Winarsky Talks About Siri

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Robert Siegel speaks with Norman Winarsky, vice president of SRI Ventures and co-founder and board member of Siri. Siri was an SRI spin-off company acquired by Apple last year. This company developed the virtual personal assistant technology for the new iPhone.

Copyright © 2011 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

ROBERT SIEGEL, host: Look around you at your early adopter friends this week and you may well see them deep in conversation with their phones. Not on their phones, but with their phones. The newest offering from Apple, the iPhone 4S, has all the things one now expects of a cell phone, a nice camera, a big bright screen. But according to many tech enthusiasts, the game changer in this phone is a voice and some would say something close to a personality. It's called Siri. It was developed at SRI International, which was originally the Stanford Research Institute.

And joining us now to talk about Siri is Norman Winarsky who's the vice president of ventures at SRI International. Welcome to the program.

NORMAN WINARSKY: Thank you so much, Robert.

SIEGEL: I want you to explain what Siri is. It's not exactly a speech recognition program. It's something more than that.

WINARSKY: No, it's much more than that. So, Siri does recognize speech, namely take your spoken words and put that into textual form. But that's really only the beginning - in truth, not the breakthrough. The greatest breakthrough was to recognize the intent of the sentence.

So you could be saying: I'd like a top-rated hotel in San Francisco for tomorrow night, with a pool and a fitness center. And it understands and recognizes that.

SIEGEL: It does?

WINARSKY: That's real artificial intelligence being applied.

SIEGEL: Well, I happen to have a friend's new iPhone here. So, since you said that I'm going to say: I'd like a top-rated hotel in San Francisco for tomorrow night, with a pool and a fitness center.

SIRI: Robert, I can't search near businesses. My apologies.

SIEGEL: Well, I have to try again. Maybe it didn't understand my diction.

WINARSKY: Try it again. It should work.

SIEGEL: I want a hotel room in San Francisco tomorrow night at a top-rated hotel with a swimming pool and a fitness center.

SIRI: I found a number of hotels that have swimming pools and have fitness centers. Sixteen of them are in San Francisco, California. I've sorted them by rating.

SIEGEL: And there they are. I think even on the second try, awfully impressive.

WINARSKY: And that's what makes Siri a game changer.

SIEGEL: Now, somewhere in Siri's genealogy here, there is DARPA. This is an outgrowth of something that the Defense Department was once doing?

WINARSKY: Right. Right. So let me explain. DARPA created a program called CALO, the cognitive assistants that learns and organizes. And this is a large program, perhaps the largest in the history of DARPA for an AI program.

SIEGEL: An artificial intelligence program?

WINARSKY: Artificial intelligence program and what was unique about the program was what they called learning in the wild. They were inspired by "MASH." Do you remember "MASH"?

SIEGEL: You mean on television? Yeah.

WINARSKY: On television. Do you remember Radar O'Reilly in "MASH"?

SIEGEL: Of course.

WINARSKY: Well, Radar O'Reilly always knew what the captain wanted before the captain knew what the captain wanted. That was the inspiration for CALO. We wanted to assist people in their everyday life. We wanted to provide them a virtual personal assistant that could help them in their meetings, help them with what they want to accomplish, help them look forward in making their reservations. This was inspired originally by that, in fact.

SIEGEL: So you think that if I had a virtual personal assistant for a few years, that my virtual personal assistant - by virtue of what it knows and what questions of mine it's familiar with - would be significantly different from my friend's virtual personal assistant who has another iPhone, and uses the same program?

WINARSKY: So there is that capacity that was always in the original vision of Siri that it can be personalized to you and learn from you and your preferences and your favorites. And, yes, it does have some of that now, but you can be absolutely sure that it will continue to do that in the future.

SIEGEL: Well, Norman Winarsky, thank you very much for talking with us about Siri.

WINARSKY: Thank you so much, Robert.

SIEGEL: Siri is, as we just heard, the virtual personal assistant that's available on the new iPhone. And Norman Winarsky is vice president for ventures at SRI International, the company where Siri was developed.

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Cellphones To Warn When You're Near Monthly Limit

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Enlarge Julie Jacobson/AP

The usage limit warnings will arrive as text messages, and subscribers won't need to sign up for them — they'll arrive automatically.

Julie Jacobson/AP

The usage limit warnings will arrive as text messages, and subscribers won't need to sign up for them — they'll arrive automatically.

Cellphone companies pledged Monday to warn subscribers before they go over their monthly limits for calling minutes, text messages and data use.

The pledge comes in response to a threat of regulation by the Federal Communications Commission, which wants to curb nasty surprises in the monthly bills of wireless subscribers.

CTIA — The Wireless Association, a trade group representing the major cellphone companies, said they're also promising to warn subscribers that they're paying roaming fees if they travel abroad.

The warnings will arrive as text messages, and subscribers won't need to sign up for them — they'll arrive automatically. CTIA said its members will have warnings in place on at least half their plans in a year and all of them in two years.

AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless, the two largest carriers, already provide text-message warnings on their data plans, but not on text messaging or calls. Instead, subscribers have to look up their usage data.

The announcement was made jointly by the CTIA and the FCC, which credited Consumer's Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports, for raising awareness of the issue. The magazine had found that many of its subscribers had been startled by high monthly bills.

The alerts are voluntary for the phone companies, but FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski made it clear that the agency would step in if companies fail to police themselves.

Kathleen Grillo, senior vice president for federal regulatory affairs at Verizon Communication Inc., said the voluntary approach was preferable because things change quickly in the wireless world and regulations don't always keep up.

"The result is an industry code that will serve consumers better than rules that would soon be outdated," she said.

Asked at the press conference why it would take two years to fully implement the warnings, CTIA President Steve Largent said phone companies have to reconfigure their systems.

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Why are the voices that emanate from our machines so often female?

Plenty of research shows how TV viewing might harm kids under 2. What about mobile screens?

Robert Siegel speaks with Lytro founder Ren Ng.

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German satellite falling to Earth

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23 October 2011 Last updated at 03:06 GMT By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News The Rosat spacecraft has some robust parts that will survive all the way to the surface A big German spacecraft is making an uncontrolled fall from the sky.

The Roentgen Satellite (Rosat) re-entered the Earth's atmosphere between 01:45 and 02:15 GMT.

Just as for Nasa's UARS satellite, which plunged into the atmosphere in September, no-one was able to say precisely when and this would happen.

What makes the redundant German craft's return interesting is that much more debris this time is likely to survive all the way to the Earth's surface.

Experts calculate that perhaps as much as 1.6 tonnes of wreckage - more than half the spacecraft's launch mass - could ride out the destructive forces of re-entry and hit the planet.

It is not clear whether any pieces have yet reached the Earth's surface.

In the case of UARS, the probable mass of surviving material was put at only half a tonne (out of a launch mass of more than six tonnes).

The difference is due to some more robust components on the German space agency (DLR) satellite.

Rosat was an X-ray telescope mission and had a mirror system made of a reinforced carbon composite material. This mirror complex and its support structure are expected to form the largest single fragment in what could be a shower of some 30 pieces of debris to make it through to the surface.

But again, as was the case with UARS, any Rosat wreckage is strongly tipped to hit the ocean, given that so much of the Earth's surface is covered by water.

Destructive design

UARS' final resting place was tracked to a remote region of the Pacific, north-east of the Samoan islands.

Rosat could come down anywhere between 53 degrees North and South latitude - a zone that encompasses the UK in the north and the tip of South America in the south.

Future spacecraft sent into orbit may have to meet stricter guidelines that limit the amount of debris likely to fall back on to the planet, but these rules are still some way from being introduced said Prof Richard Crowther, an expert on space debris and adviser to the UK Space Agency.

"Up until now we've designed satellites to survive the harsh environment of space, and we haven't given much thought to designing them for destructive re-entry," he told BBC News.

"But in future, we will have to consider whether we have got this balance right, and perhaps satellites should be designed in such a way that we can ensure more of what comes down is destroyed in the atmosphere and doesn't hit the surface.

"Unfortunately, there is a whole legacy of spacecraft - 50 years of satellites - and we are going to have to put up with this situation for quite some time, I'm afraid."

Science success

Rosat was launched in 1990 to survey the X-ray sky. It mapped more than 100,000 sources of this high-energy radiation. X-rays tend to come from the hottest and most violent parts of the cosmos, such as the regions around exploded stars and the "edges" of black holes.

The spacecraft worked for eight-and-a-half years before its star tracker failed and it could no-longer work out its position and point correctly. It was shut down in February 1999, and has been in descent ever since. Controllers do not have any contact with the craft; all they know is its altitude and path across the sky through radar tracking.

The fall to Earth has accelerated in recent months and weeks as the spacecraft has experienced increased drag as a result of its passage through residual air molecules still found more than 200km above the planet.

The deeper it reaches, the faster Rosat will be pulled in. But without a propulsion system, the precise timing and location of its impact cannot be influenced by controllers.

Tough materials

Rosat will start to tumble rapidly when it engages the thicker parts of the atmosphere, about 80km up.

Mechanical forces will first rip off its flimsiest structures, such as its solar arrays and antennas.

The heating the satellite then experiences as it plunges downwards will deform and melt low-temperature materials and vaporise them.

Only high-temperature metals such as stainless steel and titanium will put up much resistance.

Tracking stations will typically witness the uncontrolled return of at least one piece of space debris every day; and on average, one intact defunct spacecraft or old rocket body will come back into the atmosphere every week.

Something the size of Nasa's UARS satellite is seen to enter uncontrolled perhaps once a year.

Much larger objects such as space station cargo ships return from orbit several times a year, but they are equipped with thrusters capable of guiding their dive into a remote part of the Southern Ocean.

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

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Apps For Exercise, Eating And Sending Postcards

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Share Comments   Apps For Exercise, Eating And Sending Postcards by NPR Staff

October 18, 2011

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Six new apps — clockwise from top left, Chefs Feed, Anthill, Chewsy, Fitocracy, Postagram and RunKeeper — can help you exercise, find food, or just kill time.

text size A A A October 18, 2011

Part of an occasional series on mobile apps.

Today's smartphones have applications that can help you track your latest jogging route — and find a place to eat afterward. And if you snap a nice picture along the way, they'll even let you use that to make a postcard.

Talking about the latest roundup of amazing apps, Slate's tech columnist Farhad Manjoo tells NPR's Steve Inskeep that as a new father, he's been trying out new apps as he sits awake with his young son in the middle of the night.

Manjoo says these apps are worth checking out:

Anthill: With an emphasis on "tactical trail defense," this game takes itself seriously while having fun. The object is to defend the anthill — and worker ants — by deploying warrior ants.

Chefs Feed: Famous chefs like Wolfgang Puck and Mario Batali share their recommendations on where to eat. For now, it only covers four cities, but more are on the way.

Chewsy: This restaurant app emphasizes ratings and photos for specific dishes from a menu — not for the overall experience. But like Chefs Feed, it's not in every area yet, Manjoo says.

RunKeeper: Like other fitness apps, this workout tracker uses GPS to compile stats about your workout. But it's expanded beyond jogging to include biking and walking. Runkeeper can also track your heart rate.

Fitocracy: Combining elements of social media with gaming, this app awards points for different workouts. As you exercise more, you gain badges — and bragging rights.

Postagram: This postcard app (similar to one featured in Apple's new iOS 5) allows users to take a picture with their phone and have it sent via the postal service, along with a short note.

Manjoo also hosts Slate's video series, Killer Apps. Watch him review Fitocracy:

Apps That Let You Share Cars, Photos And Money

Ben Keighran, CEO of Chomp, runs down his favorite new apps, from car services to photo sharing.

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PhotographyNew Camera Focuses Shot After It's Taken

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Cinq Brings an Extra Screen to Laptops for $249

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Sideline

Once you've got a dual-monitor setup at your desk, it's hard to go back to single-screen computing. In other words, using a laptop, with its one measly screen, stinks.

Fortunately, Sideline is on the case with its Cinq companion monitor, a portable secondary screen that clips to any laptop and runs on USB power, using DisplayLink. Although it's not the first USB-powered screen on the market, it's the first one I've seen that attaches to the laptop itself by a set of rails and a clamp. Once attached, the Cinq can swivel around and switch between horizontal and vertical orientation.

(MORE: 'GScreen Spacebook' Fits Two Big Screens into One Big Laptop)

As Cinq's product photos demonstrate, it's perfect for lounging barefoot by the pool in your slacks and tie, convincing yourself and the world that you're getting real work done:

Or for impressing all the ladies at the airport lounge--until they realize you're just wasting time on Tweetdeck:

The Cinq's LED-backlit screen measures 10.1 inches with 720p resolution, and weighs 15 ounces. It has a response time of 16 ms, and viewing angles of 45 degrees on either side. The Cinq software is compatible with Windows and Mac, and it includes a built-in SD card reader, just in case your laptop doesn't have one for some reason.

One thing Sideline isn't talking about is the screen's effect on your computer's battery life. Obviously, it'll vary by laptop, but don't expect to get as much juice as you did without a second screen in tow.

Although Cinq's product page still says its in pre-order, Slashgear reports that the Cinq is now shipping. I've e-mailed Cinq support to try and get a firm answer. (UPDATE: Ben Nickey, Sideline's CEO, told Techland that the Cinq will be shipping in roughly three weeks. As for battery life, he said his MacBook Pro ran for about four hours with one Cinq attached, and about 2.5 hours with two extra screens, compared to about six hours without them. Video and other power-intensive tasks will drain the battery faster.)

(LIST: Eight New Tablets and Ultrabooks You Should Know About)

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Groupon IPO Details: $16 per Share, $10.1 Billion Valuation

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The subject of Groupon's IPO has been much rumored and discussed in recent days, with sources suggesting earlier this week that the company's value would be announced around $10 billion, down from an earlier $25 billion valuation. Turns out, that speculation was right on the money.

According to a new, detailed, report, Groupon will sell 30 million shares in an IPO valued between $10.1 and $11.4 billion. Shares will be priced between $16 and $18 each, and net proceeds are estimated around $478.8 million. No date for the official announcement was given in this latest report.

MORE: Groupon IPO Reportedly Back on Track

Graeme McMillan is a reporter at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @Graemem or on Facebook at Facebook/Graeme.McMillan. You can also continue the discussion on TIME's Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

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Galileo sat-nav rides into orbit

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21 October 2011 Last updated at 14:26 GMT By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News The Soyuz rocket carrying the first two satellites lifts off from the base in French Guiana

Europe's first satellite-navigation spacecraft have been sent into orbit.

The two Galileo satellites were launched by a Russian Soyuz rocket from its new base in French Guiana at 07:30 local time (10:30 GMT; 11:30 BST).

The European Commission (EC) is investing billions of euros in its own version of the American GPS system.

It expects Galileo to bring significant returns to EU nations in the form of new businesses that can exploit precise space-borne timing and location data.

The Soyuz mission was a long one - it took three hours and 49 minutes to get the satellite pair into their correct orbit 23,222km above the Earth.

"Galileo is at the heart of our new industrial policy," EC Vice-President Antonio Tajani said once the separation confirmation had come through. "We must commit very strongly to Galileo. We need this; this not entertainment. This is necessary for the competitiveness of our European Union in the world."

Mr Tajani then announced the industrial competition to procure 6-8 more satellites over and above the 18 already contracted.

Working together

The two spacecraft launched on Friday are pathfinders for the Galileo system as a whole.

Together with another pair of satellites to be lofted next year, they will prove that Galileo works as designed, from the spacecraft in the sky to all the control and management operations on the ground.

Continue reading the main story A project of the European Commission and the European Space AgencySome 30 satellites are likely to be launched in batches in the coming yearsGalileo will work alongside the US GPS and the Russian Glonass sat-nav systemsEurope's full system promises real-time positioning down to a metre or lessIt should deepen and extend high-value markets already initiated by GPSSome say economies are over-reliant on GPS; Galileo ought to make sat-nav more robust"This phase is called in-orbit validation - IOV," said Javier Benedicto, the Galileo project manager at the European Space Agency (Esa), the EC's technical agent on the project.

"The intention is to test and verify the various system functionalities and the ultimate system performance," he told BBC News.

Deployment of the full Galileo system is likely to take most of the decade.

Sat-nav users themselves will not immediately see any benefits from Galileo, however. That will have to wait until a navigation signal is switched on, and it is likely to be 2015 before there are enough spacecraft in orbit for Galileo to start to show its true capability.

Compared with the Americans' current version of GPS, Galileo carries more precise atomic clocks - the heart of any sat-nav system.

In theory, the data transmitted by Galileo should therefore be significantly better than its US counterpart. Whereas a position fixed by the publicly available GPS signal might have an error of about 10m, Galileo's designers promise metre-scale accuracy when full deployment is achieved.

But the plan is to make the different systems interoperable, meaning the biggest, most obvious benefit to users will simply be the fact that they can see more satellites in the sky at any one time.

So, as the decade progresses and the number of spacecraft in orbit increases, the performance of all sat-nav devices should improve. Fixes ought to be faster and more reliable, even in testing environments such as big cities where tall buildings will often obscure a receiver's view of a transmitting spacecraft.

The satellites have been built in the UK (Astrium) and Italy (Thales Alenia Space) A large antenna will transmit signals to users on the groundDistress signals are picked up by a search and rescue antennaAnother antenna receives information on the status of GalileoThe spacecraft is controlled from the ground via telecommandsSensors make sure the satellite is always pointing at EarthFurther sensors keep an eye on where the Sun is in the skyA laser retroreflector can determine the satellite's exact heightRadiators expel excess heat to protect electronics from overheating

Galileo was famously called the "Common Agricultural Policy in the sky" by one British politician infuriated by the price of the project.

It is presently running about a decade behind schedule, and it will cost in excess of five billion euros to put the full constellation (27 satellites and three spares) in orbit before 2020. Ongoing running costs, including the renewal of worn out spacecraft, are estimated to be about 800 million euros a year.

But the EC maintains this expenditure will be dwarfed by the economic returns of having improved sat-nav.

Few people perhaps recognise the full extent of GPS usage today. Sat-nav is not just about drivers trying to find their way on unfamiliar roads - banks employ GPS time to stamp global financial transactions; and telecommunications and computer networks are synchronised on the "ticks" of the satellites' atomic clocks.

Indeed, Britain's Royal Academy of Engineering issued a report earlier in the year that said the UK economy had become dangerously over-reliant on satellite-navigation signals, and that too many applications had little or no back-up were these signals to go down.

In that sense, having a second system that is separate but compatible with the US GPS network should make applications more robust.

"Nevertheless, like GPS, the Galileo signal is transmitted from over 10,000 miles above the Earth's surface, and Galileo therefore shares many of the vulnerabilities that the academy described in its recent report," said lead author, Dr Martyn Thomas.

"The report recommended investment in a high-power, terrestrial, low-frequency alternative to GPS and Galileo. The best candidate remains the enhanced Loran system, eLoran, that has been researched and developed in the UK by the General Lighthouse Authorities."

Pad beauty

Galileo should have three services available by mid-decade: one that is open and free to anyone with compatible receiver equipment; another that is encrypted and for use by law enforcement and other government agencies; and a third application dedicated to search and rescue (SAR).

This last service would enable sailors in distress, for example, to transmit their position and receive an acknowledgement that help is on its way.

The technology for SAR on Galileo was supposed to be being provided by China until late technical and political disagreements prompted the EC to look for alternative sourcing. As a consequence, the first two spacecraft will fly with dummy SAR payloads.

Friday's launch was doubly significant because it marked the first time a Russian Soyuz rocket had launched from Western territory.

A new spaceport costing half a billion euros has been fashioned for the rocket in French Guiana's jungle landscape.

"Some people say it is a beautiful launch pad. I don't know about that, but it is certainly very impressive," Jean-Marc Astorg, who led the Soyuz in French Guiana project for the French space agency (Cnes), told BBC News.

Like Baikonur, Sinnamary has a large flame bowl under the padA key difference is the mobile gantry, withdrawn prior to launchSoyuz receives a big boost by launching closer to the equatorRockets are brought to the pad along a 700m-long rail lineThe segments of a Soyuz are assembled in the MIK buildingLaunch control is just 1km from the pad, in a secure bunkerOther buildings on the 120ha site include propellant storage areasJonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

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Camera can snap now, focus later

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20 October 2011 Last updated at 11:29 GMT Users can choose what they want to focus on after the image is taken A digital camera that allows photographers to focus their pictures after taking them has gone on sale.

Rather than recording a single version of an image, the Lytro captures data about the intensity and direction of all the light entering its lenses.

That information can be reorganised later with the option to change which parts are blurred and which are sharp.

The "light field" technology was developed by company founder Ren Ng while he was at Stanford University.

The Lytro looks nothing like a conventional camera

It is, in some ways, analogous to the practice of shooting RAW images with a current generation digital camera.

In that example, the device records all of the light falling on its sensor without running it through processes such as colour balancing or sharpening. These can be applied later on a computer.

Similarly, by recording the light field passing through many tiny micro-lenses in the Lytro, the action of merging these to create a single flat image can be applied as a post-production effect.

The phrase light field was coined by Russian scientist Alexander Gershun in 1936. Work on developing capture mechanisms began to gain momentum during the 1980s and 1990s.

On its website, Lytro has published Mr Ng's 2006 university PhD thesis outlining his approach, which ultimately led to the commercial product.

In a press statement, Mr Ng said: "Light field photography was once only possible with 100 cameras tethered to a supercomputer in a lab.

BBC Click looks at Lytro ahead of its launch

The Lytro's image sensor is capable of capturing, according to the company, 11 megarays of data.

However, it is understood that megarays do not translate to megapixels, and final image quality may be considerably less than that of conventional digital cameras.

The camera is also capable of producing 3D images, a feature which will be added at a later date.

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iPad 2 Smart Cover Exploit Breaks Through Passcodes

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Need to break into a passcode-protected iPad 2? All you need is a Smart Cover.

The security exploit, reported by 9to5Mac, allows limited access to the iPad 2 running iOS 5, but could expose e-mails and iMessages, and allows the intruder to delete apps. Here's how it works:

1. From the lock screen, hold the power button until the "slide to power off" screen appears.

2. Attach a Smart Cover to the iPad 2 and place it over the screen.

3. Lift the smart cover and press "cancel" on the power off screen.

The iPad will then return to the home screen, or to whatever app was open before the device was locked. An intruder won't be able to open any new apps, but as several 9to5Mac commenters point out, apps can be deleted. Also, the intruder could use the iPad 2's spotlight search function to glean info from e-mails or iMessages.

Big deal? Not really, because the exploit only allows limited functionality on the iPad 2. And if you're really worried about it, you can go into the iPad's General settings menu and disable Smart Cover unlocking. You'd essentially be making the Smart Cover dumb, but it's a small price to pay if you've got some sensitive data stored in your e-mail or messages—at least until Apple releases the inevitable patch.

MORE: Two Minute Video: Should You Buy the iPad 2?

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Don't Count On Facebook Boosting Your Brainpower Just Yet

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Enlarge AFP/Getty Images

If a high number of Facebook friends gives you a bigger brain, then CEO Mark Zuckerberg, seen here in Sept., must have one massive cortex.

AFP/Getty Images

If a high number of Facebook friends gives you a bigger brain, then CEO Mark Zuckerberg, seen here in Sept., must have one massive cortex.

A lot of people seem to be running wild with the idea that there is a direct, positive link between Facebook and the brain's grey matter.

I want to believe a study that suggested Facebook can enhance the size of key parts of your brain. Really I do.

But Facebook hasn't been proved to build a bigger brain just yet, and having a bigger brain wouldn't necessary mean you're better at making virtual friends either.

The rush to credulity on this proposition may lie in some of the language used to describe the study; PR materials called the findings a "direct link." That tends to make me think cause and effect. But in this study, that hasn't been proved.

 

University College London researchers merely found a correlation, not a direct cause, between the amount of grey matter in college students' brains and the number of friends they had on Facebook.

The students with larger, friend networks happened to have more grey matter seen in brain scans. The researchers have emphasized the association and not causation in a statement and a briefing for reporters.

Lead-author Ryota Kanai and his team looked at regions of the brain that have been known to correspond to social cognition: the amygdala, the right superior temporal sulcus, the left middle temporal gyrus and the entorhinal cortex.

Grey matter, or the brain tissue responsible for processing, is found in these regions corresponding to memory, emotional response, perception, navigation and reading social cues. In other words, the researchers were looking in the places where social cognition occurs.

When they compared the brain scans of 125 healthy university students to the number of online friends and real-life friends they had, those with more friends had more grey matter in the amygdala — a region already known to be larger in people with a larger network of real-world friends. They also saw more grey matter in the other three brain regions of people with a high number of online friends. The results were replicated in 40 more students.

What do others think? "I'm cautiously optimistic about the relationship," Dr. James Fowler, who wasn't involved in the research, tells Shots. Fowler, a professor of medical genetics and political science at University of California, San Diego, investigates brain function and social networking. His research has shown that genes alone don't dictate social behavior.

So what does the University College researchers' work have going for it?:

They're looking in the right place.They did see more grey matter in the brains of people with more virtual friends.Variability in the grey matter occurs across individuals and populations.The brain changes as it matures.More grey matter doesn't necessarily mean better social networking.Further research needs to be done to directly connect the two factors.

"Next they should do a functional study," Fowler says. "What happens when people are actually on Facebook? Is increasing the amount of engagement simultaneously causing our brains to change to make social interaction more enjoyable?"

The findings appeared Wednesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

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The man behind the V for Vendetta mask

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20 October 2011 Last updated at 09:43 GMT By Rosie Waites BBC News Magazine The sinister Guy Fawkes mask made famous by the film V for Vendetta has become an emblem for anti-establishment protest groups. Who's behind them?

(Spoiler alert: Some plot details revealed below)

From New York, to London, to Sydney, to Cologne, to Bucharest, there has been a wave of protests against politicians, banks and financial institutions.

Anybody watching coverage of the demonstrations may have been struck by a repeated motif - a strangely stylised mask of Guy Fawkes with a moustache and pointy beard.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange arrived at the Occupy London Stock Exchange protest to make a speech wearing one of these masks. He took it off, reportedly at the insistence of the police.

They were thought to have been used first by the notorious hacker-activist group Anonymous in 2008 during a protest against Scientology, but have since spread throughout the global protest movement.

Continue reading the main story

Anonymous needed an all-purpose image to hide their identity and also symbolise that they stand for individualism - V for Vendetta is a story about one person against the system”

End Quote David Lloyd The masks are from the 2006 film V for Vendetta where one is worn by an enigmatic lone anarchist who, in the graphic novel on which it is based, uses Fawkes as a role model in his quest to end the rule of a fictional fascist party in the UK.

Early in the book V destroys the Houses of Parliament by blowing it up, something Fawkes had planned and failed to do in 1605.

British graphic novel artist David Lloyd is the man who created the original image of the mask for a comic strip written by Alan Moore. Lloyd compares its use by protesters to the way Alberto Korda's famous photograph of Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara became a fashionable symbol for young people across the world.

"The Guy Fawkes mask has now become a common brand and a convenient placard to use in protest against tyranny - and I'm happy with people using it, it seems quite unique, an icon of popular culture being used this way," he says.

A curious Lloyd visited the Occupy Wall Street protest in Zuccotti Park, New York, to have a look at some of the people wearing his mask.

"My feeling is the Anonymous group needed an all-purpose image to hide their identity and also symbolise that they stand for individualism - V for Vendetta is a story about one person against the system."

The film of V for Vendetta ends with an image of a crowd of Londoners all wearing Guy Fawkes masks, unarmed and marching on parliament.

It is that image of collective identification and simultaneous anonymity that is appealing to Anonymous and other groups, says Rich Johnston, a commentator on the world of comics.

The 2006 film added a new costume to the fancy dress pantheon

The widespread adoption of the masks was definitely a reaction to the film rather than the book, he argues.

"The book is about one man bringing down the state but the film includes a scene of a huge crowd - making a statement against a faceless corporation."

"The masks were useful for the Scientology protests because it prevented individuals from being recognised," he adds.

Lloyd said that when he and writer Moore created the character of V they had a basic idea of an urban guerrilla fighting a fascist dictatorship but wanted to inject more theatricality into the story.

The mask is bought even in countries where Guy Fawkes is not such a well-known figure

"We knew that V was going to be an escapee from a concentration camp where he had been subjected to medical experiments but then I had the idea that in his craziness he would decide to adopt the persona and mission of Guy Fawkes - our great historical revolutionary."

The masks were originally made by Warner Bros to promote the film and were handed out at screenings. Now they are being sold to everyone from activists to fancy dress enthusiasts.

Rubies Costume Company, which makes the mask, sells around 100,000 a year worldwide, and 16,000 in the UK, according to spokesman Steve Kitt, who seems a little concerned that any association with activists might harm the company's image.

Rubies is dismissive of the idea that Anonymous and other protesters have fuelled demand for the mask, saying it has been successful ever since the film was released.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been associated with the V imagery

Lloyd says he has already heard anecdotes about police in the US searching for the masks in people's houses to be used as evidence of involvement with Anonymous hacker attacks, "which is scary but also ridiculous - you wouldn't prosecute someone for having a t-shirt with Che or CND on it".

Johnston is just back from the New York Comic Con and recalls one incident where a group of V for Vendetta fans, dressed as their hero, unwittingly wandered into the Occupy Wall Street protest and were mistaken for protesters by the police.

Paul Staines, who blogs under the name of Guido Fawkes, said he finds it ironic that anti-capitalist, anti-corporation activists are inadvertently supporting Warner Bros - one of America's 100 biggest companies with profits last year of £1.6bn - by buying the masks.

He thinks the widespread use of the mask "signifies a loss of trust in politics - Guy Fawkes is the most anti-political figure you can pick".

One Anonymous member camping out in the shadow of London's St Paul's Cathedral said she was with a group of 15 people and planned to stay for "as long as necessary".

Sales of the masks make money for Warner Bros

She said that she and others had been wearing the masks, not only to protect their identity but also because it has become a symbol of the movement against corporate greed.

"It's a visual thing, it sets us apart from the hippies and the socialists and gives us our own identity. We're about bypassing governments and starting from the bottom."

Johnston sees the mask as fundamentally a violent image. "It's not a symbol of passive resistance but a symbol of active terrorism - it's about bringing down a government and a country and that could be quite scary and alienating to some people."

The idea of the V mask being appropriated as a political symbol is inherently ridiculous, he suggests.

"It's like assuming you can bring down a government using a light sabre or a He-Man sword."

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Will Smartphones And iPads Mush My Toddler's Brain?

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Enlarge Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images

For real: Fisher-Price's Laugh & Learn Baby iCan Play Case protects an iPhone while baby plays with apps.

Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images

For real: Fisher-Price's Laugh & Learn Baby iCan Play Case protects an iPhone while baby plays with apps.

Parents of small children have long been told to avoid using the television as a babysitter. This week, the nation's leading group of pediatricians reiterated its stance against letting kids under 2 watch any TV at all.

But what about iPhones and iPads?

These days, it's pretty common to see Mom or Dad hand over a pricey smartphone to a cranky toddler to stave off a temper tantrum. One survey found that as many as 1 in 4 toddlers has used a smartphone. For many young kids, it's become the toy of choice.

I confess, I've given my iPhone to my 1 1/2-year-old in a pinch (he likes to browse my iTunes collection). But in general, I've tried to limit my son's exposure to our family's iPad and iPhones because of the American Academy of Pediatrics' long-standing advice to keep kids under 2 away from screens.

 

The AAP first issued that guidance in 1999. Now, "we have more science to back up the previous recommendation," says Dr. Ari Brown, the lead author of the AAP's revised guidelines on toddlers and TV. (Parents might recognize her as the author of the best-selling parenting guide Baby 411.)

Despite the many educational DVDs aimed at the under-2 crowd, the AAP says research doesn't support the notion that kids that young benefit from videos. Some studies suggest TV viewing may actually be harmful to those under 2 — even when the set is merely on in the background.

"The concern that we have is it's distracting to the parent, so the parent is talking less to the child, there's less parent-child conversation, which is important for language development," Brown tells Shots. "And it's also distracting for the child."

Distracted infants and toddlers are more likely to abandon an activity quickly. Experts worry about how that will affect children's ability to learn to organize information and make decisions "when they're not having the experience of being really focused on the activity that's at hand," says Brown.

A better use of time, says Brown: Let tots engage in free play, like stacking cups on the floor. That type of activity has been shown to boost baby's development.

So how does all this relate to smartphones and tablets?

The AAP's new policy doesn't address these devices — "we simply don't have the science right now to comment," Brown says.

But if you're merely pulling up an Elmo video on YouTube and handing your mobile device over, that viewing experience is just as passive as if your kid were watching TV, so the same concerns apply, says Brown.

What about all those peekaboo and storybook apps aimed specifically at the toddler set?

"When it comes to apps and interactive games," she says, "that is a completely different way of using your brain."

That's not official AAP policy, Brown stresses. But as a pediatrician, she says she could see how some apps might provide a limited, "virtual approximation of something a child might be doing with an object in their hand. They're figuring out cause and effect or sequencing or ordering."

"There might be a real educational use for those items on these screens," she says. "We just don't have any data to say one way or the other."

And if the same impulse that keeps so many of us bound to our digital devices also makes parents more likely to play an app with a child, so much the better, says Brown. "It might teach the parent and child how to share."

Just don't use that as an excuse to sneak in some rounds of Angry Birds under the guise of family bonding. The bottom line, says Brown, is that parents need to engage actively with their child — not with their devices. "When you are with your child," she says, "be there with them."

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Mobile phone cancer link rejected

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21 October 2011 Last updated at 01:11 GMT By Nick Triggle Health correspondent, BBC News Mobile phone safety has been much debated over the past two decades Further research has been published suggesting there is no link between mobile phones and brain cancer.

The risk mobiles present has been much debated over the past 20 years as use of the phones has soared.

The latest study led by the Institute of Cancer Epidemiology in Denmark looked at more than 350,000 people with mobile phones over an 18-year period.

Researchers concluded users were at no greater risk than anyone else of developing brain cancer.

The findings, published on the British Medical Journal website, come after a series of studies have come to similar conclusions.

'Reassuring'

But there has also been some research casting doubt on mobile phone safety, prompting the World Health Organization to warn that they could still be carcinogenic.

In doing so, the WHO put mobile phones in the same category as coffee, meaning a link could not be ruled out but could not be proved either.

The Department of Health continue to advise that anyone under the age of 16 should use mobile phones only for essential purposes and keep all calls short.

Continue reading the main story

These results are the strongest evidence yet that using a mobile phone does not seem to increase the risk of cancers of the brain or central nervous system in adults”

End Quote Hazel Nunn Cancer Research UK The Danish study, which built on previous research that has already been published by carrying out a longer follow-up, found there was no significant difference in rates of brain or central nervous system cancers among those who had mobiles and those that did not.

Of the 358,403 mobile phone owners looked at, 356 gliomas (a type of brain cancer) and 846 cancers of the central nervous system were seen - both in line with incidence rates among those who did not own a mobile.

Even among those who had had mobiles the longest - 13 years or more - the risk was no higher, the researchers concluded.

But they still said mobile phone use warranted continued follow up to ensure cancers were not developing over the longer term, and to see what the effect was in children.

Hazel Nunn, head of evidence and health information at Cancer Research UK, said: "These results are the strongest evidence yet that using a mobile phone does not seem to increase the risk of cancers of the brain or central nervous system in adults."

Prof Anders Ahlbom, from Sweden's Karolinska Institute, praised the way the study was conducted, adding the findings were "reassuring".

Prof David Spiegelhalter, an expert specialising in the understanding of risk who is based at the University of Cambridge, said: "The mobile phone records only go up to 1995 and so the comparison is mainly between early and late adopters, but the lack of any effect on brain tumours is still very important evidence."

And Prof Malcolm Sperrin, director of medical physics at Royal Berkshire Hospital, said: "The findings clearly reveal that there is no additional overall risk of developing a cancer in the brain although there does seem to be some minor, and not statistically significant, variations in the type of cancer."

But the researchers themselves do accept there were some limitations to the study, including the exclusion of "corporate subscriptions", thereby excluding people who used their phones for business purposes, who could be among the heaviest users.

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Biography Sheds New Light On Steve Jobs' Life

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Enlarge John MacDougall/AFP/Getty Images

A visitor walks past an ad for a biography of Apple founder Steve Jobs at the 63rd Frankfurt Book Fair on Oct. 11.

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A visitor walks past an ad for a biography of Apple founder Steve Jobs at the 63rd Frankfurt Book Fair on Oct. 11.

A new biography portrays Steve Jobs as a skeptic all his life giving up religion because he was troubled by starving children, calling executives who took over Apple "corrupt" and delaying cancer surgery in favor of cleansings and herbal medicine.

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, to be published Monday, also says Jobs came up with the company's name while he was on a diet of fruits and vegetables, and as a teenager perfected staring at people without blinking.

The Associated Press purchased a copy of the book Thursday.

The book delves into Jobs' decision to delay surgery for nine months after learning in October 2003 that he had a neuroendocrine tumor a relatively rare type of pancreatic cancer that normally grows more slowly and is therefore more treatable.

Instead, he tried a vegan diet, acupuncture, herbal remedies and other treatments he found online, and even consulted a psychic. He also was influenced by a doctor who ran a clinic that advised juice fasts, bowel cleansings and other unproven approaches, the book says, before finally having surgery in July 2004.

Isaacson, quoting Jobs, writes in the book: "'I really didn't want them to open up my body, so I tried to see if a few other things would work,' he told me years later with a hint of regret."

Jobs died Oct. 5, at age 56, after a battle with cancer.

The book also provides insight into the unraveling of Jobs' relationship with Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google and an Apple board member from 2006 to 2009. Schmidt had quit Apple's board as Google and Apple went head-to-head in smartphones, Apple with its iPhone and Google with its Android software.
Isaacson wrote that Jobs was livid in January 2010 when HTC introduced an Android phone that boasted many of the popular features of the iPhone. Apple sued, and Jobs told Isaacson in an expletive-laced rant that Google's actions amounted to "grand theft."

"I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong," Jobs said. "I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this."

Jobs used an expletive to describe Android and Google Docs, Google's Internet-based word processing program. In a subsequent meeting with Schmidt at a Palo Alto, Calif., cafe, Jobs told Schmidt that he wasn't interested in settling the lawsuit, the book says.

"I don't want your money. If you offer me $5 billion, I won't want it. I've got plenty of money. I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that's all I want." The meeting, Isaacson wrote, resolved nothing.

The book is clearly designed to evoke the Apple style. Its cover features the title and author's name starkly printed in black and gray type against a white background, along with a black-and-white photo of Jobs, thumb and forefinger to his chin.

The biography, for which Jobs granted more than three dozen interviews, is also a look into the thoughts of a man who was famously secretive, guarding details of his life as he did Apple's products, and generating plenty of psychoanalysis from a distance.

Jobs resigned as Apple's CEO on Aug. 24, six weeks before he died.

Doctors said Thursday that it was not clear whether the delayed treatment made a difference in Jobs' chances for survival.

"People live with these cancers for far longer than nine months before they're even diagnosed," so it's not known how quickly one can prove fatal, said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society.

Dr. Michael Pishvaian, a pancreatic cancer expert at Georgetown University's Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, said people often are in denial after a cancer diagnosis, and some take a long time to accept recommended treatments.

"We've had many patients who have had bad outcomes when they have delayed treatment. Nine months is certainly a significant period of time to delay," he said.

Fortune magazine reported in 2008 that Jobs tried alternative treatments because he was suspicious of mainstream medicine.

The book says Jobs gave up Christianity at age 13 when he saw starving children on the cover of Life magazine. He asked his Sunday school pastor whether God knew what would happen to them.

Jobs never went back to church, though he did study Zen Buddhism later.

Jobs calls the crop of executives brought in to run Apple after his ouster in 1985 "corrupt people" with "corrupt values" who cared only about making money. Jobs himself is described as caring far more about product than profit.
He told Isaacson they cared only about making money "for themselves mainly, and also for Apple rather than making great products."

Jobs returned to the company in 1997. After that, he introduced the candy-colored iMac computer, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad, and turned Apple into the most valuable company in America by market value for a time.

The book says that, while some Apple board members were happy that Hewlett-Packard gave up trying to compete with Apple's iPad, Jobs did not think it was cause for celebration.

"Hewlett and Packard built a great company, and they thought they had left it in good hands," Jobs told Isaacson. "But now it's being dismembered and destroyed."

"I hope I've left a stronger legacy so that will never happen at Apple," he added.

Advance sales of the book have topped best-seller lists. Much of the biography adds to what was already known, or speculated, about Jobs. While Isaacson is not the first to tell Jobs' story, he had unprecedented access. Their last interview was weeks before Jobs died.

Jobs reveals in the book that he didn't want to go to college, and the only school he applied to was Reed, a costly private college in Portland, Ore. Once accepted, his parents tried to talk him out of attending Reed, but he told them he wouldn't go to college if they didn't let him go there. Jobs wound up attending but dropped out after less than a year and never went back.

Jobs told Isaacson that he tried various diets, including one of fruits and vegetables. On the naming of Apple, he said he was "on one of my fruitarian diets." He said he had just come back from an apple farm, and thought the name sounded "fun, spirited and not intimidating."

Jobs' eye for simple, clean design was evident early. The case of the Apple II computer had originally included a Plexiglas cover, metal straps and a roll-top door. Jobs, though, wanted something elegant that would make Apple stand out.

He told Isaacson he was struck by Cuisinart food processors while browsing at a department store and decided he wanted a case made of molded plastic.
He called Jonathan Ive, Apple's design chief, his "spiritual partner" at Apple. He told Isaacson that Ive had "more operation power" at Apple than anyone besides Jobs himself that there's no one at the company who can tell Ive what to do. That, says Jobs, is "the way I set it up."

Jobs was never a typical CEO. Apple's first president, Mike Scott, was hired mainly to manage Jobs, then 22. One of his first projects, according to the book, was getting Jobs to bathe more often. It didn't work.

Jobs' dabbling in LSD and other aspects of 1960s counterculture has been well documented. In the book, Jobs says LSD "reinforced my sense of what was important creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could."

He also revealed that the Beatles were one of his favorite bands, and one of his wishes was to get the band on iTunes, Apple's revolutionary online music store, before he died. The Beatles' music went on sale on iTunes in late 2010.

The book was originally called "iSteve" and scheduled to come out in March. The release date was moved up to November, then, after Jobs' death, to Monday. It is published by Simon & Schuster and will sell for $35.

Isaacson will appear Sunday on 60 Minutes. CBS News, which airs the program, released excerpts of the book Thursday.

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A story from our Three-Minute Fiction contest written by Caryn Tayeh of Bethesda, Md.

A story from our Three-Minute Fiction contest written by Chris Westberg of Williamsburg, Va.

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A New Emily Post For Your Blog Posts

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Do we care about manners?

We certainly seem to care a lot about Downton Abbey, but perhaps that is because the world of footmen, retiring to a drawing room and eating with tiny forks feels so very foreign to us in this mad dash era of texting and Twitter. I notice that more and more, my phone has ceased to be a real instrument for calling anyone (besides my parents and doctor's office) — if someone needs something from me, they quickly text, e-mail, or Skype. A thank you is extra, perfunctory. The downside of lightning-speed communication is that all conversations have the danger of becoming casually transactional, and far from formal or polite (do I sound like a grandmother yet?).

And yet, there is one bastion of manners that shines on through the decades, doggedly determined to be the the bible of how to treat other people. Emily Post's Etiquette, which comes out today in its 18th edition and weighs as much as a country ham, has been the go-to guide for the prim and proper since its debut in 1922. Back then, the book was titled Etiquette in Society, In Business, In Politics, And At Home, and was penned by Emily herself, a 50-year-old divorcee living in an elegant Manhattan apartment on Washington Square.

Today, the book is written by her great-great-grandchildren: Anna Post, Lizzie Post, and Daniel Post Senning, led by great-grandaughter-in-law Peggy Post. Together, they run the Emily Post Institute, a family business devoted to helping people avoid awkward faux pas at baby showers or funerals. The book contains all the classics — what it means to order frog legs, the right flowers to send to a hospital, how to perform a shady secret exit at a party without offending anyone — but it also tackles a new territory not exactly known for dignity or correctness: the internet.

The 18th edition's tagline promises "Manners for a New World," which means that the authors have (adorably) adopted the internet and folded guidelines for online decorum into the massive tome on place settings and how to talk about current affairs at a cocktail party.

 

Whether or not the web-based generation would ever use a book like this as a reference rather than a doorstop is the big question: We still need to know how to comport ourselves, perhaps now more than ever as we gain new forms of communicating and need authorities to navigate us through murky waters. But the book itself feels like a dusty artifact; what we really could use is an app for that. And as it turns out, one exists.

Still, if you are a civility junkie, or just looking for a new coffee table amusement, the 18th edition does contain some gems and is worth flipping through. We present to you, without further ado, the most useful online advice from the "New World" of manners.

1) A red light on someone's GChat should be taken seriously: "Just because someone's IM service shoes them as being 'available,' doesn't necessarily mean they are...Respect 'do not disturb; status. Remember, each time you IM you are interrupting someone."

Preach it, Emily. There is nothing more aggravating than someone trying to have an urgent instant message conversation when you are in the middle of a task. That said, we have learned the power of going "invisible" on GChat.

2) Easy on the caps lock: "Avoid typing your entire message in capital letters because CAPS ARE THE EQUIVALENT OF SHOUTING. So use upper- and lower-case letters unless you have something to shout about: I'M ENGAGED! All caps messages are also much harder to read."

This is a good one — the trend of throwing down the caps-lock FOR EMPHASIS has run its course. Just capitalize the right words. And as for the woman who is shouting about being engaged: Emily Post says it's okay to delete her e-mail.

3) When you accidentally CC the wrong person on an e-mail, apologize right away: "Admit your insensitivity and tell her how terrible you feel about hurting her. As for for forgiveness, but don't expect the friendship to be patched up overnight, it might take months before she can trust you again. In the meantime, remind yourself of one of the edicts of email culture: You can never be too careful."

We have done this one too many times to ignore the "always double check who you are actually sending this to" rule with email. Otherwise, you run the risk of inviting your ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend to your birthday party. Trust.

4) You are allowed to do whatever you want on your own Facebook page: "It's your page. It's okay to ignore a friend request, untag yourself from a photo or ask someone to remove a photo of you from their page, delete a friend's comment on your post, unfriend someone whose presence on your page makes you uncomfortable, ignore quizzes, groups, and event requests."

This is true, and we thank Ms. Post's great-grandkids for saying something. People can be very touchy about Facebook and untagging, but the truth is, Facebook is how you present yourself to the world these days. You want your page to look exactly like a business card (or for some people, a postcard from a wild vacation in Cabo), and you are allowed to delete any content that does not belong. We all have to protect our reps.

5) The Post stance on Twitter = Don't Be Annoying: "Be relevant. Don't tweet about what you had for breakfast or what store you happen to be in...Beware of linking Twitter through your Facebook page. Your multiple tweets work on Twitter but may be annoying to people who get feeds from you through Facebook."

Because there is nothing worse than hearing that you had waffles twice.

So what do you think? Will you be using Etiquette to clean up your manners on the web, or will you continue to post snarky anonymous comments and send people "Let Me Google That For You" missives?

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Virtual Supermarket Lets Commuters Shop in Subway Station

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The one thing nobody wants to do after a long day of work is schlep to the supermarket and fight the crowds grabbing groceries for dinner. Commuters in Seoul, however, now have a different option—shopping by smartphone in the virtual grocery store in the Seolleung underground station.

It works like this: Photos of hundreds of virtual groceries line the walls. Shoppers simply step up, take a photo of the QR code listed under each product and go about their day. If they order by 1pm, their groceries should be delivered to them by dinnertime.

(MORE: Health Checkup: Who Needs Organic Food?)

The company behind the virtual supermarket, Tesco-affiliate Homeplus, is thinking of rolling this technology out to other subway stations and eventually to other countries. Kwon Ki-Duk of the Samsung Economic Research Institute tells BBC News that this might only work in South Korea, one of the world's most wired countries with 10 million smartphone subscribers and an Internet use rate of around 80%.

Could this work here in the United States? We certainly has enough smartphone subscribers at 45 million. A poll back in April found that half of all shoppers with a smartphone consulted it while shopping, although that probably doesn't pertain to picking up bananas and cereal at the grocery store.

FreshDirect, which allows New Yorkers to order groceries online and have them delivered to their homes, already has a mobile app, which, really, isn't that different from the experience offered by Homeplus. I'd make a bet on mobile apps, not QR codes (which seem to be getting less popular), as being the future of grocery shopping.

MORE: Google Wallet Goes Live, Looks to Add Visa, American Express and Discover

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Why Aren't Women Tweeting About Occupy Wall Street?

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REUTERS / Shannon Stapleton

Twitter is still the social media outlet of choice for Occupy Wall Street, but new analysis into the #OWS tweets has found a surprising gender imbalance in those who're talking about the protests: Fewer women seem to be doing so, despite Twitter being a female-dominated service overall.

According to analysis by Attention released yesterday, only 30% of tweets mentioning Occupy Wall Street were from female users, even though over 64% of all Twitter users are believed to be female as a result of a 2010 Pew survey. That number is actually up from where it was a month earlier; by mid-September, fewer than 20% of Occupy Wall Street tweets were from women.

(MORE: Twitter Owns #OccupyWallStreet Chatter)

An entirely separate study, carried out by social media monitoring firm Trendrr for AdAge Magazine, sees that number slightly higher; it puts the percentage of female OWS tweets around 38%. But the odd gender discrepancy remains: Is the reason that the women interested in Occupy Wall Street were more likely to get involved with the cause than tweet about it, that the female demographic for Twitter doesn't have as large a crossover with the OWS demographic as men, or simply that fewer women were interested in tweeting about the subject in general?

MORE: Twitter Drops Lawsuit in Exchange for 'Tweet' Trademark

Graeme McMillan is a reporter at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @Graemem or on Facebook at Facebook/Graeme.McMillan. You can also continue the discussion on TIME's Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

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