There are surgeons operating on patients right now who can't feel their instruments. Similarly, there are workers in nuclear facilities around the world using remote manipulator arms to handle radioactive materials without a sense of what they're touching. It's an epidemic of numbness that afflicts virtually everyone who performs a manual job with robotic assistance-from bomb disposal experts in Afghanistan to astronauts aboard the International Space Station.

The problem isn't physiological; but rather, mechanical. As robots become increasingly common, particularly in high-stakes and high-risk situations, the benefit of deploying remotely operated surrogates is hitting a functional wall. For the most part, robots can't feel what they touch, forcing their users to rewire their own instincts and replace simple tactile cues-the contours of a wire between two fingertips, for example-with constant visual confirmation. The result is what researchers call "increased cognitive load," where the operator must actively think about countless minor tasks that should all be effortless. When the clock is ticking on those tasks, such as when a patient is losing blood, or a roadside bomb is about to detonate, the weight of that additional responsibility can become nearly unbearable.

Now, researchers are hoping to lighten that cognitive burden, and possibly make an entire generation of robots more effective, by creating machines that can feel. It's called haptic technology, and it represents one of the most challenging research fields in robotics. But with new sensors and feedback systems finally making it out of the lab, it also happens to be one of the most promising.

Sensory feedback: the thin line between good vibrations and aggravating distractions
At its core, haptics is about machines communicating through touch, whether that means a joystick that grinds to a halt when the manipulator it's commanding hits an obstacle, or a touch screen that buzzes with each tap on its virtual keyboard. Vibration is the most common form of haptic feedback, and the rattle of an incoming call on a silenced cell phone is its most common application.

Extending that concept to robotics seems straightforward. When a surgical robot, like Intuitive Surgical's da Vinci system, touches a patient's tissue with its manipulator, why not signal the operator with a mild buzz? "You don't want to put vibration on a surgeon's hand," says Ken Steinberg, CEO of Massachusetts-based Cambridge Research & Development, which has tested its own haptic device for use with surgical robots. Since their hands already pinch and torque the machine's controls to direct the manipulators inside a patient's body, surgeons have told Steinberg that near-constant vibrations would, at best, be a nuisance; and at worst, a confusing, finger-numbing distraction. "Vibration absolutely does not work with the human body," says Steinberg. "The nerves lose track of which vibration is stronger and which one is weaker. All it does, over time, is aggravate you."

Cambridge R&D's solution is less buzz, more nudge. The company recently demonstrated the Neo, a prototype of a linear actuator-a headband-mounted mechanism that moves up and down, rather than with the circular motion typical of most motors. When the da Vinci system's instruments or manipulators make contact with anything, the Neo's small tactor (a tiny transducer that conveys pressure and vibrations to the user's skin) pushes against the surgeon's head. The use of the linear actuator allows for adjustments of tactile feedback by minute degrees-from a feathery tickle that reflects a manipulator brushing against tissue, to an unmistakable tap when a suture is pulled taut.

To test the feedback's effectiveness, one surgeon outfitted with a Neo conducted a simulated operation that required him to grasp a vein-something surgeons typically avoid doing with minimally invasive surgical robots due to the high risk of puncture or damage. "We decided to show how delicately we could grab a simulated vein to demonstrate the minimized level of deflection, or crushing," says Steinberg. "We blindfolded the surgeon and had him use the robot to grab the vein, which was a straw in this case, and told him to stop the moment he could feel the straw." When the surgeon felt the straw, the robot stopped almost immediately, providing Steinberg with confirmation that there would not have been any tissue damage or punctures. Considering that the da Vinci's standard feedback is visual-only by way of a 3D high-resolution monitor, it's an impressive glimpse of what transmitted touch has to offer. "This capability costs hundreds of dollars to install, not hundreds of thousands. We think we have a solution for haptics for the next decade," says Steinberg.

Although Cambridge R&D is hoping to license its technology to companies like Intuitive Surgical, a more traditional form of haptic feedback has already made it into the operating room. The RIO surgical robot, which is used exclusively for hip and knee procedures, is guided by an orthopedic surgeon, but RIO already has a plan in place before the procedure begins-it draws on its own knowledge of the patient based on CT scans conducted ahead of time. So if the human surgeon veers off-target, or applies too much pressure, the RIO applies what Florida-based Mako Surgical calls "tactile feedback." It's another term for "force feedback," where the controls actively push back against the user.

Haptics may be more effective if robots are designed to react to tactile feedback autonomously
And yet, force feedback isn't a catch-all solution. While the RIO surgical robot can contain its user within a clearly defined area, robots like the ones that responded to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, or to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster in 2011, are navigating the chaos of unpredictable environments. Researchers must shift gears to provide better solutions for the operators of these types of systems, who are tasked with turning wrenches or doorknobs by peering through cameras that are murky with oil, or flickering due to the ionizing effects of elevated radiation levels.

Instead of obsessing over how to transmit the sensation of touch to the user in a meaningful, non-distracting way, companies like Los Angeles-based SynTouch are focusing on the machines themselves. If a robot knows what it's touching, why not program it to react accordingly? SynTouch's BioTac sensors are designed to mimic the human fingertip, detecting force as well as vibration and temperature. By combining all three kinds of inputs, a BioTac-equipped robotic hand might be able to discern glass from metal (based on temperature), and a button from its surrounding panel (based on texture). But as handy as that input would be to a human user, robots might make better use of the information.

According to SynTouch co-founder and head of business development Matt Borzage, it's a matter of speed. "With humans, our hands need to make thousands of adjustments per second when holding something. If it starts to slip, to send that information all the way up to the brain and all the way back down the arm takes too long. That's why the spinal cord is connected to the arm," says Borzage. For a robot hand to achieve that level of human-like precision, and avoid constant fumbling, it has to act independently. Waiting for an operator to receive a haptic signal, process it, and send back a command is a recipe for halting, klutzy failure. "It's why we need to implement some low-level reflexes into the robotic arm that mimic that spinal cord level reflex," says Borzage.

This reflex-based approach is being adopted by the makers of the Shadow Hand, one of the world's most dexterous robotic hands. "For remote manipulation, there's no great benefit yet for having complex sensing because you can't get that back to the operator," says Shadow Robot Company's managing director Rich Walker. "You want that data to be interpreted by the robot, rather than being rendered back to the human." The London-based company works closely with SynTouch, which created a Shadow Hand BioTac kit to help research-oriented customers integrate the fingertip sensors with that system. But for the touch-enhanced technology to make the leap to widespread real-world adoption, such as in robots used by material handlers in nuclear power facilities, a smart, nimble manipulator could be feasible long before a system with haptic feedback.

Haptic technology may ultimately give robots a stronger sense of "self"
It would be unfair to say that haptic technology, as it is traditionally defined, has been abandoned. If anything, it's evolved, encompassing both machines that can feel, and machines that can share that sensation with humans. Montreal-based Kinova Systems is currently developing a haptic-enabled upgrade to its existing, joystick-controlled JACO gripper arm. The arm can be attached to a wheelchair to enable someone with upper-body disabilities to grab and manipulate an item, and give that person a refined sense of "touch," while doing so via the gripper's three individually controlled, underactuated "fingers." The second phase of the research will apply feedback to the operator, possibly through an arm or headband. But the first step will be grippers that sense and identify the objects they touch, and adjust accordingly; a glass of water, for example, might be held level, and with just enough pressure to maintain a grip, to avoid shattering the glass.

The field of haptics, in other words, may wind up helping robots first. If companies like Cambridge R&D, SynTouch and Shadow Robot can successfully court the major players in robotics-the ones whose systems have become ubiquitous in hospitals, under oil rigs, or throughout the world's battlefields and disaster zones-those machines will need less monitoring. They'll catch the wrench before it tumbles into the plume of oil, or snip a single wire within the bomb's snarl of cables. Call it a happy accident: in the quest to make machines that can transmit touch, and that are easier to control, roboticists have made machines that better control themselves.

Download a prospectus

Bio: Erik Sofge is a technology, science and culture writer based in Massachusetts. He's a regular contributor to Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Men's Journal, and the Wall Street Journal Weekend. His work has also appeared in Slate, Fast Company, and The Best American Science Writing 2012.

Disclaimer: All funds are subject to market risk, including possible loss of principal. Funds that invest in a single sector are subject to greater volatility than those with a broader investment mandate. Investing in small companies is generally carries more risk than investing in larger companies. Funds investing overseas are subject to additional risks, including currency risk and geographic risk.

The following companies are not held by T. Rowe Price Health Sciences Fund, T. Rowe Price Blue Chip Growth Fund, T. Rowe Price Growth & Income Fund, T. Rowe Price Growth Stock Fund, T. Rowe Price Global Technology Fund, T. Rowe Price New Horizons Fund, or T. Rowe Price Science & Technology Fund as of December 31, 2012: Show Robot, Kinove Systems, Syntouch, Mako Surgical, Cambridge Research & Development.

The funds' portfolio holdings are historical and subject to change. This material should not be deemed a recommendation to buy or sell any of the securities mentioned.

This is a sponsored article and does not reflect the opinions of Popular Science.

We've been following the Antarctic drilling projects for a while now; there have been three major projects to drill holes in some of the coldest and most remote lakes on the planet to see what's underneath all the ice. The reason we're so interested in these hard-to-study lakes is for their relation to other worlds, specifically Europa and Enceladus, the frozen moons of Jupiter and Saturn, respectively. And last week, the Russians, who have been drilling into Lake Vostok, the coldest and deepest lake of them all, announced that they had in fact found a new type of bacteria, seemingly unrelated to all known organisms on the planet.

That announcement came on the heels of the American discovery of microbes in Lake Vida, and seemed to usher in a pattern--were there creatures in many more of these frozen lakes?

Except, well, no. This weekend, Vladimir Korolyov, the head of the Russian genetics laboratory at Saint Petersburg Institute of Nuclear Physics, admitted to Interfax (a news agency catering to Russia, China, and surrounding areas) that the bacteria they had found were nothing but contaminants. This wasn't completely unexpected, given earlier reports. Says Korolyov: "We found certain specimen, although not many. All of them were contaminants... That is why we cannot say that previously-unknown life was found."

Welp.

[via io9]

Everyone wants to figure out the the secret key to happiness. Maybe it's power, or money, or a social thing. Or maybe it's related to watching adorable chimps see the sky for the first time. Or, like most things, it could just be in your head.

According to a group of UCLA researchers, the key to happiness lies in a certain neurotransmitter called hypocretin. When study subjects were happy, hypocretin levels soared. When the were sad, hypocretin levels decreased.

This has implications for both depression treatment and the study of narcolepsy, as the sleep disorder and depression often go hand in hand. The study, from last week's Nature Communications, looked at the release of two peptides (chemical compounds with two or more bonded amino acids) in the brain -- MCH, or melanin-concentrating hormone, and hypocretin. Hypocretin levels increase when we're waking up, while MCH levels increase during the onset of sleep.

To examine the relationship between hypocretin, depression and narcolepsy, researchers followed eight epileptic hospital patients whose brains were already being monitored by implanted electrodes. They measured the release of hypocretin and MCH while the patients watched TV, talked to hospital staff and their families, underwent clinical testing and slept. The patients rated their moods every hour in a questionnaire.

When experiencing positive emotions, anger, social interactions and when waking up, the patients' hypocretin levels increased. When they were in pain or asleep, the hypocretin levels remained much lower. MCH levels were highest when they were falling asleep or just after eating, and lowest when they were experiencing pain or interacting socially.

Some drug companies are working on using hypocretin antagonists in sleeping pills, but this study suggests that that would affect people's moods as well. Along with previous research, the results "suggest that hypocretin administration will elevate both mood and alertness in humans," according to senior author Jerome Siegel, a UCLA psychiatry professor who studies sleep.

[Science Daily]

Biologists in Japan have cloned 581 mice from one original donor mouse, Livescience reported. The scientists made the mice over 25 generations of cloning; that is, from making clones from clones from clones, 25 times over.

They could probably make animal clones indefinitely, the research team wrote in a paper published last week in the journal Cell Stem Cell. Really. Check out the last sentence of their abstract: "Our results show that repeated iterative recloning is possible and suggest that, with adequately efficient techniques, it may be possible to reclone animals indefinitely."

The 581 cloned mice were made using an improved version of somatic cell nuclear transfer, the technique that created Dolly the cloned sheep in 1996. Previously, researchers using somatic nuclear cell transfer would get fewer and fewer animals every time they tried to make a clone from a clone. Eventually, they wouldn't get any new clones at all. Cloned mammals also often died sooner than their non-cloned counterparts.

The cloning team protected the mice's DNA from the genetic abnormalities they (the humans) think reduced the efficiency of previous cloning efforts. The researchers didn't lose any cloning efficiency over their 25 generations, they reported, and their cloned mice lived normal lifespans of about two years.

Cloning could help reproduce animals for farming or conservation, Sayaka Wakayama, a biologist at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology who led the cloning study, said in a statement. This isn't the first time Wakayama has made some big strides in cloning. He previously cloned mice from bodies of mice that had been frozen for 16 years.

[Livescience, RIKEN]

Back in 2005, before it was announced that Joseph Ratzinger would be pope, a leak helped the German media break the story. The conclave, the group of cardinals that elects the pope, will soon make another decision, and they don't want a repeat of 2005. The answer? Bug-proof any areas where the cardinals are working, including the Sistine Chapel.

To do that, Vatican officials will be installing a Faraday cage that can block signals, while also monitoring and potentially even searching electors. The Synod Hall, where early meetings happen, has already had its wireless network disabled to ensure zero media contact. Officials are also working to remove their own bugs, installed in response to the 2012 "Vatileaks" document leak. Television, radio, and other news sources are banned unless absolutely necessary.

So, yes, this sounds more than a little Big Brother-ish, especially when papal police have been given broader powers in response to the Vatileaks scandal. Everyone preparing the area where the voting will take place has even been literally sworn to secrecy, under penalty of excommunication. But people might be looking for the scoop again, so we'll see if this can plug the Vatican tight.

[Vatican Insider]

It was only a matter of time, really. We tried the Oculus Rift, a virtual-reality headset meant for gaming, at this year's CES, and found it pretty amazing. And wherever there are amazing advances in technology, porn that takes advantage of it will follow.

Sinful Robot, a startup based in Irvine, California, recently formed with the stated aim of bringing "immersive virtual reality erotic encounters" to the Oculus Rift platform. The company, which is hiring, in case you're interested in being on the cutting edge of erotica, kicked things off with the launch of its website and a post on Reddit, which quickly garnered thousands of upvotes and crashed Sinful Robot's blog. There isn't much information on what kind of content they'd be creating, or how it would use the Oculus Rift's virtual reality to make a new kind of "erotic encounter."

That makes sense, because we've seen very little of what the Oculus can do. When I tried it out, the only "game" was a snowy castle to walk around. The base is there; you can look left and right and up and down and the camera responds. But this is a totally new platform and while Oculus has the verbal support of some high-profile members of the gaming industry, we really don't know what it'll turn into.

You can check out Sinful Robot's site here.

There are a few eternal questions that haunt humanity: Is there a point to life? Who are we? Are we alone in the universe? And of course, what happens to my Twitter feed when I die?

Facebook profiles can become heartfelt memorials to the deceased, or, unreported, simply live on as a normal profile minus the status updates. But what happens to the social media junkie whose greatest living wish is to never go a day without tweeting?

With _LivesOn -- an artificial intelligence project from Lean Mean Fighting Machine, a British ad agency, and Queen Mary University in London -- social media mavens won't have to worry about a little thing like death getting in the way of their tweets.

With the clever/awful tagline "When your heart stops beating, you'll keep tweeting," the service would take up the business of running your Twitter feed when you move on to bigger and deader things.

In life, _LivesOn would be a private mirror account that learns your syntax from the tweets you're already writing. Once you die, the "executor" to your _LivesOn "will" decides whether or not to make that account public. (Presumably, if your social media presence was filled with updates on your flu status or whining about awards shows, your trustworthy friend or family member could elect not to foist your virtual Twitter twin on the public.)

According to NPR, it could even favorite and retweet for you. Nothing boosts the ego like when a dead person favorite's your wittiest tweet, right?

So far, more than 7,000 people have signed up for the service, though it's still in development. The Independent reports that it will launch sometime this year.

It could also be a tool for those that are too lazy to tweet for themselves. "It would be your twin, posting the sorts of things you're interested in so you can go off and use your time more wisely," LivesOn creator Dave Bedwood told The Independent.

"Once people get over the death question, there's the fact that this will be very useful for the living," he said in another interview with CBC News. Right. Let's all just "get over the death question."

[CBC News]

One of the more delightful YouTube video genres involves sending a camera into towards the blackness of space beneath a weather balloon. The first one I ever saw featured a father and his young son in Brookyln. Other have used it for everything from college admission letters to Hello Kitty to Natty Light, to even a LEGO version Felix Baumgartner's jump. Okay, that last one didn't actually make it to space, but it fits the genre: slow launch, frantic first person footage as it plummets, and then a triumphant recovery. Most of these drops rely on a tough camera casing that can survive the fall back to Earth.

David Windestål of Sweden had a different idea. What if, instead of just sending a camera into space, he sent a drone? Well, technically an RC model plane. Here's how he did it:

Start with a model airplane

Windestål picked the FunJet, an RC plane with enough interior space to hold the gadgets he wanted to add.

Add a video transmitter

The video transmitter allows for first-person-view remote control flying. Essentially, it gives the controller a view from the camera mounted inside the cockpit, allowing Windestål to fly the plane as though he were on board. Windestål chose the Lawmate 1W 1.2GHz, a transmitter with an overheating problem that actually becomes an asset in the cold upper atmosphereof space.

Cut the balloon

The most inventive part of Windestål's design is the mechanism that releases the plane from the hydrogen balloon that carries it to space. While it didn't work perfectly in flight, the device is still a good solution to a tricky problem. When the balloon that is carrying the plane gets high enough, it will inevitably burst as the gas inside expands beyond the ability of the balloon to contain it. When that happens, the tangle of balloon risks getting in the way of the radio antenna and covering the camera. Not fantastic. To try to cut the plane loose from the balloon before that happened, Windestål tied a wire around the string holding the balloon, and then at the flick of a switch ran more electricity through the wire than it was rated for, causing it to burn through the rope over the course of 10-30 seconds.

Enjoy the fall

After the modified FunJet disconnected from the balloon, it began plummeting toward Earth. Windestål got control of the plane after 20 minutes and was able to fly it back to the ground, steering it past a road before gracelessly striking a tree. Watch the video below:

Windestål put together a detailed DIY guide describing how he constructed his space plane. One word of caution: Helium is very expensive in Sweden, so Windestål instead used highly flammable hydrogen to inflate his balloon. If hydrogen in balloons sounds familiar, that's probably because of the Hindenburg,, an airship which caught fire and exploded in 1937. Windestål recommends against using hydrogen, and I can't agree more.

THE TREND

The average smartphone today has as much processing power as a 1970s supercomputer-enough (as luck would have it) to act as the hub of a streaming home-audio network, serve as a mobile medical lab, or even run a robot. So now, instead of building robots from scratch, companies can construct models around smartphones.

THE BENEFIT

In the past, developing the central processing computer and software to get a robot to do even a simple task cost tens of thousands of dollars. By outsourcing brainpower, companies can cut the final price to hundreds. And since apps, not specialty code, determine how a robot acts, software developers can easily update a robot with new capabilities and behaviors. Eventually, companies may even open up their software so users can create custom robotic personalities.

1) Double Robotics Double
Double is a wheeled robot avatar that stands up to five feet tall. It holds an iPad where its head should be, while a human driver-whether across the office or across the country-uses a custom video-chat app to see what the iPad sees and steer the robot. Double has a gyroscope-balanced stand, which allows it to roll at speeds up to 1.5 mph without tipping over. $2,499

2) Romotive Romo
Romo, a robotic toy pet, interacts with its playmates autonomously. Engineers developed computer-vision software that picks out people and shapes, which the robot can track, follow, or avoid. Facial-detection software allows Romo to see people, take pictures of them, recoil if they get too close, or cry if they leave it alone for too long. $150

3) Tovbot Shimi
The Shimi speaker dock is a personal DJ and dance partner. Speech recognition in Shimi's app lets the robot respond to requests for specific artists or genres-even cue up tunes that match the user's mood. The app also registers the tempo of the music, so it can send commands to Shimi to tap its free foot and bob its head to the beat. $199 (available summer)

DNA is a sturdy molecule; it can hang around for a long time in fossilized plants and animals. To find out just how long, an international team of scientists decided to determine its rate of decay-the length of time it takes half of its bonds to break.

First, the scientists extracted and measured the amount of DNA in 158 tibiotarsus leg bones of extinct moa, 12-foot, flightless birds that once roamed New Zealand. Next, they used radiocarbon dating to calculate the ages of the bones, which ranged from about 650 years old to 7,000 years old. With that data, the scientists calculated the hereditary molecule's half-life: about 521 years.

The rate, however, isn't slow enough for humans to take blood from an amber-encased mosquito and clone dinosaurs, like in Jurassic Park. "We believe this is the last nail in the coffin," of claims that scientists can get DNA from million-year-old fossils, says Morten Allentoft, a scientist from Copenhagen's Natural History Museum who worked on the project. Even in ideal preservation conditions, the scientists calculated that every single DNA bond would be broken at 6.8 million years: The youngest dino fossils are 65 million years old. And because scientists need long stretches of DNA to replicate it, they estimate that the oldest usable DNA will actually be one to two million years old. The record holder right now is DNA found in ice cores, at 500,000 years old.

So much for Jurassic Park.

The creators of the legendary urban planning series SimCity told PopSci they never intended for their game to have any political leanings or secret messages, but we could sense their environmental beliefs a mile away. From evil factory owners to not-so-subtle pokes at the food industry, developer Maxis has crafted a relatively heavy-handed take on how the world is and how it ought to be.

Click here to check out the gallery.

Think of all the pages you've "liked" on Facebook. Perhaps a favorite restaurant, a museum, a sports team. Perhaps a favorite magazine. How much do you think those errant clicks -- which are linked publicly with your profile no matter how embarrassed you are to be a fan of Justin Bieber -- betray about your personal demographics and preferences?

Way more than you want them to, according to a study from the University of Cambridge's Psychometrics Centre and Microsoft Research Cambridge. In a study published online in PNAS Monday, the researchers say automatic analysis of Facebook Likes can accurately predict a user's race, age, IQ, sexuality, personality and political views. Though the Facebook app myPersonality, which study author David Stillwell has a financial stake in, the researchers gathered information from more than 58,000 Facebook users.

That a Facebook fans of "Barack Obama" might be Democrats or people who liked the "No H8" campaign were more likely to be gay seems obvious, but other correlations were far less intuitive. "Curly Fries" and "Thunderstorms" seem to be surprisingly linked with a high IQ, while "That Spider is More Scared Than U" happens to draw a non-smoking fan base. Predictors of male heterosexuality include "Being Confused After Waking Up From Naps." An appreciation of "Hello Kitty" tended to be associated with people who were more open and less emotionally stable.

After creating a statistical model for Facebook likes, the researchers could differentiate between an African-American and white American user with 95 percent accuracy, a Republican from a Democrat with 85 percent accuracy, and guess your relationship status with a 65 percent accuracy. I suppose my online adoration of TSwift, "Crying naked in the bathroom listening to Adele" and "Hot Dog Eating Contests" really does gives me away as a single lady?

Even more obscure information like whether or not your parents separated before you were 21 years old could be culled from your Facebook likes with enough accuracy (60 percent) to prove interesting to advertisers, the authors write:

They could even make guesses as to personality traits like intelligence, emotional stability and openness with a fair degree of accuracy, according to the University of Cambridge's
press statement:

"Watch what you like" seems to be the theme here. The researchers warn:

On the bright side, liking "Science" is a good predictor for a high IQ. We can only imagine the same goes for PopSci.

[Phys.org]

At the South by Southwest tech/music/film extravaganza in Austin, Texas, Google showed off a few concrete examples of how apps work work on the crazy-futuristic Google Glass project. The New York Times, for example, is building an app that'll show you a story when you ask for "news," and will read the story to you if you'd like. Gmail, expectedly, will show you subject line and sender of new emails, and let you dictate replies. Evernote, one of the best note-taking services out there, will allow you to save and send photos through its Skitch service.

These are early examples of what Glass can do--according to Engadget, Google said these were the result of sharing the API with "a few friends"--but it's good to know that even this far before release, Google is getting Glass out there. If Glass is going to live up to its potential, it's going to need these developers to take advantage of it. We're excited to see how these apps integrate with the interface we've already seen.

[via Engadget]

Yesterday, hardware design company Xi3 announced pre-sale of one of the most anticipated pieces of hardware in the gaming world: the Piston. It's a modular computer that hooks up to Steam--sort of the iTunes of game downloads--and lets you play and buy games through your TV. At $1,000, it might've been a little steep, but one of its big draws was that it was working with Valve, the company that built Steam and some of the biggest games of the past two decades. But that arrangement, apparently, is no more.

Eurogamer got this response when asking a Valve spokesman about the Piston: "Valve began some exploratory work with Xi3 last year, but currently has no involvement in any product of theirs."

As recently as January, during the Consumer Electronic Show, Xi3 at least seemed to be touting a relationship with Valve, so this a bit of a surprise.

Right now, no hardware has quite mastered Steam. The best way to shop for, download, and buy games is by buying/building your own PC. That's fine, but surely, you'd think, there must be an alternative if all someone wants to do is play games on the PC. Well, not really. At least not easily and on a television, which the Linux-powered Piston is built to do.

Not partnering with Valve might not change the final product, but if you want someone to build a Steam Box, you want the company that made Steam to at least have a hand in the process. That's part of where the excitement for this came from. But just because Valve's not working on the Piston doesn't mean that the company won't be making its own version. A few days ago, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell told the BBC that a Valve-built prototype Steam Box will be given a test run in the next three or four months. If it works well, that'd be good news for gamers, even if it puts the Piston in an even tighter spot.

[Eurogamer]

Humans have a tendency to gravitate toward those that they share something with -- whether that's a common nationality, a shared love of a certain band or a favorite food. Yet babies don't just like individuals they have something in common with -- they also prefer people who are mean to dissimilar individuals, a new study in Psychological Science indicates.

In previous studies, infants have shown a preference for people who help others. However, that goodwill may only extend to those they identify as being like them.

To study this, (and put themselves in the running for the "most fun in research" award) a group of psychologists put on a puppet show for 9 and 14-month-old infants. The babies first had to chose which food they preferred -- either green beans or graham crackers -- and then watched the puppet show, where one of two rabbit puppets shared the same preference, and one had the opposite.

Later, the babies watched other puppet shows featuring either the similar or dissimilar puppet plus a "helper" and a "harmer" dog puppet. The helpful dog caught a ball the rabbit dropped and threw it back, whereas the other dog caught the ball and ran away with it. When the babies saw the experiment with the rabbit with similar tastes, they preferred the nice, helpful dog puppet, but they preferred the dog that stole from the dissimilar rabbit puppet.

In a subsequent experiment the older infants showed the same preference and could distinguish between helpful and harmful characters and those who were just neutral. They preferred the harmful character over the neutral one, whereas the 9-month-old infants didn't have as nuanced of an evaluation process and didn't significantly prefer harmful characters over neutral ones.

"These findings suggest that babies either feel something like schaudenfreude - pleasure when an individual they dislike or consider threatening experiences harm," according to lead author Kiley Hamlin of the University of British Columbia. "Or babies have some early understanding of social alliances, recognizing that the 'enemy of their enemy' is their friend."

While ganging up on someone who hates your favorite snack food seems irrational, the effect stretches beyond infancy:

While it may not mean all babies are doomed to be racist, it does show that the tendency to distrust or dislike people unlike ourselves develops even earlier than we thought.

Ever read the comments section of an article about obesity in America? (Hello, calling the Hairpin.) If you've somehow escaped the experience, I advise you to continue escaping it. Otherwise, you probably already know there's always someone who says something like, "It's just about calories in versus calories out! So get off the couch already!"

It's not that simple, of course. There are actually a lot of sort of weird things that are associated with weight gain and obesity, not least of which is where your calories actually come from.

One of those weird things is how much sleep you get, which researchers have known about for years. In 2004, the leaders of the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort Study reported that those who slept less than five hours a night had different levels of hormones that signal fullness than those who slept an average of eight hours. And sleep and nutrition scientists are still studying the phenomenon: A study published today in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences looks at energy intake and expenditure in adults on different sleep schedules over two weeks. (Turns out those who got less sleep used more calories, but also ate more, gaining 1.8 pounds on average.)

What other nonintuitive things have been associated with weight gain?

Having obese friends.

Traveling too much, or not at all.

Not having dinners together with your family, if you're a kid.

Apparently just moving to America from another country with lower obesity rates.

What does all this mean? Well, there are a lot of things in people's environments that affect how easy it is for them to maintain a healthy weight. Numerous studies show that lifestyle changes and social support can help people maintain significant weight loss, as the Columbia Journalism Review explained in January. Many of those changes have to do with tweaking triggers in your environment.

As an intern facing impending graduation and no firm job prospects, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that trying to land a job is more of an art than a science. After all, most of the advice floating around on nailing job interviews and increasing employability hews more to the "listen to what this executive says" side of the spectrum than the randomized double-blind trials side. Vagaries abound. "Stand out." "Do your research." Sure.

The science that is out there doesn't help much, either. Most of what aids or destroys you in your job hunt, it seems, are factors outside of your control, and some of this stuff is downright confusing. Are you too beautiful for the task at hand? Not beautiful enough? What's an enterprising job seeker to do?

According to the latest scientific research, all of these things:

Be good at annoying puzzles.
Think about the last time you felt powerful.
Wear glasses.
Have a firm handshake.
Have cross-cultural experience.
Have the same relationship status as your interviewer.
Be culturally similar to your employer.
Have a plan.
Love yourself.
Be a handsome man.
Don't be an attractive woman.
Really, don't be an attractive woman.
Don't have acne.
Don't be pregnant.
Don't be too skinny.
Don't be too fat.
Really, don't be too fat.
Don't say you are "creative" or have "extensive experience."
Be old.
Wait, no, don't be too old.
Don't order wine at dinner.
Don't interview on the same day as your toughest competition.

Only a little while after turning itself back on after a glitch stuck it in safe mode, Curiosity's chemical analysis of rock samples show something amazing: chemical evidence ancient Mars could've supported life.

Curiosity used a pair of its instruments, Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) and Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin), to retrieve data on a powdered rock sample dug up last month, and scientists have uncovered chemical signs of life in it: the presence of sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and carbon point to a planet that could once keep microbes alive. The sulfates and sulfides, particularly, could've been used by tiny organisms as a source of energy, something Earth-bound microbes do, too.

Curiosity has been exploring near an ancient riverbed that scientists already suspected would've been ripe to keep life, well, alive. (The sample itself came a few hundred yards away from the stream bed.) The chemical analysis gives that theory a boost. Unlike other parts of Mars, this area wouldn't have been too harsh for any microbes to survive.

About 20 percent of the sample is made up of clay minerals, which could've been formed when water on the Red Planet mixed with minerals. Scientists also found a mixture of oxidized, partly oxidized, and un-oxidized chemicals, which was hinted at back when the sample was first taken and showed a decidedly not-red interior of Mars.

Scientists will be confirming the results by testing another rock sample.

[NASA]