“This is a technical demo for face substitution technique. The application works in real time and it’s developed using the opensource framework for creative coding openFrameworks: openFrameworks.cc

The face tracking library returns a mesh that matches the contour of the eyes, nose, mouth and other facial features. That way the mesh obtained from a photo is matched to the face in the video.

Via Vimeo link 1 and Vimeo link 2 (Thanks Wendy)

The team’s conclusion — that people make better decisions about some things, and worse decisions about others — was rewarded last night with an Ig Nobel prize, in the annual awards that recognise research that “cannot or should not be reproduced”.

At the ceremony at Harvard University yesterday, Dr Tuk and her collaborator Luk Warlop accepted the Medicine Prize, which they shared with Australian scientists who made a similar discovery.
The honours are given to science that “first makes people laugh and then makes them think”, and were handed out by seven genuine Nobel laureates.

In Dr Tuk’s study, published in the journal Psychological Science, 193 students were asked to take a battery of standard mental tests. They were then split into two groups, one of which was asked to drink five large glasses of water 45 minutes before the tests.

After being suitably primed with a need to relieve themselves, the students were better at identifying colours, but not at identifying the meanings of words.

People who hold off the need to urinate are also better able to resist the temptation to spend money — suggesting that avoiding the loo before a shopping trip might save you money. The Ig Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded to a Japanese team led by Makoto Imai, of Shiga University of Medical Science, for their patented invention of an alarm that wakes people up by releasing a pungent wasabi spray.

The Physiology award went to an international team led by Anna Wilkinson, of the University of Lincoln, for an important paper published in Current Zoology entitled “No evidence of contagious yawning in the red-footed tortoise, Geochelone carbonaria”.

The Peace Prize was won by Arturas Zuokas, the Mayor of Vilnius, in Lithuania, for his innovative and wholly effective crackdown on illegal parking. Mayor Zuokas took to the wheel of a tank, and ran over offending luxury cars.

Darrell Gwynne and David Rentz were honoured in the Biology category for their discovery that male buprestid beetles sometimes mistake beer bottles for females, and mate with them. A team led by Hernman Kingma, of Maastricht University, won the Physics prize for determining why discus throwers get dizzy, while hammer throwers do not.

The Psychology prize went to Karl Halvor Teigen, of the University of Oslo for research into understanding why people sigh.

John Perry, of Stanford University in California, won the Literature prize for developing a Theory of Structured Procrastination. It says: “To be a high achiever, always work on something important, using it as a way to avoid doing something that’s even more important.””

From The Times (Thanks Susanne)

“Across parts of Australia, reports have been pouring in of strange voices chattering high in the treetops — mysterious, non-sensical conversations in English. But while this phenomenon is certainly quite odd, its explanation isn’t paranormal. It turns out that escaped pet birds, namely parrots and cockatoos, have begun teaching their wild bird counterparts a bit of the language they picked up from their time in captivity — and, according to witnesses, that includes more than a few expletives.

Jaynia Sladek, an ornithologist from the Australian Museum, says that some birds are just natural mimickers, able to acquire new sounds based on things they hear around them. For birds kept as pets, these sounds tend to mirror human language — but that influence doesn’t cease even after said birds escape or are released back into the wild.

Once back in their natural environments, these chatty ex-pets eventually join with wild birds who, in turn, start picking up the new words and sounds. The remnants of that language also eventually gets passed along to the escaped birds’ offspring, much like it does for humans.

“There’s no reason why, if one comes into the flock with words, [then] another member of the flock wouldn’t pick it up as well,” Sladek said in an interview with Australian Geographic.

According to the report, ‘Hello cockie’ is one of the most commonly heard phrases feral birds are teaching in the wild, along with a host of expletives — perhaps the last words those escapees heard after their frantic owners realized they were making a break for freedom.”

Via Treehugger.com (Thanks Damon)

It all started more than a dozen years ago, when Jill McGlone, who had been working as an office assistant for the Norfolk Community Services Board, was suspended for “revealing confidential medical information.” Apparently, authorities forgot to suspend her pay, however, and the checks, which totalled about $26,000 per year, kept going out.

Her situation was only uncovered recently, when a new supervisor, Maureen Womack, came in to take the reigns of Norfolk CSB. She went over the budget, discovered the human resource department’s mistake, and fired McGlone with alacrity.

Full story at AOL

Full story here

Worship of animals as avatars of the gods isn’t new in Hindu beliefs. Monkeys enjoy significant role in Hindu mythology where they are worshiped as avatars of Hanuman, the mighty ape that helped Rama in his fight against evil.

Raju, the “groom,” was famous in his village, attracting crowds wherever he went. He was known for eating, sleeping and smoking cigarettes with his owner, Ramesh Saini, who treated him like a son.

Two months ago Saini met soon-to-be-bride Chinki’s caretaker, a priest in a nearby village, who proposed the marriage of the two monkeys.

Full story at Lbtimes

According to a new study, laughter truly is contagious: the brain responds to the sound of laughter and preps the muscles in the face to join in the mirth.

“It seems that it’s absolutely true that ‘laugh and the whole world laughs with you,” said Sophie Scott, a neuroscientist at the University College London. “We’ve known for some time that when we are talking to someone, we often mirror their behavior, copying the words they use and mimicking their gestures. Now we’ve shown that the same appears to apply to laughter, too–at least at the level of the brain.”

Scott and her fellow researchers played a series of sounds to volunteers and measured the responses in their brain with an fMRI scanner. Some sounds, like laughter or a triumphant shout, were positive, while others, like screaming or retching, were negative. All of the sounds triggered responses in the premotor cortical region of the brain, which prepares the muscles in the face to move in a way that corresponds to the sound. The response was much higher for positive sounds, suggesting they are more contagious than negative sounds–which could explain our involuntary smiles when we see people laughing.

More lolz at unikz

A police official in the north-eastern Catalonia region said on Thursday that the man arrested last week was very thin.

Also arrested was an accomplice who placed the contortionist thief inside the cargo hold of a bus running from Girona airport to Barcelona, boarded the bus and then retrieved him at the end of the line.

During the 60-mile (100km) ride, the thief would slip out of the suitcase and use a sharp object to pick locks or open zips to steal from bags. Police were alerted by bus passengers who reported items stolen from their baggage.

Via Guardian

His team could not rouse him and the audience was asked to leave while the people were still “asleep” on stage. They were “woken up” soon after when Mr Days recovered. His manager said the performer has a voice recording which can be used to bring people round.

However, Alan Coman, treasurer of the Royal Manor Theatre, has disputed Mr Days’ claims that he passed out and said the episode was “only a joke”. ”It was part of a project for students who were filming the whole thing… but they (the people on stage being hypnotised) weren’t pretending because they didn’t get up to help.

Audience member Fiona Faye said: “He was pulled from stage and there was loads of commotion from a number of people backstage including one man who ran to the other side of the stage to get a first aid kit.

“At first the audience, including us, found it very funny and thought it was part of the act, but as time went on we began to realise that it was not part of the show and he had actually hurt himself. ”At this point we become very worried not only for David Days but also the guests that were onstage oblivious to anything as they were still hypnotised.

“They simply just sat there ‘asleep’.”

Full story at BBC News

The Bank of America filed foreclosure papers on the home of a couple, who didn’t owe a dime on their home. They paid cash and never even had a mortgage. Not good enough for the bank, the case went to court and the bank lost.

A Collier County Judge agreed and after the hearing, Bank of America was ordered, by the court to pay the legal fees of the homeowners’, Maurenn Nyergers and her husband.

The Judge said the bank wrongfully tried to foreclose on the Nyergers’ house. After more than 5 months of the judge’s ruling, the bank still hadn’t paid the legal fees, and the homeowner’s attorney did exactly what the bank tried to do to the homeowners. He seized the bank’s assets.

Full story at Digtriad