Touching Emoji(表情符号)
Distancing amid the COVID-19 pandemic has made both physical and social connections a touch more difficult to maintain. For Stanford University graduate student Millie Salvato, being apart from her mother on the opposite coast has proved challenging.
After collecting 661 touch movements-squeezes, strokes, shakes, pokes, and the like-Salvato and her colleagues mapped the location and pressure of each.
“It doesn’t feel like an actual human hand ... but it doesn’t feel like these separate motions either,” Salvato says, as one might expect from large moving disks. “It feels nice, honestly.”
In the new study, “I think it’s interesting that participants can reliably understand what touch has been delivered to them at a pretty high rate, given the scarce amount of information that they have available to them,” Gerling says.
Previous research has found that social touch is important for physical and mental health.
A.One can’t help but wonder when new tech will convey emotion through a virtual touch. |
B.Even with no training, 30 new study participants correctly matched the simulated touches to the six situations 45 percent of the time. |
C.Sometimes a text or video call is not enough, and people in Salvato’s situation often long for a way to send a loving touch or comforting squeeze from afar. |
D.In the future, instead of just sending a <3 to a loved one by phone or computer, adding a “touch emoji” might help us feel just a little bit closer. |
E.Next, they used a machine-learning software to select the movements that were most reliably part of each response. |
F.“It’s a unique work that looks at how our social touch is delivered and then... how to reproduce it,” says Gerling, a touch researcher not involved in the study. |
There’s a useful concept from psychology that helps explain why good people do things that harm the environment: the false consensus effect. That’s where we overvalue how acceptable and prevalent (普遍的) our own behavior is in society. Put simply, if you’re doing something (even if you secretly know you probably shouldn’t), you’re more likely to think plenty of other people do it too. What’s more, you likely overestimate how much other people think that behavior is broadly OK.
This bias (偏见) allows people to justify socially unacceptable or illegal behaviors. Researchers have observed the false consensus effect in drug use and illegal hunting. More recently, conservationists are beginning to reveal how this effect contributes to environmental damage.
In Australia, people who admitted to poaching (偷猎) thought it was much more prevalent in society than it really was, and had higher estimates than fishers who obeyed the law. They also believed others viewed poaching as socially acceptable; however, in reality, more than 90% of fishers held the opposite view. The false consensus effect has also shown up in studies examining support for nuclear energy and offshore wind farms.
Just as concepts from psychology can help explain some forms of environmental damage, so too can they help address it. For example, research shows people are more likely to litter in areas where there’s already a-lot of trash scattered around; so making sure the ground around a bin is not covered in rubbish may help.
Factual information on how other people think and behave can be very powerful. Energy companies have substantially reduced energy consumption simply by showing people how their electricity use compares to their neighbors. Encouragingly, stimulating people’s natural desire for status has also been successful in getting people to “go green to be seen”, or to publicly buy eco-friendly products.
As the research evidence shows, social norms can be a powerful force in encouraging and popularizing environmentally friendly behaviors. Perhaps you can do your bit by sharing this article!
【小题1】Which example best illustrates the false consensus effect?A.A student spends long hours surfing the internet. |
B.A blogger assumes many people dislike his posts. |
C.A driver frequently parks illegally in public places. |
D.A smoker believes people generally approve of smoking. |
A.It is unacceptable. | B.It is widespread. |
C.It is controversial. | D.It is complex. |
A.Embrace green habits for better health. |
B.Make green choices that others can perceive. |
C.Join green movements for personal fulfillment. |
D.Choose green items that are easy to spot in stores. |
A.Understate social norms. | B.Highlight personal responsibilities. |
C.Publicize sustainable practices. | D.Encourage technological innovations. |
We can video chat with astronauts aboard the International Space Station and watch live footage from the frozen heights of Everest. But communicating with a submarine (潜艇)or a diver is not so easy. The lack of practical methods for sharing data between underwater and airborne devices has long been a frustration for scientists. The difficulty stems from the fact that radio signals work perfectly in air travel but poorly in water. Sonar (声呐)signals used by underwater sensors reflect off the surface of the water rather than reaching the air.
Now,researchers at MIT have developed a method with the potential to revolutionize underwater communication. “What we’ve shown is that it’s actually feasible to communicate from underwater to the air," says Fadel Adib,a professor at MJT’ s Media Lab,who led the research.
The MIT researchers designed a system that uses an underwater machine to send sonar signals to the surface, making vibrations (震动)corresponding to the ls and Os of the data. A surface receiver then reads and decodes these tiny vibrations. The researchers call the system TARF. It has any number of potential real-world uses, Adib says. It could be used to find downed planes underwater by reading signals from sonar devices in a plane' s black box and it could allow submarines to communicate with the surface.
Right now the technology is low-resolution. The initial study was conducted in the MIT swimming pool at maximum depths of around 11 or 12 feet. The next steps for the researchers are to see if TARF is workable at much greater depths and under varying conditions—high waves, storms, schools of fish. They also want to see if they can make the technology work in the other direction— air to water.
If the technology proves successful in real-world conditions, expect “texting while diving” to be the latest underwater fashion.
【小题1】What does the author mainly talk about in Paragraph 1?A.The future of video chat underwater and in air. |
B.The frustrations of developing underwater devices. |
C.The difficulty of communication from water to air. |
D.The current situation of communicating with a submarine. |
A.Achievable. | B.Convenient. |
C.Changeable. | D.Alternative. |
A.It is widely used to find downed planes. |
B.It can work well at great depths underwater. |
C.It is an underwater machine that sends signals. |
D.It can send,receive and read signals from underwater. |
A.The Real-world Uses of Sonar Technology |
B.Full Water-to-air Communication Closer to Reality |
C.A Breakthrough in the Application of Video Chat |
D.TARF Becoming a New Means of Communication |
Why Does Food Taste Bad On Airplanes?
How many times have you complained about airline food being tasteless? According to popularly accepted studies, the reason might be a change in our ability to perceive taste.
The Cabin Air is 15% Drier Than the Air on the Ground
To maintain the pressure inside the cabin, airlines must closely regulate the air inside, involving changing its composition. The air inside airplane cabins is far more dry than the air we breathe on the ground.
The Pressure Inside the Cabin is Lower Than on the Ground
In the pressurized cabin a passenger’s bodily fluids will move upwards and the nasal cavities (鼻 腔) swell. The swelling messes with our taste buds, making the food taste unappealing. You might know how dining in such conditions feel, since we’ve all fought colds in the past.
Bad food can’t be blamed merely on the in-cabin conditions too. It’s also possible that the food is actually bad. Due to food safety standards, all meals must be cooked on the ground and unbreakable. Such requirements for mass production definitely ties down the chef’s hands.
What can be done?
A.The method of food production is different. |
B.The mass production of food is to blame. |
C.In some cases, it’s even drier than certain deserts. |
D.A sick person is far from the best judge of food quality. |
E.That makes it our body’s fault, rather than the airlines. |
F.But that doesn’t mean meals served on airplanes can’t taste just as good. |
G.Basically, we can’t use the same recipes for airline meals that we would use on the ground. |
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