Facebook could make teen girls depressed

Facebook may help people connect but spending too much time on the social networking site can make teenage girls depressed, a US psychologist has warned. The number of friends they have is also a big risk factor for depression. Dr Leonard Sax, author of Girls on the Edge, said the risks were higher for girls because they usually only posted "good things and happy stuff". "Girls post the happy things and they turn the camera on themselves so it's 'look here at what I'm doing,'" News.com.au quoted him as saying. "Then they look at all the other girls' Facebook pages, look at them being happy and think 'my life sucks, look at all the things those girls are doing and how much fun they're having,'" Dr Sax explained. Dr Sax said teenage girls, unlike adults, struggled to understand that people were intentionally making themselves look good. They were more likely to compare their lives to what they saw on the computer screen. "The problem is she is spending all this time on her presence on Facebook and not nurturing strong friendships because Facebook prioritises acquaintances. Many girls now say they do''t have one or two best friends, they have 12, 15, 20. They are losing the skills to nurture close friendships," he said. Dr Sax recommends parents limit time on social networking sites to 20 to 30 minutes a day and institute set times they would spend with their daughters. "Parents need to know everything their children are doing on their laptop and they need to know that you know," he said. "Say 'it's my job to know what you're doing because I need to be able to keep you safe'. If they want to say something private to a friend, go and speak to them," he suggested. Dr Sax said parents had to balance restrictions with positives, such as setting aside quality time.

Human noise affects plant, animal life

Human noises, such as the rumble of traffic or the hum of machines, do affect birds and animals which change their behaviour accordingly, indicates a new study. As many animals also pollinate plants or eat or disperse their seeds, human noise can have ripple effects on plants, too, says the study led by Clinton Francis of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Centre, North Carolina (US). In cases where noise has ripple effects on long-lived plants like trees, the consequences could last for decades, even after the noise goes away, reported the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, citing a statement of the centre. In previous studies, Francis and colleagues found that some animals increase in numbers near noisy sites, while others decline. But could animals' different responses to human noise have indirect effects on plants too, the researchers wondered. To find out, the researchers conducted a series of experiments from 2007 to 2010 in the Bureau of Land Management's Rattlesnake Canyon Wildlife Area in northwestern New Mexico. The region is home to thousands of natural gas wells, many of which are coupled with noisy compressors for extracting the gas and transporting it through pipelines. The compressors roar and rumble 24X7 round the year. When researchers compared the number of pollinator visits at noisy and quiet sites, they found that one bird species in particular -- the black-chinned hummingbird -- made five times more visits to noisy sites than quiet ones. "Black-chinned hummingbirds may prefer noisy sites because another bird species that preys on their nestlings, the western scrub jay, tends to avoid those areas," Francis said. Pollen transfer was also more common in the noisy sites. If more hummingbird visits and greater pollen transfer translates to higher seed production for the plants, the results suggest that "hummingbird-pollinated plants such as scarlet gilia may indirectly benefit from noise", Francis said.

Spies could use your TV to snoop on you

Spies could now snoop on you through your TV, dispensing with the necessity of planting bugs in your room, according to CIA director David Petraeus. The CIA says it will be able to 'read' these devices via the internet - and perhaps even via radio waves from outside the home, Petraeus added. Everything from remote controls to clock radios can now be controlled via apps - and chip company ARM recently unveiled low-powered, cheaper chips which will be used in everything from fridges and ovens to doorbells, according to the Daily Mail. Petraeus said that web-connected gadgets will transform the art of spying - allowing spies to monitor people automatically without planting bugs, breaking and entering or even donning a tuxedo to infiltrate a dinner party. "Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters, all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing," he said. Petraeus a former head of the allied forces in Afghanistan who became the CIA director on September 6, 2011, was speaking to a venture capital firm about new technologies which aim to add processors and web connections to previously 'dumb' home appliances such as fridges, ovens and lighting systems. This week, one of the world's biggest chip companies, ARM, unveiled a new processor built to work inside 'connected' white goods. The ARM chips are smaller, lower-powered and far cheaper than previous processors - and designed to add the internet to almost every kind of electrical appliance. Futurists think that one day 'connected' devices will tell the internet where they are and what they are doing at all times - and will be mapped by computers as precisely as Google Maps charts the physical landscape now. Privacy groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation have warned of how information such as geolocation data can be misused - but as more and more devices connect, it's clear that opportunities for surveillance will multiply.

Software turns spoken English into 26 languages

Computer giant Microsoft has reportedly created a software dubbed the "Universal Translator" that can convert English language spoken to it into 26 different languages. Frank Soong and Rick Rashid -- from the Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington -- created the software which can also speak in the user's own voice, the Daily Mail reported. The scientists hope that the software will one day allow visitors to foreign countries have conversations with other people, even though they do not speak the same language. Soong said his breakthrough could help language students and might also work with navigational devices. Hypothetically, it could be installed into a smart phone meaning tourists have a ready made translation device sitting in their pockets. "We will be able to do quite a few scenario applications. For a monolingual speaker travelling in a foreign country, we'll do speech recognition followed by translation, followed by the final text to speech output in a different language, but still in his own voice," Soong said. Soong and Rashid created the software with colleagues at the Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing, the company's second-largest research lab. The device needs around one hour to get used to a person's voice, and then works by comparing the words that have been recorded with stock models for the target language.

Titanic survivor's letter says 'captain drunk when ship hit iceberg'

The captain of the Titanic might have been drunk when the liner hit an iceberg, according to a never-seen-before letter of a survivor. The survivor, Emily Richards, claimed that she saw Captain Edward Smith drinking in the saloon bar of the ship in the run-up to the disaster. History books record the white-whiskered skipper attending a first class dinner party a few hours before the collision and then retiring to his cabin. He was woken just before midnight and was last seen alive on the bridge after making the heroic decision to go down with his ship. One of the many myths surrounding the 1912 tragedy is that the 62-year-old captain was drunk, although no evidence has ever been produced to support this. However, the newly found account of second-class passenger Richards does appear to support this theory. Her allegation comes in a letter she wrote home from the rescue ship Carpathia two days after the Titanic sunk. Richards, from Penzance, Cornwall, and her two sons were saved in the disaster but her brother George was one of the 1,522 people who perished. "The boat struck an iceberg at 11 o'clock on Sunday night. The Captain was down in the saloon drinking and gave charge to someone else to steer the ship. It was the Captain's fault. My poor brother George... drowned as far as we know now," a grief-stricken Richards wrote to her mother-in-law. "I hope I shall never see no such thing again. It was a dreadful sight. The water was like a mill pool. Me and mother and the children were on the last boat. The poor men had to come after. I hope my poor George is safe. I am thankful to say me and the two dear children are safe, and my dear mother and Ellen. I have lost all my things. I don't care as long as I am safe from a watery grave," she wrote. The letter, together with a second one she wrote home after arriving in New York, has come to light on the 100th anniversary of the sinking. They remained unseen in her family for 75 years before being bought by a private collector and have never before been made public. Richards, who was 24 then, was heading to join her husband James who had already emigrated to Ohio, US, and was taking their two young sons William and Sibley. She was accompanied on Titanic's maiden voyage from Southampton to New York by her younger brother George, 23, sister Nellie and mother Elizabeth. After the liner struck the iceberg at 10.20 pm on April 14, 1912, the three women and two children were helped into a lifeboat but George remained on board. In her second letter from the Star Hotel in New York she wrote: "George, poor boy, is gone. "Willie was dressed in a ship's blanket made into a coat, the baby has got a cold - but Willie is alright. "The Americans were kind concerning clothes for the night. This city is a city of mourning." The letters are now being sold by Henry Aldridge and Son auctioneers of Devizes, Wilts, with a combined estimate of 20,000 pounds. "This was a woman whose emotions would have been incredibly raw having lost a loved one in the sinking. She would have wanted someone to blame and clearly she blamed the captain. As far as we know there are no other witness reports that put the captain in the saloon drinking on the evening of the sinking," the Sun quoted auctioneer Andrew Aldridge as saying. "So Emily Richards' account is not consistent with the dozens of others that exist. It is very controversial, but you can't ignore the fact she was there. It puts a very different perspective on the events if it is true. "Captain Smith was largely exonerated by the British enquiry into the disaster and there are numerous accounts of him dying an Englishman's death by choosing to go down with the ship. "First person accounts written on Carpathia headed notepaper are incredibly rare. I think only a handful have emerged over the last 15 years so there is a great deal of interest in this," he added. The auction takes place on March 31.

Listening to music daily 'may improve health'

Listening to music everyday could be a simple and effective way to enhance well-being and health as it may evoke positive emotions and reduce the listener's stress levels, a new study has revealed. The new doctoral thesis in psychology from the University of Gothenburg is based partly on a survey study involving 207 individuals, partly on an intervention study where an experiment group consisting of 21 persons listened to self-chosen music for 30 minutes per day for two weeks while an equally sized control group got to relax without music. The results of the studies show that positive emotions were experienced both more often and more intensively in connection with music listening. The experiment group did also perceive less stress and had lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol. The more the participants in the survey study liked the music, the less stress they experienced. "But it should be pointed out that when studying emotional responses to music it is important to remember that all people do not respond in the exact same way to a piece of music and that one individual can respond differently to the same piece of music at different times, depending on both individual and situational factors," said the author of the thesis Marie Helsing. "To get the positive effects of music, you have to listen to music that you like," Helsing added.

My inconclusive travel plans 2012

I have been in many places, but I've never been in Cahoots. Apparently, you can't go alone. You have to be in Cahoots with someone. I've also never been in Cognito. I hear no one recognizes you there. I have, however, been in Sane. They don't have an airport; you have to be driven there. I have made several trips there, thanks to my friends, family and work. I would like to go to Conclusions, but you have to jump, and I'm not too much on physical activity anymore. I have also been in Doubt. That is a sad place to go, and I try not to visit there too often. I've been in Flexible, but only when it was very important to stand firm. Sometimes I'm in Capable, and I go there more often as I'm getting older. One of my favorite places to be is in Suspense! It really gets the adrenalin flowing and pumps up the old heart! At my age I need all the stimuli I can get! I may have been in Continent, and I don't remember what country I was in. It's an age thing. PLEASE DO YOUR PART! Today is one of the many National Mental Health Days throughout the year. You can do your bit by remembering to send an e-mail to at least one unstable person. My job is done!

Now, violin strings made of spider silk

A Japanese researcher has spun thousands of strands of spider silk to create a set of violin strings. The strings apparently have a "soft and profound timbre" compared to the traditional gut or steel strings. That may arise from the way the strings are twisted, resulting in a "packing structure" that leaves practically no space between any of the strands, the BBC reported. "Bowed string instruments such as the violin have been the subject of many scientific studies," Dr Shigeyoshi Osaki of Japan's Nara Medical University said. "However, not all of the details have been clarified, as most players have been interested in the violin body rather than the properties of the bow or strings." Dr Osaki used 300 female Nephila maculata spiders - one of the species of "golden orb-weavers" known for their complex webs - to provide the dragline silk that spiders dangle from. For every string, Dr Osaki twisted between 3,000 and 5,000 individual strands of silk in one direction to form a bundle. The strings were then primed from three of these bundles twisted together in the opposite direction. He then measured their tensile strength - a vital factor for violinists wishing to avoid breaking a string in the middle of a concerto. The spider-silk strings endured less tension before breaking than a traditional but infrequently used gut string, but more than an aluminium-coated, nylon-core string. A closer study using an electron microscope revealed that, while the strings themselves were perfectly round, in cross-section the strands had been compressed into a range of different shapes that all fit closely together, leaving no space between them. Dr Osaki suggested that it is this feature of the strings that lends them their strength and, importantly, their unique tone. "Several professional violinists reported that spider strings... generated a preferable timbre, being able to create a new music," he said. "The violin strings are a novel practical use for spider silk as a kind of high value-added product, and offer a distinctive type of timbre for both violin players and music lovers worldwide," he added. The study has been published in a forthcoming edition of the journal Physical Review Letters.

Delhi-based reggae group nominated for British award

New Delhi-based music group Reggae Rajahs has been nominated in the best international band/group award at the British Reggae Industry Awards (BRIA), to be held in October. The BRIA are aimed at promoting reggae music and ensuring that the genre develops and grows not just in Britain, but internationally too. The Reggae Rajahs is a trio of Diggy Dang, Mr. Herbalist and DJ MoCity. The group came together early 2009, and since then, they have been introducing the Indian masses to an eclectic mix of reggae, dub, lovers rock, ska and dancehall. An excited Dang said: "We've been nominated in the best international group or band and it's a privilege just to be nominated. We're sharing nominations with bands that have almost given birth to the reggae scene, like The Mighty Diamonds, Toots and the Maytals among others. "It would be huge even if we got into the top five. I think it's also brilliant because it will help us get recognised for the work we are doing in promoting the scene and it will be greatly helpful in giving the scene a boost. I'm hoping we get noticed in those terms," he added. The winners of BRIA will be decided upon through votes, and the last day for voting is April 30. Votes can be cast on www.britreggae.com/vote.php Meantime, Reggae Rajahs are set to tour Europe this summer, having been invited to play at Outlook Festival (Croatia), a fest celebrating sound system culture and bass heavy music. They are also planning to release their first single and music video this year.