Jag vet inte om det är en medveten strukturerad strategi från företagen men jag tror det går till så här:

1. Ta adressuppgifterna vid köp.
2. Vänta tre månader så att kunden inte kan minnas säkert om hon bad om nyhetsbrev eller inte.
3. Skicka nyhetsbrev.

Idag fick jag ett nyhetsbrev från ett företag där jag köpt varor. Men jag är rätt säker på att jag inte har bett om ett nyhetsbrev. Jag skriver "rätt säker" eftersom det är pass tre månader sedan jag handlade där. Men jag har som policy att aldrig signa upp för nyhetsbrev. Det här är absolut inte första gången det händer.

An Itanium processor is implemented in 8M 65nm CMOS and measures 21.5×32.5mm2. The processor has four dual-threaded cores, a system interface and 30MB of cache. Quickpath high-speed links enable peak processor-to-processor bandwidth of 96GB/s and peak memory bandwidth of 34GB/s.

Läs mer: Intel to tell all about roaring 96GB/s QuickPath interconnect | The Register

Come Feb., customers can buy the new p 550 system with Power6 chips. This 4U box will support one to four processors and up to 256GB of memory. That's a ton of memory for a relatively small box, but IBM thinks the database hunger is out there to feed the beast.

Håll i hatten VMare et consortes!

Läs mer: IBM taunts Sun, HP and VMware with $40 PowerVM hypervisor | The Register

Animals given junk food appeared less stressed and agitated than those fed on a healthy diet.

Läs mer: Junk food may lower stress: research - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

The search for an anti-aging pill could soon pay off in new diabetes treatments. Pills being tested on people with diabetes activate the same gene as a beneficial compound found in red wine does– a gene identified by researchers as a key to controlling aging.

Läs mer: Red Wine Aging Drug: Science Videos - Science News - ScienCentral

Surprisingly, the link between fatalistic beliefs and unethical behavior has never been examined scientifically -- until now. In two recent experiments, psychologists Kathleen Vohs of the University of Minnesota and Jonathan Schooler of the University of British Columbia decided to explore this knotty philosophical issue in the lab, and they figured out an innovative way to do it.

Läs mer: Destined to Cheat? New research finds free will can keep us honest | Science Blog

SECRETARY RICE: Thank you very much. Thank you, Klaus, for that terrific introduction. I’m tempted to ask if you are the conductor – (laughter) – and to say that it is a very good thing if no one misses any notes, the piano or the orchestra.

Läs mer: Keynote Address at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum

Hittat via Johan Eriksson

Via bejcon hittar jag denna sketch:

A woman has difficulty understanding things that are to scale

Läs mer: YouTube - Big Train: Small Train sketch

The human brain expends up to 80 percent of its energy on synaptic activity, constantly adding and strengthening connections in response to all kinds of stimulation, explains study author Chiara Cirelli, associate professor of psychiatry. Given that each of the millions of neurons in the human brain contains thousands of synapses, this energy expenditure “is huge and can’t be sustained.”

Läs mer: Brain connections strengthen during waking hours, weaken during sleep | Science Blog

Leaflets calling for ethnic killings mysteriously appeared before the voting. Politicians with both the government and opposition parties gave speeches that stoked long-standing hatred among ethnic groups. And local tribal chiefs held meetings to plot attacks on rivals, according to some of them and their followers.

Läs mer: Signs in Kenya That Killings Were Planned - New York Times

Utfiskning av haven är ett stort problem, och Frankrikes president Sarkozy gör det inte bättre. Han tycks mena att det är fiskarna (de mänskliga) som har rätt gentemot forskarna:

 

Then, the president said this, and his words could sum up everything that makes people in Brussels increasingly fearful and disdainful of Mr Sarkozy:

"We must stop this situation where we have scientists on one side and fishermen on the other, because the first people who have an interest in saving the resource, it's the fishermen."

This could be glossed another way: in effect, what Mr Sarkozy was saying was:

"Facts versus a French special interest group? It's no contest." The final insult was the line about fishermen having an interest in protecting the resource: European fishermen have had many years to demonstrate, beyond all doubt, that they heed first and last the lure of short-term profits by extracting as many fish from the sea as possible.

Som Economistbloggen skriver "Fakta mot franska specialintressen? Självklart vem som vinner."

Läs mer: Facts, who needs them? | Certain ideas of Europe | Economist.com

Och sedan kanske de också kan bli beväpnade?

"What we want the infantrymen to be able to do is pull a pack of six or so out of their pocket and have them ready for use," Jamey Jacob, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering told the Daily.

Läs mer: Unmanned aerial vehicles the size of a cigarette | Military Tech - Mark Rutherford looks at how the military merges with the digital age - CNET Blogs

Jag tror inte att Axess TV har så många tittare i Sverige, men de var just med i på CNN med ett inslag om Irakisk flyktinginvandring i Sverige. Det är kul att se. Gör man intressanta reportage så kommer någon att plocka upp dem, även om det inte är någon svensk mainstream-kanal.

Inslaget var på engelska, så det kanske var avsett för export från början?

Läs mer: YouTube - MAtrix Ping Pong

You read that headline correctly. A study out in The Lancet today asserts that among a group of 86 non-psychotic patients with low IQs given either Risperdal, Haldol or a placebo to stem their irritability and aggressive outbursts placebo outperformed the two anti-psychotics. Although the study involved a group of patients for whom I don't know their particular DSM diagnosis, this is major news, perhaps heralding the end of the common use of anti-psychotics in Western culture.

Läs mer: Furious Seasons

This type of selective publishing was recognised as a pervasive problem in medicine, and to try and combat this, a rule was introduced that required all clinical trials to be registered before they began. This means no-one could claim that a negative study didn't occur and others could try and track down the data if needed. The researchers in this new study decide to do exactly this. They examined the American Food and Drug Admistration (FDA) register and requested data from all 74 trials of the most commonly used antidepressant drugs.

Läs mer: Mind Hacks: Effect of antidepressants exaggerated due to buried data

Ever wondered where your opinions come from, how you manage to be creative, or how you solve problems? Well, don't bother. Psychology studies examining these areas and more have found that while we're good at inventing plausible explanations, these explanations are frequently completely made-up.

Läs mer: PsyBlog: What Everyone Should Know About Their Own Minds: 6 Introspective Insights From Psychology

One of the biggest puzzles of Islamic terrorism is why so many of its participants are engineers. Perhaps the most famous one is Mohammad Atta, the 9/11 mastermind (pictured above); but when you read news reports of suicide bombing incidents, you realize he's not alone. It's engineer after engineer after engineer. Why? Because in the Middle East, the mindset of engineers mixes with religiosity -- and a lack of professional opportunity -- to produce a toxic, combustive psychology. That's the conclusion of "Engineers of Jihad", a paper by sociologists Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog of the University of Oxford -- the link is directly to the full PDF.

Läs mer: collision detection: Paper explains how the "engineering mentality" produces terrorists

Although the cause of autism is not yet clear, studies of twins have shown that genes play a major role. It is likely that variations in many genes, influenced by environmental factors, interact during brain development to cause vulnerability to the disease. These genes have yet to be identified. Several candidates, including CNTNAP2, have been suggested. The assertion that the CNTNAP2 gene appears to be involved is strengthened by the fact that each of the different analytical approaches the researchers used in this study led to the same conclusion.

Läs mer: Autism Risk Higher in People with Gene Variant | Science Blog

In the third part of the study, the researchers had students play the “find-the-smile” game every morning for a week for just five minutes. A control group played a video game that required them to search for a five-petalled flower among a group of seven-petalled flowers.

Läs mer: Anti-Stress Video Game: Science Videos - Science News - ScienCentral