Tokyo, Japan (CNN) -- Yotaro cries, giggles, and kicks when you tickle him. He sneezes and his nose runs. When he is upset, his rattle calms him down.

An average baby -- sort of -- since Yotaro is a robot. His inventors hope he will help Japan's sagging birth rate, among the lowest in the world.

"A robot can't be human but it's great if this robot triggers human emotions, so humans want to have their own baby," said Hiroki Kunimura, the project leader for the Yotaro robot.

Kunimura and his University of Tsukuba team originally built Yotaro because they wanted to create a robot that would appeal across national and cultural lines. Since a baby doesn't have any language skills yet, they chose to build a robotic infant.

The University of Tsukuba students then started showing off Yotaro at robot competitions, and were surprised by the reactions from the public and the media.

"People asked us if this baby robot was created to tackle the low birth rate in Japan," said Kunimura, who describes himself as Yotaro's "daddy."

The low birth rate wasn't the initial concept, but when Kunimura started seeing how the public touched and reacted to Yotaro, he saw the possibility of a robotic solution to a social crisis.

Yotaro, in Japan's high-tech robotics world, is extraordinarily low-tech. The emotions are pre-set in a computer program and shot onto his eerily large head with a projector. Yotaro's warm body temperature is silicone warmed by water. His endlessly runny nose is a water hose on a slow drip. But the effect Yotaro has on people, said his inventors, is stunningly human.

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Neuroscientists can predict your behavior better than you can
 June 23, 2010 By Stuart Wolpert Matthew Lieberman

(PhysOrg.com) -- "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." — John Wanamaker, 19th-century U.S. department store pioneer

In a study with implications for the advertising industry and public health organizations, UCLA neuroscientists have shown they can use brain scanning to predict whether people will use sunscreen during a one-week period even better than the people themselves can.

"There is a very long history within psychology of people not being very good judges of what they will actually do in a future situation," said the study's senior author, Matthew Lieberman, a UCLA professor of psychology and of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences. "Many people 'decide' to do things but then don't do them."

The new study by Lieberman and lead author Emily Falk, who earned her doctorate in psychology from UCLA this month, shows that increased activity in a brain region called the medial prefrontal cortex among individuals viewing and listening to public service announcement slides on the importance of using sunscreen strongly indicated that these people were more likely to increase their use of sunscreen the following week, even beyond the people's own expectations.

"From this region of the brain, we can predict for about three-quarters of the people whether they will increase their use of sunscreen beyond what they say they will do," Lieberman said. "If you just go by what people say they will do, you get fewer than half of the people accurately predicted, and using this brain region, we could do significantly better."

"While most people's self-reports are not very accurate, they do not realize their self-reports are wrong so often in predicting future behavior," Falk said. "It is surprising to find out that some technique might be able to predict my own behavior better than I can. Yet the brain seems to reveal something important that we may not even realize."

The study, the first persuasion study in neuroscience to predict behavior change, appears June 23 in the Journal of Neuroscience.

For the study, Falk, Lieberman and their collaborators sought people who did not use sunscreen every day. The study group consisted of 20 participants, mostly UCLA students, 10 female and 10 male. The participants had their brains scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at UCLA's Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center as they saw and heard a series of public service announcements. They were also asked about their intentions to use sunscreen over the next week and their attitudes about sunscreen.

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They will tell people whatever they want to hear. They will actuallly keep doing as they have been doing all along "investing" their money in profitable "charitys" that help sterilize people in the third world using ultrasound (!), from which they will profit from under corporate aliases, so they can go and steal their resources later on!!! Can't forget about those vaccine contributions!!! No child to be left behind in the desert without a teste frying laptop and an all seeing eye!!!!


Billionaires plan to put the world to rights following secret supper Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are among those signing up to the greatest private donation in history...

It was a dinner meeting that fed the appetites of the world's conspiracy theorists just as much as those sitting down to eat. Held in May 2009 at a secret location in New York, the meal was a meeting between some of the globe's richest billionaires, organised by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

A year later, we know what they were talking about. Not taking over the world, but working out ways to give away billions of dollars.

Full details of the secret meeting have emerged in an article in Fortune. The magazine has revealed a guest list that included well-known billionaires such as Oprah Winfrey (pictured), Ted Turner and Michael Bloomberg, sitting alongside lesser-known lights of the über-wealthy such as Eli and Edythe Broad and John and Tashia Morgridge. According to the magazine, the aim of the meeting was to sow the seeds of philanthropy among the wealthiest people in the world with the hope that they would pass it on to other like-minded souls. And this would not be small-scale giving. No, this would be donations that would seriously impact the pockets of even the most wealthy.

The meeting was called the "first supper". There have been, according to Fortune, second and third suppers since then. Finally, a strategy has emerged around a "pledge" whereby billionaires who sign up promise to give away 50% of their net worth. If it works, the group will be the greatest private philanthropic effort in history.

Of course, there are many problems that the rich might turn their hand to. Global warming caused by a world obsession with fossil fuels; pollution caused by unthinking industrial development; victims of war caused by fighting over resources like diamonds and gold, or even helping the millions of victims of the great recession triggered by the excesses of the finance industry. All of which prompts a, perhaps, uncharitable thought. It would be wonderful if the rich helped sort out the world's problems. It would be even more wonderful if some had not benefited so much from creating them in the first place.

Marijuana Cuts Lung Cancer Tumor Growth In Half, Study Shows ScienceDaily (Apr. 17, 2007) —

The active ingredient in marijuana cuts tumor growth in common lung cancer in half and significantly reduces the ability of the cancer to spread, say researchers at Harvard University who tested the chemical in both lab and mouse studies.

They say this is the first set of experiments to show that the compound, Delta-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), inhibits EGF-induced growth and migration in epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) expressing non-small cell lung cancer cell lines. Lung cancers that over-express EGFR are usually highly aggressive and resistant to chemotherapy.

THC that targets cannabinoid receptors CB1 and CB2 is similar in function to endocannabinoids, which are cannabinoids that are naturally produced in the body and activate these receptors. The researchers suggest that THC or other designer agents that activate these receptors might be used in a targeted fashion to treat lung cancer.

"The beauty of this study is that we are showing that a substance of abuse, if used prudently, may offer a new road to therapy against lung cancer," said Anju Preet, Ph.D., a researcher in the Division of Experimental Medicine.

Acting through cannabinoid receptors CB1 and CB2, endocannabinoids (as well as THC) are thought to play a role in variety of biological functions, including pain and anxiety control, and inflammation. Although a medical derivative of THC, known as Marinol, has been approved for use as an appetite stimulant for cancer patients, and a small number of U.S. states allow use of medical marijuana to treat the same side effect, few studies have shown that THC might have anti-tumor activity, Preet says. The only clinical trial testing THC as a treatment against cancer growth was a recently completed British pilot study in human glioblastoma.

In the present study, the researchers first demonstrated that two different lung cancer cell lines as well as patient lung tumor samples express CB1 and CB2, and that non-toxic doses of THC inhibited growth and spread in the cell lines. "When the cells are pretreated with THC, they have less EGFR stimulated invasion as measured by various in-vitro assays," Preet said.

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Satellite tracking for the most dangerous psychiatric patients David Rose, Health Correspondent
From the Times online
Some of Britain’s most dangerous psychiatric patients, including murderers, rapists and paedophiles, are being fitted with satellite tracking devices to stop them escaping and reoffending.

A leading NHS trust has become the first to fit patients with an ankle bracelet containing global positioning system (GPS) technology, so they can be tracked if they abscond. The device, worn on a lockable, steel-reinforced, ankle strap, allows authorities to track a patient’s movements to within a few metres anywhere in the world.

More than 60 medium and high-risk patients detained at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust have been fitted with the device as a condition of day leave, or while they are transferred to and from hospitals.

The trust said that such measures were necessary to protect the public, after a series of high-profile incidents where patients absconded, fled abroad or committed violent crimes.

Mental health charities said that the secure cuffs, which can be forcibly removed only using industrial bolt cutters, resembled “virtual leg irons” and could violate the rights of vulnerable patients.

The GPS device, known as a Buddi tracker, was originally designed for carers to track dementia patients who wandered from their homes.

The secure version, remotely monitored by a private security company based in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, was approved in March for routine use after a pilot study showed that it could help to apprehend patients in a matter of hours rather than days.

A number of other NHS Trusts are understood to be considering use of the trackers, developed by Sara Murray, an entrepreneur whose previous projects include confused.com, the price comparison website.

The system was introduced in South London as a response to the case of Terrence O’ Keefe, 39, a rapist who escaped from the trust’s care in March 2008 and later strangled David Kemp, 73, in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. O’Keefe was jailed for life after being recaptured and convicted of murder.

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