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Mars Base

Numbers Games Devised to Aid People with "Dyscalculia": Scientific American - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm

scibyte78 Dyscalculia

shared by Mars Base on 19 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Three months on, Christopher seems to be faring better at the number-line game, going so quickly that Babtie asks him to slow down and explain his reasoning for each move
  • dyscalculic children tend to learn much more quickly when they talk through what they do
  • also believes that Christopher's maths anxiety, a near-universal trait of child and adult dyscalculics, is fading
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • Tetris-like game called Numberbonds, in which bars of different lengths fall down the screen
  • select a block of the correct size to fill out a row
  • emphasizes spatial relationships, which some dyscalculics also struggle with.
  • The Number Sense games, including a snazzy-looking iPhone version of Numberbonds, are intended to nurture the abilities that
  • contends, are the root of numerical cognition and the core deficit of dyscalculia — manipulating precise quantities.
  • In a game called Dots to Track, for example, children must ascribe an Arabic numeral to a pattern of dots, similar to those on dice.
  • When they enter the wrong value — and they often do — the game asks the children to add or remove dots to achieve the correct answer.
  • Other students are improving more slowly, but it is not easy to say why
  • Dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder are common among dyscalculics, and it can be difficult to untangle these problems,
  • with the right practice and attention from teachers and parents, dyscalculic children can thrive,
  • computer games are a supplement, not a replacement, for one-on-one tutoring.
  • in 2009 that Number Race, a game his group developed, modestly improved the ability of 15 dyscalculic kindergarten children to discern the larger of two numbers, but that it had no effect on their arithmetic or counting
  • a Swiss team reported in 2011 that a game that involves placing a spaceship on a number line helped eight- to ten-year-old dyscalculics with arithmetic
  • studied the children in an fMRI scanner during a task that involved arranging numbers.
  • one month after training, the children showed increased activation in the intraparietal sulcus and reduced neural activation elsewhere in the parietal lobes — a hint that their improvements in arithmetic were related to changes involving brain areas that respond to number.
  • hopes to monitor the brains of students such as Christopher as they practice Number Sense, to see if their parietal lobes are indeed changing
  • turned down by every funding source he has applied to
  • dyscalculia, like other learning disabilities, takes a toll on productivity
  • it doesn't attract much attention or money
  • In the United States, for example, the National Institutes of Health spent $2 million studying dyscalculia between 2000 and 2011, compared with more than $107 million on dyslexia.
Mars Base

Online Game on How Earth's Moon Formed Nabs Honors | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/oon-formation-online-game.html

scibyte80 LunarGame

shared by Mars Base on 01 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • An online game that allows players to build their own moon and sculpt its features has won big praise in science art competition
  • "Selene: A Lunar Construction GaME,"
  • measures how and when players learn as they discover more about how the Earth's moon formed
  • ...30 more annotations...
  • by extension, the solar system.
  • received an honorable mention in the 2012 International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge
  • When they look at the moon, players are seeing what actually created those features
  • It makes moon observations more meaningful
  • Named for the Greek goddess of the moon, Selene works in two parts
  • In the first round, players aim asteroids of varying sizes, densities, and radiations so that they collide with one an
  • Too much force, and the rocks ricochet off one another
  • even if you overshoot your target, the gravity of the growing moon may tug just enough to pull the new piece into the pack
  • participants a chance to watch accretion in action
  • developing moon is constantly compared to the real-life one, and players strive to make as close a match as possible
  • After all of the small asteroids have melted together to form a smooth new moon, it's time to scratch up the surface
  • Players can aim asteroids of varying sizes at the body, and select areas where lava breaks through the crust
  • Because the accretion and surface-sculpting processes for the moon echo that of the rest of the planets, players also develop an understanding of how the early solar system formed
  • kids ages nine and up engage in the game, they build concrete knowledge that can be applied into any learning environment that they later experience, a process that serves to make learning more intuitive
  • Though the game is effective for high school and college students, and slanted to match the national standards for those age ranges
  • was more attractive to middle school students
  • One of the primary goals of Selene is to allow
  • team to analyze the learning process
  • means the game requires a login, and for minors, parental permission must be given.
  • analyzation takes time
  • able to provide a quick overview of my game play
  • can tell from looking at your data what your experiences were
  • That under-the-hood ability to study learning is why the project was so attractive in terms of funding to NASA and the National Science Foundation
  • d a prototype of the game was developed by CyGaMEs in May of 2007.
  • first version was released in 2010. But the game is constantly being improved as the understanding of the learning process grows
  • also looking at expanding it to mobile platforms in the near future.
  • recognition is of course a great honor and encouragement — but more importantly, may drive more players to the website so that we can collect more data
  • More players, of course, means more information that can be gathered about how participants learn
  • At the same time, more people can learn about how the moon formed, growing their understanding of the nearest celestial body.
  • http://selene.cet.edu/
Mars Base

Game on! Researchers use online crowd-sourcing to diagnose malaria - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...ne-crowd-sourcing-malaria.html

scibyte45 crowdsourcing medical

shared by Mars Base on 03 May 12 - No Cached
  • Online crowd-sourcing — in which a task is presented to the public, who respond, for free, with various solutions and suggestions — has been used to evaluate potential consumer products, develop software algorithms and solve vexing research-and-development challenges. But diagnosing infectious diseases
  • crowd-sourced online gaming system in which players distinguish malaria-infected red blood cells from healthy ones by viewing digital images obtained from microscopes.
  • recognize infectious diseases with the accuracy of trained pathologists
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science
  • Working on the assumption that large groups of public non-experts can be trained to recognize infectious diseases with the accuracy of trained pathologists
  • School of Medicine at UCLA
  • found that a small group of non-experts playing the game (mostly undergraduate student volunteers) was collectively able to diagnosis malaria-infected red blood cells with an accuracy that was within 1.25 percent of the diagnostic decisions made by a trained medical professional.
  • The game, which can be accessed on cell phones and personal computers, can be played by anyone around the world, including children
  • if you carefully combine the decisions of people — even non-experts — they become very competitive
  • if you just look at one person's response, it may be OK, but that one person will inevitably make some mistakes. But if you combine 10 to 20, maybe 50 non-expert gamers together, you improve your accuracy greatly in terms of analysis
  • could potentially help overcome limitations in the diagnosis of malaria
  • current gold standard for malaria diagnosis involves a trained pathologist using a conventional light microscope to view images of cells and count the number of malaria-causing parasites
  • process is very time-consuming, and given the large number of cases in resource-poor countries, the sheer volume presents a big challenge
  • significant portion of cases reported in sub-Sahara Africa are actually false positives, leading to unnecessary and costly treatments and hospitalizations
  • t the same platform could be applied to combine the decisions of minimally trained health care workers to significantly boost the accuracy of diagnosis, which is especially promising for telepathology, among other telemedicine field
  • By training hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of members of the public to identify malaria through UCLA's crowd-sourced game, a much greater number of diagnoses could be made more quickly — at no cost and with a high degree of collective accurac
  • research group created an automated algorithm for diagnosing the same images using computer vision, as well as a novel hybrid platform for combining human and machine resources toward efficient, accurate and remote diagnosis of malaria.
  • Before playing the game, each player is given a brief online tutorial and an explanation of what malaria-infected red blood cells typically look like using sample images
  • one of the major challenges will be the skepticism of traditional microscopists, pathologists and clinical laboratory personnel, not to mention malaria experts, who will initially view with suspicion a gaming approach in malaria diagnostics
Mars Base

Computer Game-Playing Shown to Improve Multitasking Skills: Scientific American - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm

scibyte101

shared by Mars Base on 05 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • a study published this week in Nature
  • convincingly shows that if a game is tailored to a precise cognitive deficit, in this case multitasking in older people, it can indeed be effective
  • the study found that a game called NeuroRacer can help older people to improve their capacity to multitask
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • the effect seems to carry over to tasks in everyday life and is still there after six months
  • The study also shows how patterns of brain activity change as those cognitive skills improve
  • NeuroRacer is a three-dimensional video game in which players steer a car along a winding, hilly road with their left thumb, while keeping an eye out for signs that randomly pop up
  • If the sign is a particular shape and colour, players have to shoot it down using a finger on their right hand
  • draws on a mix of cognitive skills just as real life does — such as attention focusing, task switching and working memory
  • first recruited around 30 participants for each of six decades of life, from the 20s to the 70s
  • confirmed that multitasking skills as measured by the game deteriorated linearly with age
  • then recruited 46 participants aged 60–85
  • put them through a 4-week training period with a version of NeuroRacer that increased in difficulty as the player improved
  • After training, subjects had improved so much that they achieved higher scores than untrained 20-year-olds
  • the skill remained six months later without practice
  • scientists also conducted a battery of cognitive tests on the participants before and after training
  • Certain cognitive abilities that were not specifically targeted by the game improved and remained improved
  • working memory and sustained attention
Mars Base

Memories 'geotagged' with spatial information - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...131128141405.htm

scibyte111 memories

shared by Mars Base on 01 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Using a video game in which people navigate through a virtual town delivering objects to specific locations, a team of neuroscientists
  • has discovered how brain cells that encode spatial information form "geotags" for specific memories and are activated immediately before those memories are recalled.
  • work shows how spatial information is incorporated into memories and why remembering an experience can quickly bring to mind other events that happened in the same place
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • findings provide the first direct neural evidence for the idea that the human memory system tags memories with information about where and when they were formed
  • this study involved playing a simple video game on a bedside computer
  • The game in this experiment involved making deliveries to stores in a virtual city
  • The participants were first given a period where they were allowed to freely explore the city and learn the stores' locations
  • When the game began, participants were only instructed where their next stop was, without being told what they were delivering
  • After they reached their destination, the game would reveal the item that had been delivered, and then give the participant their next stop
  • After 13 deliveries, the screen went blank and participants were asked to remember and name as many of the items they had delivered in the order they came to mind
  • This allowed the researchers to correlate the neural activation associated with the formation of spatial memories (the locations of the stores) and the recall of episodic memories: (the list of items that had been delivered).
  • "Having these patients play our games allows us to record every action they take in the game and to measure the responses of neurons both during spatial navigation and then later during verbal recall."
  • By asking participants to recall the items they delivered instead of the stores they visited, the researchers could test whether their spatial memory systems were being activated
  • map-like nature of the neurons associated with spatial memory made this comparison possible
  • During navigation, neurons in the hippocampus and neighboring regions can often represent the patient's virtual location within the town
  • Using the brain recordings generated while the participants navigated the city, the researchers were able to develop a neural map that corresponded to the city's layout
  • As participants passed by a particular store, the researchers correlated their spatial memory of that location with the pattern of place cell activation recorded
  • With maps of place cell activations in hand, the researchers were able to cross- reference each participant's spatial memories as they accessed their episodic memories of the delivered items
  • given just the place cell activations of a participant
  • could predict, with better than chance accuracy, the item he or she was recalling
  • cannot distinguish whether these spatial memories are actually helping the participants access their episodic memories
  • seeing that this place cell activation plays a role in the memory retrieval processes
  • Earlier neuroscience research
  • had suggested the hippocampus has two distinct roles
  • tracking location information for spatial memory, and
  • recording events for episodic memory
  • This experiment provides further evidence that these roles are intertwined
Mars Base

Could the Video-Game Tetris Curb Cravings for Food, Cigarettes and Alcohol? - 0 views

www.scienceworldreport.com/...ood-cigarettes-and-alcohol.htm

scibyte122

shared by Mars Base on 25 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • A recent study suggests that Tetris could actually help dieters reduce cravings
  • examine how the game can affect people's carvings
  • researchers created two study groups: One that played Tetris for three minutes while the other group was told that the game was loading but they never received the chance to play
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • participants were then asked to rate their cravings for cigarettes, food and alcohol based on the vividness, intrusiveness and strength of those cravings.
  • Tetris group showed a 24 percent reduction in cravings following their activity with the game
  • the other group who did not get to play Tetris did not experience any craving reductions.
  • "Ultimately, we are constantly looking for ways to stimulate cravings for healthy activities - such as exercise - but this a neutral activity that we have shown can have a positive impact."
  • "Feeling in control is an important part of staying motivated, and playing Tetris can potentially help the individual to stay in control when cravings strike
  • It is something a person can quickly access, for the most part whether they are at work or at home, and replaces the feeling of stress caused by the craving itself,"
Mars Base

Numbers Games Devised to Aid People with "Dyscalculia": Scientific American - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm

scibyte78 Dyscalculia

shared by Mars Base on 19 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • By developing treatments for dyscalculia
  • to test competing theories about the cognitive basis of numeracy. If,
  • dyscalculia is at heart a deficiency of basic number sense and not of memory, attention or language, as others have proposed, then nurturing the roots of number sense should help dyscalculics
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • It may be the case that what these kids need is just much more practice than the rest of us
  • starts with a game involving a number line
  • “What is the number that is right in the middle between 200 and 800? Do you know it?
  • A classic sign of dyscalculia is difficulty in grasping the place-value system,
  • A soft computer voice tells Christopher to “find the number and click it
  • The game involves zooming in and zooming out to rescale the number line
  • talks through each move — a strategy that Babtie encourages
  • but it takes him more than a minute to locate 210. His classmates, meanwhile, are learning to multiply two-digit numbers.
  • Butterworth
  • made his name probing obscure speech and language disorders
  • tested 31 eight- and nine-year-old children who were near the bottom of their class in mathematics but did well enough in other subjects.
  • Compared with normal children and those with dyslexia, the dyscalculic children struggled on almost every numerical task, yet were average on tests of reading comprehension, memory and IQ.
Mars Base

Numbers Games Devised to Aid People with "Dyscalculia": Scientific American - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm

scibyte78 Dyscalculia

shared by Mars Base on 19 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • team now has tentative plans to evaluate its software with researchers at the Cuban Neurosciences Center and the University of Pedagogical Sciences in Havana next year
  • also placing the game in other countries, including China and Singapore.
  • Cubans, curiously, are putting money into this, even though they've got very little
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • hopes that Number Sense — if it can improve dyscalculia — will help him in the academic debate over the cognitive basis of numeracy.
  • the interest of the children was to have a fun game full of ideas and variety, and that was not very compatible with an analytic approach
Mars Base

Numbers Games Devised to Aid People with "Dyscalculia": Scientific American - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm

scibyte78 Dyscalculia

shared by Mars Base on 19 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • The study confirmed for Butterworth that developmental forms of dyscalculia are the result of basic problems in comprehending numbers and not in other cognitive faculties
  • determining exactly what those problems are would prove challenging
  • approximate number sense, distinguishes larger quantities from smaller ones, be they dots flashing on a screen or fruits in a tree.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • A second ancient number system allows humans and many other animals to instantly and precisely recognize small quantities, up to four.
  • People who are poor at distinguishing approximate quantities do badly in maths, suggesting that the approximate-number system is crucial.
  • some work shows that dyscalculics are poor at recognizing small numbers, suggesting that this ability is also fundamental to numeracy
  • scans of people with dyscalculia suggest that their intraparietal sulci are less active when processing numbers and less connected with the rest of the brain compared with numerate children and adults.
  • views such results as consequences, not causes, of the poor numerical abilities that characterize dyscalculia.
  • argues that another cognitive capacity is even more fundamental to number sense
  • calls this 'numerosity coding': the understanding that things have a precise quantity associated with them, and that adding or taking things away alters that quantity.
  • Approximation and a sense of small numbers, while critical, are not enough for humans to precisely grasp large numbers,
  • Language, he argues, empowers humans to integrate the two number systems — giving them the ability to intuitively distinguish, say, 11,437 from 11,436.
  • young children who could not yet count past two nonetheless understood that adding pennies to a bowl containing six somehow altered its number, even if the children couldn't say exactly how.
  • If numerosity coding is fundamental, it predicts that dyscalculics
  • struggle to enumerate and manipulate all numbers, large and small.
  • hopes that, by honing this ability, the Number Sense games will help support his research ideas
Mars Base

Numbers Games Devised to Aid People with "Dyscalculia": Scientific American - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm

scibyte78 Dyscalculia

shared by Mars Base on 15 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • A cognitive scientist who studies numerical cognition and a learning disability likened to dyslexia for mathematics works on identifying its cause as well as ways to help those who suffer from it
  • After conducting some tests,
  • concluded that
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • “a disaster at arithmetic” and diagnosed him with dyscalculia, a little-known learning disability sometimes called number blindness and likened to dyslexia for maths
  • Researchers estimate that as much as 7% of the population has dyscalculia, which is marked by severe difficulties in dealing with numbers despite otherwise normal
  • well above normal) intelligence
  • he has crusaded to get dyscalculia recognized — by parents, teachers, politicians and anyone who will listen.
  • Number Sense, a suite of educational computer games
Mars Base

Claims of fairness in apes have critics crying foul | Zoology | Science News - 0 views

www.sciencenews.org/..._apes_have_critics_crying_foul

scibyte78

shared by Mars Base on 16 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Chimpanzees often share and share alike when cooperating in pairs, suggesting that these apes come close to a human sense of fairness, a controversial new study finds.
  • chimps tend to fork over half of a valuable windfall to a comrade in situations where the recipient can choose to accept the deal or turn it down and leave both players with nothing
  • Yerkes National Primate Research Cente
  • ...23 more annotations...
  • just as people do, chimps turn stingy when supplied with goodies that they can share however they like
  • But psychologis
  • of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
  • considers the new results “far from convincing.
  • In Proctor’s experiments, pairs of chimps interacted little with each other and showed no signs of understanding that some offers were unfair and could be rejected
  • study suggests that there is no fairness sensitivity in chimpanzees
  • coauthored two earlier studies in which chimps given food generally shared as little as possible with partners, who accepted most offers
  • Apes on the receiving end affirmed an offer by pulling food within reach using a mechanical device or refused an offer by doing nothing for 30 seconds.
  • In the new study, chimps and preschool children were tested in a way that Proctor contends is closer to a cooperation task known as the ultimatum game that is used in experiments with adults.
  • In the game’s standard version, one player splits a pot of money with another player
  • If the receiver accepts the proposer’s offer, both players keep their shares.
  • If the receiver rejects the offer, both players get nothing.
  • Proposers fork over 40 percent to 50 percent of the pot in most human cultures
  • A concern with fairness and a fear of retaliation for lowball offers prompts these generous offers
  • Her group studied six adult chimps at an outdoor research facility and 20 preschool children ages 2 to 7
  • Four pairs of chimps and 10 pairs of kids played a modified ultimatum game, in which a proposer can offer one of two tokens to a receiver
  • Accepted tokens got handed to an experimenter in exchange for rewards
  • Proposers opted for even splits much more frequently when a partner could reject offers
  • Two pairs of chimps split banana slices equally substantially more often than expected by chance
  • In both species, receivers exchanged all tokens for rewards, even those for unfair deals.
  • Neither chimps nor kids were trained that refusal was an option, but the mere threat of a partner’s retaliation motivated proposers to share equally
  • Jensen disagrees with that conclusion. Receivers’ acceptance of all offers “suggests that they were not sensitive to unfairness but were motivated only by getting rewards,
  • undermines any suggestion that chimp or child proposers assumed that their offers could be rejected
Mars Base

Olympians live longer than general population... But cyclists no survival advantage ove... - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...ulation-cyclists-survival.html

scibyte76 Olympian

shared by Mars Base on 14 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • second study comparing athletes who trained at different physical intensities, found that those from high or moderate intensity sports have no added survival benefit over athletes from low intensity sports
  • Olympic medallists live longer than the general population, regardless of country of origin, medal won, or type of sport played
  • those who engage in disciplines with high levels of physical contact, such as boxing, rugby and ice hockey, are at an increased risk of death in later life
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • researchers compared life expectancy among 15,174 Olympic athletes who won medals between 1896 and 2010 with general population groups matched by country, sex, and age
  • All medallists lived an average of 2.8 years longer
  • in eight out of the nine country groups studied.
  • Gold, silver and bronze medallists enjoyed roughly the same survival advantage, as did medallists in both endurance and mixed sports
  • Medallists in power sports had a smaller, but still significant, advantage over the general population.
  • study was not designed to determine why Olympic athletes live longer
  • possible explanations include genetic factors, physical activity, healthy lifestyle, and the wealth and status that come from international sporting glory
  • In the second study, researchers measured the effect of high intensity exercise on mortality later in life among former Olympic athletes
  • They tracked 9,889 athletes
  • who took part in at least one Olympic Games between 1896 and 1936
  • represented 43 disciplines requiring different levels of exercise intensity and physical contact
  • researchers did find an 11% increased risk of mortality among athletes from disciplines with a high risk of body collision and with high levels of physical contact, such as boxing, rugby and ice hockey, compared with other athletes
  • two public health experts point out that people who do at least 150 minutes a week of moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity also have a survival advantage compared with the inactive general population
  • , they found that athletes from sports with high cardiovascular intensity (such as cycling and rowing) or moderate cardiovascular intensity (such as gymnastics and tennis) had similar mortality rates compared with athletes from low cardiovascular intensity sports, such as golf or cricket
Mars Base

Teenagers play detectives on Interpol's new website - 0 views

phys.org/...eenagers-interpol-website.html

scibyte49 Interpol crime

shared by Mars Base on 30 May 12 - No Cached
  • Global police agency Interpol Tuesday launched a website to educate teenagers about crimes that can be committed over the Internet and tell them how they can protect themselves from the dangers
  • website also aims to teach teenagers about the 190-country-member organisation
  • focal point of the new site is a game "Interpol Junior Officer -- the Case of the Black Tattoo," in which players assume the role of an Interpol officer who travels worldwide, gathering clues to help local police track down an international gang involved in smuggling.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • launched in English and will eventually have Arabic, French and Spanish versions.
Mars Base

EyeWire gamers help researchers understand retina's motion detection wiring - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...mers-retina-motion-wiring.html

scibyte130 eyes

shared by Mars Base on 06 May 14 - No Cached
  • A team of researchers working at MIT has used data supplied by gamers on EyeWire to help explain how it is that the retina is able to process motion detection
  • the team describes how they worked with gamers at EyeWire and then used the resulting mapped neural networks to propose a new theory to describe how it is the eye is able to understand what happens when something moves in front of it.
  • Scientists have known for quite some time that light enters the eye and strikes the back of the eyeball where photoreceptors respond
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • Those photoreceptors send information they receive to another type of neural cell known as bipolar cells
  • they in turn convert received signals to another signal format which is then sent to what are known as starburst amacrine cells (SACs)
  • Signals from the SAC are sent via the optic nerve to the brain
  • scientists believe they have a pretty good idea about how the whole process works for static images, they have not been able to get a handle on what happens when images sent to the eyeball have information about things that are moving
  • In this new effort, the researchers sought to do just that—via assistance from thousands of gamers on the EyeWire game playing site
  • The problem with figuring out how nerve cells work in the eye, of either mice or humans, is the inability to watch what happens in action—everything is too tiny and intricate
  • To get around that problem, researchers have been building three dimensional models on computers
  • even that gets untenable when considering the complexity and numbers of nerves involved
  • That's where the EyeWire gamers came in, a game was created that involved gamers creating mouse neural networks—the better they were at it the more points they got
  • only the best at it were invited to play
  • The result was the creation of a model that the researchers believe is an accurate representation of the cells involved in processing vision, and the networks that are made up of them
  • the rest was up to the research team
  • They noted that in the model, there were different types of bipolar cells connecting to SACs—some connected to dendrites close to the cells center, and others connected to dendrites that were farther away
  • Prior research had shown that some bipolar cells take longer to process information than others
  • The researchers believe that the bipolar cells that connect closer to the center are of the type that take longer to process signals
  • This, they contend, could set up a scenario where the center of the SAC receives information from both types of bipolar cells at the same time—and that, they suggest, could be how the SAC comes to understand that motion—in one direction—is occurring
  • The researchers suggest their theory can be real-world tested in the lab, and expect other teams will likely do so
  • If they are right, the mystery of how our eyes detect motion will finally be solved.
Mars Base

Physicists use Kinect to control holographic tweezers (w/ Video) - 0 views

phys.org/...olographic-tweezers-video.html

scibyte70 Kinect

shared by Mars Base on 05 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • Researchers
  • in Scotland have devised a means of using a Microsoft Kinect sensing system to allow for hand control of holographic optical tweezers
  • Laser tweezers are laser based devices that allow for manipulation of very small objects; typically at the cellular level
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • A laser beam is projected towards a target, but before reaching it, is split into three separate beams
  • three beams are broadcast onto the edges of the object to be manipulated
  • as the beams are moved the object is caused to move in lockstep
  • , fine tuning control of the laser to cause the movement of an object has been less than ideal
  • researchers to continue looking for alternative means
  • In this new research, the team connected a Microsoft Kinect device to the tweezers and then demonstrated an ability to move microscopic sized objects by moving their hands around in the air.
  • connecting a Kinect device to their virtual tweezers, the researchers found that they were able to define the space in which they wished to work by using simple hand movements and then to connect, virtually to a particular tiny object
  • The Kinect
  • is not precise enough to capture subtle movements however
  • doesn't allow for force-feedback, or the ability to feel the resistance of an object as its being moved
  • HoloHands, is not sophisticated enough to allow for serious research work
  • being used as a tool for educational purposes, either as a tool, or implemented as a learning game.
Mars Base

Researchers debunk the IQ myth - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...2012-12-debunk-iq-myth.html

scibyte76 IQ

shared by Mars Base on 23 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • After conducting the largest online intelligence study on record
  • research team has concluded that the notion of measuring one's intelligence quotient or IQ by a singular, standardized test is highly misleading
  • study, which included more than 100,000 participants
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Utilizing an online study open to anyone, anywhere in the world, the researchers asked respondents to complete 12 cognitive tests tapping memory, reasoning, attention and planning abilities, as well as a survey about their background and lifestyle habits.
  • expected a few hundred responses, but thousands and thousands of people took part, including people of all ages, cultures and creeds from every corner of the world
  • The results showed that when a wide range of cognitive abilities are explored, the observed variations in performance can only be explained with at least three distinct components: short-term memory, reasoning and a verbal component
  • No one component, or IQ, explained everything
  • scientists used a brain scanning technique known as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), to show that these differences in cognitive ability map onto distinct circuits in the brain.
  • Intriguingly, people who regularly played computer games did perform significantly better in terms of both reasoning and short-term memory
  • smokers performed poorly on the short-term memory and the verbal factors
  • people who frequently suffer from anxiety performed badly on the short-term memory factor in particular
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