Free Republic

Why We 'Never Forget A Face'Are you one of those people who never forgets a face? An example of the drawings of faces, watches and cars that were used in the study. (Courtesy of Isabel Gauthier) New research from Vanderbilt University suggests that we can remember more faces than other objects and that faces "stick" the best in our short-term memory. The reason may be that our expertise in remembering faces allows us to package them better for memory. "Our results show that we can store more faces than other objects in our visual short-term memory," Gauthier, associate professor of...

Just think how eerie it would be, yet also how peaceful - people all around having conversations on their mobile phones, but without uttering a sound. Thanks to some military research, this social nirvana just might come true. DARPA, the US Department of Defense's research agency, is working on a project known as Advanced Speech Encoding, aimed at replacing microphones with non-acoustic sensors that detect speech via the speaker's nerve and muscle activity, rather than sound itself. One system, being developed for DARPA by Rick Brown of Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, relies on a sensor worn around the neck...

NOTE: If I know anything about the rabid naysayers on FR, at least some of the RELIGIOUS [vs spiritual] types will wail and rant that ANYTHING having to do with numbers and The Bible has to be crossing the line into dealing with Biblically forbidden NUMEROLOGY. This is nonsense. The dictionary definition of “numerology” makes clear that numerology is the study of numbers, as the figures designating the year of one’s birth, “to determine their supposed influence on one’s life, future, etc.” [Quix color, bold emphasis on the definition from: HERE: http://www.infoplease.com/ipd/A0562554.html Clearly, the Biblically prohibited issue is INTEREST IN,...

Oregon's Silicon Forest has some exotic denizens, but few can compare with Video Encoding, the dot com conjuring enhancements to your viewing pleasure in cinemas, on the internet, your home television, and when you fly commercial air. This two-year-old enterprise, created by Portland's Brian Maguire, practices, by Brian's own designation, a black art. And does it so well it is a major supplier to Stephen Spielberg's Dreamworks film production company; among other's, if you've seen Shrek or Saving Private Ryan, for instance, you've been exposed to what Video Encoding creates. The recent entertainment rage called DVD (Digital Video Disc) is...