Month: December 2016

(Banner image courtesy of iStock)

Honda is getting ready to take car and driver interactions to a whole new level. The Japanese automaker has announced plans for an electric vehicle called the NeuV, which will be powered by artificial intelligence and its own “emotions,” The Next Web reports.

Honda is calling the NeuV’s type of A.I. technology an “emotion engine.” The automobile giant has teamed up with telecommunications company SoftBank to develop a series of sensors and cameras, which will work to read a driver’s emotions, then engage with him or her in conversation. Simply put, Honda wants drivers to form a deeper emotional attachment to their cars, allowing people and the machines they rely on to “grow up” and share experiences together.

The NeuV is fully automated and designed with commuters in mind. Honda plans to unveil the ambitious concept car at CES 2017 (Consumer Electronics Show) in early January, as part of their broader “Cooperative Mobility Ecosystem”-themed exhibit.

[h/t The Next Web]

Pioneering astronaut and former U.S. Senator John Glenn has died, according to a statement from Ohio State University. The 95-year-old had suffered various health problems recently, and was being treated at the university’s James Cancer Hospital. Glenn, who in 1962 became the first American to orbit the Earth, also became the oldest astronaut to go to space, taking a space shuttle trip at the age of 77, while still a member of the Senate. (He retired from Congress a year later, in 1999.)

Here are a few tidbits of wisdom from the man whom NASA calls “a true American hero.”

1. ON SERVICE

“If there is one thing I’ve learned in my years on this planet, it’s that the happiest and most fulfilled people I’ve known are those who devoted themselves to something bigger and more profound than merely their own self interest,” he said in the 1997 announcement regarding his donation of his personal papers and artifacts to Ohio State University, which eventually named its public affairs college after him. He went on to give the school’s commencement speech in 2009, telling students that “we are more fulfilled when we are involved in something bigger than ourselves.”

2. ON CYNICISM

“If this cynicism and apathy are allowed to continue to fester, it will not only be dangerous, but in our democracy it will be suicidal,” he said upon the creation of the John Glenn Institute of Public Service at Ohio State. He went on to become an adjunct professor there, teaching late into his life.

3. ON TAKING RISKS

Glenn tells the story of climbing a giant sycamore in his childhood in his memoir. “Every time I climbed that tree, I forced myself to climb to the last possible safe limb and look down,” staring down the 55 feet to the ground. “Every time I did it, I told myself I’d never do it again. But I kept going back because it scared me and I had to know I could overcome that.”

4. ON HIS TIME IN CONGRESS

In his 2000 memoir, Glenn recalled the 24 years he served in Congress and the 9400 votes he cast. “Each had contributed in small or large measure to the painstaking march of our democracy,” he reflected. “I could not have asked for anything more rewarding.”

5. ON SEEING THE EARTH FROM ORBIT

As he made history as the first American to see Earth from orbit, his response was simple: “Oh, that view is tremendous,” he said over the radio.

6. ON NEXT-GENERATION SCIENTISTS

“The most important thing we can do is inspire young minds and to advance the kind of science, math, and technology education that will help youngsters take us to the next phase of space travel,” he said as the spokesperson for National Space Day in 2000.

7. ON HIS FAME

Glenn often demurred when asked about the fame he achieved in his life. “I figure I’m the same person who grew up in New Concord, Ohio, and went off through the years to participate in a lot of events of importance,” he once said in an interview. “What got a lot of attention, I think, was the tenuous times we thought we were living in back in the Cold War. I don’t think it was about me. All this would have happened to anyone who happened to be selected for that flight.”

8. ON FEAR

“You fear the least what you know the most about,” he said in the two months of continuous postponements that preceded his historic 1962 flight. As his orbiter, Friendship 7, reentered the atmosphere, he worried his heat shield had come loose, and he could see fiery chunks flying past his window. But his words to his capsule director were calm and cheeky. “My condition is good, but that was a real fireball, boy,” he said upon landing in the ocean.

9. ON TAKING RISKS ON THE JOB

“There are times when you devote yourself to a higher cause than personal safety,” he told the surviving family members of the space shuttle Challenger astronauts after the deadly 1986 explosion, comforting them immediately after the disaster. He went on to say that “the seven brave heroes were carrying our dreams and hopes with them.”

It’s a literary mystery: Nearly 200 years after it was published in New York’s Troy Sentinel, we still don’t know who really wrote “A Visit from St. Nicholas.”

When it first appeared in the newspaper on December 23, 1823, there was no name attached to it. It wasn’t until 13 years later that Clement Clarke Moore, a professor and poet, was named as the author. A story emerged that a housekeeper had, without Moore’s knowledge, sent the piece—which he had written for his kids—to the newspaper, and in 1844, the poem was officially included in an anthology of Moore’s work.

The problem? The family of Henry Livingston, Jr., claimed their father had been reciting “A Visit From St. Nicholas” to them for 15 years before it was published. Here’s the view from both sides.

THE LIVINGSTON ARGUMENT

Livingston’s Dutch background is a key component in this mystery. His mother was Dutch, and many references in the poem are as well. For example, “A Visit from St. Nicholas” is likely where we got the popular names for Santa’s reindeer—there seems to be no reference to their names prior to the poem. A couple of the names have skewed slightly over the years; instead of Donner and Blitzen, the latter two reindeer recited were called “Dunder” and “Blixem,” the Dutch words for “Thunder” and “Lightning.” (These days, the spellings have changed slightly to “donder” and “bliksem.”)

According to proponents of this hypothesis, Blixem first became Blixen to better rhyme with Vixen, and then, in 1844, Moore changed it to the more German Blitzen. Dunder would become Donder, and then, in the early 20th century, was changed to Donner to match Blitzen’s new German name. (Clement Moore proponents counter that the original editor of the poem may have altered the names to better fit a pseudo-Dutch framework, and Moore was simply changing them back to the original.)

Also piling up in the case against Moore is the fact that at least four of Livingston’s children and even a neighbor girl said they remembered Henry telling them the tale of St. Nick as early as 1807. They even said they had evidence—a dated, handwritten copy of the original poem with revisions and scratch marks all throughout. Unfortunately, the house containing this gem burned down, taking the Livingston family’s proof with it.

When a professor from Vassar analyzed poetry by both authors, he declared that there was virtually no possible way Moore could have written “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” According to the professor, the style of the Christmas favorite was completely different—both structurally and content-wise—than anything else Moore had ever written. But the anapestic scheme used matched up with some of Livingston’s work perfectly.

Earlier this year, a New Zealand professor wrote a book where he tackled this question by applying complex statistical analysis to works by both authors. He found that “if we did not know whether the poems in Moore’s manuscript notebook were by him or by Livingston, our full range of tests would, in combination, categorize every one of them as much more probably Moore’s. In this they contrast sharply with ‘The Night Before Christmas,’ which is consistently associated more closely with Livingston.” But the Moore camp usually argues that these studies are constructed in such a way that they would always discount Moore, especially through ignoring works like “The Pig & The Rooster,” which is anapestic. The Livingston camp dismisses it and another anapestic poem by saying, “If Moore wrote ‘The Night Before Christmas’ he displayed in it a facility that deserted him in his efforts in the same meter both at about the same time and a decade later.”

THE MOORE ARGUMENT

Aside from the obvious fact that Moore stepped forward to take credit first, one big key seems to be his relationship with Rip Van Winkle author Washington Irving.

In Irving’s A History of New York, he referred to St. Nick as “riding over the tops of the trees in that self-same wagon wherein he brings his yearly presents to children.” And “when St. Nicholas had smoked his pipe, he twisted it in his hatband, and laying his finger beside his nose,” he got in his wagon and disappeared.

Familiar, huh? Clement Moore being good friends with Irving might help explain some of the Dutch references in the poem—Irving was quite involved in the Dutch culture and traditions of New York state.

There’s still no definitive proof for either writer, though. To this day, it’s just one family’s word against the other’s. Clement Clarke Moore is the author who usually gets the credit for the classic, and it will likely remain that way unless Livingston’s descendants can prove otherwise.

A version of the piece originally ran in 2012.

Life is full of little mysteries. Why do we run out of conditioner before we’re out of shampoo? Why do we blush, even when we’re not embarrassed? And perhaps most frustratingly for people with chatty co-workers, why can’t we concentrate on work in our noisy, open-plan office when we have no problem focusing in a busy coffee shop?

The first two questions remain a mystery, but The Telegraph reports that researchers may have found an explanation for why your loquacious office peers drive you crazier than a rambling barista or clattering dishes: People trying to focus on a task find work-related conversations to be far more distracting (and annoying) than random, meaningless chitchat.

A team of acoustic scientists, led by Takahiro Tamesue, a professor at Yamaguchi University in Japan, conducted a study that looked at how background noise affects concentration. They asked subjects to perform tasks requiring intense focus while listening to various sounds, including random noises or productive, work-related discussions.

During one test, volunteers had to count how many times a red square flashed across a computer screen over the course of 10 minutes, while listening to both random noise and human speech at different pitches. In a second trial, they were asked to identify and count an infrequently heard noise among a sea of other noises, including background noise, music, and meaningful words. Subjects were asked to rate how annoying the “distracting” sounds were. During both tasks, scientists monitored participants’ brain waves through electrodes placed on the scalp, to gauge whether they were processing the sounds or were tuning them out.

Researchers found “that more meaningful noises, such as music and conversation, had a stronger effect on levels of subjective annoyance than meaningless noises—and led to a greater decline in performance on cognitive tasks involving memory or arithmetic tests,” as they concluded in a news release. Additionally, the participants’ brain waves showed that their selective attention was influenced by how meaningful the noises were.

According to Tamesue, the study’s findings suggests that employees should consider not only sound level, but how meaningful sounds are, while creating a workplace ambiance. “Because it is difficult to soundproof an open office, a way to mask meaningful speech with some other sound would be of great benefit for achieving a comfortable sound environment,” he said.

In short, if you’re going to have a discussion about work with a co-worker, consider opting for the soundproof conference room instead of talking in the middle of the office. Your colleagues will thank you—and end up being way more productive, to boot.

[h/t Telegraph.co.uk]

Q. What do vegan zombies eat?
A. Graaaaaaaaaaaaains. 

If that joke made you groan like the undead, thank your bilateral processing abilities. Researchers studying the neuroscience of puns say that understanding them, even the bad ones, requires cooperation between both sides of the brain. They published their research in the journal Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain and Cognition. 

Humor has a reputation for being transgressive, but all that boundary-pushing is only possible thanks to a system of internal rules. From knock-knock jokes to digs on someone’s mama, each class has its own standardized scaffolding. Some philosophers argue that humor itself depends on a formula: taking something familiar and giving it an unexpected—but not upsetting—twist. 

This “benign violation” setup is also at the heart of the pun. The joke up top takes a reader’s familiarity with the cliché of the lurching, brain-craving zombie, then uses a rhyme to add a surprising shade of meaning. Yes, we know that dissecting jokes isn’t funny. We’re done now.

Neuroscientists at the University of Windsor wondered how our brains would parse the two-step process of understanding puns. They were specifically curious to find out how the work was divvied up between the brain’s left and right hemispheres. 

To find out, they brought volunteers into the lab and sat them down in front of computers, which proceeded to display a series of easy, cheesy puns. (Ex.: “They replaced the baseball with an orange to add some zest to the game.”) Some of the puns showed up on the left side of the screen, where they would be processed first by the right side of the brain. The rest showed up on the right. The participants were timed to see how long it took them to get each joke, such as it was. 

The results showed that participants were quicker on the uptake when their puns appeared on the right side of the screen—that is, starting with the left side of their brains. This makes sense, co-author Lori Buchanan told Scientific American: “The left hemisphere is the linguistic hemisphere, so it’s the one that processes most of the language aspects of the pun, with the right hemisphere kicking in a bit later.” 

Understanding a pun, they found, requires input from both hemispheres. The left side introduces the standard, linguistic part of the sentence or joke—essentially setting up the setup—while the right side analyzes the punchline’s double meaning. 

That’s probably more thought than most puns deserve. 

Jane Austen, chronicler of 18th century social norms, was more receptive to criticism from her loved ones than most. The novelist actually encouraged her friends and family to write her with opinions on her work, and her own notes on those letters are about to go on display at the British Library, The Guardian reports.

“Jane Austen Among Family and Friends” celebrates the writer on the 200-year anniversary of her death. It features reviews by Austen’s friends and family on her third novel, Mansfield Park, which was published in 1814, just a few years before her 1817 death. And many of those reviews were not favorable. Austen’s own mother told her the novel wasn’t as good as Pride and Prejudice and called its main character, Fanny Price, “insipid.” Others tended to agree, like her niece, Anna Lefroy, who liked the book but hated the character of Fanny. Another letter writer said it “wanted incident,” and one, according to Austen, thought her first two books were “nonsense,” but hoped the new novel would be better.

Not all the reviews were so bleak. Austen’s sister Cassandra (who drew the sketch of the author above) “thought it quite as clever, tho’ not as brilliant as P. & P.” She was fond of Fanny and found the stupidity of the character Mr. Rushworth delightful.

Regardless of the opinions of those close to her, the novel would sell out within six months of its publication.

The exhibition also includes notebooks of writings by a teenage Austen as well as her writing desk and some of her memorabilia. They will be on display at the British Library from January 10 to February 19, 2017.

[h/t The Guardian]

The global fashion industry has a major pollution problem, thanks to the rise of fast-fashion apparel. Cheap, low quality items can be bought, disposed of, and bought again, but at an environmental cost—large quantities of water that become contaminated with bleaches, dyes, and more during the manufacturing process, for one thing. But one company is trying to make fashion a little more environmentally friendly, as Co.Exist reports. A Pittsburgh-based company called Thread International recycles trash collected from streets and canals in Haiti to create thread and fabric that puts plastic bottles to good use and provides jobs.

The company estimates that its trash-centric manufacturing process reduces water use by 50 percent compared to the manufacture of a cotton shirt. Thread International also prides itself on creating fair wages and safe working conditions for its employees in some of the poorest parts of Haiti and Honduras, motivated by founder Ian Rosenberger’s desire to help Haitians after the country’s 2010 earthquake.

Threat International makes yarn and thread and sells its own fabric. Fashion companies like Timberland and Kenneth Cole are using the company’s materials to make shoes, bags, and clothes. HP is using the recycled plastic to make printer cartridges.

The brands who use Thread’s materials end up paying a little more than they otherwise would, but the process uses 80 percent less energy than making virgin polyester, according to Co.Exist. To some companies, the trade off between ethical manufacturing and cheap goods is worth it, attracting customers who are willing to pay a little more for the peace of mind of buying products that are better for the environment.

[h/t Co.Exist]

Black cats aren’t always considered bad luck. In the English Midlands, brides are given dark-hued felines to bless their marriage, and in Japan, the animals are believed to be auspicious (particularly for single women). Now, the Associated Press reports, the police force in a small Pennsylvania town says a black cat helped them solve a crime.

In late November, the Ephrata Police Department was searching for a 23-year-old man wanted on an outstanding Lancaster County bench warrant (legalese for an arrest warrant that’s issued by a judge or court). Authorities found the man in a local home’s backyard, but he fled the scene, prompting the police to follow him.

Cops searched the surrounding area, but they didn’t spot the fugitive. Thankfully, a witness stood nearby—the black cat. As most pet owners know, there’s often no rhyme or reason to feline behavior, but one officer noted that the kitty’s eyes seemed to be fixed on two sheds in the backyard. One of them was empty—but sure enough, the second shed housed the runaway offender.

The man was taken into police custody, and the Ephrata Police Department later shared news of the crime-fighting feline on Facebook. “The Ephrata PD is thankful for any crime fighting assistance we get, whether human or feline!” they wrote. If the kitty sticks around, we sense a reality show in the works …

[h/t Associated Press]