http://www.pnas.org/content/97/8/4398.full
Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers
http://allthingsd.com/20111209/hp-is-keeping-webos-but-veer-sizing-it/Watch, it may be worthwhile to buy an HP tablet
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/334/6061/1427.full
Sciencewww.sciencemag.org
Science 9 December 2011:
Vol. 334 no. 6061 pp. 1427-1430
DOI: 10.1126/science.1210789
Vol. 334 no. 6061 pp. 1427-1430
DOI: 10.1126/science.1210789
- Report
Empathy and Pro-Social Behavior in Rats
+ Author Affiliations
Abstract
Whereas human pro-social behavior is often driven by empathic concern for another, it is unclear whether nonprimate mammals experience a similar motivational state. To test for empathically motivated pro-social behavior in rodents, we placed a free rat in an arena with a cagemate trapped in a restrainer. After several sessions, the free rat learned to intentionally and quickly open the restrainer and free the cagemate. Rats did not open empty or object-containing restrainers. They freed cagemates even when social contact was prevented. When liberating a cagemate was pitted against chocolate contained within a second restrainer, rats opened both restrainers and typically shared the chocolate. Thus, rats behave pro-socially in response to a conspecific’s distress, providing strong evidence for biological roots of empathically motivated helping behavior.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2397414,00.asp
Microsoft Can Remotely Kill Purchased Apps
They just don't learn.http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16066855
"The CNW survey of 3,800 people offers no conclusive proof, but there is nevertheless a strong sense that consumers are getting suspicious, both about whether GM knows what it is doing and about whether it is telling customers all that it knows.
Retaining customers
GM is working hard to mollify consumers.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
End Quote Joan Claybrook Formerly with the US National Highway Traffic Safety AdministrationThey have a duty to inform people when they've rated a vehicle as 'top rated' and make it clear there's a problem”
At first, when the problem first came to light, chief executive Dan Akerson offered to buy back Volt models from any concerned customers.
Then, when dozens of customers came forward wanting to hand back the keys to their cars, the company changed tack.Rather than automatically buying back the Volts, and thus losing its as yet tiny army of early adopters of electric motoring technology, GM started offering them some 6,000 free loan cars while awaiting the outcome of an investigation into the fires.
The hope, off course, must have been that the investigation would come up with findings that would calm nerves.
And perhaps it has.
Apparently, the fires in the Volts batteries were caused by a chain of events.
A crash test caused a leak of coolant liquids, which subsequently crystallised. This caused an electrical short that, in turn, resulted in a fire some days or weeks after the crash.
It could cost as little as $1,000 to fix.
Keeping it secret?
Dan Akerson says it is important for consumers, for GM and for the entire industry to fix this fast It now appears the fire hazard was first discovered back in June, when GM first heard about a fire in a Volt that occurred some three weeks after the vehicle had been crash tested.
Yet, almost five months went by before either GM or the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) told dealers and customers about the potential risks and urged them to drain the battery pack as soon as possible after an accident.
Part of the reason for delaying the disclosure was the "fragility of Volt sales" up until that point, according to Joan Claybrook, a former administrator at NHTSA.
"NHTSA could have put out a consumer alert," he said, according to industry website Autoguide.com.
"Not to tell [customers] for six months makes no sense to me. They have a duty to inform people when they've rated a vehicle as 'top rated' and make it clear there's a problem.""
http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/
"End Times" enthusiasts.
"Ilargi: Earlier today, in a fancy location in Brussels, - no, you're right, they probably had it €500 a plate catered, can't take the risk of venturing out into the real world where the people live they're supposed to represent-, one bullet-proof limo after another arrived to deliver the honorable hoity-toity from 27 EU countries and their servants for an informal gala dinner during which they could, in hard-fought peace, discuss the maximum extent to which austerity measures can be taken in various member countries without provoking outright civil war.
Security costs? Just a few million bucks; what are you insinuating? We do this every week.
And I'm thinking: the limo's may be bullet proof, but they're certainly not fool proof.
It links up perfectly with something the Polish Prime Minister said to his MPs this week: "You're either at the table or you're on the menu."
Only, he meant his country's government should have a say in what goes on (not just France and Germany). He did not mean the people of Poland themselves should be at the table. They are, like all other European people who were not delivered by bullet-proof limo to attend the dinner, very much on the menu. It's the 1% vs the 99%.
"European leaders Merkel and Sarkozy have reached "complete agreement" (mostly) on a new treaty that would restrict the budgeting and size of future deficits for eurozone nations. ", or so I read somewhere this week. Sounds great guys! Problem is, though, that the problem is not future deficits, it's present ones. What do you have for those?
Thing is, they have nothing. The EFSF stability fund was supposed to be leveraged up to €2 trillion or more. Not happening. The ECB was supposed to buy trillions in useless and worthless sovereign periphery bonds. Not happening. Geez, wonder why. Incestuously adding the EFSF to its own daughter (just temporarily..), the ESM; actually proposed. But not going to happen.
The busiest people today and tomorrow in Brussels at the EU meeting are the spin doctors. It’s about form, not content. Not what you say, but how you say it. They have nothing. The interests of the countries involved are by now so far apart, it's somewhat insane that Merkel and Sarkozy even try to maintain that "we're all in this together" stance.
Well, then again, they have by now both realized what predicament they're in. There's no way out that would allow either to keep their jobs. So they're together in that at least. But it's not going to be for their lack of trying!
For the financial markets, Merkel and Sarkozy, and all the rest of Europe, have long since lost all credibility. So they may pretend to be still in control, but there is no such thing as control without credibility. It’s all about faking it from here on in. . . ."
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/09/inflating-your-way-to-prosperity/
"
Inflating Your Way To Prosperity
One thing I often see in comments is people attributing to me, or to others, the notion that you can inflate your way to prosperity — which is presented as self-evidently absurd.
Well, if you think that it’s self-evidently absurd, you’ve been listening to the wrong people.
Nobody thinks that an economy operating somewhere near full employment can inflate its way to higher output. But under depression conditions — which is what we have now — inflation is very much a positive thing.
Here’s a quick example from Eichengreen and Sachs showing changes in the gold value of currencies 1929-35 versus changes in industrial production; the devaluation of currencies against gold was closely related to the changes in their overall price level:
Yep, countries were able to inflate their way to prosperity. And you get an immediate failing grade if you start ranting about Zimbabwe or Weimar."
Well, if you think that it’s self-evidently absurd, you’ve been listening to the wrong people.
Nobody thinks that an economy operating somewhere near full employment can inflate its way to higher output. But under depression conditions — which is what we have now — inflation is very much a positive thing.
Here’s a quick example from Eichengreen and Sachs showing changes in the gold value of currencies 1929-35 versus changes in industrial production; the devaluation of currencies against gold was closely related to the changes in their overall price level:
Think
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2011/12/europe-friday.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/
Debt crisis: eurozone banking system on the edge of collapse
09 Dec 2011
| 41 Comments .
No comments:
Post a Comment