Facebook Emotion Study Breached Ethical Guidelines

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1Zf7npnb_PzgCaymc4ZkyPEvcLpci1Sd9aqfGDxnGwb17yWdIuuUqIdsnC9vAKJU0p5uJk1vCGT7fSqNuFkYhZHkSpzM8yihDHAnq60ev4AF7rqYOzHmdDSovxn_iDGl-jTErVYfY9A/s1600/790666770963453734.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1Zf7npnb_PzgCaymc4ZkyPEvcLpci1Sd9aqfGDxnGwb17yWdIuuUqIdsnC9vAKJU0p5uJk1vCGT7fSqNuFkYhZHkSpzM8yihDHAnq60ev4AF7rqYOzHmdDSovxn_iDGl-jTErVYfY9A/s1600/790666770963453734.jpg" /></a></div> <br /> <div class="first-text" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Over the weekend, the internet exploded over the fact that Facebook had conducted psychological experiments<inset id="1597385219"></inset> on user news feeds. While Zuckerberg's team doesn't see a problem with that it did<inset id="1597656068"></inset>, academic researchers seem think it <a href="http://laboratorium.net/archive/2014/06/28/as_flies_to_wanton_boys" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">breached ethical research guidelines</a>.</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> James Grimmelmann, professor of law at the University of Maryland, has written an <a href="http://laboratorium.net/archive/2014/06/28/as_flies_to_wanton_boys" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">extensive blog post</a>about the experiments. He points out that Facebook claims everything is OK because "[the study] was consistent with Facebook's Data Use Policy, to which all users agree prior to creating an account on Facebook, constituting informed consent for this research."</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Since, Facebook has added that the<inset id="1597656068"></inset> "research was conducted for a single week in 2012 and none of the data used was associated with a specific person's Facebook account. " Again, it suggests that this makes everything OK.</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> But Grimmelmann claims that isn't really the point. Indeed, he points out that the subjects of the experiment didn't give informed consent-and Federal law requires informed consent on such studies. Not just that, <a href="http://laboratorium.net/archive/2014/06/28/as_flies_to_wanton_boys" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">he also claims that the study harmed participants</a>:</div> <blockquote style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; quotes: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> <div style="border: 0px; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> This... was not an observational study. It was an experimental study-indeed, a randomized controlled trial-in which participants were treated differently. We wouldn't tell patients in a drug trial that the study was harmless because only a computer would ever know whether they received the placebo. The unwitting participants in the Facebook study were told (seemingly by their friends) for a week either that the world was a dark and cheerless place or that it was a saccharine paradise. That's psychological manipulation, even when it's carried out automatically.</div> </blockquote> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <a href="http://laboratorium.net/archive/2014/06/28/as_flies_to_wanton_boys" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">He concludes that</a> "this is bad, even for Facebook... This study is a scandal because it brought Facebook's troubling practices into a realm-academia-where we still have standards of treating people with dignity and serving the common good." And there, right there, is why all the weekend's fuss over a single scientific study is entirely deserved. [<a href="http://laboratorium.net/archive/2014/06/28/as_flies_to_wanton_boys" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Laboratorium</a> via <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/30/facebook-emotion-study-breached-ethical-guidelines-researchers-say" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" x-inset="1">Guardian</a>]</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Image by <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/spencereholtaway/" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Spencer E Holtaway</a> under Creative Commons license.</em></div> </div>

Facebook Emotion Study Breached Ethical Guidelines

Over the weekend, the internet exploded over the fact that Facebook had conducted psychological experiments  on user news feeds. While ...

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Samsung Note 3 Neo Review – More Affordable And Stripped Down Note 3

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPVtxENX56cIZU0VY0soe4H2LRaAl9852K9XhMvTztOrF6BO68QVEMBx9d-CTrjIPZinsWMg6hex5-_YiAzEXAzvYMjfOnLHRQP58jvuPU0v3ie6GIugFYc73m-kwwgxuYZOgrWQGl7w/s1600/37521141.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPVtxENX56cIZU0VY0soe4H2LRaAl9852K9XhMvTztOrF6BO68QVEMBx9d-CTrjIPZinsWMg6hex5-_YiAzEXAzvYMjfOnLHRQP58jvuPU0v3ie6GIugFYc73m-kwwgxuYZOgrWQGl7w/s1600/37521141.jpg" /></a></div> <br /> <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;">Samsung Note 3 Neo is an attempt by Samsung to make note 3 with latest UI and features more affordable and reachable to Indian users. It can be an upgrade for existing users using Note 2 or planning to get one. But as per the price set for Note 3 Neo, it is still not a device which seems affordable for many users out there.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><b style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What is it?</b><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;">It is a big-display smartphone with an electronic stylus. It has a 5.5 Super AMOLED LCD display but comes with HD resolution of 720 x 1280 with a pixel density of nearly 267 pixels per inch. On the hardware front, it comes powered with Quad Core 1.3 Ghz processor + 1.7 Dual core processor, 2 GB RAM, 8 MP AF rear camera, 2 MP front camera with HD video record capability. There is 16 GB of built-in memory with a Micro SD card that can support up to 64GB card. You do not have support to install apps on the memory card. It's backed by 3100 mAh battery runs on android 4.3 Jelly bean.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><img class="gwt-Image" src="http://www.gizmodo.in/photo/37521163.cms" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: bottom;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><b style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Who is it for?</b><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;">This device is for those who need a powerful, big-display smartphone with latest hardware and won't mind paying for it. It's for users who would like to buy a phablet that should come from a known brand and useful features in User Interface. Samsung has a good brand value which makes many people to go for it.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><b style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Design</b><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><img class="gwt-Image" src="http://www.gizmodo.in/photo/37521157.cms" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: bottom;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;">Its looks great but not very different from it's elder brother Note 3. It feels good in hand, gives a strong grip, and has a nice form factor overall. It combines slim design and a decent built quality. But it does not feel premium, albeit it feels like another plastic phone from Samsung. The rear of the phone has matte finish so it will not catch finger prints. The volume buttons and power and sleep keys are metallic buttons and give good tactile feedback when pressed.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;">It weighs around 162 grams and it does not feel heavy; the form factor is good as you can easily hold the phone in one hand. At 8.6 mm, it does not have a very slim profile, but still edges are kept thinner, which makes it portable and easy to carry around, or to put it inside any bag or pocket. However, the rear camera module comes little above the surface of the phone.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><b style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Display</b><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;">It has 720 x 1280 Super AMOLED capacitive touch screen display, which makes various graphic more colorful and attractive as well. The viewing angles are also very good. You can read the display under sunlight as well. Resolution seems quite low on this 5.5-inch display but you won't see the pixels with naked eyes unless you read a document with large amount of text.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><b style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Software</b><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;">It runs android 4.3 jeallybean but it runs a custom Samsung Touchwiz User Interface that causes lag and slow animations at times. The touch screen is responsive to finger touch and there is no considerable lag in UI transitions or animations.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><b style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Camera</b><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><img class="gwt-Image" src="http://www.gizmodo.in/photo/37521160.cms" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: bottom;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;">The rear camera on the device is 8 MP with auto focus; tap to focus is also supported with the default camera UI that is customized. It does provide modes like HDR, Panorama, animated photo and eraser mode, and many other options that you may not use. The overall photo quality is good in day light and low light shots taken from the device were decent but showed slight amount of noise. The 2 MP front fixed focus camera is good for video chat and video call, you can do a good quality of HD video chat with it.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><b style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Gaming</b><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;">It performs well on gaming front as it has Mali T624 GPU and 2GB of RAM. Both of these help you play HD games on this phone without any issues, it can play heavy graphic games like Modern Combat 4, Nova 3, and Front Line Commando: D Day. All the games mentioned ran smoothly without any issues with graphics.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><b style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sound Quality</b><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;">Note 3 Neo performs quite nice in terms of sound quality but the volume of sound is low from loudspeaker. It has single speaker on the rear back and the placement of this speaker is not good as it might get blocked when you place device on table while watching a video.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><b style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Good</b><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;">Good Display and Great Viewing Angles</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;">Decent Camera Quality</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><b style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Bad</b><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;">Plastic Feel</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;">Costly</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><b style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Should I Buy it?</b><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;">Note 3 Neo is for those who would like to have a Note 3 but at a lower price. This can be great upgrade for many users who are using Note 2. It comes with latest version of Touchwiz UI that has brought a lot of new features, which you will like if they sound cool to you. The rear camera is 8 MP but the performance it quite decent. In all, this is a branded phablet that will cost you some good money but it will last for next 2 years at least.</span></div>

Samsung Note 3 Neo Review – More Affordable And Stripped Down Note 3

Samsung Note 3 Neo is an attempt by Samsung to make note 3 with latest UI and features more affordable and reachable to Indian users. It...

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How Chillies Can Be Used To Treat Pain

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQXJRpdx4EOXAOeTnCyI_jFbtibWyJhVMbwC7i6vf8KdSj1JE7Zf1j42O70efZB5lwmEYtdyHNcBm40O1UytAFSo1Z0GG5V86xRnkSKFD26lPyH9g4LD3EzZHzMQc1oQTg80bMYAsW3g/s1600/37518188.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQXJRpdx4EOXAOeTnCyI_jFbtibWyJhVMbwC7i6vf8KdSj1JE7Zf1j42O70efZB5lwmEYtdyHNcBm40O1UytAFSo1Z0GG5V86xRnkSKFD26lPyH9g4LD3EzZHzMQc1oQTg80bMYAsW3g/s1600/37518188.jpg" /></a></div> <br /> <div class="first-text" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Humans are, essentially, sadomasochists. For more 600 years we have sought out, cultivated, eaten, applied to our skin and even weaponised a chemical capable of making us feel heat and pain.</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Heat, it seems, is desirable. Whether in the kitchen or the bedroom, we have embraced the volcanic properties of the chilli pepper to enhance our food and spice up our love lives. But in The Pain Detective<inset id="1595774993"></inset>, published on Mosaic<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">, </em>chillies crop up unexpectedly. In the film, they feature as a component of a medically manufactured, super-hot patch being gingerly applied to Colin Froy's feet - not to inflict pain but, curiously, to diminish it. What is it about chillies that allows them to be both master and servant of pain?</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> In an attempt to understand the heat properties of the wildly varied and abundant chilli, American pharmacist Wilbur Lincoln Scoville sought a measure of hotness that was more standardised and reproducible than the universal 'hand fanning' used to indicate too much heat. By 1912, Scoville had devised a scale to measure the sensation of chill intensity. The Scoville scale has been used ever since to rate the potency of chillies.</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> The bell or sweet pepper is devoid of spice, scoring a round zero on the Scoville scale. Its relatives, however, are a little more spirited. Jalapeños fall into the 2,500-8,000 Scoville Heat Unit (SHU) range, while cultivars of the diminutive Scotch Bonnet pepper span 100,000-350,000 SHU.</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> The real firestarters include the bhut jolokia, or ghost chilli, a pepper so incendiary that its roughly 900,000 SHU have been harnessed by the Indian military to build a chilli grenade for incapacitating rowdy crowds. But the current world record holder is the aptly named Carolina Reaper, which is ready to inflict over 1.5 million SHU on anyone unfortunate enough to try and tame it.</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> The source of heat in every example above is the colourless, odourless chemical capsaicin. Capsaicin itself defines the very limit of the Scoville scale: the pure chemical form ranks north of 15 million SHU.</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> While undetectable to birds - a major means of seed dispersal for chilli plants - the hot sensation of this entirely natural, plant-based chemical acts as a deterrent to mammals who might destroy the seeds with their teeth. The capsaicin 'burn' is actually an illusion, a chemical trick fooling the brain into perceiving heat. This happens because capsaicin binds to and activates a specific channel protein (a biological gate) on the surface of nerve cells that sense pain and heat.</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Normally, these proteins, known as TRPV1 receptors, remain inactive in mammals unless stimulated by temperatures above 42°C (107.6°F). When stimulated, they elicit a sensation of heat and pain, a warning to get away from a source of potential damage. Due to slight differences in TRPV1 structure between mammals and birds, capsaicin is incapable of binding to this same protein in birds.</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> This 'heat receptor' protein is found throughout the nervous system, including in nerve cells in our skin and the digestive system. This means that, inside and out, chillies burn. Perhaps counterintuitively, eating chilli can trigger a cascade of cooling effects, such as sweating and flushing - one reason why the chilli is associated with the bedroom.</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Applied externally, chillies cause a sensation of burning, as capsaicin activates TRPV1 in nerves in the skin. But, if exposed to capsaicin for long enough, these pain nerve cells will become 'exhausted', having depleted their internal chemical stores. The nerve cells are no longer able to respond to capsaicin (or indeed, anything that might cause pain) and so you are no longer able to perceive pain. This is why chronic exposure to capsaicin acts as an analgesic. And this is why people experiencing chronic pain, like Colin Froy, are willing to endure chilli patches. Each of which contains chemicals equivalent to around 10 million SHU.</div> <hr style="background-color: white; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-top-style: solid; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; height: 1px; line-height: 25px; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px;" /> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This article<a href="http://mosaicscience.com/extra/how-much-physical-activity-do-you-really-need" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" x-inset="1"> first appeared on Mosaic </a>and is republished here under Creative Commons license. Mosaic is dedicated to exploring the science of life. Each week, it publishes a feature on an aspect of biology or medicine that affects our lives, our health or our society; it tells stories with real depth about the ideas, trends and people that drive contemporary life sciences. <a href="http://mosaicscience.com/" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" x-inset="1">Mosaic</a> is published by the Wellcome Trust, a global charitable foundation that seeks to drive extraordinary improvements in human and animal health. It covers subjects that fit with the Trust's mission and vision, but isn't limited to the research the Trust funds.</em></div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Image by <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/davemorris/" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Dave Morris</a> under Creative Commons license.</em></div> </div>

How Chillies Can Be Used To Treat Pain

Humans are, essentially, sadomasochists. For more 600 years we have sought out, cultivated, eaten, applied to our skin and even weaponi...

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BlackBerry Passport Leaked Online

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxHofRmDSyvM8RfK0of5xKOK8LAzAEysk8kRiXS10yO-tu9fadNBX3FMFLOTAaU61aEQUcA7b4wVKrqfOnpUacgpFNH9j86BZ_NMq07tdZz88sUaSHlZggsBalC7OpUzK8aVpEZYI4dw/s1600/37513945.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxHofRmDSyvM8RfK0of5xKOK8LAzAEysk8kRiXS10yO-tu9fadNBX3FMFLOTAaU61aEQUcA7b4wVKrqfOnpUacgpFNH9j86BZ_NMq07tdZz88sUaSHlZggsBalC7OpUzK8aVpEZYI4dw/s1600/37513945.jpg" /></a></div> <br /> <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;">There has been a lot rumors about BlackBerry's new device, here's the latest one. Twitter user </span><a href="https://twitter.com/halobandit/" style="background-color: white; color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; text-decoration: none;">@halobandit</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;">has come up with a ton of leaks about the model. It appears that the user has snatched up an advanced unit of the handset. Looking at the images, it is believed that the device comes with a 1440 x 1440 resolution on a screen under 5 inches. Interestingly, it is the highest pixel density ever on a BlackBerry device.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;">Notably, the device shown in the leaked pictures takes cues from an actual passport. This is the reason why it's called the BlackBerry Passport.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;">Currently, there aren't many details available about the specifications of the device. The company will reveal about the BlackBerry Passport at its launch event, which will probably take place in London this September.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;">There are possibilities that the Passport will single-handedly revolutionize BlackBerry's smartphone business. Till then wait for the device to hit the market. [</span><a href="https://twitter.com/halobandit/" style="background-color: white; color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; text-decoration: none;">@halobandit</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;">]</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;">(Image: </span><a href="https://twitter.com/halobandit/" style="background-color: white; color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px; text-decoration: none;">@halobandit</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; line-height: 25px;">)</span></div>

BlackBerry Passport Leaked Online

There has been a lot rumors about BlackBerry's new device, here's the latest one. Twitter user  @halobandit has come up with a t...

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The Phenomenon Behind Tornadoes

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> </div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZakBj3KYTSzm3R9agDxQ37W6NqX1ijTTNjko1R_w0G3sT10jppmh-YxGo-I-tqTZDjERkfn0QHWesy3CDSKphpBqTYZQWb8Ez1vvCUzeJpy62bWoz9p1cHxKXhYpK45PMMf03Gea4Xw/s1600/37509216.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZakBj3KYTSzm3R9agDxQ37W6NqX1ijTTNjko1R_w0G3sT10jppmh-YxGo-I-tqTZDjERkfn0QHWesy3CDSKphpBqTYZQWb8Ez1vvCUzeJpy62bWoz9p1cHxKXhYpK45PMMf03Gea4Xw/s1600/37509216.jpg" /></a></div> <br /> <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;">The mention of tornadoes tends to conjure up all kinds of violent and scary images in mind. Tornadoes have caused major destruction in the past, however affecting mostly the continent of North America, particularly the United States. But because of their mysterious appearance and extreme destruction, tornadoes have always been a subject of discussion around the world.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;">In fact, not just tornadoes, weather phenomenon like cyclones, hurricanes, and typhoons all have known to cause much damage and news. However, cyclones are typically strong tropical storms that have also known to affect western coast of India. Typhoons and hurricanes are the same, only known by different names in different parts of the world. Hurricanes and typhoons form over water and are huge, while tornadoes form over land and are much smaller in size. Hurricanes occur in the Atlantic, and typhoons in the Pacific.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What is a tornado?</strong><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;">A tornado is a rapidly spinning vertical column of air that develops from a thunderstorms and forms above the sea level. It gradually moves down towards the ground. No other weather phenomenon matches the wildness and destructive power of tornadoes. Tornadoes are often strong enough to destroy large buildings, leaving only rubble in its place. They have the power and velocity to lift cars weighing tons of kgs in steel and hurl them meters away. At the same time they also have the precision to pick up straws of grass and twist them around tree branches. Around 800 tornadoes are reported each year, resulting in many deaths and injuries.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;">Tornadoes tend to occur at the event of a violent thunderstorm and caused by two main factors: 1) Instability in the atmosphere</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;">2) The occurrence of wind shear</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Instability in the atmosphere</strong><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;">Instability occurs in the atmosphere when extreme hot and humid conditions combine with cold and dry ones. It is a unique phenomenon and it's natural to wonder how it might happen. The unusually warm and humid conditions take place in the lower atmosphere, and the cooler than usual conditions arise in the upper atmosphere. In the United States, warm, wet winds travel north from the Gulf of Mexico in spring and summer, where they meet cold, dry, and south-moving Canadian fronts.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;">Warm air always rises up, but when the two conditions (warm and cold) meet, the cold air can trap the warm air beneath it. Because the warm air cannot move upward, it begins to rotate. As the sun heats the ground, more warm air continues to rise, until finally the mass is strong enough to push through the cold air barrier. The rising warm air pushes the cold air beneath it, creating a rotating column that can span up to 15km, while its twisting speed exceeds 350km an hour. The spinning air may remain unseen until it picks up enough dust and debris for its shape to be visible. Tornadoes can last for a minute or an hour, and they can cause immense damage within this time frame within the distance they stretch.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The occurrence of wind shear</strong><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;">Wind shear is also a combination of two opposing forces. Wind shear occurs when the wind direction changes and the wind speed increases with height. An example would be a southerly wind of 15 mph at the surface, changing to a southwesterly or westerly wind of 50 mph at 5,000 feet altitude. Tornadoes are produced when two differing air masses meet. When cooler polar air masses meet warm and moist tropical air masses, the potential for severe weather is created.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;">Since instability in the atmosphere as well as wind shear are necessary for tornado formation, sometimes weak tornadoes can occur when the wind shear conditions are strong, but the atmosphere is not very unstable. This is known to have happened sometimes in the US state of California in winter, when a strong low pressure system comes ashore.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;">Similarly, weak tornadoes can occur when the atmosphere is very unstable, but there is little wind shear. For instance, Florida (which reports more tornadoes than any other state in the US) has many weaker tornadoes of this type. Naturally, the most violent of tornadoes occur when both strong instability and strong wind shear are combined and present. This occurs in the middle part of the country mostly during the spring and to a lesser extent during fall.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;">The deadliest of tornadoes recorded till date is the 'Tri-State Tornado' that killed 695 people and injured 2,027. It traveled more than 300km, with winds circulating at the speed of over 400km/hr through Missouri, Illinois and Indiana on March 18, 1925. It was rated an F5 at the top of the Fujita scale (like Richter scale for earthquakes), the worst in history.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;">(Image: Thinkstock)</span><br /> <br /></div>

The Phenomenon Behind Tornadoes

The mention of tornadoes tends to conjure up all kinds of violent and scary images in mind. Tornadoes have caused major destruction in...

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Facebook Experimented On Random Users To Study Newsfeed Emotions

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijIe-rZKpMtovx1BjYiZyuUsYuH3-E_8cLlkY5ibhGjR_heZpon2hKs_uC9Np6Bul_XU3iNbWOj8NPVJJP_eINJfQwyRCRZxuKOhCzd9zL3do-i9o1WjGdx9yxZxGqjQ7BB_biq3C40A/s1600/37399565.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijIe-rZKpMtovx1BjYiZyuUsYuH3-E_8cLlkY5ibhGjR_heZpon2hKs_uC9Np6Bul_XU3iNbWOj8NPVJJP_eINJfQwyRCRZxuKOhCzd9zL3do-i9o1WjGdx9yxZxGqjQ7BB_biq3C40A/s1600/37399565.jpg" /></a></div> <div class="first-text" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <br /></div> <div class="first-text" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Spend the afternoon with a Debbie Downer, and you'll likely end up feeling blue too. Turns out, the same is true digitally:Facebook just published data saying this "emotional contagion" works just as strongly through your News Feed-which they discovered after <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22229754.900-even-online-emotions-can-be-contagious.html#.U664BI1dVQC" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">tinkering with the emotional content</a> of nearly 700,000 random users' feeds.</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Yes, as the <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">research paper published in <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Proceedings of the National Academy of Science</em></a>describes, Facebook's researchers wanted to figure out whether the transfer of emotions that we've all experienced face-to-face can also occur digitally. So the team of three created an algorithm that analyzed the words in News Feed posts to categorize them as emotionally positive or negative.</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> They then used this information to tinker with a whole mess of people's News Feeds. The team took 689,003 users' feeds and tweaked the emotional content for a week. Some users received feeds with some of the more negative status updates hidden; others got feeds tuned toward doom and gloom.</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Turns out, there was a direct effect: despite no actual human interaction occurring, the subjects who saw artificially chipper news feeds posted happier status updates; the opposite was true for folks given a sourpuss feed.</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> The findings are, perhaps, kind of interesting: for the first time, we have statistical proof that social media affects our emotions in a way that's very similar to IRL human interaction. <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">As the authors put it</a>, "in contrast to prevailing assumptions, in-person interaction and nonverbal cues are not strictly necessary for emotional contagion, and . . . the observation of others' positive experiences constitutes a positive experience for people."</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> But there's something a bit creepy about Facebook using nearly three quarters of a million regular users as psychological test subjects, without their ever knowing it. To be fair, the emotional content rating and newsfeed manipulation was done by machine, rather than some lab-coated scientist combing through all your friends' status updates. But the notion that Facebook can actually manipulate your emotions via the news feed items you see just feels a bit bleak.</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Of course, it's all covered under <a href="https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Facebook's privacy policy</a>, the one you <del style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">thoroughly studied and deeply considered</del> blindly agreed to when you signed up for the social media service. Facebook didn't need to ask you for consent-they already had it.</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> So don't be surprised if you start feeling happy, sad, or angry in response to a friend's happy, sad, or angry status update. Turns out, it's just the way we're wired. Although there's a good chance your friends' humblebragging updates probably aren't 100 percent truthful<inset id="1595563358"></inset>. [<a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">PNAS</a>; <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22229754.900-even-online-emotions-can-be-contagious.html#.U664BI1dVQC" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" x-inset="1">New Scientist</a> via <a href="http://www.avclub.com/article/facebook-tinkered-users-feeds-massive-psychology-e-206324?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_campaign=Default:1:Default" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" x-inset="1">A.V. Club</a>]</div> </div>

Facebook Experimented On Random Users To Study Newsfeed Emotions

Spend the afternoon with a Debbie Downer, and you'll likely end up feeling blue too. Turns out, the same is true digitally:Faceboo...

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If Einstein Had Never Been Born, Would We Still Have Nuclear Weapons?

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY-0YIDZW1E-UMg702BC1YSCfOYbLEO4eAVzUWgaCuR64Tk-fuvgvBX1f7PblVPSNLuHNs0ZTQLGs93xihBVTcovl8RLwtapX1KvJtWnW2oDfqUC031t1xugL5qT8wAXuJt4aLa-VCew/s1600/37396027.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY-0YIDZW1E-UMg702BC1YSCfOYbLEO4eAVzUWgaCuR64Tk-fuvgvBX1f7PblVPSNLuHNs0ZTQLGs93xihBVTcovl8RLwtapX1KvJtWnW2oDfqUC031t1xugL5qT8wAXuJt4aLa-VCew/s1600/37396027.jpg" /></a></div> <br /> <div class="first-text" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Albert Einstein and his equation <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">E=mc&sup2; are famously connected to the modern atomic age. But</em></em><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> as n</em><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">uclear historian Alex Wellerstein writes in this counterfactual account of history, the great physicist mattered than you'd think in the invention of the nuclear bomb.</em></div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">If Albert Einstein had never been born, would it have changed when nuclear weapons were first produced?</strong> For whatever reason, I've seen this question being asked repeatedly on Internet forums, as odd as it is. It's kind of a silly question. You can't go in and tweak one variable in the past and then think you could know what the outcome would be. History is a chaotic system; start removing variables, who knows what would happen. Much less a variable named Albert Einstein, one of the most influential physicists of the 20th century, and whose importance extended well past the equations he wrote... and those were pretty important equations, at that!</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> On the other hand, this kind of science-fiction counter-factual can have its usefulness as a thought experiment. It isn't history, but it can be used to illustrate some important aspects about the early history of the atomic bomb that a lot of people don't know, and to undo a little bit of the "great man" obsession with bomb history. Albert Einstein has been associated with the bomb both through his famous mass-energy equivalence calculation (E=mc&sup2;) and because of the famous <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Szil%C3%A1rd_letter" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Einstein-Szilard letter</a> to Roosevelt in 1939. On the face of it, this gives him quite a primary role, and indeed, he usually shows up pretty quickly at the beginning of most histories of the Manhattan Project. <strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But neither E=mc&sup2; nor the Einstein-Szilard letter were as central to the Manhattan Project's success as people realize - either scientifically or historically.</strong></div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> In terms of the science, E=mc&sup2; gets a lion's share of attention, most perfectly expressed by <a href="http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19460701,00.html" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Einstein's portrait on the cover of <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Time</em> magazine in 1946</a> (above) with his equation emblazoned on a mushroom cloud. A lot of people seem to think that E=mc&sup2; played a key role in the development of the bomb, that the weapon just falls out of the physics. This is wrong. The equation can help one understand <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">why</em> atomic bombs work, but it doesn't really tell you <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">how</em> they work, or whether you would expect them to even be possible.</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> The way I like to put it is this: <strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">E=mc&sup2; tells you about as much about an atomic bomb as Newton's laws do about ballistic missiles.</strong> At some very "low level" the physics is crucial to making sense of the technology, but the technology does not just "fall out" of the physics in any straightforward way, and neither of those equations tell you whether the technology is possible. E=mc&sup2; tells you that on some very deep level, energy and mass are equivalent, and the amount of energy that mass is equivalent is gigantic. But it says nothing about the <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">mechanism</em> of converting mass into energy, either whether one exists in the first place, or whether it can be scaled up to industrial or military scales. It gives no hints as to even <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">where to look</em> for such energy releases. <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">After the fact</em>, once you know about nuclear fission and can measure mass defects and things like that, it helps you explain very concisely where the tremendous amounts of energy come from, but it gives you no<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">starting</em> indications.</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <img alt="If Einstein Had Never Been Born, Would We Still Have Nuclear Weapons?" data-asset-url="/photo/37396029.cms" data-chomp-id="787014614765768619" data-format="jpg" height="458" src="http://www.gizmodo.in/photo/37396029.cms" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: bottom;" width="636" /></div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Eddington's famous plate of the 1919 solar eclipse, which helped confirm Einstein's theory of General Relativity. Very cool looking, and interesting science. But not relevant to atomic bombs. </em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_May_29,_1919" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Source</em></a></div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> What about the rest of Einstein's main theoretical work, both Special and General Relativity Theory? <strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">They are pretty irrelevant to bomb-making.</strong> The physical processes that take place inside atomic bombs are what physicists call "<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">non-relativistic</strong>." Relativity theory generally only shows its hand when you are talking about great speeds (e.g. large fractions of the speed of light) or great masses (e.g. gravitational fields), and neither of those come into play with fission bombs. You can neglect relativity when doing the math to make a bomb.<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">1</span></div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> An intelligent follow-up question might be: "well, just because relativity theory didn't play a role in the bomb process itself doesn't answer the question of whether it started physics on a path that led to the bomb, does it?" Without getting into a long timeline of the "science that led to the bomb," here, I think we could reasonably summarize the situation like this: Einstein's 1905 papers (of which E=mc&sup2; was one) <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">did</em> indeed play a role in the subsequent developments that followed, but perhaps not as <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">direct</em> a one as people think. E=mc&sup2; didn't inspire physicists to start looking into processes that converted mass to energy - they were already looking into those through an entirely separate (and earlier) line of development, namely the science of radioactivity and particle physics. The fact that huge amounts of energy were released through nuclear reactions, for example, had already been studied closely by the Curies, by Ernest Rutherford, and by Frederick Soddy <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">prior</em> (but only just) to 1905.</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Arguably, the most important work Einstein did in this respect was his work on the photoelectric effect (for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1921), which helped establish the physical reality of Max Planck's idea of a quantum of energy, which helped kick off investigations into quantum theory in earnest. This had a big influence on the later direction of physics, even if Einstein himself was never quite comfortable with the quantum mechanics that developed in subsequent decades.</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <img alt="If Einstein Had Never Been Born, Would We Still Have Nuclear Weapons?" data-asset-url="/photo/37396031.cms" data-chomp-id="787014614925946795" data-format="jpg" height="477" src="http://www.gizmodo.in/photo/37396031.cms" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: bottom;" width="636" /></div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Hahn-Meitner-Strassman experiment apparatus, at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. My own photo.</em></div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Did any of the relativity work lead, though, down the path that eventually arrived at the discovery of fission in 1939?</strong>I don't think so. The experiments that Hahn, Meitner, and Strassman were doing in Berlin that lead to the discovery of fission in uranium were themselves careful replications of work that Fermi had done around 1934. Fermi's work came directly out of an experimentalist, nuclear physics context where physicists were bombarding substances with all manner of subatomic particles to see what happened. It was most directly influenced by the discovery of the neutron as a new sub-atomic particle by Chadwick in 1932. This came out of work on atomic theory and atomic modeling that was being done by Rutherford and his students from the early 1910s-1920s. And this early nuclear physics came, most directly, out of the aforementioned context of radioactivity and experimental physics of the late 19th century.</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">None of which has a strong, direct connection to or from Einstein's work in my mind.</strong> They have some overlaps of interest (e.g. Bohr was a student of Rutherford's), but the communities working on these sorts of experimental problems are not quite the same as the more theoretical circle that Einstein himself worked in.<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">2</span> If we somehow, magically, removed Einstein's early work from the equation here, does the output change much? There would be some reshuffling, probably, but I sort of think that Rutherford would still be doing his thing anyway, and from that much of the other work that led to the bomb would eventually come out, even if it had a somewhat different flavor or slightly different timeline.</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <img alt="If Einstein Had Never Been Born, Would We Still Have Nuclear Weapons?" data-asset-url="/photo/37396034.cms" data-chomp-id="787025011585107010" data-format="png" height="343" src="http://www.gizmodo.in/photo/37396034.cms" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: bottom;" width="636" /></div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This is my least-favorite way of depicting the fission process, where energy (E) is a magic lightning bolt coming out of the splitting atom. In reality, most of the energy comes in the form of the two fission products (F.P. here) repelling from each other with great violence. </em><a href="http://fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/doctrine/dod/fm8-9/1ch2.htm" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Source.</em></a></div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Do you even need to <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">know </em>that E=mc&sup2; to make an atomic bomb?</strong> Perhaps surprisingly, you don't! There are other, more physically intuitive ways to calculate (or measure) the energy release from a fission reaction. If you treat the fission process as being simply based on the electrostatic repulsion of two fission products, you get essentially the same energy output in the form of kinetic energy. This is how the physics of fission is often taught in actual physics classes, because it gives you a more concrete indication of <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">how </em>that energy is getting released (whereas E=mc&sup2; with the mass-defect makes it seem like a magical lightning bolt carries it away). There are other more subtle physical questions involved in making a bomb, some of which have Einstein's influence on them in one way or another (e.g. Bose-Einstein statistics). But I think it is not totally crazy to say that even if you somehow imagine a world in which Einstein had never existed, that the physics of an atomic bomb would still work out fine - Einstein's specific technical work wasn't central to the problem at all. We also have not brought up the question of whether without Einstein, relativity in some form would have been discovered anyway. The answer is probably "yes," as there were people working on similar problems in the same areas of physics, and once people started paying a close attention to the physics of radioactivity they were bound to stumble upon the mass-energy relationship anyway. This isn't to denigrate or underestimate Einstein's influence on physics, of course. What makes Einstein "Einstein" is that he, a single person, pulled off a great number of theoretical coups all at once. But if he hadn't done that, there's no reason to think that other people wouldn't have come up with his theoretical insights individually, if slightly later.</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <img alt="If Einstein Had Never Been Born, Would We Still Have Nuclear Weapons?" data-asset-url="/photo/37396037.cms" data-chomp-id="787025011625305922" data-format="jpg" height="433" src="http://www.gizmodo.in/photo/37396037.cms" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: bottom;" width="636" /></div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A postwar re-creation of the genesis of the Einstein-Szilard letter.</em></div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> What about Einstein's most direct role, <strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">the famous Einstein-Szilard letter of 1939 </strong>that influenced President Roosevelt to set up the first Uranium Committee? This is a tricky historical question that could have (and may at some point) an entirely separate blog post relating to it. Its writing, contents, and influence are more complex than the standard "he wrote a letter, FDR created the Manhattan Project" understanding of it that gets boiled down in some popular accounts. My feeling about it, ultimately, is this: if the Einstein-Szilard letter hadn't been written, it isn't clear that anything would be terribly different in the outcome in terms of making the bomb. Something like the Uranium Committee might have been started up anyway (contrary to popular understanding, the letter was <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">not</em> the first time Roosevelt had been told about the possibility of nuclear fission), and even if it hadn't, it isn't clear that the Uranium Committee was necessary to end up with a Manhattan Project. The road from a fission program whose primary output was <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">reports</em>and a fission program whose primary output was <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">atomic bombs</em> was not a direct one. By early 1941, the Uranium Committee had failed to convince scientist-administrators that atomic bombs were worth trying to build. They had concluded that while atomic bombs were theoretically feasible, they were not likely to be built anytime soon. Had things stayed there, it seems unlikely the United States would have built a bomb ready to use by July/August 1945.</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The "push" came from an external source: the British program.</strong> Their MAUD Committee (an equivalent of the Uranium Committee) had concluded that a nuclear weapon would be much easier to build than the United States had concluded, and sent an emissary (Mark Oliphant) to the United States to make sure this conclusion was understood. They caught Vannevar Bush's ear in late 1941, and he (along with Ernest Lawrence, Arthur Compton, and others) wrested control of the uranium work out of the hands of the Uranium Committee, accelerated the work, and morphed it into the S-1 Committee. The name change is significant - it is one of the more vivid demonstrations of the increased degree of seriousness with which the work was taken, and the secrecy that came with it. By late 1942, the wheels for the full Manhattan Project were set into motion, and the work had become a real bomb-making program.</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Einstein wasn't involved with any of the later work that actually led to the bomb.</strong> He <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">almost</em> was, though: in late 1941, Bush considered consulting Einstein for help on the diffusion problem, but opted not to push for it - both because Einstein wasn't regarded as politically reliable (he had a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312288565/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0312288565&linkCode=as2&tag=restrdata-20&linkId=UXAVHFH7YV34PUQB" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">fat FBI file</a>), and his approach to physics just wasn't very right for <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">practical</em>problems.<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">3</span> Bush decided that Einstein would stay out of the loop.</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <img alt="If Einstein Had Never Been Born, Would We Still Have Nuclear Weapons?" data-asset-url="/photo/37396041.cms" data-chomp-id="o73vt1trmiw0mz9fvayw" data-format="jpg" height="438" src="http://www.gizmodo.in/photo/37396041.cms" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: bottom;" width="636" /></div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Unusual, rare anti-Nazi propaganda postcard from 1934, showing Hitler expelling Einstein from Germany, titled "The Ignominy of the 20th Century." It is one of the most blatant visual renderings of Einstein as a "scientific saint." </em><a href="http://www.snyderstreasures.com/pages/militaryposters.htm" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Source.</em></a></div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Let's sum it up. <strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Did Einstein play a role in the creation of the atomic bomb?</strong> Of course - his physics isn't irrelevant, and his letter to Roosevelt did start one phase of the work. But both of these things are less prominent than the <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Time-</em>magazine-cover-understanding makes them out to be. They weren't central to what became the Manhattan Project, and if you could somehow, magically, remove Einstein from the equation, it isn't at all clear that the atomic bomb wouldn't have been built around the time it actually was built. I don't think you can really credit, or blame, Einstein for the atomic bomb, in any direct fashion. <strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Einstein <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">did</em> play a role in things, but that role wasn't as crucial, central, or direct as a lot of people imagine.</strong>If you could magically drop him out of history, I think very little in terms of atomic bombs would have been affected.</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">So why does the Einstein and the bomb myth persist?</strong> Why does everybody learn about the Einstein letter, if it wasn't really was sparked the Manhattan Project? There are two answers here, I think. One is that Einstein was, even before the war, one of the best-known, best-recognized physicists of the 20th century, and was synonymous with revolutionary science and genius. Having him "predict" the atomic bomb with equations in 1905 - 40 years before one was set off - is the kind of "genius-story" that people love, even if it obscures more than it enlightens. It also has a high irony quotient, since Einstein was forced to flee from Germany when the Nazis took power.</div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> But there's another, perhaps more problematic aspect. In many early copies of the Smyth Report that were distributed by the government, copies of the Einstein letter were mimeographed and loosely inserted. The magnification of Einstein's role was purposefully encouraged by the government in the immediate period after using the weapon. (And it was even a convenient myth for Einstein, as it magnified his own importance and thus potential influence.) Hanging the atomic bomb on Einstein's head was an act of self-justification, of sorts. Einstein was the world's greatest genius in the eyes of the public, and he was a well-known pacifist, practically a scientific saint.<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> After all, if Einstein thought building a bomb was necessary, who could argue with him?</strong></div> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> NOTES</div> <ol style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <li style="border: 0px; color: #222222; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; list-style: decimal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><small style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As Robert Serber puts it: "Somehow the popular notion took hold long ago that Einstein's theory of relativity, in particular his famous equation E = mc&sup2;, plays some essential role in the theory of fission. Albert Einstein had a part in alerting the United States government to the possibility of building an atomic bomb, but his theory of relativity is not required in discussing fission. The theory of fission is what physicists call a non-relativistic theory, meaning that relativistic effects are too small to affect the dynamics of the fission process significantly." Robert Serber, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520075765/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0520075765&linkCode=as2&tag=restrdata-20&linkId=RBOZCDBSPTNBWTZO" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Los Alamos Primer: The First Lectures on How to Build an Atomic Bomb</em></a> (University of California Press, 1992), 7.</small></li> <li style="border: 0px; color: #222222; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; list-style: decimal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><small style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">For a good, non-teleological, non-bomb-centric approach to the context of 19th- and 20th-century physics, Helge Kragh's<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691095523/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0691095523&linkCode=as2&tag=restrdata-20&linkId=W2AIPOBXPMBIFVJ6" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Quantum Generations: A History of Physics in the Twentieth Century</a></em> (Princeton University Press, 2002), is excellent.</small></li> <li style="border: 0px; color: #222222; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; list-style: decimal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><small style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Einstein wasn't entirely a head-in-the-clouds physicist, of course. He worked at the patent office, and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393326047/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0393326047&linkCode=as2&tag=restrdata-20&linkId=TYMFFPWHG2QZRFSD" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">as Peter Galison has written about</a>, even his famous thought experiments were often motivated by experience with practical problems of time synchronization. And he did help <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_refrigerator" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">invent a refrigerator with Leo Szilard</a>. But his work on diffusion physics was too abstract, too focused on first-principle analysis, for use in producing a practical outcome.</small></li> </ol> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Related posts from <a href="http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Restricted Data</a>:</div> <ul style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <li style="border: 0px; color: #222222; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; list-style: disc inside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/05/23/oppenheimer-gita/" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Oppenheimer and the Gita</a></li> <li style="border: 0px; color: #222222; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; list-style: disc inside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/01/31/sakharovs-turning-point-first-soviet-h-bomb-test/" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Sakharov's Turning Point</a></li> <li style="border: 0px; color: #222222; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; list-style: disc inside; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/10/04/atomic-bomb-used-nazi-germany/" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Would the atomic bomb have been used against Germany?</a></li> </ul> <hr style="background-color: white; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-top-style: solid; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; height: 1px; line-height: 25px; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px;" /> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Alex Wellerstein is a historian of science who specializes in nuclear weapons history. He is currently at the Center for the History of Physics, at the American Institute of Physics, and is moving this fall to the Stevens Institute of Technology. He writes the blog <a href="http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Restricted Data</a> and is the creator of the <a href="http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/" style="color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">NUKEMAP</a></em><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</em></div> </div>

If Einstein Had Never Been Born, Would We Still Have Nuclear Weapons?

Albert Einstein and his equation  E=mc&sup2; are famously connected to the modern atomic age. But  as n uclear historian Alex Welle...

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Check Out These Top 4 Spam-Blocking Plug-Ins For WordPress

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9unirDlt7lZRMjVKHT28WvxRl7uhNjVh9HsB8gc5p0JxR9oXHZ-A2hSBgAbYZUJpoX7c2SEH226tkOQAmrH63sIdyOCnIFyhBQRMXjWNb5_dJ7GSe_mRgU6Npn1HgbO_I_zVDJ3Fl6w/s1600/37525483.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9unirDlt7lZRMjVKHT28WvxRl7uhNjVh9HsB8gc5p0JxR9oXHZ-A2hSBgAbYZUJpoX7c2SEH226tkOQAmrH63sIdyOCnIFyhBQRMXjWNb5_dJ7GSe_mRgU6Npn1HgbO_I_zVDJ3Fl6w/s1600/37525483.jpg" /></a></div> <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;"><br /></span> <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;">Websites featuring user-generated content (UGC) are becoming extremely popular nowadays. But companies and individuals who run UGC WordPress websites must figure out a way to protect themselves and their brands from negative and/or inappropriate submissions made by users. Use of profanity and spamming are crucial issues and they can only be dealt with the help of </span><a href="http://www.webpurify.com/blog/webpurify-launches-video-moderation-service-to-fight-pornography-and-bullying/" style="background-color: white; color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; text-decoration: none;">UGC content moderation</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;">.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;">While your goal is to create a site that is fun and engaging for users, you must also be able to protect your WordPress site from users who indulge in profane language and spammers who try hijack-marketing and litigious methods.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;">One of the best ways to drive customer engagement on your WordPress website is incorporating social computing features that make it more interactive. Features like comments, reviews, polls, blogs, and ratings add a lot of value to a site and help foster a community around your brand. However, adding such features to your website also brings along its own set of challenges. You would love to have users commenting on the articles you post or want to leave user-generated product reviews and recommendations on the site. But what about the users who abuse this privilege of interaction? There are plenty of </span><a href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/webpurifytextreplace/" style="background-color: white; color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; text-decoration: none;">UGC moderation</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;"> tools that can help you weed out these users and keep them at bay, so that your brand identity does not suffer. Some of these tools focus on filtering out profanity while others act as effective spam blockers. So let us take a look at the top four spam-blocking plug-ins, available for WordPress websites.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">1. Akismet</strong><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;">No one hates spam as much as the owners of WordPress websites. In fact, spammers are hated by website owners and other users alike. No one wants to read a thread that consists of a few genuine comments and loads of spam. When you operate a website, it becomes your duty to ensure that there are no spamming comments or reviews on it. But how do you go about it? One of the best spam-blocking plug-ins for WordPress websites is Akismet. Launched in 2005, Akismet is a complex filtering engine that is very easy to use. It keeps track of the various comments, pingbacks, and trackbacks by users. Using that data, Akismet's plug-in works by rigorously testing all the entries to filter out the spam. All comments categorized as spam by Akismet are directly pushed into your spam folder. You can, of course, check your spam folder to ensure that only spam is being filtered out and no errors are being committed. There might be a few times that Akismet will err on the side of caution and mark genuine comments and entries as spam, but you can rest assured that the system is an intelligent one and the longer you use it, the better it gets at identifying posts you deem to be spam. Akismet is free for small WordPress sites while bigger commercial sites have to pay a monthly fee of $5. But considering the service it provides, the amount is a small one.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">2. Anti-spam</strong><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;">Anti-spam is a simple, no-nonsense spam filter plug-in. As the name suggests, Anti-spam is completely against any kind of spam. Once configured, this plug-in automatically detects spam and makes it disappear without a trace. This means other users will not have to put up with captcha and website administration won't have to look through long moderation queues. The spam will be gone for good.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;">However, one of the downsides of Anti-spam is that the spam will be gone for good - made completely invisible by the plug-in. There are no options to find out what the plug-in is categorizing as spam and if there is any mistake, you will just have to forget about it. As Knuth says, "Premature optimization is the root of all evil." But there is something to be said for all the headaches that premature optimization can save you. In Anti-spam's case, it gets it right more times than wrong.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">3. Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin (GASP)</strong><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;">GASP may not have as many downloads as Akismet, but it does have a stunning 4.9 out of 5 rating on WordPress. What does this mean? It means that GASP is a very good anti-spam plug-in. GASP is mainly concerned with automated spam sent your way by spambots. This effective anti-spam tool is absolutely infallible when it comes to combating spambots or automated spammers. However, there's one downside to this plug-in - its effectiveness suffers greatly when it comes to human spammers. All you need to do to validate you are a human is put a checkmark in the provided box. Needless to say, human spammers can do this just as well as other users. While this is crucial, the bottom line is that GASP is not pretending to be anything that it is not. Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin keeps spambots out - all of them, all the time.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">4. WP-reCaptcha</strong><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;">Websites like Facebook and Twitter love reCaptcha. In order to ensure that you are a genuine user and not a bot, you will have to give permissions and enter reCaptcha phrases. reCaptcha can also be used for your WP site. The WordPress version of this famous plug-in is WP-reCaptcha. This WP plug-in does not subscribe to the age-old verification system that other anti-spam plug-ins use. Older verifications use simple font and words that can easily be bypassed by Optical Character Recognition (OCR) systems used by spambots. In contrast, WP-reCaptcha stops spambots by using a unique system that puts forward archaic font and word combinations that would be near-impossible for spambots to decipher. Therefore, your WP site will be spam-free.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;">Other popular options for </span><a href="http://www.webpurify.com/blog/webpurify-launches-video-moderation-service-to-fight-pornography-and-bullying/" style="background-color: white; color: #4296b5; cursor: pointer; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px; text-decoration: none;">UGC moderation</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 25px;">, anti-profanity, and anti-spam plug-ins are Spam Stopper, Defensio Anti-spam, and SPAM Free WordPress. Look for a plug-in that you find easy to install and use, and would like to continue using for a long time.</span></div>

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