PERSONALITY TEST

PERSONALITY TEST Choose an icon that speaks to you the most. Don't think about it too hard. Read the answer below... Let us know what you got! 

1. You are a generous and moral (not to confuse with moralizing) person. You always work on self-improvement. You are very ambitious and have very high standards. People might think that communicating with you is difficult, but for you, it isn't easy to be who you are. You work very hard but you are not in the least selfish. You work because you want to improve the world. You have a great capacity to love people until they hurt you. But even after they do. . . you keep loving. Very few people can appreciate everything you do as well as you deserve. 

2. You are a fun, honest person. You are very responsible and like taking care of others. You believe in putting in an honest day's work and accept many work-related responsibilities. You have a very good personality and people come to trust you easily. You are bright, witty and fast-thinking. You always have an interesting story to tell. 

3.You are a smart and thoughtful person. You are a great thinker. Your thoughts and ideas are the most important. You like to think about your theories and views alone. You are an introvert. You get along with those who likes to think and learn. You spend a lot of time, thinking about morality. You are trying to do what is right, even if the majority of society does not agree with you. 

4. You are perceptive and philosophical person. You are a unique, one soul of your kind. Next to you there's no one even slightly similar to you. You are intuitive and a bit quirky. You are often misunderstood, and it hurts you. You need personal space. Your creativity needs to be developed, it requires respect of others. You are a person who clearly sees the light and dark sides of life. You are very emotional. 

5. You are self-assured and in charge. You are very independent. Your guiding principle in life is 'I'll do it my way.'. You are very self-reliant and know how to stay strong for yourself and the people you Love. You know exactly what you want and are not afraid of pursuing your dreams. The only thing you demand from people is honesty. You are strong enough to accept the truth. 

6. You are kind and sensitive. People relate to you very well. You have many friends and you love helping them. You have this warm and bright aura that makes people feel good when they are around you. Every day, you think about what you can do to improve yourself. You want to be interesting, insightful and unique. More than anybody else in the world, you need to love. You are even ready to love those who don't love you back. 

7. You are happy and unflappable. You are a very sensitive and understanding person. You are a great listener who know how to be non-judgmental. You believe that everybody has their own journey in life. You are open to new people and events. You are highly resistant to stress and rarely worry. Normally, you are very relaxed. You always manage to have a good time and never lose your way. 

8. You are charming and energetic. You are a fun person who knows how to make people laugh. You live in a state of harmony with the universe. You are spontaneous and enthusiastic. You never say no to an adventure. Often, you end up surprising and even shocking people. But that's just how you are. . . You always remain true to yourself. You have many interests and if something proves of interest to you, you will not rest until you acquire a profound knowledge of this area. 

9. You are optimistic and lucky. You believe that life is a gift and you try to achieve as much as possible and put this gift to the best use possible. You are very proud of your achievements. You are ready to stick by the people you care about through thick and thin. You have a very healthy approach to life. The glass is (at least) half full for you. You use any opportunity to forgive, learn, and grow because you believe that life is too short to do otherwise.

Read More

Scientists detect water around a hot Jupiter

Scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) are part of a research team that has detected water vapor in the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system. The team, including scientists from California Institute of Technology, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Pennsylvania State University, and University of Arizona, applied a sophisticated Doppler technique to the infrared to directly detect the planet and demonstrate the presence of water in its atmosphere. The discovery is described in the March 10, 2014 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The planet, named tau Boo b, orbits the nearby star tau Boötis and belongs to a class of exotic planets called "hot Jupiters" that are not found in our solar system. A hot Jupiter is a massive extrasolar planet that orbits very close to its parent star. Unlike our Jupiter, which is fairly cold and has an orbital period of about 12 years, tau Boo b orbits its star every 3.3 days and is heated to extreme temperatures by its proximity to the star. Under these conditions, water will exist as a high temperature steam. While hot Jupiters are found to be relatively common in the Galaxy, the origin and nature of these planets remain the subject of intense research.

The research team studied data collected at the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, using the Near Infrared Echelle Spectrograph instrument. Because a hot Jupiter is too close to its star to separate the planet's light from that of the star, the researchers adapted a Doppler technique previously used to detect low mass-ratio spectroscopic binary stars. Application of this method to tau Boo b, however, posed a huge challenge, because the infrared radiation from the star is more than 10,000 times greater than that of the planet. The analysis software to extract this minute planetary signal was developed by Chad Bender, a Penn State member of the team, while he was a National Research Council Associate at NRL.

By comparing the molecular signature of water to the combined light spectrum of the planet and star, the scientists were able to measure the motion of the planet as it orbits the star and establish the presence of water vapor in the planet's atmosphere. The team also determined that the planet is six times more massive than Jupiter.

Dr. John Carr, a researcher in NRL's Remote Sensing Division and co-author on the paper, said, "The detection of water vapor in tau Boo b is an exciting and important step in understanding the composition of these exotic planets. Our result also demonstrates the power of this technique for measuring water and other molecules in the atmospheres of planets, giving us a new tool to study the nature and evolution of extrasolar planets."

Prior to this, scientists have reported detections of water for just a few other extrasolar planets. Most of these used the transit method, which requires a special orientation that causes the planet's orbit to pass in front of its star, as viewed from Earth. Alternatively, if a planet is sufficiently far away from its parent star, imaging techniques can be used to measure the composition of the atmosphere. However, most extrasolar planets do not fit into these two categories. The development of this new technique for exoplanets provides a means to learn about the atmospheres of this population of planets.

This work is ongoing, with plans to further examine the physical properties and composition of this hot Jupiter's atmosphere. The research team is also applying this technique to search for water and other molecules in several other hot Jupiter exoplanets.

Source: Phys.org

Read More

Fastest Robot

Read More

Computers see through faked expressions of pain better than people

A joint study by researchers at the University of California San Diego and the University of Toronto has found that a computer system spots real or faked expressions of pain more accurately than people can.
The work, titled "Automatic Decoding of Deceptive Pain Expressions," is published in the latest issue of Current Biology.

"The computer system managed to detect distinctive dynamic features of facial expressions that people missed," said Marian Bartlett, research professor at UC San Diego's Institute for Neural Computation and lead author of the study. "Human observers just aren't very good at telling real from faked expressions of pain."

Senior author Kang Lee, professor at the Dr. Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study at the University of Toronto, said "humans can simulate facial expressions and fake emotions well enough to deceive most observers. The computer's pattern-recognition abilities prove better at telling whether pain is real or faked."

The research team found that humans could not discriminate real from faked expressions of pain better than random chance – and, even after training, only improved accuracy to a modest 55 percent. The computer system attains an 85 percent accuracy.

"In highly social species such as humans," said Lee, "faces have evolved to convey rich information, including expressions of emotion and pain. And, because of the way our brains are built, people can simulate emotions they're not actually experiencing – so successfully that they fool other people. The computer is much better at spotting the subtle differences between involuntary and voluntary facial movements."

"By revealing the dynamics of facial action through machine vision systems," said Bartlett, "our approach has the potential to elucidate 'behavioral fingerprints' of the neural-control systems involved in emotional signaling."

The single most predictive feature of falsified expressions, the study shows, is the mouth, and how and when it opens. Fakers' mouths open with less variation and too regularly.

"Further investigations," said the researchers, "will explore whether over-regularity is a general feature of fake expressions."

In addition to detecting pain malingering, the computer-vision system might be used to detect other real-world deceptive actions in the realms of homeland security, psychopathology, job screening, medicine, and law, said Bartlett.

"As with causes of pain, these scenarios also generate strong emotions, along with attempts to minimize, mask, and fake such emotions, which may involve 'dual control' of the face," she said. "In addition, our computer-vision system can be applied to detect states in which the human face may provide important clues as to health, physiology, emotion, or thought, such as drivers' expressions of sleepiness, students' expressions of attention and comprehension of lectures, or responses to treatment of affective disorders."

Source: Phys.org

Read More

Device may restore speech to people on breathing tubes

Doctors in the Netherlands say they've found a potentially important new use for a simple old device—the "electronic voice box." It may help hospitalized patients who've lost the ability to speak because they need tubes down their throat to help them breathe.

The electronic voice box, or "electrolarynx," was first developed in the 1920s. It's a cylinder, about the size of an electric shaver that vibrates at one end. It's been used almost exclusively to help people who've lost their ability to speak because their vocal cords have been surgically removed, often after cancer.

"It's mostly been used in the past. It's something I saw when I was a student. I saw a patient who was able to talk with the device and it made a huge impression on me," said Dr. Armand Girbes, an intensive care physician at VU University Medical Center, in Amsterdam.

The device came to mind again when a patient's wife recently came to Girbes to say that her husband, who was on a mechanical ventilator after lung surgery, was frustrated because he couldn't speak. Girbes searched the hospital to dig up the only electrolarynx they still had.

"I tried it myself. I put it on my neck," he said.

After a few minutes of practice, which Girbes said felt a little bit like lip-synching, he used his mouth and tongue to form words without actually trying to make the sounds himself—and he was able to produce intelligible words.

His 59-year-old patient got the hang of it just as quickly.

"I still remember the first thing he said to his wife: He said 'Hello, my dear.' That was very moving to hear from a patient who was critically ill in intensive care," Girbes said.

He reported his success in the March 20 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

"I think it's an interesting idea," said Dr. Lindsay Reder, an assistant professor of otolaryngology at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. She was not involved in the patient's case.

"A lot of these patients who are intubated are also on sedation medication because it's not the most comfortable thing," Reder said.

For his part, Girbes said a side benefit of using the electrolarynx in ventilated patients is that they might need less sedation (because of reduced stress). Delirium and oversedation are major problems for patients in intensive care units.

Reder said that's an interesting theory, but one that requires more research to prove for certain.

"I think it's something we'd obviously need to do more of it in a controlled way to know if it's widely applicable, but I do think it's an interesting thing from a quality-of-life and quality-of-care standpoint," she said.

Source: Phys.org

Read More

Scientists Discover Why Dark Chocolate Is So Good For You In Most Delicious Research Project Ever

Chocolate: can't live without it.



Now you have a scientific excuse to dive into your daily chocolate fix: researchers have found the reason dark chocolate is so healthy for you.

Research presented at the 247th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society reveals that microbes in the gut consume the chocolate and convert it into heart-healthy anti-inflammatory compounds.

"We found that there are two kinds of microbes in the gut: the ‘good’ ones and the ‘bad’ ones," Maria Moore, one of the study's researchers, explained.

"The good microbes, such as Bifidobacterium and lactic acid bacteria, feast on chocolate. When you eat dark chocolate, they grow and ferment it, producing compounds that are anti-inflammatory."

Inflammation has been linked to heart disease and stroke although, according to the American Heart Association, "[e]xactly how inflammation plays a role in heart attack and stroke remains a topic of ongoing research."

Before grabbing the nearest chocolate bar or scooping a bowl of chocolate ice cream, it's important to note that the health benefits are directly linked to cocoa powder and not a sugar- and milk-laden chocolate bar; lead researcher John Finleyrecommends sprinkling a little cocoa powder on top of oatmeal.

He also noted that combining dark chocolate with fruits like pomegranates and açaí could reap even more health benefits.

Source: SCI

Read More

Eyes are windows to the soul—and evolution

Why do we become saucer-eyed from fear and squint from disgust?These near-opposite facial expressions are rooted in emotional responses that exploit how our eyes gather and focus light to detect an unknown threat, according to a study by a Cornell University neuroscientist.

Our eyes widen in fear, boosting sensitivity and expanding our field of vision to locate surrounding danger. When repulsed, our eyes narrow, blocking light to sharpen focus and pinpoint the source of our disgust.

The findings by Adam Anderson, professor of human development in Cornell's College of Human Ecology, suggest that human facial expressions arose from universal, adaptive reactions to environmental stimuli and not originally as social communication signals, lending support to Charles Darwin's 19th century theories on the evolution of emotion.

"These opposing functions of eye widening and narrowing, which mirror that of pupil dilation and constriction, might be the primitive origins for the expressive capacity of the face," said Anderson. "And these actions are not likely restricted to disgust and fear, as we know that these movements play a large part in how perhaps all expressions differ, including surprise, anger and even happiness."

Anderson and his co-authors described these ideas in the paper, "Optical Origins of Opposing Facial Expression Actions," published in the March 2014 issue ofPsychological Science.

Looks of disgust result in the greatest visual acuity—less light and better focus; fearful expressions induce maximum sensitivity—more light and a broader visual field.

"These emotions trigger facial expressions that are very far apart structurally, one with eyes wide open and the other with eyes pinched," said Anderson, the paper's senior author. "The reason for that is to allow the eye to harness the properties of light that are most useful in these situations."

What's more, emotions filter our reality, shaping what we see before light ever reaches the inner eye.

"We tend to think of perception as something that happens after an image is received by the brain, but in fact emotions influence vision at the very earliest moments of visual encoding."

Anderson's Affect and Cognition Laboratory is now studying how these contrasting eyemovements may account for how facial expressions have developed to support nonverbal communication across cultures.

"We are seeking to understand how these expressions have come to communicate emotions to others," he said. "We know that the eyes can be a powerful basis for reading what people are thinking and feeling, and we might have a partial answer to why that is."

Source phys.org

Read More