Scientists give mice false memories

Scientists say they have, for the first time, generated a false memory in an animal by manipulating brain cells that encode that information. They published their findings this week in the journal Science.

What's more, the researchers say, the cellular events involved in the formation of a false memory resemble what takes place in forming a real memory. This jibes with the fact that humans who have false memories of events that didn't happen firmly believe that those memories are real.

"We should continue to remind society that memory can be very unreliable," said the study's senior author, Susumu Tonegawa, director of the RIKEN-MIT Center for Neural Circuit Genetics, a collaboration between institutions in Saitama, Japan, and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/25/health/mouse-brain-memory 

Florida sinkhole swallows parts of resort near Disney World

User Passwords Visible On Chrome

If your default browser is Chrome and you save passwords try this little trick…
Enter “chrome://settings/passwords”
You’ll get this:

Now click that little blue button that says “Show”…SURPRISE! There’s your password in plain text for anyone to read.

Yup, if you leave your computer unguarded anyone can come along and get all the user names and passwords to your favorite websites.

Cymothoa Exigua

Also called the "tongue-eating louse," this parasitic crustacean of the family Cymothoidae enters fish through the gills, then attaches itself at the base of the fish's tongue. Once there, it extracts blood through its front claws, causing the tongue to atrophy from lack of blood, then it replaces the fish's tongue by attaching its own body to the muscles at the tongue's stub. They are supposedly not harmful to humans unless picked up alive, in which case they can bite.

Robot Programmed to Fall in Love with a Girl Goes too Far

What they didn’t count on were the effects of several months of self-iteration within the complex machine-learning code which gave Kenji his first tenderness. As of last week, Kenji’s love for the doll, and indeed anybody he sets his ‘eyes’ on, is so intense that Dr. Takahashi and his team now fear to show him to outsiders.
The trouble all started when a young female intern began to spend several hours each day with Kenji, testing his systems and loading new software routines. When it came time to leave one evening, however, Kenji refused to let her out of his lab enclosure and used his bulky mechanical body to block her exit and hug her repeatedly. The intern was only able to escape after she had frantically phoned two senior staff members to come and temporarily de-activate Kenji.

http://techandfacts.com/robot-programmed-to-fall-in-love-with-a-girl-goes-too-far/

Grandma's Experiences Leave a Mark on Your Genes

Darwin and Freud walk into a bar. Two alcoholic mice — a mother and her son — sit on two bar stools, lapping gin from two thimbles.

The mother mouse looks up and says, “Hey, geniuses, tell me how my son got into this sorry state.”

“Bad inheritance,” says Darwin.

“Bad mothering,” says Freud.

For over a hundred years, those two views — nature or nurture, biology or psychology — offered opposing explanations for how behaviors develop and persist, not only within a single individual but across generations.

And then, in 1992, two young scientists following in Freud’s and Darwin’s footsteps actually did walk into a bar. And by the time they walked out, a few beers later, they had begun to forge a revolutionary new synthesis of how life experiences could directly affect your genes — and not only your own life experiences, but those of your mother’s, grandmother’s and beyond...

http://discovermagazine.com/2013/may/13-grandmas-experiences-leave-epigenetic-mark-on-your-genes?fb_action_ids=10100415499158260&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_ref=.UbniFSnK9hf.send&fb_source=aggregation 

Giant Pyrosome and Salps - pelagic sea squirts

Technology Preventing Drug-Facilitated Sexual Assault

DrinkSavvy successfully raises $52,089 in less than 45 days at www.IndieGoGo.com/DrinkSavvy from 2582 individual contributors to help us perfect our prototype! Thank you to all who contributed and believe in our goal to prevent drug-facilitated sexual assault. You will forever be a part of what makes DrinkSavvy a success and should be proud!

We estimate DrinkSavvy cups/straws to be ready by around September 2013 to our generous contributors, and available to the public by around early to mid 2014. DrinkSavvy glassware to be available soon thereafter.

http://drinksavvyinc.com/

Sinkhole gets a few veggies and some fiber in its diet

40 Maps That Will Help You Make Sense of the World

http://twistedsifter.com/2013/08/maps-that-will-help-you-make-sense-of-the-world/