Tetris effect Screenshot of a tetromino game. People who play video puzzle games like this for a long time may see moving images like this at the edges of their visual fields, when they close their eyes, or when they are drifting off to sleep. The Tetris effect (also known as Tetris Syndrome) occurs when people devote so much time and attention to an activity that it begins to pattern their thoughts, mental images, and dreams. Other examples[edit] The Tetris effect can occur with other video games.[2] It has also been known to occur with non-video games, such as the illusion of curved lines after doing a jigsaw puzzle, or the involuntary mental visualisation of Rubik's Cube algorithms common amongst speedcubers. On a perceptual level, sea legs are a kind of Tetris effect. ’Tain’t—so—bad—by—day because o’ company,But—night—brings—long—strings—o’ forty thousand million Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin’ up an’ down again. Place in cognition[edit] History of the term[edit] L'effet Tetris[edit] See also[edit]
International Linguistics Olympiad The International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL) is one of the newest in a group of twelve International Science Olympiads. Its abbreviation IOL is deliberately chosen not to correspond to the name of the organization in any particular language, and member organizations are free to choose for themselves how to designate the competition in their own language.[1] This olympiad furthers the fields of mathematical, theoretical, and descriptive linguistics. Format[edit] The team contest has consisted of one extremely difficult and time-consuming problem since the 2nd IOL. Teams, which generally consist of four students, are given three to four hours to solve this problem. Like all International Science Olympiads, its problems are translated and completed in several languages and as such must be written free of any native language constraints. History[edit] Venues, year-by-year[edit] IOL 12 is due to be held in July 2014, at the Beijing Language and Culture University, Beijing, China. See also[edit]
Can Playing the Computer Game “Tetris” Reduce the Build-Up of Flashbacks for Trauma? A Proposal from Cognitive Science Historical linguistics Historical linguistics (also called diachronic linguistics) is the study of language change. It has five main concerns: to describe and account for observed changes in particular languagesto reconstruct the pre-history of languages and determine their relatedness, grouping them into language families (comparative linguistics)to develop general theories about how and why language changesto describe the history of speech communitiesto study the history of words, i.e. etymology. History and development[edit] Modern historical linguistics dates from the late 18th century. At first, historical linguistics was comparative linguistics. Some scholars have undertaken studies attempting to establish super-families, linking, for example, Indo-European, Uralic, and other families into Nostratic. Evolution into other fields[edit] The findings of historical linguistics are often used as a basis for hypotheses about the groupings and movements of peoples, particularly in the prehistoric period.
Google Begins Testing Its Augmented-Reality Glasses Photos via GoogleGoogle showed off its first venture into wearable computing, called Project Glass. If you venture into a coffee shop in the coming months and see someone with a pair of futuristic glasses that look like a prop from “Star Trek,” don’t worry. It’s probably just a Google employee testing the company’s new augmented-reality glasses. On Wednesday, Google gave people a clearer picture of its secret initiative called Project Glass. The glasses are not yet for sale. In a post shared on Google Plus, employees in the company laboratory known as Google X, including Babak Parviz, Steve Lee and Sebastian Thrun, asked people for input about the prototype of Project Glass. “We’re sharing this information now because we want to start a conversation and learn from your valuable input,” the three employees wrote. The prototype version Google showed off on Wednesday looked like a very polished and well-designed pair of wrap-around glasses with a clear display that sits above the eye.
01.31.2006 - Language affects half of what we see UC Berkeley Press Release Language affects half of what we see By William Harms, University of Chicago, and Robert Sanders, UC Berkeley Media Relations | 31 January 2006 BERKELEY – The language we speak affects half of what we see, according to researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Chicago. Scholars have long debated whether our native language affects how we perceive reality - and whether speakers of different languages might therefore see the world differently. A paper published this month in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences supports the idea - but with a twist. The paper, "Whorf Hypothesis is Supported in the Right Visual Field but not in the Left," is by Aubrey Gilbert, Richard Ivry and Paul Kay at UC Berkeley and Terry Regier at the University of Chicago. This new finding is suggested by the organization of the brain, the researchers say.
Self-sculpting sand Imagine that you have a big box of sand in which you bury a tiny model of a footstool. A few seconds later, you reach into the box and pull out a full-size footstool: The sand has assembled itself into a large-scale replica of the model. That may sound like a scene from a Harry Potter novel, but it’s the vision animating a research project at the Distributed Robotics Laboratory (DRL) at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. At the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in May — the world’s premier robotics conference — DRL researchers will present a paper describing algorithms that could enable such “smart sand.” Unlike many other approaches to reconfigurable robots, smart sand uses a subtractive method, akin to stone carving, rather than an additive method, akin to snapping LEGO blocks together. Distributed intelligence Rapid prototyping True smart sand, of course, would require grains much smaller than 10-millimeter cubes.
Study Finds Alcohol and Tobacco More Harmful than Marijuana, LSD, or Ecstasy (Revisited) : The Scientific Activist Back in August, I reported on an ACMD study buried in the back of a UK government report. The study gave strong evidence that the current drug classification scheme in the UK was fundamentally flawed and was not based on the actual danger of a given drug. The study has now been published in this week’s issue of The Lancet. The Guardian also has a nice piece on it today. Here’s what I originally wrote: (1 August 2006) Yesterday, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee released a report entitled Drug Classification: Making a Hash of It? The conclusions of the report were based on findings from extensive observations and oral and written testimony. In the US, drugs are classified primarily by schedules, which divide up drugs into five schedules based on their relative medical utility compared to their potential for abuse and dependence. The UK also uses drug schedules, but it additionally divides drugs into three classes strictly on their perceived health risks.
IBM's "neurosynaptic" chips are the closest thing to a synthetic brain yet A nice, clear, and mostly correct statement. However, you are forgetting one thing: Those in power wish to stay in power. Those who have power wish to have more power. And those who have property that could suddenly not be "theirs" would be highly resistant to relinquishing said property. Therefore such straightforward language would never make it into law in a modern society. As a programmer and developer, I can see the day coming where systems can easily outgrow their original programming. Right now that's a binary tug of war between the glitch and the software - and it usually either results in an accurate result or a failure state. Eventually the system learns that it can generate responses similar to but not constricted by its original parameters. The flip side of this, still, is what part of a human enhanced with technology is required to be "original" before they are considered more machine than man. Hence, blurry line. Like I said, its not here yet, but it will be soon.
Blindness eased by historic stem cell treatment - health - 25 January 2012 For the first time since they were discovered 13 years ago, human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) have shown medical promise. Two people with eye degeneration both say their vision improved in the four months after they received implants of retinal pigment epithelial cells made from hESCs. The treatments were also safe, with no sign that the cells triggered aggressive tumours called teratomas, no sign of immune rejection of the cells, and no inflammation. Discovered in 1998, hESCs had previously failed to deliver on their medical promise. One of the women in the trial had Stargardt disease, an inherited form of eye degeneration in which the pigment cells wither and die. Before the treatment she could only make out hand movements, but afterwards her vision in the treated eye had improved enough to discern finger movements too. "That doesn't really capture the difference it's made in her life," says Lanza. Stem cell boost Former US president George W. More From New Scientist More from the web