Research by psychologists at the University of Utah has led to the development of a new lie detection system that tracks the activities of a subject's eyes:

Using eye movement to detect lies contrasts with polygraph testing. Instead of measuring a person's emotional reaction to lying, eye-tracking technology measures the person's cognitive reaction. To do so, the researchers record a number of measurements while a subject is answering a series of true-and-false questions on a computer. The measurements include pupil dilation, response time, reading and rereading time, and errors.

The researchers determined that lying requires more work than telling the truth, so they look for indications that the subject is working hard. For example, a person who is being dishonest may have dilated pupils and take longer to read and answer the questions. These reactions are often minute and require sophisticated measurement and statistical modeling to determine their significance.[...]

Besides measuring a different type of response, eye-tracking methods for detecting lies has several other benefits over the polygraph. Eye tracking promises to cost substantially less, require one-fifth of the time currently needed for examinations, require no attachment to the subject being tested, be available in any language and be administered by technicians rather than qualified polygraph examiners.

Link via DVICE | Photo by Flickr user orangeacid used under Creative Commons license

Cartoonist Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal is back with six good arguments on why you should ride a polar bear to work. The Encyclopedia of Adaptations in the Natural World, which confirms Inman's claim that a polar bear's hair is transparent and hollow.

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Sometimes one might encounter a simulation of jousting at a Renaissance fair, but this medieval sport is now returning as a full-contact martial art. There are about 200 jousters around the world and 30 in North America, and as Dashka Slater writes in The New York Times, the sport is becoming increasingly authentic and dangerous:

Over time, modern jousters have learned the lessons of their medieval predecessors — plate armor protects better than chain mail, and more armor protects better than less. Even so, there are still plenty of injuries: concussions and dislocated shoulders, broken hands, assorted fractures and gashes. In one much-talked-about incident a few years ago, the Australian jouster Rod Walker suffered a partly severed penis when a lance veered south during a match at a Renaissance fair in Michigan — a targeting failure that might not have happened if both he and his opponent hadn’t been competing with broken hands.

Link via The Agitator | Photo by Flickr user Jeff Kubina used under Creative Commons license | Previously: Would This 16th Century Helmet Terrify a Jousting Opponent

(YouTube Link)

Who will win in this grand battle between the toughest, most savage men ever?

Judging from the visual style and sound effects, I'd guess that this video was created by the same Russian ad agency responsible for the Mario vs. Pac-Man video.

via Digg | Previously: Super Chuck Norris Bros.

(YouTube Link)

We've previously featured the neat videos of astronaut Don Pettit showing how a CD player becomes a gyroscope in space, adding Alka-Seltzer to a spherical drop of water, showing the Aurora Borealis from space, and drinking drops of tea with a pair of chopsticks. In this video, Pettit shows how it's possible to sip a coffee in zero gravity from a specially-designed lidless cup.

via The Presurfer | Biography of Pettit

BioCouture is an environmental sustainability project by designer Suzanne Lee to grow fabric for clothing using bacterial cellulose. The resulting sheets can be molded while wet, or cut and sewn when dry. Examples of her work are currently on display at London's Science Museum.

Link via Nerdcore | Artist's Website | Exhibit Website | Photo: BioCouture

Someone kept stealing underwear from clotheslines in Portswood, UK. The perpetrator, the victims discovered, was a cat who took the panties and brought them back to his owner as presents:

Eager to please his new owners, Peter and Birgitt Weismantel, 13-year-old Oscar had been bringing home presents to the family home in Portswood, a suburb of the southern coastal town of Southampton.

"He started bringing socks home a few months ago and then gardening gloves which we tracked to our neighbor," his owner Peter Weismantel told the Southern Daily Echo newspaper.

"Then we had a situation in which he brought back young women's underwear," said Peter, 72.[...]

On average he commits 10 robberies a day.

"He brings them back as presents," Birgitt told the Echo. "We can't give him back now as he makes such an effort with all these gifts. He's got a lovely personality and is a very loving cat.

Link | Photo by Flickr user eriwst, used under Creative Commons license

(YouTube Link)

Leroy Anderson (1908-1975) was a composer of pops orchestral music. In 1950, he wrote "The Typewriter", a short piece that featured a mechanical typewriter. The above video is a 2008 performance of that piece by the Strauss Festival Orchestra, featuring percussionist Martin Breinschmid on the typewriter.

Article Link via The Presurfer | Previously: The Last Generation of Typewriter Repairmen

Dave Crisp, using only a metal detector, found a hoard of more than 52,000 Roman coins in Frome, UK. They were sealed inside a pot about 30 cm underground:

Somerset County Council archaeologists excavated the pot -- a type of container normally used for storing food -- it weighed 160kg (350 pounds) and contained 52,500 coins.

The hoard was transferred to the British Museum in London where the coins were cleaned and recorded.

The coins date from AD 253 to 293 and most of them are made of debased silver or bronze.

You can view a photo gallery of the treasure trove at the link.

Link via Gizmodo | Photo: CNN

Douglas Coupland made this pixelated sculpture of an orca. It's located at the Vancouver Convention Centre. Coupland is also a novelist and playwright, and we've previously featured his innovative trailer for a book.

Link via Make | Artist's Website | Photo: Douglas Coupland

There's a London Underground station that never moves a single passenger. That's because it's a mock-up built to train new employees. The station, located in West Kensington, is designed to be as realistic as possible:

The tube station is probably the highlight for any visitor and in addition to looking like a tube station, it also behaves a bit like one. When a train is due to arrive, although no physical train appears, the platform rumbles, speakers drown out conversations and there is even a fan in the corner blowing to simulate the wind blast that heralds the arrival of the train.

What would you add to make the simulator truly realistic?

Link via The Presurfer | Photo: Ian Visits

LEGO artist Nathan Sawaya had a tattoo artist mark his thumb so that it looks like a LEGO brick:

Every single day, I snap together bricks. Each day I am pressing down on the bumps of each brick to make sure there is a tight fit. And if I press real hard, the bumps leave little marks on myfingers and thumb. What better way to pay tribute to my medium of choice, then permanently inking those marks on to my thumb?

Link | Sawaya Website | Photo: Brick Artist

Four years ago, we wrote that the US Army was developing body armor that is normally a liquid, but turns into a solid when it's hit. Britain's military researchers have come up with something similar, but now there's clear evidence that it can withstand the impact of a bullet:

The BAE scientists describe it as "bullet-proof custard".

"It's very similar to custard in the sense that the molecules lock together when it's struck," explained Stewart Penny, business development manager in charge of materials development at the company.[...]

"In standard bullet-proof vests, we use thick, heavy, layered plates of Kevlar that restrict movement and contribute to fatigue," said Mr Penny.

In the tests, scientists used a large gas gun to fire ball bearing-shaped metal bullets at over 300 metres per second into two test materials - 31 layers of untreated kevlar and 10 layers of kevlar combined with the shear-thickening liquid.

"The Kevlar with the liquid works much faster and the impact isn't anything like as deep," he explained.

Link via DVICE | Photo by Flickr user Shanti, shanti used under Creative Commons license

Rapper Snoop Dogg tried to rent the entire Principality of Liechtenstein -- all 62 square miles of it -- in order to record a music video:

Snoop was reportedly trying to shoot a music video in the tiny Western European country, but was rebuffed ... and not because trying to rent an entire country is a crazy thing to do. Says Liechtenstein property agent Karl Schwaerzler, "We've had requests for places and villages but never one to hire the whole country before. It would have been possible, but Snoop Dogg's management did not give us enough time."

Link via Digg | Image: US Department of State

A shop in a mall in Shenyang, China, lets women vent their frustrations by smashing household items:

The venting store located in the fourth floor of a shopping mall has a sign "No Men" at the door.

The store is divided into several zones such as a living room and a bedroom. Wang Jingyu, the business manager of the shopping mall said they would like to open a kitchen-like zone later, and they have done this so "women can come here to feel like they are in their own homes but without any limitations, and they can break anything here."

Customers wear protective helmets and gloves so that they don't get hurt. They're limited to 1 minute of mayhem, so they have to go somewhere else if they want to go totally psycho.

Link via Marginal Revolution | Photo: People's Daily Online