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POPSQuality of Sleep = Memory storage the Belgian study shows that getting a good night’s sleep the night after learning a new fact has a direct impact on the transfer process between the hippocampus and the medial prefrontal cortex.
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POPSScience of Search: How to Make Out, or Levitate How-to searches also reveal our aspirations. Comprising 12% of the instructional searches were those questions geared towards self improvement: how to "lose weight," "gain weight," "make money," and, for those truly in search of instant gratification, "make money fast." On the darker side, over 9.5% of the searches were for illicit or illegal activities, with marijuana use figuring high on the list ("how to grow marijuana," "grow pot," "grow weed") but also some very concerning questions: "how to commit suicide," "how to make meth," even "how to make a bomb." We apparently feel comfortable enough with our computers and the Internet to query just about anything. Search continues to grow in importance as we sift through the mountain of information available to us. As the growth of "how to" searches increases, its clear that we are turning to search engines as sources of knowledge and insight into getting things done.
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POPSDo Plants Have Feelings? If plants do have some sort of "feelings", what are all the vegans and vegetarians going to do? After all, you can't live on love alone... ;)
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POPSThe story behind Hitler's moustache The prosaic explanation comes in a new biography of the writer Alexander Moritz Frey, who came to know him when both were lowly privates in a Bavarian infantry division. In a hitherto unpublished essay, Frey, who died in 1957, wrote of his first meeting with Hitler in 1915: "A pale, tall man tumbled down into the cellar after the first shells of the daily evening attacks had begun to fall, fear and rage glowing in his eyes. "At that time he looked tall because he was so thin. A full moustache, which had to be trimmed later because of the new gas masks, covered the ugly slit of his mouth."
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POPSThe Mathematical Lives of Plants The seeds of a sunflower, the spines of a cactus, and the bracts of a pine cone all grow in whirling spiral patterns. Remarkable for their complexity and beauty, they also show consistent mathematical patterns that scientists have been striving to understand. ... Scientists have puzzled over this pattern of plant growth for hundreds of years. Why would plants prefer the golden angle to any other? And how can plants possibly "know" anything about Fibonacci numbers? For the first time, scientists have found convincing biochemical mechanisms responsible for the interlocking spiral growth patterns seen in many plants. (The Romanesco broccoli plant is a striking example.) The video of the experiment with magnetized liquid iron droplets demonstrates how the geometry of such growth could occur in nature.
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POPS10 years to the Singularity? The creation of a superhumanly intelligent AI system could be possible within 10 years, with an "AI Manhattan Project," says Ben Goertzel.
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