Over the course of four different experiments including hundreds of participants, researchers from Canada’s University of Waterloo and Sheridan College tested how profound people would rate a bunch of buzzwords strung together in a plausible syntactic structure. The psychologists intended to establish a method of testing people’s individual receptivity to bullshit. 

Participants rated statements on a scale of profundity from 1 to 5, 5 being “very profound.” … Read More → "Lots of people think complete nonsense is profound, study finds"

The small sensors found in wearables like fitness trackers and smartwatches are only becoming more versatile, from monitoring your heart rate to enabling gesture control. But a new sensor design could afford these devices even more flexibility, in more ways than one. By combining carbon nanotubes with used chewing gum, scientists have developed a sensing device that can pick up movements of the more flexible body parts, such as bent finger.
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Many 3D cameras and scanners produce rough images, especially as they get smaller and cheaper. You often need a big laser scanner just to get reasonably accurate results. If MIT researchers have their way, though, even your smartphone could capture 3D images you’d be proud of. They’ve developed a technique that uses polarized light (like what you see in sunglasses) to increase the resolution of 3D imaging by up to 1,000 times. Their … Read More → "Super-sharp 3D cameras may come to your smartphone"

Can computers calculate the formula for a successful musical? British theatergoers will soon find out. According to The Guardian, UK TV channel Sky Arts has commissioned the creation of a computer-generated musical, to premiere at the Arts Theater in London in February 2016. 

Entitled Beyond the Fence, the musical is a collaboration between humans and machines. While computers generated elements of plot and score, humans created the choreography and staging. … Read More → "A computer-generated musical will premiere in London next year"

Why do Jupiter’s storms rotate backwards compared to those on Earth? Scientists now think they have an answer – and it’s all to do with gas flowing upwards from deep within the giant planet.

On Earth, the Coriolis effect causes our storms to rotate in the same direction as the rotation of the planet, but on Jupiter they rotate in the opposite direction. This new study, by scientists at … Read More → "Why are Jupiter’s storms backwards?"

Researchers from North Carolina State University have discovered a new phase of solid carbon, called Q-carbon, which is distinct from the known phases of graphite and diamond. They have also developed a technique for using Q-carbon to make diamond-related structures at room temperature and at ambient atmospheric pressure in air.
via Phys.org

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A group of researchers at the University of Alberta have developed what may be the first mathematical theory of humor, all thanks to a funny-sounding nonsense word: snunkoople.

Psychology professor Chris Westbury was studying people with aphasia, a disorder affecting language comprehension, when he noticed something strange. Subjects were asked to read strings of letters and identify whether they were real words. After a while, Westbury noticed subjects seemed to laugh at certain … Read More → "Researchers have developed a mathematical method for identifying certain kinds of humor"

Google is teashing machines to play Atari games like Space Invaders,Video Pinball, and Breakout. And they’re getting pretty good.

At DeepMind, a Google subsidiary based in Cambridge, England, researchers have built artificial intelligence software that’s so adept at these classic games, it can sometimes beat a human player—and a professional, at that. This … Read More → "Teaching AI to play Atari will help robots make sense of our world"

As a professional climatologist, Brian Brettschneider thinks a lot about the weather. What does it mean to have “good weather”? One element, Brettschneider thinks, is a pleasant temperature of 70ºF.

If you’d like to spend an entire year at that temperature without making use of heating or air conditioning, then he’s got the perfect road trip for you. On every day of this 9,125-mile journey, the average high is 70ºF. It … Read More → "A year-long road trip where the temperature is always 70ºF"

A researcher has finally found the impact crater where the Apollo 16 rocket booster crashed on the Moon, almost 44 years later. 

The Apollo 16 mission was the fifth NASA mission to land humans on the Moon and return them safely to Earth, and as one of the crew’s experiments, they crashed their Saturn V stage 3 booster onto the Moon’s surface after it had propelled them safely into lunar orbit.
via Read More → "The crash site of Apollo 16’s rocket booster has been spotted on the Moon"