Original source An anonymous reader writes “A new study published in the March edition of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology indicates that a gamer’s experience of a video game and not the content of the game itself can give rise to violent behavior. In other words, ‘researchers found it was not the narrative or imagery, but the lack of mastery of the game’s controls and the degree of difficulty players had completing the game that led to frustration.’ Based on their findings, researchers note that even games like Tetris and Candy Crush can inspire violent behavior more so than games like World of Warcraft or Grand Theft Auto if they are poorly designed and difficult to play.”

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Original source PolygamousRanchKid (1290638) writes “Grilling meat gives it great flavour. This taste, though, comes at a price, since the process creates molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) which damage DNA and thus increase the eater’s chances of developing colon cancer. But a group of researchers led by Isabel Ferreira of the University of Porto, in Portugal, think they have found a way around the problem. When barbecuing meat, they suggest, you should add beer. The PAHs created by grilling form from molecules called free radicals which, in turn, form from fat and protein in the intense heat of this type of cooking. One way of stopping PAH-formation, then, might be to apply chemicals called antioxidants that mop up free radicals. And beer is rich in these, in the shape of melanoidins, which form when barley is roasted.” (The paper on which this report is based, sadly paywalled.)

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Just released by the UK Ministry of Defence is this great picture of this year’s display scheme for the Royal Air Force Eurofighter Typhoon. The freshly painted tail on ZK343 from 29 (R) Sqn contains the squadron’s emblem, the buzzard and it’s famous XXX.

Crown Copyright

Original source jones_supa writes: “New Caledonian crows — already known to be smart — may also understand how to displace water to receive a reward, with the causal understanding level of a 5-7 year-old child, according to results published in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Sarah Jelbert from University of Auckland and colleagues. As demonstrated in the included video, ‘Scientists used the Aesop’s fable riddle — in which subjects drop stones into water to raise the water level and obtain an out-of reach-reward — to assess New Caledonian crows’ causal understanding of water displacement. … Crows completed 4 of 6 water displacement tasks, including preferentially dropping stones into a water-filled tube instead of a sand-filled tube, dropping sinking objects rather than floating objects, using solid objects rather than hollow objects, and dropping objects into a tube with a high water level rather than a low one. However, they failed two more challenging tasks, one that required understanding of the width of the tube, and one that required understanding of counterintuitive cues for a U-shaped displacement task.’ The authors note that these tasks did not test insightful problem solving, but were directed at the birds’ understanding of volume displacement.”

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Original source First time accepted submitter chimeraha (3594169) writes “Synchronized with the northern winter solstice and the UNIX Epoch, the terran computational calendar contains 13 identical months of 28 days each in addition to a short Month Zero containing only new year’s day and a single leap year day every four years (with the exception of every 128 years). The beginning of this zero-based numbering calendar, denoted as 0.0.0.0.0.0 TC, is on the solstice, exactly 10 days before the UNIX Epoch (effectively, December 22nd, 1969 00:00:00 UTC in the Gregorian Calendar). It’s “terran” inception and unit durations reflect the human biological clock and align with astronomical cycles and epochs. Its “computational” notation, start date, and algorithm are tailored towards the mathematicians & scientists tasked with calendrical programming and precise time calculation. There’s a lot more information at terrancalendar.com including a date conversion form and a handfull of code-snipits & apps for implementing the terran computational calendar.”

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Soda Sequestration

How much CO₂ is contained in the world’s stock of bottled fizzy drinks? How much soda would be needed to bring atmospheric CO₂ back to preindustrial levels?

Brandon Seah

For most of the history of civilization, there were about 270 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In the last hundred years, industrial activity has pushed that number up to 400 parts per million.

One “part per million” of CO₂ weighs about 7.8 billion tons. A can of soda contains in the neighborhood of 2.2 grams of CO₂, so you would need about 450 quadrillion cans of soda. That’s enough to cover the Earth’s land with ten layers of cans.

There’s clearly not enough room to do this. Even if we stacked the cans up to the edge of space,[1] I don’t have any hard numbers, but my guess would be that you could probably stack supermarket soda six-pack crates a few hundred meters high before the bottom layer ruptures. they’d still take up an area the size of Rhode Island.[2] We shouldn’t actually try it, given what happened last time.

We’d need to add even more cans to keep up with ongoing emissions. We’re currently increasing the atmosphere’s CO₂ concentration by an average of 2 parts per million each year:

At that rate, we’d need to add one can of soda per person every 30 seconds, which is about 10,000 times the current consumption rate.[3] The global average is one can per person every 5 days. In the US, the average is one every 18 hours. That would add a new layer of cans to the ground every 6[4] I originally had the wrong number here; thank you to Paulina for catching it! 20 years or so.

This layer of cans would get pretty annoying.

Are there any ways out of this predicament?

In some areas, you can turn in soda cans for recycling and receive a small amount of money; in Massachusetts, where I live, it’s 5 cents. If you collected one year’s worth of soda cans—instead of layering them across the Earth’s surface—and emptied them out, you could redeem them for $372 trillion.

With that much money, you could simply buy the world’s current reserves [5] [4] Source: xkcd.com/980, bottom right. of coal, oil, and natural gas—the source of the whole problem.

Then, you put it all back in the ground and leave it there.

Problem solved.

Original source http://ift.tt/P4WGSR EDIT: Holy Shit! My first FP! http://ift.tt/P4WGSR