Jan 11

Study shows love for music relates to brain chemical, not to My Chemical Romance

Posted in: Music, research, science, study, Today's Chili
It would make sense that people listen to music for the sheer pleasure of it, right? That’s what we thought, but apparently there’s a scientific reason for this. Scientists have discovered that when Earthlings listen to pleasurable music, one particular chemical is loosed in the gord. The study, conducted by Robert Zatorre and Valorie Salimpoor of McGill University in Montreal, concluded that when the participants tuned into instrumental pieces they were familiar with, their brains released dopamine into the striatum — an area of the noggin linked with anticipation and predictions. According to PET scans, the members of the study unleashed the chemical 15 seconds before a climaxical moment in a song, signaling the possibility that humans may actually release it in anticipation and not as a reaction to a wailing solo. Bonus point? Chopped and screwed tracks unleashed forty times more dopamine. Just kidding, but it’s probably true.

Study shows love for music relates to brain chemical, not to My Chemical Romance originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 12 Jan 2011 01:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jan 07

4G Shocker! Study finds consumers want what they fail to understand

Posted in: 4G, hspa, research, study, Today's Chili
We’ve certainly seen our fair share of 4G devices in the Las Vegas sun (well, convention center) this year, but as you might have guessed, a recent study finds that increased awareness does not necessarily equal increased understanding. As the Nielsen Company recently discovered, the majority (54 percent) of consumers who know or care about 4G were relying on the old International Telecommunications Union definition of mobile data speeds over 100 Mb/s, even though carriers have sort of been making up their own rules (for instance, T-Mobile and AT&T are calling their HSPA+ networks 4G). And what to make of the large percentage of people who think that 4G somehow refers to the iPhone 4? That one’s a perpetual head-scratcher. But in the end, the study finds that none of that really matters: almost three in ten consumers are gearing up to buy a 4G device within the next twelve months. And \that’s what really matters, right?

4G Shocker! Study finds consumers want what they fail to understand originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Jan 2011 10:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jan 06

Late mid-week shocker: young adults get their ‘news’ from the ‘net, not from television

Posted in: education, research, study, Television, Today's Chili

In what is undoubtedly a shocking and groundbreaking revelation, the Pew Research Center has conducted a recent study which has caused it to conclude that young adults now get their news predominantly from the internet, rather than from television (and even less from ham radio). According to the study, which the center seems to have been conducting yearly for a while now, 67 percent of adults under 30 said in 2010 that the ‘net was their primary source of news, up from 34 percent in 2007. Curiously, respondents could choose up to two ‘main’ news sources, so 52 percent report that television is a main news source in 2010, down from 68 percent in 2007. While none of this probably comes as any surprise to any of you, our readers, it does tend to explain that strange and ever-growing tendency we’ve noticed in our friends of talking about things like Groupon, Facebook, and some meme some webpage made up to sell something as if they were talking about actual news.

Late mid-week shocker: young adults get their ‘news’ from the ‘net, not from television originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Jan 2011 13:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceYahoo!  | Email this | Comments

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Jan 04

Shocker! Media addicts suffer withdrawal symptoms, just like real addicts

Posted in: research, science, social networking, SocialNetworking, study, Today's Chili
…and we’re all media addicts, aren’t we? A recent study conducted by the International Center for Media & the Public Agenda (ICMPA) certainly seems to indicate that this is indeed the case. The premise was pretty straightforward: students at twelve universities around the world were instructed to abstain from using all media for twenty-four hours. The results were somewhat predictable: across the board, going without television was somewhat easy to do, while abstaining from text messaging and instant messaging brought on withdrawal symptoms: “When I did not have those two luxuries,” wrote one student, “I felt quite alone and secluded from my life. Although I go to a school with thousands of students, the fact that I was not able to communicate with anyone via technology was almost unbearable.” According to Dr. Roman Gerodimos of the University of Portsmouth both psychological and physical symptoms were reported by the young techno-junkies.

Shocker! Media addicts suffer withdrawal symptoms, just like real addicts originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Jan 2011 02:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink TG Daily  |  sourceSalzburg Academy  | Email this | Comments

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Dec 18

New research says e-cigarettes are safer than real ones, no cigarettes safer still

Posted in: Medicine, research, study, Today's Chili
Research swayed back and forth on the health risks associated with e-cigarettes since their debut in the US about three years ago. The faux cigs, which are essentially nicotine inhalers intended to help smokers kick the actual smoking habit while still getting their dose of nicotine, the main addictive ingredient in tobacco. In the first truly comprehensive study of the somewhat controversial nicotine replacement method, researchers at Boston University’s School of Public Health has found that not only are e-cigarettes much safer to “smoke” than normal ones, they may also aid in kicking the addictive habit altogether. According to the researchers, “few, if any” of the chemicals found in e-cigarettes pose serious health risks, and carcinogen levels in them are up to 1,000 times lower than in actual tobacco. This research, of course, disagrees with the FDA’s findings that essentially, the chemicals found in e-cigarettes were risky and unknowable. The FDA has yet to evaluate e-cigarettes the way that they have done with all medications and other nicotine replacement products, so we can’t be sure, but it’s looking more and more possible that if you just need to smoke, an e-cigarette may be a safer route… for everything but your dignity, of course.

New research says e-cigarettes are safer than real ones, no cigarettes safer still originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Dec 2010 03:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dec 13

Shocker! Internet use now ties TV in time spent avoiding outdoor activity

Posted in: study, Television, Today's Chili, TV

Despite a huge dropoff in cable subscribers this year, Forrester Research’s 40,000-strong survey pegs consumer TV consumption at about 13 hours weekly, same as it ever was. But lo and behold, reported internet use has also risen to 13 hours weekly, a veritable tie to which we naturally reply, “what took it so long?” This number represents a 121 percent uptake in the past five years and attributes its success to multitaskers and those who are spending less time with radio, newspaper, and magazines — again, nothing too mind-blowing to our perception of reality. If the survey has revealed anything surprise to us, it’s that email is only used by 92 percent of those questioned, leaving at least eight percent classically trained in case the post-apocalyptic world of Kevin Costner’s The Postman ever becomes reality.

[Image Credit: ICHC]

Shocker! Internet use now ties TV in time spent avoiding outdoor activity originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Dec 2010 19:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nov 10

Study finds that text message-addicted teens more likely to have a life

Posted in: statistics, study, Today's Chili
According to a recent study lead by Dr. Scott Frank, an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, kids in Cleveland who text over 120 times a day are more likely than to have had sex or to have used drugs or alcohol than kids who don’t send as many messages. We’re guessing it’s because it takes in excess of 120 text messages for kids to line up their drugs, alcohol, or sex partners. To explain the findings, Frank puts it this way: “If parents are monitoring their kids’ texting and social networking, they’re probably monitoring other activities as well.” The study, based on a survey of 4,200 students, is one of the first to look at the correlation between texting and risky behavior in teenagers.

Study finds that text message-addicted teens more likely to have a life originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Nov 2010 17:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Gearlog  |  sourceAssociated Press  | Email this | Comments

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Nov 08

Shocker! Laptops placed on laps will overheat you where you don’t want to be overheated

Posted in: laptop, Laptops, medical, Medicine, research, study, Today's Chili

Scrotal hyperthermia — even its name sounds like a terrible, horrible thing. Yes, gadget enthusiasts, we’re talking about the vastly underrated problem that is the overheating of a techie gentleman’s reproductive parts. A study recently published in the Fertility and Sterility journal confirms what we’ve long known — that heat escaping laptops sat on laps can and will raise the temperature in your external offspring storage units — but adds a bit of handy additional info as well. Firstly, it turns out that keeping one’s legs together to balance the laptop is mostly to blame, as it doesn’t provide enough airflow to let heat escape, while lap pads have been found to be entirely ineffective in protecting testicles from rising in temperature. Another note of import is that the men in this study failed to notice when their scrotal thermometers rose above what’s considered safe, so we’d just advise doing your mobile blogging Engadget style: from a bar, a coffee table, the trunk of a car, or even a humble desk.

Shocker! Laptops placed on laps will overheat you where you don’t want to be overheated originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Nov 2010 15:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Switched, Reuters  |  sourceFertility and Sterility  | Email this | Comments

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Nov 02

UCLA / Caltech researchers help patients move mouse cursors with their brains

Posted in: medical, Medicine, research, study, Today's Chili, university, video

It’s certainly not a revolutionary new concept — whiz kids have been tinkering with brain-controlled interfaces for years on end — but a collaboration between UCLA scientists and colleagues from the California Institute of Technology has taken the idea one leap closer to commercialization. Itzhak Fried, a professor of neurosurgery at UCLA, kept a close watch (via embedded electrodes) on how a dozen humans reacted to certain images, and eventually, Fried and co. were able to show that Earthlings can “regulate the activity of their neurons to intentionally alter the outcome of stimulation.” In other words, they were able to move a mouse cursor with just their mind, and brighten a test image with a 70 percent success rate. By honing the process of controlling what actions occur when focused on a given subject (or input peripheral), it opens up the possibility for paralyzed individuals to not only check their email, but also control prosthetic limbs. It’s hard to say when this stuff will be put to good use outside of a hospital, but the video after the break definitely makes us long for “sooner” rather than “later.”

Continue reading UCLA / Caltech researchers help patients move mouse cursors with their brains

UCLA / Caltech researchers help patients move mouse cursors with their brains originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Nov 2010 04:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Gizmag  |  sourceNature, UCLA, Caltech  | Email this | Comments

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Nov 01

Shocker! Kids spending too much time in front of TV screens, too little in loving parents’ embrace

Posted in: Movies, research, statistics, stats, study, Television, Today's Chili, TV, university

Not that anyone really needed to have this spelled out, but America’s tots are apparently spending too much time in front of the telly tubes. The latest study, conducted by the Seattle Children’s Research Institute and the University of Washington, finds that children under the age of five are spending 4.1 hours of each day watching movies or TV, doubling the recommended maximum of two hours a day. Whether you take the slightly arbitrary two-hour RDA to heart or not, it’s undeniable that all of us — not just the young ‘uns — are spending increasingly larger chunks of our time looking at the world through a screen and not through our own retinas. And, if you want an extra topping of alarmist extrapolation, these figures come from a research sample concluded in 2006, today’s better-equipped toddlers are very likely to outdo those numbers when mobile devices and the like are factored in. Imagine how bad this would all be if the US didn’t have so much quality programming to entertain and educate them with.

Shocker! Kids spending too much time in front of TV screens, too little in loving parents’ embrace originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Nov 2010 01:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink CNET, ScienceDaily  |  sourceScienceDirect  | Email this | Comments

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