電玩玩家比起常人較具視覺優勢

Video Gamers Have a Visual Edge over Non-Gamers

電玩玩家比起常人較具視覺優勢

All that time spent slaying (屠殺) aliens and singlehandedly saving the world from melodramatic (戲劇似的) malefactors (罪人、壞人) in video games may give players more than just a dopamine (多巴胺) hit — a new study says it helps the brain’s visual center process (處理) information more quickly, too.

That’s not a new view, by the way: We’ve long heard claims (主張) that action-oriented (動作取向) video games enhance aspects of vision or motor-reflex (運動反射) functions like hand-eye coordination (手眼協調). But in this Duke University-led study, the researchers wanted to narrow the range of possible physiological (生理學) mechanisms that might be gaining an actual advantage. Does playing games induce better visual sensitivity? Enhanced visual memory? Better decision-making? More than one of those? All of them?

Finding the answers involved locating (定位) a sample population of both gamers and non-gamers — easier said than done when you’re studying college students, notes Duke Today. Drawing from a much larger subject group participating in another study, the researchers were able to identify 125 participants who either played games intensively (密集地) or didn’t game at all.

The test, gauging (估計、測量) how the amount of time we see something affects our ability to retain (保留、保持) it in memory, involved flashing (亮出) a circle of eight letters for one-tenth of a second at participants, who then had to wait a brief, variable (益變的、多變的) amount of time before a prompt (即時的) appeared asking them to identify the letter that had been at the indicated (指出) spot on the circle. The results: intensive action gamers beat non-gamers every time, regardless of the delay interval (間隔). At the same time, there was no difference between intensive gamers and non-gamers when measuring the rate of memory decay (衰退) about where the letters had been — the gamers simply captured (捕獲) more information to begin with.

“Gamers see the world differently,” said Greg Appelbaum, a psychiatry (精神病治療) professor at Duke who led the study. “They are able to extract (挖掘) more information from a visual scene.”

So which is it: Seeing better, longer visual memory, or better decision-making skills? Applebaum says the results suggest it’s not better memory, but perhaps some combination of the other two — a question the researchers hope to answer by turning next to MRI brain scans of gamers in action.

*在這裡補充一些和文章相關的資訊：

dopamine　多巴胺

多巴胺是一種用來幫助細胞傳送脈衝的化學物質，為神經傳導物質的一種。這種傳導物質主要負責大腦的情慾，感覺，將興奮及開心的資訊傳遞，也與上癮有關。

雪梨咖啡廳讓你用吻付款

Sydney Cafe Lets You Pay with a Kiss
雪梨咖啡廳讓你用吻付款

One café in Sydney, Australia has an unusual marketing proposition (提議): For the entire month of June, your coffee is free if you kiss the person you came with. The only catch (只需要) ? You have to do the smooching (擁吻) between the hours of 9 and 11 a.m. Otherwise you have to pay the regular $3.50 price for the fresh brew (沖泡、煮).

What kind of kiss? Apparently, air-kissing won’t suffice (足夠、滿足) here. “It has to be a real kiss…a true kiss. I can see if it is a fake kiss. I am kind of a specialist (專家),” one French waiter at the three-month old Metro St James teases a middle-aged couple in the video shown here.

Sure, it’s a gimmick (花招). But so far, it’s getting positive reviews on the cafe’s Facebook page. “What a good idea! This should be done all over!” wrote one commenter. Or, as one French speaker put it: “Il y a de l’amour dans l’air, bonne journée!” (有愛在空氣中，美好的一天！)

Apparently (顯然地) the food’s not bad, either. According to Time Out Sydney, which gave the Hyde Park bistro a four-star rating, “if you only eat one thing here, make it the chocolate and berry pudding. It’s a sort of French take on bread and butter pudding, made from pressed croissants all bound with chilled crème anglaise (乳蛋糕).”

One thing we’d like to know, however: If there is no one to tag along with you, can you can just plant (栽種、播種，這裡指獻吻，意思近種草莓) one on a cute waiter?

最後附上相關的影片：

員工為加薪繡上公司圖樣刺青

Employees Get Tattoo of Company Logo For Pay Raise

員工為加薪繡上公司圖樣刺青

 Would you get inked with the company logo for a pay raise?

A New York-based real estate firm Rapid Realty has offered its 800 employees a 15% pay raise if they tattoo the company’s logo onto their bodies, and the offer is snowballing (像滾雪球般增大), according to CBS New York. So far, nearly 40 employees accepted the challenge, AOL Jobs reported.

There were apparently no size or location restrictions for the logo tattoos. For instance, Brooke Koropatnick told CBS New York that she got hers behind the ear.

Employees who agreed to get inked said getting a substantially (實質上、基本上) larger paycheck was motivation enough to get a tattoo. In a video, Brooklyn-based broker (經紀人) Adam Altman said the ink would be a reminder to work harder. “I don’t see myself going anywhere, and if I have it on my arm, it’ll force me to keep going and working hard [sic],” Altman said.

Owner Anthony Lolli told CBS New York that he got the idea from an employee who had done it.

“He calls me up, he says ‘Hey Anthony, I’m getting the logo on me.’ I show up at the shop and I’m like ‘this is cool, how can I repay (報答、酬報) you?’ ” Lolli said.

Lolli said the employees who have gotten inked (簽字、簽約) “get a lot of respect from the other agents with the amount of commitment that they have,” AOL Jobs reported.  The company owner pays for the tattoos, which can cost up to $300. Lolli told CBS New York that he hasn’t gotten inked yet, but plans to eventually (最終).

Perhaps getting permanently (永久地) branded with a company logo gives a whole new meaning to the term “walking billboard.”

在這裡補充一些和文章內容相關的資訊:

AOL:

AOL的全名為「American Online」，一般稱他為「美國在線」或「美國線上」。AOL是美國勢力很大的網路媒體公司，於2000年被美國時代華納公司併購。前一陣子也才聽說Yahoo為了對抗微軟的併購，積極的想跟AOL有些合作或合併。

扒手肆虐，羅浮宮館員閉館抗議

Louvre Museum Closes as Staff Protests Epidemic (極為流行的) of Pickpocketing

扒手肆虐，羅浮宮館員閉館抗議

The world’s most visited art museum is dealing with an influx (匯流、湧進) of unwelcome visitors.

A staff walkout over the rise of pickpockets (扒手) forced the Louvre in Paris to shut its doors Wednesday, Agence France-Presse reports.

Workers say that thieves have been showing up at the museum in gangs of up to 30 — primarily made up of young Eastern Europeans — and are responsible for incidents (事件、插曲) of “spitting, insults, threats” and striking employees and visitors.

Staffers “come to work afraid because they find themselves confronted with organized groups of pickpockets who are increasingly aggressive (有侵略性的) and which include children, who get into the museum free and even when taken in for questioning by police, come back a few days later,” Christelle Guyader, a representative (代表) for the network of trade unions Solidaires Unitaires Démocratiques (SUD), told the AFP.

The Louvre did request more police protection late last year and is planning to immediately increase law enforcement (實施) presence around the premises (館址), as well as limit access to people already outed (揭露) as pickpockets, a spokesperson for the museum told the AFP.

Last year, nearly 9.7 million people visited the landmark, best-known as the home of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.

在此補充一些和文章有關的訊息：

羅浮宮始建於12世紀末，由法王腓力二世（「奧古斯都」）下令修建，最初是用作防禦的城堡，邊長約90米，四周有城壕， 其面積大致相當於今羅浮宮最東端院落的四分之一。

當時的羅浮宮堡並不是法國國王的居所，而是被用來存放王室財寶和武器。 法國國王對藝術品的收集始於弗朗索瓦一世時期，弗朗索瓦一世曾從義大利購買了包括油畫蒙娜麗莎在內的大量藝術品。 

拿破崙在征服歐洲各國的同時，將被征服國家的藝術品大量運往法國，送至羅浮宮（此時已改名為「拿破崙博物館」）展出，還增加了古羅馬和古埃及藝術品展廳。 但隨著1815年拿破崙的第二次退位和終生放逐，羅浮宮藏品中約有5000多件藝術品被歸還給原來所屬國。 

此後的100多年裡，羅浮宮的收藏範圍不斷擴大，加入了東方（遠東）、亞述、古埃及等時代的藏品。隨著藏品數量的增多，展覽空間越來越小。 

1981年，法國政府決定將羅浮宮建築群的全部建築劃撥博物館，並對羅浮宮實施了大規模的整修。由華裔美籍設計師貝聿銘(1983年普利茲克獎得主， 被譽為「現代主義建築的最後大師」)（the last master of high modernist architecture）設計的位於羅浮宮中央廣場上的透明金字塔建築。

如何提升團隊IQ?

How to Raise a Group’s IQ

如何提升團隊IQ?

What makes a group intelligent? That is: What enables (使…能夠) a team of people to effectively solve problems and produce solutions? You might think a group’s IQ would be simply the average intelligence of the group’s members, or perhaps the intelligence of the team’s smartest participant (參予者). But researchers who study groups have found that this isn’t so.

Rather, a group’s intelligence emerges from (浮現於) the interactions that go on within the group. A team’s intelligence can be measured, and like an individual’s IQ score, it can accurately predict the team’s performance on a wide variety of tasks. And just as an individual’s intelligence is malleable (具可塑性的) and expandable (可擴展、可發展的), a group’s intelligence can also be increased. Here are five suggestions on how to guide the development of smart teams:

1. Choose team members carefully. The smartest groups are composed of people who are good at reading one another’s social cues (暗示), according to a study led by Carnegie Mellon University professor Anita Williams Woolley and published in the journal Science. (Woolley and her collaborators (同事、合作者) also found that groups that included a greater number of women were more intelligent, but the researchers think this is because women tend to be more socially sensitive than men.)

2. Talk about the “how.” Many members of teams don’t like to spend time talking about “process,” preferring to get right down to work — but Woolley notes that groups who take the time to discuss how they will work together are ultimately (最後、最終) more efficient and effective.

3. Share the floor. On the most intelligent teams, found Woolley et al(等人)., members take turns speaking. Participants (參與者) who dominate the discussion or who hang back and don’t say much bring down the intelligence of the group. Alex “Sandy” Pentland, an MIT professor who studies group dynamics (群體動力學), has found that in smart teams, members connect directly with one another — not just with the team leader — and they’re constantly engaging in (致力於) “back channel” or side conversations that supplement the main discussion.

4. Foster informal social connections among members. The smartest teams spend a lot of time communicating outside of formal meetings, says Pentland. He tells of a call center where team members’ coffee breaks were staggered across the workday. Changing the schedule so that all members had a coffee break at the same time led them to do their work more efficiently and feel more satisfied with their jobs.

5. Be open to external influences. In the most successful groups, Pentland discovered, team members regularly take off on their own to explore and discover. They then bring that information back to the group, invigorating (鼓舞、激勵) the group’s work with fresh insights from the world outside the conference room.

婦人持一罐義大利肉醬洗劫銀行

婦人持一罐義大利肉醬洗劫銀行

Woman Robs Bank With a Jar of Spaghetti Sauce

Prego or Ragu? (兩種義大利麵醬的名字) Whatever it was, the spaghetti sauce was definitely not a bomb.

A woman entered a bank in Clinton Township, Mich. and put a package on the counter, telling the bank clerk that it contained (包含) a bomb and demanding (要求) money, reported the Detroit Free Press Sunday.  The clerk complied (<把錢>收集起來), and the thief — a woman witnesses said was approximately (大約) 60 years old — left with her loot (戰利品). That’s when the bank employees and customers fled (逃離) the building and called the bomb squad (拆彈小組).

“It did look like there was a hard object in there,” Clinton Township Lt. Eric Reincke said. “But it was folded over (包起來) so you couldn’t see what was inside.” The Michigan State Police bomb squad arrived and scanned the package — revealing that there wasn’t a explosive device in it at all, but instead several cans of spaghetti sauce. Reincke was had no qualms (疑慮) about the extra precaution (預防、謹慎) however. “If you don’t know what’s in a package… you have to treat it like it is possibly an explosive device,” he told the Free Press.

No one was injured in the course of the robbery and it’s unclear how much money the woman made off with (偷走). The police have not yet made an arrest in the case but they claim to have a lead (線索) on a suspect.

在這裡補充一些和文章有關的資訊：

Prego醬和Ragu醬:

我們的回憶告訴我們什麼?

What Our Memories Tell Us About Ourselves

Do you remember the time President Obama shook hands with Iranian president Ahmadinejad? If you took part in a recent psychological (心理學的) study, it’s possible that you will. More than 5,000 participants (參與者) were presented (呈現) with doctored (修改過的) photographs representing fabricated (偽造、杜撰) political events, with around half claiming (聲稱) to have memories for the false scenarios (Obama has, of course, never shaken hands with the Iranian president). Part of a decades-long program of research by psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, the latest study provides a neat demonstration of how our memories are created in the present rather than being faithful records of the past.

The popular perception (認知) of memory shows a considerable lag with the new scientific consensus (一致、論調). The psychologists Daniel J. Simons and Christopher Chabris have conducted (實施) two large-scale surveys showing that roughly half of respondents (受試者) thought that memory works like a video recorder. And although many people do recognize that their memories are fallible (容易犯錯的、不可靠的), there is much less understanding of precisely (精確的) how and why they fail us.

Memory is a system with many moving parts, and thus many processes that can go wrong. The various ‘sins of memory’ (in Daniel L. Schacter’s phrase) give us the best clues about how this complex mental function works. Psychologist and neuroscientists have taken advantage of these clues to explore the strong links between imagination and memory, to demonstrate how social factors influence our recollections (回憶), and to show how memory may actually have evolved to predict the future rather than keep track of the past. There is arguably (可說是) little evolutionary advantage to being able to recall the past in vivid detail; it is much more useful to be able to use past experience to predict what comes next.

So why are we so attached (依附) to our idea of memories as fixed, unchanging possession?  There are many reasons, but one is that memories are foundational for our sense of self. This is particularly true for early childhood memories (which the scientists tell us are the most unreliable of all). In her striking (引人注目的) description of lying as a small child in her cot (吊床) at St. Ives, Virginia Woolf noted that this wasn’t just her earliest memory; it was the moment she became the person (and the writer) she was. It is no wonder that we resist the idea that our memories are collages of disparate (不同的) sources of information, assembled (集合) and reassembled (重新集合) long after the event.

Bracing (令人振奮的) as it might be, this new way of thinking about memory does not have to lead to self-doubt. It simply requires that we take our memories with a pinch (一小搓) of salt, and forge (編造) new relationships with them. They may be a kind of fiction (虛構、想像的事), but the manner of their making speaks volumes about those who create them. In the Obama-Ahmadinejad study, the researchers found that events were more likely to be falsely recalled if they fit the individual’s political affiliations (聯繫) (conservatives were more likely than liberals to ‘remember’ the Ahmadinejad handshake, for example). Whether the events happened or not, your biases (偏見) and beliefs shape the kind of memories you form, and thus reveal the kind of person you are.

在這裡補充一些和文章有關的內容：

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

伊朗現任總統，由於伊朗和美國外交上長期交惡，歐巴馬並沒有和他握過手。

越南禁止矮、胖警員指揮交通

Vietnam to Ban Short, Fat Police Officers from Traffic Duty

越南禁止矮、胖警員指揮交通

The police force in Vietnam’s capital city of Hanoi is undergoing a makeover (美容)

— and cracking down (壓迫) on the physique (體格、體型) of its on-duty traffic officers, the BBC reports.

Officers who are described as overweight, short or abusive will be removed from the streets and reassigned to desk duty, in an attempt to improve the image of Hanoi’s traffic police department. A recent World Bank-backed survey on the most corrupt institutions (組織、團體) in Vietnam found the traffic force at no. 1, according to the Agence France-Presse.

In 2011, authorities (有關當局) banned Hanoi police from wearing sunglasses on duty or hiding behind trees to catch drivers, while attempts were made to recruit (招募) female traffic cops in an attempt to improve public perception (認知) of the force.

The removal of Hanoi’s less attractive officers may improve the force’s physical image, but it doesn’t quite solve the corruption (貪腐) problem. However, according to the BBC, in addition to the new waistline regulations, on-duty policemen will be forced to carry an official code of conduct on professional behavior with them at all times.

Vietnam is not the only country to begin regulating its police officers’ weight. Last year the Indonesian capital of Jarkarta ordered its police to exercise twice a week while the U.K. has proposed disciplinary measures for overweight officers. Mexico and South Africa have also implemented (執行、實施) obesity-related policies for police forces.

在這裡補充一些相關的資訊：

Hanoi: 

河內市（越南語：Thành phố Hà Nội／城舖河內）是越南社會主義共和國的首都，位於越南北部，紅河三角洲西北部，紅河右岸和紅河與墩河的匯流處，因處紅河與蘇瀝江之間而得名「河內」。河內是越南的工業、文化中心，同時也是越南歷史古都，其擁有1000多年歷史，從西元11世紀起就是越南政治、經濟和文化中心，市區歷史文物豐富，名勝古跡遍佈，市內古跡眾多。人口約為620萬，多為京族。

咖啡動力車打破世界紀錄

Coffee-Powered Car Breaks World Record

咖啡動力車打破世界紀錄

In addition to (除了…還) providing a morning energy boost for millions of undercaffeinated (咖啡因不足) people and reportedly helping lower stroke (中風) risks, it can also be used to fuel a Guinness World Record–breaking car, as a British conservationist (保育人士) discovered.

Martin Bacon, 42, converted (改裝) a Ford pickup truck into Coffee Car Mark 2 — the world’s fastest coffee-powered vehicle. Bacon installed a charcoal (木炭) stove (爐) on the car, which breaks down coffee-bean chaff (咖啡豆的外殼) (a by-product of the roasting process) into carbon monoxide (一氧化碳) and hydrogen (氫氣). The gas is cooled and filtered (過濾過的), and the hydrogen is used to power a modified (修改過的) gasoline engine. The coffee car hit a top speed of 65 m.p.h. in the presence of (在…面前) a Guinness adjudicator (金氏紀錄評判員) at Woodford Airfield in Manchester, England, on Feb. 19.

According to this video on the coffee-car website, starting the machine is no easy task. Instead of simply turning the ignition key (點火、發動鑰匙), Bacon has to load the coffee pellets (咖啡豆) to the boiler and wait for enough pressure to build up (增加). After two test runs on that chilly (冷颼颼的) morning and some tinkering (粗劣的修補、拼拼湊湊) with the machine that generates fluffs (一團) of white smoke when started, he successfully broke a world record.

Bacon has long been fascinated with coffee-powered vehicles. According to BBC, he converted an old Volkswagen Scirocco into Coffee Car Mark 1 and drove it 210 miles from London to Manchester in 2010. The Car-puccino (作者在這裡開個玩笑，把cappuccino拆成讀音相似的Car-puccino；既和車子，也和咖啡有關), which reportedly reached 60 m.p.h., claimed the Guinness World Record of the longest journey by a coffee-powered car.

Now, Bacon and his team are driving the Mark 2 on a tour across the U.K. to promote Co-operative Food, a British fair-trade (公平交易) brand.

Bacon’s coffee car is not the first vehicle powered by food. In 2009, scientists from Warwick University built a Formula 3 racing car boasting a biodiesel (生物柴油) engine that can run on chocolate extract (提煉物), reported the Telegraph (每日電訊報). Unfortunately, the car, which reportedly can hit speeds of up to 145 m.p.h., was banned from the championship (錦標賽) because its rather unusual fuel failed to meet regulations (規定).

在此補充一些和文章相關的內容:

chaff: 植物外層的粗糠、穀殼

biodiesel:

生物柴油（指以動植物油或廢食用油脂，經轉化技術後所產生的酯類，直接使用或混合石化柴油作為燃料）

Telegraph: 《每日電訊報》（英語：The Daily Telegraph），英國大開型報章，成立於1855年6月29日，是英國銷量最高的報紙之一。星期日電訊報是其姊妹刊物。每日電訊報早期政治立場親英國自由黨，近代政治立場則親英國保守黨。 《每日電訊報》中文版由Telegraph授權，譯言提供中文化服務。