The Inquisitr » science

Scientists close in on knowing what you’ve seen by reading your mind

Steven Hodson — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:33:26 +0000

Now this could either be one of the scariest things to have happen or it could be a huge break through but University of California neuroscientist Jack Gallant at Berkeley believes he and postdoctoral researcher Thomas Naselaris have found a way for scientists to visually display what you are thinking.

To get to this point researchers have used a fMRI machine, which measures blood flow through the brain, to track neural activity in three people as they looked at pictures of everyday objects. Unlike previous studies the looked at regions of the brain that deals with general classifications, such as “buildings” or “small groups of people”.

Once they have calibrated a model test subjects would look at other pictures. After interpreting the resulting neural patterns the researchers’ program selected corresponding pictures from a database of 6 million images.

The researchers’ fMRI readings bundled the output of millions of neurons into single output blocks. “At the finer level, there is a ton of information. We just don’t have a way to tap into that without opening the skull and accessing it directly,” said Tong.

Gallant hopes to develop methods of interpreting other types of brain activity measurement, such as optical laser scans or EEG readings.

He mentioned medical communication devices as a possible application, and computer programs for which visual thinking makes sense — CAD-CAM or Photoshop, straight from the brain.

Source: Wired Science – Brain Scans Reveal What You’ve Seen

Regarding the image used: From Neuron. Images seen by test subjects are in the left column. In the middle the image reconstructions returned by the researchers’ older, structure-focused analysis. At right are the image reconstructions produced by the newer, category-including model.

Fortified Formula Boosts Brain Development

AHN — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 10:00:50 +0000

Miami, FL (AHN) – Babies fed formula supplemented with an essential fatty acid found in breast milk have higher cognitive skills than babies fed formula alone, according to a new study.

Previous research already showed the cognitive benefits of breastfeeding, but University of Texas researchers and scientists with the Retina Foundation of the Southwest said they have discovered that the fatty acid docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA, could be the reason.

The scientists studied 229 infants receiving either formula or a combination of formula and DHA. The babies were given the different formulas either shortly after they were born, after six weeks of breastfeeding, or after four to six months of breastfeeding.

The babies were given a problem-solving test when they were 9 months old where they had to complete a series of steps to get a rattle. The scientists said in a statement that the babies who were fed the DHA-supplemented formula were more likely to get the rattle and showed more intentional behaviors that allowed them to get the rattle.

The study is published in the September/October issue of the journal Child Development.

Science shocker: men do notice boobs first after all

Kim LaCapria — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 22:53:50 +0000

Hey… hey! The post is down here!

Rocket Scientists have proven that 47% of men notice a woman’s breasts before all else. A third will check out a woman’s waist and hips (what may be colloquially known as an “ass man”) and fewer than 20% will look at a woman’s face first. (Which stands to reason, they’re not nearly as compelling when you throw a bucket of cold water on them, amirite?)

While scientists believe there may be an evolutionary component to the behavior, they concede it might not be all that scientific either:

‘Men may be looking more often at the breasts because they are simply aesthetically pleasing, regardless of the size,’ they said.

The study gauged where, how long, and how many times men directed their gaze to certain areas of a woman’s body. And breasts were definitely king:

Eighty per cent of first fixations were on the breasts and midriff. Men spent consistently more time looking at the breasts and also made significantly more fixations upon them than other regions.’

It also found that men began to gaze at the ‘components of the hourglass figure’ within 0.2 seconds.

The research also discovered that few glances were directed at the arms, lower legs and feet.

[Via Jezebel]

New Finding Uncovers Part Of Brain Determining Acceptable Social Personal Space

AHN — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:00:06 +0000

Pasadena, CA (AHN) – In a finding that sheds new light on the neural mechanisms involved in social behavior, neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have located the brain structure responsible for our sense of personal space.

The discovery published in the latest issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, can lead to new insight for autism related studies and other disorders where social distance is an issue.

The structure, the amygdala-a pair of almond-shaped regions located in the medial temporal lobes-was previously known to process strong negative emotions, such as anger and fear, and is considered the seat of emotion in the brain. However, it had never been linked rigorously to real-life human social interaction.

The research team, led by Ralph Adolphs, Bren Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and professor of biology and postdoctoral scholar Daniel P. Kennedy, were able to make this link with the help of a unique patient, a 42-year-old woman known as SM, who has extensive damage to the amygdala on both sides of her brain.

Kennedy said in a statement, “SM is unique, because she is one of only a handful of individuals in the world with such a clear bilateral lesion of the amygdala, which gives us an opportunity to study the role of the amygdala in humans.”

The patient also has difficulty recognizing fear in the faces of others, and in judging the trustworthiness of someone, two consequences of amygdala lesions that Adolphs and colleagues published in previous studies on the subject. However during the years of studying the patient researchers noticed her outgoing nature was almost too friendly. She often violated people’s personal space when interacting with them.

During his years of studying her, Adolphs also noticed that the very outgoing SM is almost too friendly, to the point of “violating” what others might perceive as their own personal space. “She is extremely friendly, and she wants to approach people more than normal. It’s something that immediately becomes apparent as you interact with her,” says Kennedy.

What makes this finding novel however is that previous studies of humans never had identified an association between the amygdala and personal space. However, SM’s unusual social behavior prompted a further investigation.

Adolphs, Kennedy, and their colleagues devised a simple experiment along with functional magnetic resonance imaging to quantify and compare her sense of personal space with that of healthy volunteers. The experiment used what is known as the stop-distance technique. Briefly, the subject (SM or one of 20 other volunteers, representing a cross-section of ages, ethnicities, educations, and genders) stands a predetermined distance from an experimenter, then walks toward the experimenter and stops at the point where they feel most comfortable. The chin-to-chin distance between the subject and the experimenter is determined with a digital laser measurer.

Among the 20 other subjects, the average preferred distance was .64 meters-roughly two feet. SM’s preferred distance was just .34 meters, or about one foot. Unlike other subjects, who reported feelings of discomfort when the experimenter went closer than their preferred distance, there was no point at which SM became uncomfortable; even nose-to-nose, she was at ease. Furthermore, her preferred distance didn’t change based on who the experimenter was and how well she knew them.

“Respecting someone’s space is a critical aspect of human social interaction, and something we do automatically and effortlessly,” Kennedy says. “These findings suggest that the amygdala, because it is necessary for the strong feelings of discomfort that help to repel people from one another, plays a central role in this process. They also help to expand our understanding of the role of the amygdala in real-world social interactions.”

The researchers believe that interpersonal distance is not something we consciously think about, although, unlike SM, we become acutely aware when our space is violated. With humans interpersonal distance varies cross-culturally and researchers believe that cultural preferences and experiences affect the brain over time and shapes how it responds in particular situations.

The findings may have relevance to studies of autism in that the disease affects an individual’s ability to interact socially and communicate with others.

Smoking pot may save beer soaked brains

Steven Hodson — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 20:25:00 +0000

It must be the weekend with this little run on beer, and other party related favors, stories but for those of you who don’t do moderate beer drinking well this might be something to keep in mind.

It appears that researchers at the University of California San Diego have found some interesting results after performing brain scans of 16 to 19 year olds in three groups: binge drinkers, binge drinkers who also smoke pot, and those with little experience of either evil substance.

In a news release from the Marijuana Project the unexpected result they discovered was that marijuana somehow stops alcohol from damaging brain cells. They found that binge drinkers showed damage in their brain’s white matter but those who drink and smoke showed more damage than the control group in only three of eight areas of the brain. In seven of the areas their brains were in better shape.

Now if you don’t believe me you can always check out the research results as posted to the web by ScienceDirect.

hat tip to Nothing To Do With Arbroath

Where’s the PETA whackos when they could actually be useful?

Steven Hodson — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 04:35:00 +0000

Animal testing is a really touchy subject as well it should be. Our use of animals in testing everything from make-up to new drugs is one of the darker spots of our society and unfortunately is something that we continue to do. So much so that supplying all those animals for testing purposes is big business with monkeys making up a large portion of the animals being used.

Figures released recently shows that in Britain alone more than 4,000 monkeys are used each year for animal testing with much of the supply coming from huge monkey farms in China. Farms that according to sources can breed up to 50,000 monkeys a year.

The Sunday Mirror uncovered disturbing images inside the monkey farms after visiting the Conghua area of Guangzhou province in China. Home to more than 40 farms, chimps arrive here from Cambodia and are bred to be sold across the globe.

Obscured by hills and notoriously secretive, the chimp camps are hidden away from the world. But our investigators – posing as businessman looking to help supply monkeys to the UK for testing – were able to get access to some of the farms.

Inside, monkeys were packed tight into cages. Mothers clutched their babies in the sterile prisons awaiting the journey to the labs of Europe, America and the Far East where they will be tortured in the name of science.

Source: Mirror :: 50,000 monkeys held in Chinese hell farms

With most of the monkeys selling for around $1,600 USD (£1,000) making the export market for monkeys and chimps pretty close to $250 million (£150 million).

Get your science geek on: Time could disappear

Steven Hodson — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 20:40:22 +0000

I have the greatest admiration for people who can think about things so far out there and yet make them seem totally plausible. Scientists are excellent at this and prove it once more with the notion that – according to a new theory – time may literally be running; and could one day vanish altogether.

The concept is based on string theory ideas which allow dimensions of space and time to swap places. The overall theory belongs to Professor Jose Senovilla, at the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, Spain. It is a theory that goes counter to the prevailing “dark energy” theory which physicists purpose as being the force that is driving galaxies apart.

Professor Senovilla on the other hand suggests

…. there is no such thing as dark energy. Instead, he says we have been fooled into thinking the expansion of the universe is accelerating because time itself is slowing down.
At our local everyday level, the change would be imperceptible.

But it would be obvious from cosmic scale measurements tracking the course of the universe over billions of years.

Astronomers work out the speed of the universe’s expansion from the frequency of light emitted by certain types of supernovae, or exploding stars.

However, these measurements depend on our current perception of time, says Prof Senovilla.
If time has been slowing down, and clocks are now running more slowly than they did long ago, it would appear from our perspective as if things have been speeding up. Looking back over billions of years, galaxies would seem to be travelling away from each other faster and faster at various intervals since the Big Bang.

“Our calculations show that we would think that the expansion of the universe is accelerating,” said Senovilla.

Source: BreakingNews.ie :: Bizarre theory suggests time may be running out

As Professor Gary Gibbons, a cosmologist as Cambridge University who finds the while idea interesting, says

“We believe that time emerged during the Big Bang, and if time can emerge, it can also disappear – that’s just the reverse effect,” he said.

Mind you this isn’t something that we’ll need to pencil into our date books anytime soon given that this happening probably wouldn’t occur for a few billion years.

10 of the strangest scientific studies

Steven Hodson — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 20:45:00 +0000

It has always amazed me how money is spent of really screwy types of studies and when it comes to ‘science’ it has to be right at the top of the list of silly spenders for silly studies. To give you an idea here’s a list of ten of some of the strangest studies done recently.

10. Elephant Self-Recognition

As a result of this study elephants have joined apes and dolphins as members of a small group of animals that can recognize themselves in a mirror. In order to find out this amazing fact three elephants were observed after placing a large mirror in their living area. The one elephant named Happy had a large white X painted above her eye and a similar mark using and invisible paint of the same texture and smell was placed on the opposite side of her head. The object of self-recognition was met apparently when Happy repeatedly used her trunk to touch her own head to touch the white mark.

Along with that the elephants made repetitive movements in front of the mirror and seemingly used the mirror to inspect their body parts.

9. Sheep recognizing faces

Babraham Institute researchers figure that sheep through sophisticated facial recognition skills have greater social requirements than we all previously thought. They found this out by training the selected sheep to associate one of the following pair; other sheep and humans, with food rewards. Apparently 20 sheep were presented with pictures of 25 pairs of sheep faces and from this they found they could recognize individuals associated with as reward by even just their profile.

It was also found that sheep supposedly can remember as many as 50 sheep faces in addition to familiar human face for up to two years.

8. Do Married Couples Start to Look Alike

It seems that age and length of marriage might be a deciding factor in the study utilizing 110 participants that were ^resented with random photographs of faces, and were then instructed to match the men with the women that most closely resembled each other. Two dozen photographs of couples when they were first married and another two dozen of those same couples 25 years later were used. It seems the judges were able to match the husbands and wives much better when they were older rather than freshly married.

7. Curvy Hips Intelligent

University researchers from Pittsburgh and California using a study of more than 16,000 women and girls which detailed their body measurements as well as including the education level and cognitive test scores to find out that women with a 70% WHR were smarter.

Here’s the thing though – that WHR stands for waist-to-hip ratio and is arrived at by taking your waist size and dividing it by your hip size. So the way it works out is that women with waists that where about 70 percent of the diameter of their hips scored better on intelligence tests and tended to have a slightly higher level of education.

6. Are Women More Attractive in Red

The question asked by psychologists of their participants in the study was this: “Imagine that you are going on a date with this woman and have $100 in your wallet. How much would you be willing to spend on your date?”

At this point they were show pictures of exactly the same women but wearing different colors. IT turns out that in the experiments women that were shown framed by or wearing red were rated significantly more attractive and sexually desirable by men than women in other colors.

5. Do Herring Communicate by Passing Gas

While I hang my head in shame that part of this study even took place in Canada I can point to Scotland as being the other perpetrator of the study that found that Atlantic and Pacific herring create a mysterious underwater sound. It is a high frequency sound that is a result of the fish releasing air from their butts. Accompanying this sound is a fine stream of bubbles but it is the sound that researchers believe the fish use to help form protective shoals at night

4. Bra Support for Bouncing Breasts

Researchers recruited 70 women with bra sizes that ranged from A-cup to Extra-large and then studied them as they walked, jogged and ran while wearing different bra types. During the study biomechanical measurements were taken of breast movement in three directions: up-and-down, side-to-side and in-and-out.

What they found out is that during walking the women’s breasts moved pretty much the same amount in all directions. When they started to jog and run though their breasts moved proportionally more in some directions than others but the overall movement was one of a figure-8. For A-cup women wearing a sports bra the reduction of overall movement was around 53% while G-cup women had a reduction of 55%.

All this to find out that whether women are flat-chested or big-busted ordinary bras fall short when it comes to supporting bouncing breasts.

3. Do Women Walk Sexier When Fertile

In order to find out if women give out subtle hints to men in order to signal the are experiencing different levels of sex hormones the studied the gait of female volunteers and their levels of sex hormones in their saliva.

These results were then compared to the results of 40 men who were shown video clips of the women volunteers and asked then to rate the attractiveness of the women by the way they walked. The researchers where so amazed with the results that they had to run the experiment twice just to verify that those with the most alluring walks were the women furthest away from ovulation. The women who were fertile apparently walked with fewer hip movements and knees close together and this didn’t do much for the men participants of the study.

2. Why Female Monkeys Shout During Sex

Apparently it was incredibly import to find out just why it was that females had the need to shout during sex which they apparently do during 86% of all sexual encounters. It seems to all boil down to getting those pesky male monkeys to actually ejaculate during sex. When the female monkey shouted the male monkeys ejaculated 59% of the time, however if they didn’t shout the males would only ejaculate 2% of the time.

As well they wanted to see if the yelling was a result of how vigorous the sex was and to do this researchers counted the number of pelvic thrusts the males gave and timed when it happened. This thrust counting led researchers to find that when the shouting occurred the thrusting increased and led to more vigorous sex. The end result was that the researchers concluded that female monkeys may shout to help their male partners climax.

1. Foot Size and Penile Length

This old wives tail got the scientific study when researchers measured the feet and penises of 104 men.

Now to get an accurate measurement of the man’s penis as there apparently no perfect way to measure one the researchers stretched the penis with a defined amount of force to determine how long it can get. This supposedly will be a pretty good indication of how long a penis will get when erect.

The result?

There is no scientific support for the relationship between a man’s shoe size and the length of his penis, which of course is making a lot of size 7 or 8 men feel a lot better about themselves.

Need to fill up your hydrogen powered car? Pull up to the port-o-johnny

Steven Hodson — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:32:16 +0000

As we look for different way to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels to power out automobiles hydrogen has been suggested as an excellent source of vehicle power. The big problem with that though is the inherent high price of converting water into hydrogen and oxygen. This means that all the hydrogen in production today comes via the use of fossil fuels.

However US researcher Gerardine Botte from Ohio University may have just found a way to utilize urine through an electrolytic process to produce hydrogen. This would result in the power source being created at a fraction of the cost it currently takes.

Botte says the idea came to her several years ago at a conference on fuel cells, where they were discussing how to turn clean water into clean power. ‘I wondered how we could do this better,’ she adds – so started looking at waste streams as a better source of molecules from which to produce hydrogen.

Urine’s major constituent is urea, which incorporates four hydrogen atoms per molecule – importantly, less tightly bonded than the hydrogen atoms in water molecules. Botte used electrolysis to break the molecule apart, developing an inexpensive new nickel-based electrode to selectively and efficiently oxidise the urea. To break the molecule down, a voltage of 0.37V needs to be applied across the cell – much less than the 1.23V needed to split water.

‘During the electrochemical process the urea gets adsorbed on to the nickel electrode surface, which passes the electrons needed to break up the molecule,’ Botte told Chemistry World. Pure hydrogen is evolved at the cathode, while nitrogen plus a trace of oxygen and hydrogen were collected at the anode. While carbon dioxide is generated during the reaction, none is found in the collected gasses as it reacts with the potassium hydroxide in the solution to form potassium carbonate

Source: RSC :: Chemistry World – Urine turned into hydrogen fuel

Granted we aren’t likely to be pulling up to port-o-johns instead of gas pumps any time soon but you gotta admire people who are willing to brave experimenting with our bodily function left-over’s on the off chance we can use them in a good way.

hat tip to EcoGeek.org

Great moments in science: study finds Great White Sharks are serial killers

Duncan Riley — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 05:02:04 +0000

A US led scientific study has amazingly found that Great White Sharks are serial killers.

The study used methods used in criminology to track serial killers and applied it to sharks. They found that like human serial killers, Great White’s operate within a confined area around an anchor point when hunting seals. The pattern was less prominent in younger sharks, suggesting that the trait is learned with age.

“Shark hunting patterns are extremely difficult to study and the work here will have important implications for our understanding of the ways in which predators hunt their prey.” Dr Steven Le Comber told The Sun.

Sadly the scientists did not set out to win an Ig Noble Award, but surely they’ll end up with a nomination.

How to tip a cow

Dennis Bjørn Petersen — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 11:05:36 +0000

For the serious cow-tipper who wants to get it right, here’s a scientician’s guide.

No related posts.

Adam the Robot makes scientific discovery

Steven Hodson — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 20:59:57 +0000

Who says you need pesky human scientists around in order to make discoveries?

Well according to the latest issue of the journal Science Adam the Robot says so. Mind you he didn’t get there without some human help considering that humans had to design Adam in the first place. The thing is that unlike robots who are designed to perform repetitive tasks the scientists at Aberystwyth University in Wales and the U.K’s University of Cambridge designed Adam to take a more human approach to scientific inquiry. The idea being for him (it?) to carry scientific research automatically without human intervention.

It seems to be working because in the Science journal article it explains how Adam autonomously hypothesized that certain genes in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae code for enzymes that catalyze some of the microorganism’s biochemical reactions

The yeast is noteworthy, as scientists use it to model more complex life systems.

Adam then devised experiments to test its prediction, ran the experiments using laboratory robotics, interpreted the results, and used those findings to revise its original hypothesis and test it out further. The researchers used their own separate experiments to confirm that Adam’s hypotheses were both novel and correct–all the while probably wondering how soon they’d become obsolete.

"This is one of the first systems to get (artificial intelligence) to try and control laboratory automation," Ross King, a professor of computer science who led the research at Aberystwyth University, told Live Science. Current robots, he noted, "tend to do one thing or a sequence of things. The complexity of Adam is that it has cycles."

Source CNET News.com

While I might worry about this whole Skynet this is pretty cool stuff.

[photo courtesy of Aberystwyth University]

The Iceman in zoomable Hi-Def

Steven Hodson — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:50:54 +0000

Back some 5,000 years ago Otzi, well at least that’s what we call him now, decided that it would be a great day to head out and get some hunting done. Unfortunately for him he never made it home that day as he ended up in a frozen tomb only to be discovered by some German tourists out hiking around the Alpine mountains in 1991. Since that time the remains of Otzi have resided in as specially built museum in Bolzano, Italy. Visitors can only view the remains through portholes into a specially refrigerated room.

That was until the Iceman photoscan project came into being and now some 150,000 high definition images later we can all enjoy the experience of seeing up close what this stone age warrior looks like.

The Iceman photoscan project took 150,000 high definition images of the perfectly preserved mummy from 12 different angles, which the researchers loaded onto the new website www.icemanphotoscan.eu.

This allows users to zoom into details that are just millimetres wide from the comfort of their living room. They can also view the mummy in 3D and see its distinctive tattoos in both white and UV light.

Source: Daily Mail

And of course the 3D view but you’ll have to supply your own glasses to see it right.

No related posts.

Truck crash demonstrates interdimensional travel science still needs work

Duncan Riley — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 06:01:38 +0000

There are many causes of road crashes, but a truck materializing in front of you from another dimension usually isn’t one of them. Until now.

In this video from an unnamed location, a truck traveling in a tunnel mysteriously hits another truck that appears from no where. The footage shows first the accident in real time, then a slow-motion replay.

As insane as this sounds, visually at least it shows the second truck appearing from no-where. At the point of impact, the second truck is also facing the wrong way, so with a clear shot ahead, we should have been able to have seen it coming. The first truck also never brakes indicating that he might have seen something coming.

Here’s the truck crash footage.

The universe that roared

Steven Hodson — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 23:11:46 +0000

I’m sure that most people consider that space is a pretty quiet place. Sound doesn’t travel very well and the only way we really hear anything that happens out there is by the radio waves that emanate from just about everything. There’s only one problem – a team of astronomers has found a strange cosmic noice that booms six times louder than they expected it should.

As reported on Space.com Alan Kogut of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center says that something new and interesting is going on in the universe

A team led by Kogut detected the signal with a balloon-borne instrument named ARCADE (Absolute Radiometer for Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Diffuse Emission).

In July 2006, the instrument was launched from NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas, and reached an altitude of about 120,000 feet (36,500 meters), where the atmosphere thins into the vacuum of space.

ARCADE’s mission was to search the sky for faint signs of heat from the first generation of stars, but instead they heard a roar from the distant reaches of the universe.

"The universe really threw us a curve," Kogut said. "Instead of the faint signal we hoped to find, here was this booming noise six times louder than anyone had predicted."

Detailed analysis of the signal ruled out primordial stars or any known radio sources, including gas in the outermost halo of our own galaxy.

Other radio galaxies also can’t account for the noise – there just aren’t enough of them.

"You’d have to pack them into the universe like sardines," said study team member Dale Fixsen of the University of Maryland. "There wouldn’t be any space left between one galaxy and the next."

The signal is measured to be six times brighter than the combined emission of all known radio sources in the universe.

Source: Space.com

For now though the origin of the signal remains a mystery.

Holy Crap! Billions of ants in one colony

Steven Hodson — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 02:51:24 +0000

One of the largest ant colonies ever discovered to date stretches over 4,000 miles across Europe and is estimated to number in the billions of ants. The colony shown in the video below; and the picture above, is approximately 500 square feet in size and goes 25 feet into the ground.

In order to be able to see exactly how a colony structure is made up the scientists filled the colony with concrete – 10 tons of it. It took almost a month before they could actually start excavating the site in order to see how it was constructed.

<\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/div>";" alt="">

[hat tip to WebEcoist]

Computer scientists finding ways to see you naked

Steven Hodson — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:12:01 +0000

Ah the boring life that computer scientists at Brown University must be leading. Sure they couch their work with social benefiting ideals like how this software will help forensic teams or sports medicine but more likely they probably just wanted to figure out how to see all those hot women without clothes without getting arrested.

Okay I’m Joking but Michael Black; a professor of computer science at Brown, along with graduate student Alexandru Balan believe that they have found a way to tell what a person likes under their clothes using only a video of that person. It appears that Brown University itself believes pretty strongly in what the two have developed because they have filed two provisional patents covering the research and any potential commercial applications.

As far as commercial applications Science Daily suggests this work could be useful in a number of areas

The potential applications are broad. Besides forensics and fashion, Black and Balan’s research could benefit the film industry. Currently, actors must wear tight-fitting suits covered with reflective markers to have their motion captured. The new approach could capture both the actors’ shape and motion, while doing away with the markers and suits.

In sports medicine, doctors would be able to use accurate, computerized models of athletes’ bodies to better identify susceptibility to injury. In the gaming world, it could mean the next generation of interactive technology. Instead of acting through a character, a camera could track the user, create a 3-D representation of that person’s body and insert the user into the video game.

Me, I just think a couple of computer scientists got bored documenting silly things like building computer models of when the sun will explode or some such boring stuff. But just in case you’re interested in this head over here for some video courtesy of the team at Brown University