Technology
A video game designed by McGill University researchers to help train people to change their perception of social threats and boost their self-confidence has now been shown to reduce the production of the stress-related hormone cortisol. The new findings appear in the October issue of the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
“We already knew that it was possible to design games to allow people to practise new forms of social perception, but we were surprised by the impact this had when we took the games out of the lab and into the context of people…
Larry Aidem, President & CEO, Sundance Channel announced today that the network will participate in the NBC Universal weeklong programming initiative "Green is Universal."
As part of NBC Universal's unprecedented corporate-wide focus on environmental issues, Sundance Channel will reprise its popular series "It's Not Easy Being Green" and "Big Ideas for a Small Planet" each night beginning at 8pm e/p from November 4 through 10 as well as broadcast its regularly scheduled destination THE GREEN on Tuesday November 6 at 9pm e/p. Sundance Channel is a venture of NBC Universal, CBS and Robert…
Terrorists are leveraging information technology to learn how to create devastating weapons cheaply and quickly - and the West is now having to learn to keep up.
Since the start of the Iraq War, improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, have accounted for nearly half of the combat deaths reported by U.S. coalition forces. The death toll underscores a grim paradox of the ongoing conflict: during the last four and a half years the United States and its allies have fielded the most advanced and complex weaponry ever developed, but egg timers and toy remote controls in the hands of knowledgeable…
Hank |
The Mandala is a detailed sand representation of the residence of the Medicine Buddha and one will be constructed by Tibetan monks over four days in Paris while simultaneously being displayed virtually in Second Life.
This confluence of technology and religion will get the message out about the situation in Burma, according to members of the Mind Science Institute and executives at a London think tank called Unfrozenmind, who have collaborated on the Second Life simulcast of the actual event.
Not everyone - okay, no one outside the Chinese government - is all that happy about things in Burma…
Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (IMEC) has developed a 2-channel wireless EEG (electroencephalography or monitoring of brain waves) system powered by a thermo-electric generator. It uses the body heat dissipated naturally from the forehead. The wearable EEG system operates completely autonomous and maintenance-free with no need to change or recharge the batteries. This is a major advantage for body-worn sensors, a key theme in the Human++ program within the Holst Centre.
The entire system is wearable and integrated into a headband. The small size, low power consumption of only 0.8mW…
Researchers in the UK are gearing themselves up for an influx of help. Forty thousand people have already run the LHC@home program on their home or office computers, to help scientists discover the secrets of matter and this week researchers at Queen Mary, University of London, officially launched the new base for LHC@home, which has moved from CERN, the European particle physics laboratory in Geneva.
LHC@home is a collaboration between CERN, the Helsinki Institute of Physics, the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Queen Mary University of London and TRIUMF in Vancouver.
It distributes an…
Dental x-rays could be a thing of the past thanks to a new knowledge transfer partnership between the University of Abertay Dundee and pioneering research firm IDMoS.
A team of scientists from the university’s SIMBIOS (Scottish Informatics and Mathematics Biology and Statistics) Centre will use sophisticated CAT (Computerised Axial Tomography) scanning equipment to verify that the company’s newly developed equipment for detecting dental cavities works.
Chair of the Environmental Sciences School, Professor Iain Young said: “IDMoS have developed a non-invasive method of checking teeth for…
A nationwide study examining the safety of Tasers® used by law enforcement agencies suggests the devices are safe, causing a low occurrence of serious injuries.
“This study is the first large, independent study of injuries associated with Tasers. It is the first injury epidemiology study to review every Taser deployment and to reliably assess the overall risk and severity of injuries in real world conditions,” said William Bozeman, M.D., the lead investigator and an emergency medicine specialist at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. “The injury rate is low and most injuries appear to…
Physiotherapy ultrasound machines are commonplace in medicine and sports injury treatment but if patients are treated with the incorrect level of ultrasonic power it could not only be less helpful, it could lead to further injury.
Calibration is the answer and scientists at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) say they have created technology that can greatly improve the accuracy of the calibration and therefore the quality of the treatment.
NPL has developed an acoustic absorber that can be retro-fitted into current calibration equipment to increase its accuracy. The upgrade has been…
As they root for the home team from the bleachers this fall, high school gridiron fans in the small Illinois town of Tolono don’t necessarily see anything out of the ordinary down on the field.
But just out of sight, tucked inside many of the maroon helmets worn by the Unity High School Rockets, a revolution of sorts is taking place. This season, 32 varsity team members are sporting helmets outfitted with the same electronic encoder modules now used by a handful of college teams.
The purpose of the high-tech headgear, which uses six strategically placed, spring-loaded accelerometers to…