collision detectioncontent | discontentThe neurobiology of the Mona Lisa's smile- February 26, 2008 For hundreds of years, art critics have mused over why the Mona Lisa's smile seems so mysterious. Now the Harvard neurobiologist Margaret Livingstone has a fascinating answer: It's because Da Vinci painted her face in colors that play tricks on the eye. Livingstone's work has long examined the way that different cells in the visual system process different types of information -- such as form, color, depth and movement. When she analyzed the Mona Lisa, she found that Da Vinci painted..http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2008/02/so_when_you_loo.html Why solitary workers can be faster workers- February 26, 2008 For years, I've worked in isolation -- either sitting alone in my office, or, recently, sitting in a rented cubicle in New York. I haven't had a job that required me to work physically alongside coworkers since 1998. And maybe that's been a good thing for my productivity -- because according to a new study, when you can see other workers performing different tasks out the corner of your eye, it slows you down. Tim Welsh, a kinesiologist at the University of Calgary, organized a nifty.http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2008/02/_for_years_ive.html LaRouche report calls me a "degenerate writer"- February 25, 2008 This is beyond delightful! The LaRouche PAC report -- "The Noosphere vs. The Blogosphere: Is The Devil in Your Laptop" -- refers to me as a "degenerate writer", "infantile", and a "disgruntled family man". Apparently the political action committee of Lydon Larouche -- an economist, political activist, and prolific conspiracy theorist -- decided to fund a report on various sourges of digital life, including blogs, Wikipedia, and video games. (PDF copy here.) As you might...http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2008/02/larouche_report.html Study: Gamers actually enjoy dying in first-person-shooters- February 24, 2008 Two years ago, I wrote a column for Wired News called "The Joy of Sucking" -- about the subtle pleasures of totally screwing up in a video game. It wasn't just pulling that out of my hat. It was based on a study by Niklas Ravaja at MIND Labs, who wired up a bunch of gamers with biosensors and found that they gave off strong pleasure signals whenever they died in the game Super Monkey Ball. Well, Ravaja is at it again -- and this time he checked for players' reactions to killing...http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2008/02/_two_years_ago.html A possible explanation for "email apnea"- February 21, 2008 Linda Stone, one of my all-time favorite thinkers on the impact of technology on human life, has written a superb piece about what she's termed "email apnea" -- the phenomenon of holding your breath while you check and write email. Stone noticed recently that whenever she sat down to check email, she began, quite unconciously, to hold her breath. Then she noticed that other people were doing it, too: I observed others on computers and BlackBerries: in their offices, their homes,...http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2008/02/a_possible_expl.html Why C-section births might cause eczema in babies- February 19, 2008 This is just about the oddest bit of research I've recently come across: Apparently C-sections might cause eczema in babies. No one fully knows what causes eczema, of course. But immunologists have for years been suspecting that eczema is linked, in some way, to autoimmune disorders. And they've also been learning that if you want to have a good immune system, you need to have a healthy balance of intestinal bacteria. New evidence supporting this argument comes in the latest...http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2008/02/why_csection_bi.html Hiccups due to our fish ancestry- February 19, 2008 Here's a lovely bit of evolutionary trivia: Apparently our hiccups are caused because we're descended from fish. That's the argument that Neil Shubin, head of the University of Chicago's anatomy school, makes in his new book Your Inner Fish. As a review of the book notes: Spasms in our diaphragms, hiccups are triggered by electric signals generated in the brain stem. Amphibian brain stems emit similar signals, which control the regular motion of their gills. Our brain stems,...http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2008/02/_heres_a_lovely.html |