[From The New York Times] Oh, for the Good Old Days of Rude Cellphone Gabbers By Nick Wingfield Published: December 2, 2011 Is talking to a phone the same as talking on it? The sound of someone gabbing on a cellphone is part of the soundtrack of daily life, and most of us have learned when to be quiet — no talking in “quiet cars” on trains, for example. But the etiquette of talking to a phone — more precisely, to a “virtual assistant” like Apple’s Siri, in the new iPhone 4S — has not yet evolved. And eavesdroppers are…

[From the MIT Technology Review Hello World blog, where the post includes a 1:58 minute DigInfo TV video report] Elastic Electrical Cables for Robotic Skin The first-of-their-kind wires could take the hard edge off of robots. David Zax 12/06/2011 A Japanese company called Asahi Kasei has developed the world’s first elastic electrical cable — and has taken the liberty of christening it “Roboden” (here’s a link, if your Japanese is good). In a somewhat unsettling comparison, TechCrunch notes that Roboden can stretch by a factor of 1.5, “like the human skin.” The comparison (which Asahi Kasei actually makes itself) is…

[From The Iowa State University News Service] [Image: Judy Vance, right, demonstrates a virtual factory in Iowa State University’s METaL virtual reality facility. Working in the virtual factory are students, left to right, Leif Berg, Meisha Rosenberg and Ryan Pavlik. Photo by Bob Elbert.] Iowa State’s METaL lab develops multiple ways to experience virtual reality December 06, 2011 AMES, Iowa – Iowa State University doctoral students Leif Berg and Ryan Pavlik handed over a Wii Remote and a pair of 3-D glasses. A visitor to Iowa State’s newest virtual reality lab – METaL, the Multimodal Experience Testbed and Laboratory –…

[From The Daily Mail Online] [Image: Virtual reality: On the H&M site, every single model’s pose and proportions are the same. The only thing that differs, apart from the swimwear, is the skin-tone, which has been altered to match each girl’s face.] H&M under fire for using real models’ heads with computer-generated bodies to sell swimwear By Tamara Abraham Last updated 6th December 2011 With tiny waists, perfect bums and endless legs, many would agree that models’ bodies often look too flawless to be real. But in the case of H&M, it seems they actually are. The Swedish retailer was…

[From North Idaho College’s Sentinel Online] Virtual athletics: Reboot Future athletes will dominate cyberspace Eric Rivera December 5th, 2011 North Idaho College’s athletic department has been geared for many years now to pursue a path of excellence. But with technology changing rapidly everyday, would that ideal hold up if the sports world expanded into a virtual reality setting? Recently, I had an opportunity to watch both TRON movies, and the game concept from the new and old videos had me thinking about possibilities for the future. In recent generations, we have seen televisions transform from the clunky old cathode ray…

[A press release from Michigan State University; more information is available in TIME’s Healthland blog] Moral dilemma: Would you kill one person to save five? Published: Dec. 01, 2011 EAST LANSING, Mich. — Imagine a runaway boxcar heading toward five people who can’t escape its path. Now imagine you had the power to reroute the boxcar onto different tracks with only one person along that route. Would you do it? That’s the moral dilemma posed by a team of Michigan State University researchers in a first-of-its-kind study published in the research journal Emotion. Research participants were put in a three…