When the new release accompanying a science paper immediately alludes to lap dances and twerking, attention must be paid.
That doesn’t happen all the time. And, incredibly, the study in question, which appeared last week in Evolutionary Psychological Science paper, actually lived up to the hype! It really does mention “female erotic lap dancers” and “twerking, which appears to be a simulated copulatory act, performed while dancing,” all in the service of mathematic ...read more
The Black Knight Transformer is a prototype flying car that can drive like a truck and fly like a helicopter. Credit: Advanced Tactics
A prototype flying car that supposedly does the job of both a helicopter and a truck went up for sale on eBay a few days before Halloween. That privately-developed AT Black Knight Transformer represents a vision of the flying car future that has seemingly fallen out of favor as new startups in Silicon Valley and elsewhere pursue the idea of flying car ...read more
Remember the ‘voodoo’ fMRI controversy? Well, I just came across a new voodoo-ish paper – just in time for Halloween.
The study, published in Neuropsychopharmacology, comes from Franziska Plessow and colleagues of Boston. The main claim is that a dose of oxytocin reduced the response of “reward-related food motivation brain regions” to pictures of high-calorie foods, suggesting that the hormone might be of use in the treatment of obesity.
However, I have some ...read more
Animation showing the path of A/2017 U1 through the solar system. (Credit: NASA/JPL)
Astronomers have spotted an interstellar visitor for the first time.
It’s either a comet or an asteroid, and came speeding right through the heart of our solar system; after a hairpin turn around the sun, it’s now on its way back out of our cosmic backyard. Scientists at the University of Hawaii’s Pan-STARRS 1 telescope at Haleakala first spotted the quarter-mile-wide object on ...read more
Sophia has porcelain skin, defined cheekbones and quite a flashy smile. She’s also a robot.
Ahead of Wednesday’s Future Investment Initiative event in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, officials granted this humanoid robot citizenship, making Sophia the first robot to receive citizenship anywhere in the world. The bot, made by Hanson Robotics, is modeled to look like Audrey Hepburn (does Sophia do Audrey justice?).
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Throughout the interview, Sophia flashed a somewhat ...read more
Do you prefer a paperback or hardback to a download on your Kindle? Or maybe BluRays and CDs instead of MP4s? You’re not alone.
Digital products might help us combat clutter, and satisfy that need for instant gratification, but when push comes to shove, a lot of people still prefer something they can hold in their hands. And sales for physical goods like books and movies seem to support that notion. So if digital is so much easier to store and tote around, what gives?
“When somethin ...read more
The Bloodhound test vehicle. (Credit: The Bloodhound Project)
A slim blue needle raced down a runway today in southwest England Thursday. Called the Bloodhound, the vehicle reached speeds of only around 200 miles per hour, but the team behind it has their sights set much higher. They hope to be the first to notch the 1,000 mph land speed record, a speed that today is only achievable in the skies.
The demonstration was the Bloodhound’s first public outing, and served as both a PR opp ...read more
(Credit: Shutterstock)
The PhD thesis of perhaps the world’s most famous living scientist, Professor Stephen Hawking, was recently made publicly available online. It has proved so popular that the demand to read it reportedly crashed its host website when it was initially uploaded.
But given the complexity of the topic – “Properties of Expanding Universes” – and the fact that Hawking’s book A Brief History of Time is also known as the most unread book of all ...read more
