Watching television is an ineffective way of stimulating an infant's intellect. That's the conclusion of a just-published paper that reports quality time spent with SpongeBob and his friends does not help children under 2 develop their cognitive skills. Researchers at Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School monitored more than 870 infants over a three-year period, measuring their television viewing patterns as well as a variety of other factors. They then tested the 3-year-olds' language and visual motor skills. After controlling for other factors believed to contribute to ... Read More
Ear Buds Shown to Stimulate Brain
February 25, 2009 • By • 1 Comment
Five short years ago — long before Shuffles, Nanos, and even video iPods were available — if you saw a person wearing the white Apple headphones around Duke University's campus, there was a good chance they were a doe-eyed freshman. In my fully disclosed, blatantly biased opinion as a jilted upperclassman at the time, I remember Duke's giveaway of 1,600 iPods to the entering freshman class seemed more like a publicity stunt than genuine attempt at transforming a hip technology into an educational tool. Sure, there were some classes, particularly music and foreign language courses, ... Read More
Oscar Predictions Golden
February 23, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Pardoe, an associate professor of Decision Sciences at the University of Oregon, correctly predicted the top four winners of the 2008 Academy Awards using his mathematical models. As we reported Feb. 2, Pardoe calculated the likely winners were Slumdog Millionaire for Best Picture, Danny Boyle for Best Director, Sean Penn for Best Actor and Kate Winslet for Best Actress. This year’s perfect score will increase his long-term average, which was at 70 percent for Best Picture winners and 77 percent for Best Actor and Actress. Last year, Pardoe was three for four, missing only the Best ... Read More
Violent Imagery Leaves Viewers ‘Comfortably Numb’
February 20, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Would you help a disabled woman pick up the crutches she dropped outside a cinema? Disturbing new research suggests it may depend upon which movie you just saw. Evidence continues to mount that violent media imagery impacts the behavior of viewers. In late 2007, Columbia University researchers reported that on-screen violence stimulates specific responses in the human brain. A recent review of 41 studies going back to the 1960s concluded that virtual violence increases the risk that both children and adults will act aggressively. In a just-published paper, one of the co-authors of that ... Read More
Robotics Handbook Scoops up Prize
February 11, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Last week, during the annual conference of the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers in Washington, D.C., the Springer Handbook of Robotics was given the PROSE Award for Excellence in Physical Sciences & Mathematics. It also won in the Engineering & Technology subcategory. The July 2008 issue of Miller-McCune magazine featured an in-depth interview with one of the handbook's editors, Bruno Siciliano, a professor of control and robotics at the University of Naples, Italy, and the president of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, ... Read More