Blogs / Discoblog

It’s tough to get people to make healthier decisions about the way they live their lives. Public health officials have tried for decades to stem the obesity epidemic by getting people to exercise more, but all their tactics–lecturing, scolding, scaring, informing, inspiring, empowering–have had very little effect.

But at a subway station in Stockholm, a band of inventive social engineers had amazing results when they decided to get commuters off the escalators and onto the stairs. They asked themselves, “Can we get more people to choose the stairs by making it fun to do?” And then they turned the staircase into a piano keyboard, complete with black and white keys.

The project was part of a larger initiative sponsored by Volkswagen called “The Fun Theory,” which aims to prove that people will change their behavior for the better if you let them have a little fun in the bargain. Have you pulled off a similar trick? Tell Volkswagen about it and you can win more than $4,000.

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Video: Volkswagen

Introducing the maple-seed-inspired Ulrich flyer, the world’s first controllable robotic monocopter. The monocopter’s inventors studied the way a maple seed whirls and twirls as it falls to the ground, and designed their flyer based on that biological blueprint. In this video, watch the little aircraft rise through the air with its single blade spinning furiously–accompanied by an epic soundtrack that ranges from techno to symphonic grandeur.

Invented at the University of Maryland’s Aerospace Engineering Autonomous Vehicle Laboratory and Alfred Gessow Rotorcraft Center, the small and capable craft meets most of the challenges set forth by DARPA’s nano-air-vehicle program. The program asks engineers to invent ultra-lightweight vehicles that could come in handy for urban military missions.

Read more about the copter over at Physorg.com.

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Video: YouTube / RoboSeed

Can’t be bothered with keys but still need a way to prevent intruders from invading your fortress of solitude? Try a secret knock detector to guard your lair.

Don’t know how to build one? Stephen Hoefer over at Make demonstrates:

However, if you live in a shoebox New York City apartment like some of us, where everyone in the building can hear you knocking, this probably won’t be very helpful.

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Video: Stephen Hoefer / Made

Listen up, iPhone users. If you’re a little uneasy flying the friendly skies, don’t worry: Richard Branson, president of Virgin Atlantic, will talk you through it. Branson has released a new iPhone app to help you make it through your flight. It’s for sale in Apple’s app store for about the same price as an in-flight beer.

Dubbed the Flying Without Fear app, it features an introduction by Branson himself, a video explaining how flying works, FAQs, relaxation exercises, and an emergency panic button to press for breathing exercises. And it’s Whoopi Goldberg endorsed!

Mashable has the deets:

The app is based on Virgin Atlantic Airways’ Flying Without Fear course, which supposedly has a 98% success rate. The idea is not bad: anything that can make your mind busy during those awkward moments of liftoff would probably be helpful, and an iPhone app seems like a perfect way to do just that. Richard Branson, president of Virgin Atlantic, claims “the app will put many travelers at ease and enable them to prepare for their first Virgin Atlantic flight.”

However it’s unclear how this app will help during the most nerve-wrecking parts of flying—takeoff and landing—since airlines require you to turn off any electronics that have an on/off switch. Guess you’ll just have to calm your nerves at the airport bar the old-fashioned way.

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Image: flickr / William Hook

Instead of spending time and money planning a manned mission to Mars, why not send an army of robots into space to do all the work? A fleet of robots could be deployed to explore far-away planets, according to researchers at Caltech’s Visual and Autonomous Exploration Systems Research Laboratory.

From the Telegraph:

Robotic airships and satellites will fly above the surface of the distant world, commanding squadrons of wheeled rovers and floating robot boats…The systems will transform planetary exploration, says [Wolfgang] Fink, who envisages the cybernetic adventurers mapping the land and seascapes of Saturn’s moon, Titan—believed to have lakes of standing liquid—as well as closer planetary neighbors like Mars.

Researchers say the robots could command themselves and other robots with little input from ground control. All of which seems like a great idea, since the human space flight program isn’t likely to take off anytime soon.

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Image: NASA

While some companies are hiring people to promote the company brand on Twitter, others frown on their employees’ personal use of social networking during work hours. And now, it’s being reported that people waste so much time Tweeting/Facebooking/etc. that it costs British companies $2.2 billion a year, according to a survey put out by Morse. The results are based on 1,460 people surveyed, who on average used Twitter or Facebook for 40 minutes during the business week.

But is time spent on Facebook and Twitter really wasted time? As TechCrunch points out, there is a “difference between being productive and ‘not wasting time’:

I’d like to see more research in this field, but more focused on office workers who spend the majority of their day staring out the windows, yapping about last night’s television highlights with coworkers in the coffee and/or smoking room, attending meetings where no decision or progress gets made, or simply working on stuff that’s not particularly considered to be productive for their employer, the British economy as a whole, or the rest of planet Earth.

As a protective measure, some companies have banned the use of social networks by having the IT guy block access to the sites. The Washington Post put out guidelines on what to Tweet and what not to Tweet. Perhaps these tips could have prevented ABC employees from tweeting that Obama called Kanye a “jackass” during an off-the-record interview. Needless to say, basic Twitter etiquette will continue to evolve: In the meantime, don’t say anything that will get you fired.

And if you happen to be on Twitter, follow us — @discovermag.

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Image: flickr/ Mykl Roventine

As medicine becomes super advanced, and super expensive, the super rich may evolve into a completely different species from everyone else, according to American futurologist Paul Saffo. He thinks medical technology such as replacement organs, specially tailored drugs, and genetic research tools to alert the moneybags of any possible hereditary health dangers, could all lead to a new class of rich, elite, and longer-living humans.

Here are Saffo’s thoughts on the advantages this would give the rich, as reported in the Guardian:

“I sometimes wonder if the very rich can live, on average, 20 years longer than the poor. That’s 20 more years of earning and saving. Think about wealth and power and the advantages that you pass on to your children.”

At the very least, they’ll be able to afford health care—and keep opposing it for the rest of is.

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Image: iStockphoto

Not even one week after the Balloon Boy hoax that riveted cable networks and American audiences, two video games have already been rolled out based onb Falcon Heene’s fake-out journey. The first, called the Balloon Boy Game, is distributed by Web start-up Heyzap. The second, Balloon Boy Adventure, is hosted on Newgrounds.com. Here’s a review from the Christian Science Monitor:

Both games are pretty straightforward. In the Balloon Boy Game, seen in the image at right, the user pilots young Falcon Heene across an urban cityscape. Falcon hangs haplessly onto the balloon; there is an option to shoot at seagulls, or grab free power-ups. In Balloon Boy Adventure, neither Falcon nor his father, Richard Heene are present – there’s only that big tinfoil muffin of a balloon.

Anecdotally, the games are enjoying a good deal of success… But for tech junkies, the most interesting part about the Balloon Boy games is that they exist at all.

Yup, it took developers all of half a day to come up with a concept and execute it into a workable game. Even more impressive would be gaming that’s simultaneous with the cable news coverage.

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Image: Courtesy of Heyzap

These days, professors are well acquainted with the threat of plagiarism from their students. But teachers quickly learned to enlist computer programs to help them catch cheaters. And now, a University of London literature professor, Sir Brian Vickers, is expanding the use of plagiarism software to determine the authors of literature that remains un-bylined.

The program, aptly named Pl@giarism, compared the play The Reign of Edward III to Shakespeare’s collection of work by looking for patterns in the number of times similar phrases appeared in both. The plagiarism software counted the number of times at least three strings of “trademark” Shakespeare words appeared in the play, such as “art thy self.” The program doesn’t look for a predetermined set of words, but looks for patterns. So when Edward III was compared to the works of other authors, the program only determined a match of 20 strings, while it found 200 strings in common with the Bard’s work, making it clear that Edward III was, indeed, written by Shakespeare.

Time reports:

Among Shakespeare’s recycled bits of phrases: “come in person hither,” “pale queene of night,” “thou art thy selfe,” “author of my blood” and even the whole phrase “lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.” Other matching strings are less compelling, but are nevertheless an essential part of distinguishing the author’s linguistic fingerprint, says Vickers. The professor also matched more than 200 strings of words between Edward III and Kyd’s earlier works — at this point in his career, he had only three plays to his name.

Therefore, it appears Kyd wrote 60 percent of the play, and Shakespeare wrote the rest.

That said, don’t expect non-literature buffs to take on the task of deciphering un-attributed works anytime soon: It took Vickers 40 years of learning about Shakespeare and two whole years to crack the Edward III case.

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Image: flickr/ Tonynetone

Not only are the medals for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games trippy, they are made from recycled circuit boards.

From Gizmodo:

The medals, designed by Canuck artists Corrine Hunt and Omer Arbel, are made from the gold, bronze and silver reclaimed from old electronics. They’re also laser-etched so no two medals are the same and feature an undulating design meant to invoke the landscape of Vancouver.

It seems the Vancouver games will satisfy both snowboarders and environmentalist

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Image: Vancouver2010.com