Companies Could Start Using Brainwaves To Figure Out How Much To Charge You

Companies could start using brainwaves to find out how much customers are willing to pay. Bloomberg Businessweek profiled Kai-Markus Muller, a German scientist who is developing technology to "measure brainwaves and hit upon feel-good prices." According to Mueller, his studies showed that Germans would pay $3.25 for a small cup of Starbucks coffee-way more than the current price of $2.44.

Read More at the link here.. http://www.businessinsider.in/Companies-Could-Start-Using-Brainwaves-To-Figure-Out-How-Much-To-Charge-You/articleshow/23989479.cms

How Poverty Taxes the Brain

Human mental bandwidth is finite. You’ve probably experienced this before (though maybe not in those terms): When you’re lost in concentration trying to solve a problem like a broken computer, you’re more likely to neglect other tasks, things like remembering to take the dog for a walk, or picking your kid up from school. This is why people who use cell phones behind the wheel actually perform worse as drivers. It’s why air traffic controllers focused on averting a mid-air collision are less likely to pay attention to other planes in the sky.

We only have so much cognitive capacity to spread around. It's a scarce resource.

This understanding of the brain’s bandwidth could fundamentally change the way we think about poverty. Researchers publishing some groundbreaking findings today in the journal Science have concluded that poverty imposes such a massive cognitive load on the poor that they have little bandwidth left over to do many of the things that might lift them out of poverty – like go to night school, or search for a new job, or even remember to pay bills on time.

Read the entire article here.. How Poverty Taxes the Brain

Element Crucial For Life On Earth Probably Came From Mars, New Study Finds

Element Crucial For Life On Earth Probably Came From Mars, New Study Finds (via Planetsave)

Owing to the fact that it is far easier for a chunk of Mars to travel to Earth than the other way around,  it is likely that certain elements necessary to catalyze the formation of biological molecules (like RNA and DNA) came  from our neighboring…

 

Could the Government Get a Search Warrant for Your Thoughts?

Source: The Atlantic

We don't have a mind reading machine. But what if we one day did? The technique of functional MRI (fMRI), which measures changes in localized brain activity over time, can now be used to infer information regarding who we are thinking about, what we have seen, and the memories we are recalling. As the technology for inferring thought from brain activity continues to improve, the legal questions regarding its potential application in criminal and civil trials are gaining greater attention.
Last year, a Maryland man on trial for murdering his roommate tried to introduce results from an fMRI-based lie detection test to bolster his claim that the death was a suicide. Read More... http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/07/could-the-government-get-a-search-warrant-for-your-thoughts/278111/

Lithopanspermia, Microorganisms From Distant Planets May Have Seeded Life On Earth, Study Says

Lithopanspermia, Microorganisms From Distant Planets May Have Seeded Life On Earth, Study Says (via Planetsave)

Life on this planet may have been seeded by microorganisms embedded in the fragments of distant planets that have crashed to Earth, according to new research from Princeton University, the University of Arizona and the Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) in Spain. The new research, just published in the…

What is this thing called love? Mere chemical trickery

In the past two decades social neuroscientists have been diligently working to unravel the mysteries of love - including the phenomena of attraction, monogamy and the parent-child bond - using techniques such as brain imaging, genome-wide association studies and transgenic animal models. In The Chemistry Between Us, Larry Young, the director of Emory University's Center for Translational Social Neuroscience, and journalist Brian Alexander offer a novel take on many of those findings. More..
CultureLab: What is this thing called love? Mere chemical trickery

Scientists generate electricity with a virus

Iran is top of the world in science growth

Which country's scientific output rose 18-fold between 1996 and 2008, from 736 published papers to 13,238? The answer – Iran – might surprise many people, especially in the western nations used to leading science. Iran has the fastest rate of increase in scientific publication in the world.More... Iran is top of the world in science growth - science-in-society - 28 March 2011 - New Scientist

The Language Fossils Buried in Every Cell of Your Body

In 2001 a team of British scientists announced the discovery of a gene, called FOXP2, that seems to be essential for language. FOXP2 came to light through the study of a family that had unusual difficulties with words. The KE family—so called in scientific papers for privacy reasons—lived in West London and included nine siblings, some of whom attended the same special speech and language school. Psychologists at the school discovered that four of the children struggled with language in a similar way. The meaning of sentences sometimes confused them: They might misinterpret “The girl is chased by the horse” to mean “The girl is chasing the horse.” They also had trouble speaking—dropping some sounds off the beginning of words, for example, so that they would say “able” when they meant “table.” More.. The Language Fossils Buried in Every Cell of Your Body