A research team led by Professor Michiteru Kitazaki from the Toyohashi University of Technology, Associate Professor Tomohiro Amemiya from the University of Tokyo, and Professor Yasushi Ikei from Tokyo Metropolitan University have developed a virtual walking system. This system records a person walking, then re-plays it to another user through the oscillating optic flow and...
Consumers discount a positive product recommendation when a product has a large variety. Firms can ensure products are liked by influencers by increasing the variety, but it may benefit them to limit variety to make a recommendation more “persuasive.” Firms can adjust the product variety to influence consumers’ quality inference, and in turn their purchase...
Many commercial films worldwide continue to express womanhood in a stereotypical manner, a recent study using image analysis showed. A Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) research team developed a novel image analysis method for automatically quantifying the degree of gender bias in in films. The ‘Bechdel Test’ has been the most representative...
If you’re at a desk with a pen or pencil handy, try this move: Grab the pen by one end with your thumb and index finger, and push the other end against the desk. Slide your fingers down the pen, then flip it upside down, without letting it drop. Not too hard, right? But for...
A recent study from North Carolina State University finds that people are likely to blame robots for workplace accidents, but only if they believe the robots are autonomous. “Robots are an increasingly common feature in the workplace, and it’s important for us to understand how people view robots in that context – including how people...
Remember domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species and Darwin’s tree of life metaphor we learned about in high school biology? That way of describing living-things lineages is just science’s best guess about how genes have mutated and split over time to change things into what they are today. It’s not uncommon for living...
Adding to what is known about the growing crisis of suicide among American teens, a team led by researchers at the McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research at New York University have uncovered several troubling trends during the period of 1991-2017, among Black high school students in particular. The findings are published in the...
Whether it’s walking down a dark street at night or fighting off grizzly bears on the trail, pepper spray is an effective tool to fend off an attacker and get safely away. But have you ever thought about what gives this personal-defense-in-a-can its bite – is it just weaponized hot sauce? The American Chemical Society...
A new study shows that two key factors can make freshly appointed CEOs more vulnerable and raise the odds they’ll get fired. The job security of a new CEO tends to suffer when the stock market reacts badly or when the previous CEO stays on as board chair, according to the study by Rice University...
For decades, luxury retailers around the world have conveyed the message that cold temperatures are a sign of status with descriptions like “icy steel Swiss watches,” “cool silk scarves” and “icy bling.” But researchers have never studied whether people truly associate cold temperatures with status and luxury. To investigate whether this association could be substantiated...
