later, Asimo makes that movement. It works with 90% accuracy in a controlled setting but it’s pretty clunky …
Although Ryan Oakley began his career as a simple rake (drunk) he has since become Toronto’s most renowned flaneur (no car) and notorious dandy (overdresses). A misanthropic composer of psycho-geographical fictions (sci-fi), he is also a server of food, a tender of bar and a washer of dishes. While performing all these functions with efficiency and elegance (disdain and malice), he somehow finds the time to publicly criticize friends, strangers and cultural crap.
