Facebook posts more memorable than book quotes: study

A study has found that people are more able to remember Facebook posts from their friends than random book quotes or human faces. 　The study “Major memory for microblogs,” conducted by academics at the University of Warwick and UC San Diego, asked undergraduate students to read posts from their Facebook feeds. They were also given sentences from random books and human faces to memorize. The researchers then asked them to recall the online posts, book quotes and human faces.The result showed stud

Jan. 16, 2013

New ‘flying’ frog discovered in Vietnam

An Australian biologist has described the discovery of a large green “flying” frog in Vietnam that uses its big webbed feet to glide through forests.Writing in the Journal of Herpetology, Jodi Rowley, an amphibian biologist at the Australian Museum in Sydney, told how she and other researchers “came across a huge green frog, sitting on a log,” not far from the capital, Ho Chi Minh City.She later determined the 3.5-inch creature is a relatively large new type of flying frog, a group known for its

Jan. 16, 2013

Japanese salmon bred with ‘surrogate’ fish

Japanese scientists say they‘ve successfully bred a type of salmon indigenous to the country through the use of surrogate parents of a different species.Researchers at the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology reported they extracted spermatogonia, or primordial germ cells, from endangered yamame salmon, a Japanese species that lives the entirety of its life in rivers.The germ cells were implanted into sterile rainbow trout hatchlings, where the cells developed into fully functioning

Jan. 16, 2013

Berries may reduce heart attack risk

Women who ate at least three servings of blueberries and strawberries per week had fewer heart attacks, U.S. and British researchers say. Senior author Eric Rimm of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston said blueberries and strawberries were used simply because they are the most eaten berries in the United States. Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of East Anglia in England conducted a prospective study among 93,600 women ages 25-42, part of the Nurses‘

Jan. 15, 2013

U.S. tech firm introduces dynamic keyboard for touch device

Tactus Technology unveiled a touch screen with buttons that rise up from the surface on demand at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.The California-based company called the technology a “tactile user interface.” It features a convex keyboard that sits on top of the existing touch screen, and then recedes back into the screen.The keyboard features a small amount of fluid in a reservoir embedded in the phone or tablet. The company’s official website said that the buttons’ layout and shape

Jan. 15, 2013

Apes have a sense of fairness: report

A study has found that Chimpanzees have a sense of fairness, which had long been regarded as unique to humans.Researchers at the Yerks National Primate Research Center in Emory University conducted research to find out if chimpanzees have a human-like sense of equality. The researchers tested six apes on the Ultimate Game. In the game, two players are rewarded with a small prize only if one individual agrees to split the prize. Adult humans most often offer a suggestion that equally benefits bot

Jan. 15, 2013

Empty praise can harm children: psychologist

Excessively complimenting children can harm their confidence, a U.S. psychologist claimed.Stephen Grosz, who teaches psychoanalytic theory at University College London, alleged that parents may be putting their children’s confidence at risk by bombarding them with “empty” compliments, such as “You really are an artist,” or “You’re so clever.”“Empty praise is as bad as thoughtless criticism -- it expresses indifference to the child’s feelings and thoughts,” Grosz was quoted by the Daily Mail as s

Jan. 14, 2013

Urgent CO2 cuts may spare millions hardship: report

Tens of millions of people may be spared droughts and floods by 2050 if Earth-warming carbon emissions peak in 2016 rather than 2030, scientists said on Sunday.Climate researchers in Britain and Germany said emission cuts now would delay some crippling impacts by decades and prevent some altogether.By 2050, an Earth heading for warming of 2-2.5 degrees Celsius (3.6-4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100 could have two very different faces, depending on the route taken to get there, said their study pub

Jan. 14, 2013

MUFON investigating flying saucer in Texas

A photograph of an alleged flying saucer hovering over a Texas oil field that surfaced on the Internet may be authentic, a UFO investigator says.The photo, which has a July 5 time stamp, appeared on the Mutual UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) Network website last week and was allegedly taken by a security camera at an oil drilling site in Eagle Ford, the San Antonio (Texas) Express-News reported.Charles Stansburge, a veteran MUFON investigator, said the photo has passed two authenticity tests."I

Jan. 14, 2013

[Newsmaker] Tragic death of online activist Aaron Swartz

A dreadful, if not downright scary, scenario is the end of free content on the Internet. What if you had to pay a fee for each and every piece of digital content you browsed on the Web? What if there were no Wikipedia, and no free news feeds from tens of thousands of media outlets? Aaron Swartz, a pioneering programmer, envisioned a cyberspace where online content is freely available. But before his vision was realized in full, he tragically ended his life at the age of 26, U.S. authorities conf

Jan. 13, 2013