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Would YOU sit on it? Scientists develop a futuristic chair that puts you in an 'altered state of mind' within minutes

Daily Mail - Science & tech

Alex Pretti's Minneapolis death was murder, Americans declare in damning poll as voters issue new demand to Trump... and reveal how few back the shooting'Greedy pig' Harry Styles is shamefully exploiting obsessed women. I know... because it happened to me: LIZ JONES My sister confided an unbearable secret about her boyfriend. Keeping quiet is intolerable... our mother will be devastated: DEAR JANE Trump accounts: Million-dollar baby plan aims to create a fortune for America's newest arrivals before age 30 Nicki Minaj flashes dagger-long nails as she clutches Trump's hand after gushing she's his No. 1 fan Bryan Kohberger's warped requests from behind bars leave prison guards sickened... as new pictures of Idaho murders reveal full extent of his barbarity Bruce Willis' wife Emma makes heartbreaking admission about star's dementia battle Hilarious live gaffe on David Muir's World News Tonight that'triggered behind the scenes meltdown' Haley Kalil confident her bitter lawsuit with ex-NFL star husband will be thrown out as she cites'free speech' after revealing size of his manhood'He was Mr Perfect... now we're seeing his true colours': How Harry Styles cultivated his'good boy' image... and why fans are now turning on him after this controversial new move Mom who gave all four of her daughters the same name slams critics: 'Our family doesn't need outside approval' Brooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz share photo of the'world's most expensive wine' at £17,000 a BOTTLE... as it's revealed she gets a '$1m monthly allowance' from her billionaire father Would YOU sit on it? Scientists develop a futuristic chair that puts you in an'altered state of mind' within minutes READ MORE: People are using'binaural beats' to simulate the effects of drugs Would you be brave enough to sit on a chair that can send you into an'altered state of mind' within minutes? That is the wild promise of the Aiora chair, a futuristic seat designed by scientists from the University of Essex and British furniture company DavidHugh LTD.


Watch Party: The Best TAG in Years, a '60s Sensation, and Omega Goes All White

WIRED

Watch Party: The Best TAG in Years, a '60s Sensation, and Omega Goes All White It's LVMH Watch Week, so here's WIRED's pick of the timepieces that made their debut--plus one notable gatecrasher. The watch world is readying itself for the slew of new releases from the likes of Patek Philippe and Rolex when Watches and Wonders descends on Geneva in April. But this week, the watchmaker Omega and the luxury conglomerate LVMH both spotted a window of opportunity to get pieces out ahead of the annual gathering. Since 2020, LVMH has been kicking off each new year by serving up watches from its stable of brands, including Zenith, TAG Heuer, Hublot, and Louis Vuitton. Meanwhile, Omega--muscling in on LVMH's party somewhat--is leaning into its connection to next month's Winter Olympics in Italy, where it will once again serve as the event's official timekeeper.


Letters from Our Readers

The New Yorker

Readers respond to Hannah Goldfield's Take about Anthony Bourdain and James Somers's piece about whether A.I. is thinking. Hannah Goldfield's article about "Don't Eat Before Reading This," by Anthony Bourdain, brought back memories of when I first learned of this new voice straddling the restaurant and literary worlds ( Takes, November 17th). When Bourdain's book "Kitchen Confidential" came out, in 2000, I was the general manager of an Italian restaurant at a historic five-star hotel. The staff was full of brainy foodies, and we talked about the book endlessly. We all thought Bourdain might end up being a flash in the pan, but were happy to be proved wrong.


What the evolution of tickling tells us about being human

New Scientist

From bonobos and rats to tickling robots, research is finally cracking the secrets of why we're ticklish, and what that reveals about our brains In a grey-walled room in the Dutch city of Nijmegen, a strange activity is underfoot. Wearing a cap covered in sensors and positioning themselves into a chair, a person places their bare feet over two holes in a platform. Beneath this lies a robot, which uses a metal probe to begin to tickle their soles. Here, at Radboud University's Touch and Tickle lab, volunteers are being mercilessly tickled in the name of science. "We can manipulate how strong the stimulation is, how fast and where it is going to be applied on your foot," says Konstantina Kilteni, who runs the lab, of the robot tickling experiment.


New wearable device lets you touch fabric online, read braille, and more

Popular Science

VoxeLite can help you literally feel websites. VoxLite adds physical sensations of touch and feel to digital experiences like scrolling a smartphone. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. A time traveler visiting from an earlier era might reasonably conclude that humanity has entered the age of cyborgs and cybernetics. Pedestrians regularly walk down city streets with tiny computers in their hands and even smaller digital devices shoved in their ear canals.


Lice Checks, Crafts, and Being Touched by Strangers: Inside a Role-Playing ASMR Spa

WIRED

Tinglesbar incorporates ASMR into elementary school and doctor's visits simulations, offering a social haven for introverts. "It's time for your lice check," a woman who goes by "Ms. K" whispers directly into my ear as she starts running her fingers into my scalp and through each strand of hair. I'm in a dark room, Eastern flute music playing in the background as I sit across from my partner who's also having his hair caressed by a stranger. We close our eyes so we don't burst out laughing.


Differential Analysis of Pseudo Haptic Feedback: Novel Comparative Study of Visual and Auditory Cue Integration for Psychophysical Evaluation

Gautam, Nishant, Sharma, Somya, Corcoran, Peter, Althoefer, Kaspar

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Pseudo - haptics exploit carefully crafted visual or auditory cues to trick the brain into "feeling" forces that are never physically applied, offering a low - cost alternative to traditional haptic hardware. Here, we present a comparative psychophysical study that quantifies how visual and auditory stimuli combine to evoke pseudo - haptic pressure sensations on a commodity tablet. Using a Unity - based Rollball game, participants (n = 4) guided a virtual ball across three textured terrains while their fi nger forces were captured in real time with a Robotous RFT40 force - torque sensor. Each terrain was paired with a distinct rolling - sound profile spanning 440 Hz - 4.7 kHz, 440 Hz - 13.1 kHz, or 440 Hz - 8.9 kHz; crevice collisions triggered additional "knoc king" bursts to heighten realism. Average tactile forces increased systematically with cue intensity: 0.40 N, 0.79 N and 0.88 N for visual - only trials and 0.41 N, 0.81 N and 0.90 N for audio - only trials on Terrains 1 - 3, respectively. Higher audio frequenci es and denser visual textures both elicited stronger muscle activation, and their combination further reduced the force needed to perceive surface changes, confirming multisensory integration. These results demonstrate that consumer - grade isometric devices can reliably induce, and measure graded pseudo - haptic feedback without specialized actuators, opening a path toward affordable rehabilitation tools, training simulators and assistive interfaces .


Curiosity-Driven Co-Development of Action and Language in Robots Through Self-Exploration

Tinker, Theodore Jerome, Doya, Kenji, Tani, Jun

arXiv.org Machine Learning

A central question in both cognitive science and artificial intelligence is how humans and artificial systems can acquire competencies for language and motor command in a co-developmental manner, despite having access to only limited learning experiences. This question is exemplified in human infants, who achieve remarkable generalization with sparse input. This is a stark contrast to large-scale models which rely on massive training corpora, to reach similar capabilities. This raises the issue of what mechanisms enable such efficient developmental learning. From the perspective of developmental psychology, infants acquire language through rich interaction with their embodied environments. T omasello's "verb-island" hypothesis argues that children initially learn verbs in specific, isolated contexts before generalizing across broader linguistic structures (1). He also emphasized the importance of embodiment in language acquisition, suggesting that grounding linguistic symbols in sensorimotor experiences is fundamental to language learning (2).


Researchers create most human-like robot skin yet

Popular Science

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. One of the major barriers they haven't overcome is the ability to "feel" sensations like a human. Although researchers have tried various sensors to give robots a rudimentary sense of touch, these systems are often costly, inaccurate, and limited to detecting only one type of sensation at a time. But that may be about to change. Researchers from the University of Cambridge and University College London have developed a new type of responsive "synthetic skin."


A Path to Loving

Beverley, John, Hurley, Regina

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

This work lays the foundations for a rigorous ontological characterization of love, addressing its philosophical complexity and scientific relevance, with particular emphasis on psychology and sociology, as well as highlighting ways in which such characterization enhances relevant AI based applications. The position defended here is that love is best understood as a concatenation of passive sensations (e.g., emotional arousal) and active evaluative judgments (e.g., perceiving the beloved as valuable), in the interest of balancing the involuntary aspects of love with its rational accountability. To provide a structured foundation, the paper draws on Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) and other applied ontological methods to differentiate various senses of love. This work engages with objections to the understanding of love as concatenation, particularly concerning the relationship between sensation and judgment. A causal correlation model is defended, ensuring that the affective and cognitive components are linked. By offering a precise and scalable ontological account, this work lays the foundation for future interdisciplinary applications, making love a subject of formal inquiry in ontology engineering, artificial intelligence, and the sciences.