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Google recently announced that it will help fund groundbreaking research by computer scientists and economists at Tel Aviv University.  The Blavatnik School of Computer Science is attempting to help computers make better decisions using a term they dubbed "regret." Head of the program Professor Yishay Mansour began this project earlier this year at the International Conference on Learning Theory in Haifa, Israel.  He and the other researchers are working on algorithms that would allow computers to learn from their past failures in an effort to make better predictions.  This is referred to as "minimizing virtual regret" by Mansour. "If the servers and routing systems of the Internet could see and evaluate all the relevant variables in advance, they could more efficiently prioritize server resource requests, load documents and route visitors to an Internet site, for instance," says Mansour.

People who look at the past through rose-tinted glasses are happier than those who focus on negative past experiences and regrets, according to a new study published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences. The study helps explain why personality has such a strong influence on a person's happiness. The findings suggest that persons with certain personality traits are happier than others because of the way they think about their past, present and future.