We have seen video games make their way into therapy programs to boost cognition but scientists at the Florida State University’s Department of Psychology are now challenging existing claims as, basically, hogwash.

“Despite the hype, in reality, there is little solid evidence that games enhance cognition at all,” said assistant professor Walter Boot. “The idea that video games could enhance cognition was exciting because it represented one of the few cases in which cognitive training enhanced abilities that weren’t directly practiced,” Boot stated. “But we found no benefits of video game training.” Not only did some of his studies fail to replicate those earlier findings, but “no study has yet met the ‘gold standard’ methods necessary in intervention studies of this sort.”

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Could this be the next big game-to-movie adaptation?

If you’ve played too much Plants vs. Zombies on your computer, games console, iOS or Android device, then maybe your dreams nightmares look something like this.

Whales can live for 50 to 75 years. But did you know that after they die, their decomposing bodies can support a whole community of organisms and other sea life for an additional 50 to 75 years?

Whale Fall is a short documentary on what happens to the largest mammal on the planet after it dies and sinks to Davy Jones’ locker. Created by Sweet Fern Productions for Radiolab, it’s not only fascinating on an educational level, but it’s also a feast for the eyes through the use of animation, paper cutouts and puppetry. I loved science growing up, but had the educational videos in biology class looked like this, I may have actually paid attention.

SOURCE via Radiolab

Will the wonders of carbon nanotubes never cease? Engineers have now used everyone’s favorite cylindrical übermolecules to create artificial muscles that can contract and twist, in a manner not unlike like the muscles found in elephant trunks and squid tentacles. The upshot? Researchers say these tiny little motors could soon be used to propel microscopic nanobots throughout your bloodstream.

In nanoscale engineering, the term “artificial muscle” is used to refer to materials that can change their shape in response to stimuli. The mechanical movements created by these muscles have potential applications in everything from cancer therapies to portable electronics.

But scaling down motors into tiny little machines isn’t easy; as motors decrease in size, their power output relative to their mass often shrinks as well. Now, an international team of scientists led by UT Dallas engineer Ray Baughman appears to have found a way to circumvent this problem.

By twisting together “untold billions” of microscopic, straw-like carbon nanotubes into filamentous strands of “yarn,” Baughman’s team was able to create a nanoscale motor capable of spinning at nearly 600 rpms, and turning a weight 2,000 times heavier than the yarn itself. Pictured here is one such carbon nanotube yarn (the angle α indicates the deviation between individual nanotube orientation and yarn direction).

Here’s how it works: the coiled structure of each length of yarn measures just one-tenth the diameter of a human hair, but when the researchers immerse one of these threads in an electrolyte (in this case an electrically conductive solution of ions) and attach one end of it to a voltage supply, its constituent fibers “absorb” ions from the surrounding solution, causing them to expand. As the yarn swells, its untethered end is free to rotate at the speed and power described previously. Reversing the voltage causes the thread to coil back in the other direction.

“The torque that we can generate per mass of the yarn is comparable to that of very large electric motors,” explains Baughman. “But as you down-size electric motors you dramatically decrease…the torque capabilities per weight.”

“Our new type of artificial muscle produces a rotating action 1,000 times larger than previously known [artificial muscle] systems,” explains University of Wollongong researcher Geoff Spinks, co-first author on the research paper describing the team’s creation, which is published in the latest issue of Science. He continues:

We believe that, with further improvements in performance, it may be possible to propel a micro or nano-bot with these fascinating materials.

Which means they could be coming to a vein near you some time soon.

Ever wonder why you may look prettier in some photos and uglier in others, even with the same smile and the same lighting? It’s all about the camera lens. These portraits—taken by Stephen Eastwood—show how this works.

If you have ever used a dating site and thought——”damn, he/she looked so hot in those pictures! What happened?” or “wow! He/she looks a lot better in person!”—you know exactly what I’m talking about.

It’s all about the lens distortion (which is also affected by the subject’s distance to the camera). Lenses make the world look different than it does through your eyes. They bend light rays, capturing the scene within a certain field of view into a limited bi-dimensional frame: the photograph. Depending on the lens’ focal length, the image will deform more or less, affecting how faces and objects look in photos. You can see how the deformation works in this Eastwood’s series, who took the same photo with a wide range of optics, going from a 350mm to 19mm. Eastwood moved the camera to frame the subject in exactly the same position so you could clearly see the effect.

The shorter the focal length, the more field of you view you can capture. With something like a 15mm fish eye lens or the 19mm that Eastwood used, the effect is really obvious. Your face would be extremely deformed, like the rest of the environment. But as you go up, the distortion gets more subtle. Sometimes this distortion can make a face prettier than it actually is. Sometimes the effect makes a face uglier. Since this subtler distortion is not obvious, your mind just buys the image thinking that this is what the person looks like.

The same happens with larger focal lengths. At 350mm there’s also a distortion of reality: the face of the model becomes flatter and wider.

In theory, shooting with something like a 135mm would produce the best, most accurate results, but there’s no right or wrong here. It depends on your subject’s anatomy. That’s why some people are “photogenic” with certain cameras and at certain angles, and look horrible with others.

If you pay attention, you can really observe this effect in everyday photos taken with cellphones and compact cameras. You can even see it without even changing the lens focal length. While taking photos with my iPhone on a recent trip, placing some people on the center of the frame made them look better, especially from a distance. Then, as I moved them to the sides of the frame, they looked sightly different. The distortion is more obvious near the sides, and it was enough to make them less attractive. The funny thing is that the contrary happened with me: I looked better on the sides than on the center. Or maybe it was just that I had a horrible hangover the whole trip.

Soundfreaq doesn’t release speaker systems often, but it’s safe to expect something spectacularly sexy when it does. Such is exactly the case with its latest audiophile-aimed creation, the Sound Stack wireless speaker. The company is toting this $400 Bluetooth-enabled HiFi rig as a “2.2″ speaker system, thanks to its DubSub design — a duo of active subwoofers pump out lowend in an effort to complement its two other “full-range” drivers. Soundfreaq’s also packed this puppy with its UQ3 processing to keep the soundstage wide despite the unit’s size. Better yet, downloading a free Remote App (available on Android and iOS) unlocks the system’s FM radio — perfect for when you’re feeling nostalgic. If that wasn’t enough, the Sound Stack’s also loaded with an iThing dock and a USB input, both of which can be used to re-juice your devices while streaming. If your Gadget Acquisition Syndrome is already kicking in, fret not, the Sound Stack is available for purchase now.

SOURCE via Soundfreaq