Links – September 19

• Flame amplification and a better hi-fi loudspeaker? A Popular Electronics article from 1968. "Flame which behaves physically and electrically like a high-fidelity loudspeaker ... and has inherent amplification besides," explains Dr. A. G. Cattaneo, manager of United Technology Center's Sunnyvale, Calif., Physical Sciences Laboratory, and one of flame amplification's three co-discoverers. h/t JH
• A world of machine-driven alphas and lesser beings Truthdig. Tyler Cowen's Average Is Over – "It might be called the age of the genius machines, and it will be the people who work with them that will rise. One day soon we will look back and see that we have produced two nations—a fantastically successful nation, working in the technologically dynamic sectors, and everyone else. Average is over."
• Wide-Faced Men Make Others Act Selfishly "Two assistant professors of management at the University of California, Riverside and several other researchers have previously shown that men with wider faces are more aggressive, less trustworthy and more prone to engaging in deception. Now, in a just-published paper, they have shown, in a series of four studies, that individuals behave more selfishly when interacting with men with wider faces and this selfish behavior elicits selfish behavior in others."
• Exposure to Pig Farms and Manure Fertilizers Associated with MRSA Infections "Researchers from Geisinger’s Henry Hood Center for Health Research and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have for the first time found an association between living in proximity to high-density livestock production and community-acquired infections with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, commonly known as MRSA."
• Lifestyle Changes May Lengthen Telomeres, A Measure of Cell Aging UC San Francisco. "A small pilot study shows for the first time that changes in diet, exercise, stress management and social support may result in longer telomeres, the parts of chromosomes that affect aging. It is the first controlled trial to show that any intervention might lengthen telomeres over time."
• Kelly McGonigal: How to make stress your friend TED Talk. "New research suggests that stress may only be bad for you if you believe that to be the case. Psychologist Kelly McGonigal urges us to see stress as a positive, and introduces us to an unsung mechanism for stress reduction: reaching out to others."
• Harold Budd & Eraldo Bernocchi Fragment One and Fragment Two Gorgeous musical dreams.
  
  

At dusk a couple days ago, a young buck stopped by to browse windfalls from the big apple tree in the kitchen orchard.