Exercising the Brain

Exercising the Brain: "Exercising the Brain

Innovative training software could turn back the clock on aging brains.

By Emily Singer

Baby boomers regularly head to the gym to combat middle-age spread. Now evidence is piling up that exercising the aging brain is just as important.

A new cognitive training program designed to rejuvenate the brain's natural plasticity could slow down mental decline by as much as ten years. The program and others like it may be an accessible way for older people to take advantage of recent advances in the neuroscience of aging.

The connections in the brain are plastic, meaning that when we learn something, the properties of our synapses and other neural circuits change, improving their processing speed and the fidelity of the information being encoded.

As we age, though, this natural learning process starts to deteriorate. 'Sensory information gets encoded less accurately, and the brain has to look and listen longer before it can make a decision about what it's seeing or hearing,' says Michael Merzenich, a neuroscientist at the University of California at San Francisco, who's been studying the neural basis of learning for 30 years.

This slowing is at the root of some age-related memory loss. For example, older persons are significantly worse than college-age ones at remembering two musical tones presented in quick succession. But if the stimuli are slowed down by just a few hundred milliseconds, giving the subject more time to process the information, the difference in performance disappears.

Recent research has shown that reading the newspaper or doing crossword puzzles can help to keep older people mentally fit. According to Merzenich, a more focused and rigorous approach will have a considerably larger impact. In 2003, he founded the for-profit Posit Science in San Francisco to develop a software program based on the idea that individuals can retrain their brains to think faster, similar to the wa"

Senate committee passes spyware bill | InfoWorld | News | 2005-11-18 | By Grant Gross, IDG News Service

Senate committee passes spyware bill | InfoWorld | News | 2005-11-18 | By Grant Gross, IDG News Service: "Senate committee passes spyware bill
Spyblock Act would also outlaw installation of adware without a user's permission

By Grant Gross, IDG News Service
November 18, 2005

WASHINGTON - A U.S. Senate committee has approved a bill that would outlaw the practice of remotely installing software that collects a computer users' personal information without consent.
SPONSOR

'SPYWARE' INFOWORLD IT STRATEGY GUIDE

Sponsored by Webroot Software

In addition to prohibiting spyware, the Spyblock (Software Principles Yielding Better Levels of Consumer Knowledge) Act would also outlaw the installation of adware programs without a computer user's permission. The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee approved the bill Thursday.

Spyblock, sponsored by Senator Conrad Burns, a Montana Republican, would prohibit hackers from remotely taking over a computer and prohibit programs that hijack Web browsers. The bill would protect antispyware software vendors from being sued by companies whose software they block.

'I am pleased that a majority of the committee agrees with me that Congress must act to protect the right of consumers to know when potentially dangerous Spyware is being downloaded onto their computers,' Burns said in a statement. 'As the Spyblock Act moves forward to the Senate floor, I hope we can continue making it a stronger bill by making sure the private sector has all the right tools it needs to successfully slow the spread of malicious spyware.'

The Spyblock Act now moves to the full Senate for consideration. The U.S. House of Representatives passed two antispyware bills in October 2004 and again in May, but the Senate has so far failed to act on spyware legislation.

The Spyblock Act would allow the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and sta"

digg / movies

digg / movies: "First BitTorrent conviction

danhuard submitted by danhuard 9 days ago (via http://arstechnica.com/news.ar...)

The first BitTorrent conviction has been given out in Hong Kong. Watch out!"

digg / security

digg / security: "Americans Spend 40 Minutes A Week Deleting Spam

Live4Soccer submitted by Live4Soccer 2 days ago (via http://us.mcafee.com/fightspam...)

'A recent survey commissioned by McAfee found that Americans waste significant amounts of their valuable time dealing with and deleting spam.' - I don't know about 40 minutes but nothing I have more than filtering that crap..."

HD Beat

HD Beat: "10 HDTV myths from PCWorld

Posted Oct 30, 2005, 11:28 AM ET by Kevin C. Tofel

Doh! I'm surprised they only stopped at ten since there's just so much misunderstanding about HDTV. Hopefully, we clarified that a little with weekend feature last week: HDTV Defined. Here's the list of myths from PCWorld along with my brief thoughts. What do you think: facts or myth? What myths have you heard that are missing from the list?

1. An HD set is all you need to get high-def programs. Actually, an HD set by itself doesn't 'get' anything until you hook up an antenna or other programming source. Keep in mind that 'HD-Ready' has no digital tuner while 'HDTV' has some tuning capabilities.

2. The bigger your HDTV set, the better it will look. Perhaps if you're showing off the size of it to the neighbors, but what about the picture? Output resolution, program signal and proper calibration have much to do with this one.


3. The higher the screen resolution, the better the image quality of an HDTV. Not necessary. First off, you need to consider the set's native resolution. The broadcast format will also dictate what the image quality is.

4. You have to relinquish the fluid motion of a CRT screen when you move up to HDTV. Oh, say it isn't so! Progressive scanning and advances in PDPs and DLP sets bring the flatties up to par with the fatties.

5. Burn-in will wreck your plasma HDTV within a year. Sure, ghosting and burn-in are a concern, but not one to worry about these days. This myth might have been valid during the first few generations of PDPs, but they've come a long way since then.

6. Bright LCDs look beautiful everywhere, and they use much less power than plasma or CRT sets do. Not so fast; brightness is good, but too bright of a picture affects those important black levels too. As far as power concerns: the power differences between sets aren't likely to break your utility budget.

7. These pricey TVs look so great out of the box that "

Will Wal-Mart sell $398 notebooks, desktops? | CNET News.com

Will Wal-Mart sell $398 notebooks, desktops? | CNET News.com: "Will Wal-Mart sell $398 notebooks, desktops?
By Michael Kanellos
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: October 31, 2005, 3:43 PM PST
Tell us what you think about this storyTalkBack E-mail this story to a friendE-mail View this story formatted for printingPrint See links from elsewhere to this story (TrackBacks/Pingbacks)TrackBack

Wal-Mart and Hewlett-Packard will likely celebrate this Thanksgiving season by attempting to crush their competitors with low-price desktops and notebooks, according to a Web site that tracks bargains.

Black Friday 2005, which posts information about retail deals, posted scans of what appear to be future Wal-Mart newspaper inserts featuring a $398 laptop and a $398 desktop with an LCD monitor from HP. The notebook deal, if consummated, would represent a new low in price for mainstream Windows laptops.

The laptop in the ad comes with a 2800 Sempron processor from Advanced Micro Devices, 256MB of memory, a 40GB hard drive, a CD-RW/DVD drive and a 15-inch screen.

The desktop, meanwhile, comes with a 3000 Sempron, 512MB of memory, a 40GB drive and a 15-inch LCD.

The upcoming computers will likely be among several bargains touted on so-called Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving that remains the biggest U.S. shopping day of the year.

The expected Wal-Mart deals are 'pretty aggressive,' said Steve Baker, an analyst at The NPD Group. 'But it sure as hell won't be the last $399 notebook or the only one on Black Friday.'

Black Friday 2005 does not reveal its sources, and stated that retail deals can change before they come out. Nonetheless, the site noted that it has a good probability of success. Baker and others have also said that PC makers would be extremely aggressive in pricing by the end of the year. During the summer, Baker said that $499 laptops would become somewhat common by the holidays.

'We"

The Formula For Laughter

OhGizmo! � The Formula For Laughter: "The Formula For Laughter
Posted on 10.05.05 @ 12:40 am

By David Ponce

Well… Jeevus Tap-Dancin Christ and all that. Something on OhGizmo that isn’t an actual (or even imaginary) product! We have us a formula. Yup. Like they have in mathematics and such. It’s a fascinating one though, and you should read on.

A Russian-American researcher claims to have gotten to the bottom of the mystery of laughter and has even concocted a for-real, living, breathing and sweating mathematical “Formula of Laughter”.

So, the question is: why do we laugh? Don’t answer sumthin smart like “because it’s funny!” Think about it. Why do we laugh? What is the social role of laughter? What are we trying to do when we joke?

Well, Igor Krishtafovich is confident that humor always implies aggression. “It is a bloodless verbal fight aiming to raise your status and strengthen your position. Even a friendly banter is a sort of intellectual clash, a kind of training before serious battles. In fact, we try to figure out who’s the boss in the family when we poke fun at our loved ones.”

And the formula? HE = PI x C/T BM

What does it mean? What’s all this? Well, for an explanation and such, come inside.

So the formula means :
PI - personal involvement

C - complexity of a joke. The higher degree of complexity the better provided that your audience can solve the problem within 1 or 2 seconds.

T - time spent by a person solving a joke. The longer the time, the weaker the effect.

BM - background mood. A joker can have an advantage if an audience enjoys the show. However, a real good joke can “blow up” the most dismal audience.

HE - humor effectiveness.

Now, there’s a fascinating article that you should really read to better understand all this. Really.

It explains things like why women consider “a good sense of humor” an essential quality in a man."

Google and Sun to Collaborate

BetaNews | Google and Sun to Collaborate: "Google and Sun to Collaborate
By Nate Mook, BetaNews
October 3, 2005, 1:37 PM

Google chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt will sit down with Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy on Tuesday morning to outline a collaborative effort between the two companies. It's not clear what the partnership will entail, but Sun has already begun to hype the event.

The news conference will take place at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California and webcast live at 10:30am PST. The announcement will mark the second high-profile joint venture for Google in as many weeks - the search giant recently forged a partnership with NASA to collaborate on technology and space research."

digg / science

digg / science: "Solar System Simulator


This cool solar system simulator by NASA lets you view the solar system or specific planets from a number of different planets and spacecraft at different times, dates, and fields of view... Check it out!"

digg / links

digg / links: "Wikipedia corrects Encyclopedia Britannica

digg3r submitted by digg3r 6 hours 45 minutes ago (via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...)

Those who have voiced skepticism over the reliability of information found in Wikipedia should take note of this. The collaboratively assembled encyclopedia maintains a page devoted to correcting errors in its chief offline competitor, the venerable Encyclopedia Britannica."

digg / software

digg / software: "FBI to get veto power over PC software?

a
The Federal Communications Commission thinks you have the right to use software on your computer only if the FBI approves. No, really. In an obscure 'policy' document released around 9 p.m. ET last Friday, the FCC announced this remarkable decision."

digg / security

digg / security: "Wiretapping Broadband



It seems the FCC can now tap your broadband connection. Last Friday the FCC released it's CALEA First Report and Order, which allowed law enforcement to wiretap VoIP service. The original CALEA omitted broadband 'information services' from such wiretaps, but now the FCC somehow was able to sneak this in."

BitTorrent's Grab at Respectability

BitTorrent's Grab at Respectability: "BitTorrent's Grab at Respectability
Its technology is beloved by illegal downloaders and file sharers. Now the outfit is raising venture funding in a bid to go commercial


BitTorrent, the maker of popular file-sharing software used to distribute movies, music, and games both legally and illegally, is going commercial. The company has raised $8.75 million in venture capital from Menlo Park (Calif.)-based Doll Capital Management and plans to create a marketplace for dispensing digital goods."
The idea? Gather movies, music, games, and software from Hollywood studios and indie producers alike and distribute them to consumers. BitTorrent would generate revenue either by selling ads within the content or charging a fee for the files.

That's a pretty dramatic turn for a technology that up to now has been so closely associated with illegal file sharing. BitTorrent was developed and released in 2002 by independent programmer Bram Cohen as a way to efficiently distribute the free Linux operating system that competes with Microsoft's (MSFT ) software. But it was quickly commandeered by file sharers for illegal swapping of copyrighted movies and TV shows

digg / links

digg / links: "Job Listings Google Maps ( other cool technologies) = SimplyHired

lucas submitted by lucas 19 hours 59 minutes ago (via http://www.simplyhired.com/)

SimplyHired does some cool stuff like linking to PayScale for salary comparison, and [my fave] mapping job opportunities with Google Maps. This can be quite helpful if you're moving to a new city and want to know where the job is, or you just want to compare commute options or neighborhoods. Oh! I think I saw some AJAX here and there, too!"