Blogs / Discoblog

If facial recognition software that can compare your features to a criminal database, or gather data for advertisers, wasn’t futuristic enough for you, consider this: Someday when you’re taking a class from a robot instructor, it might be able to tell how well you understand the material solely based on your facial expressions.

Jacob Whitehill, a computer science PhD student at the University of California, San Diego, has created software that would allow him to control how fast a video played just by moving his face. That was the first step, he says—showing that a computer could pick up on facial movements and, if it was programmed correctly, use those movements as instructions. You can check out video of his “smile detector” here.

(more…)

Despite recent reports of blogging’s potential deadliness—which turned out to be, shall we say, a tad overblown—millions of hooked bloggers can attest that writing about stressful or painful experiences online can be deeply cathartic, helping them find self-expression, common ground, and connections with others. Now, researchers are pinpointing the ways in which journaling on the Internet is good for your mental health. Scientific American reports that neuroscientists have begun examining the effects blogging has on the brain, while a recent study in The Oncologist found that cancer patients who engaged in expressive writing (though not necessarily on the Internet) just before treatment fared markedly better than patients who didn’t.

(more…)

Have you ever wondered what ovulation looks like from the viewpoint of the egg? Or wished you could cruise along the lymphatic system through a tangled web of capillaries? Now, your childhood dreams of having Ms. Frizzle for a teacher can be (practically) fulfilled: A new interactive Web site called Visible Body is the Magic School Bus of the 21st century. The psychedelic site just launched on Tuesday, and is the first free (with registration), Web-based, 3D interactive model of the human body. The site includes eye-popping videos and images, including the screenshots posted here.

(more…)