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A small system for reading and interpreting the intentions of highly disabled persons who cannot communicate normally has been developed by a team of researchers at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture. The researchers hope to develop a practical model with a price under 100,000 yen within the next few years. Because specific brain waves strengthen when a person stares at something, senior members of the Hasegawa Ryohei Neurotechnology Research Group developed a system where a person looks at blinking choices on a screen while their brain waves are measured. The choices...

Source: Association for Psychological Science Date: August 16, 2007 Why We Are Unable To Distinguish Faces Of Other Races (and Sometimes Our Own) Science Daily — There's a troubling psychological phenomenon that just about everyone has experienced but few will admit to; having difficulty distinguishing between people of different racial groups. This isn't merely a nod to the denigrating expression "they all look the same." Indeed, the "cross-race effect" is one of the most well replicated findings in psychological research and can lead to embarrassment, social castigation, or the disturbingly common occurrence of eye-witness misidentifications. Although a potentially charged experience,...