Bullies' Brains Light Up With Pleasure as People Squirm

When shown videos of someone inflicting pain (such as closing a piano lid on a player's fingers, above), bullies experience activity in their brains' pleasure centers, a November 2008 study showed. The subjects tested seemed to enjoy seeing people hurt.

Image courtesy Jean Decety, University of Chicago

The brains of bullies—kids who start fights, tell lies, and break stuff with glee—may be wired to feel pleasure when watching others suffer pain, according to a new brain scanning study.

The finding was unexpected, noted Benjamin Lahey, a psychologist at the University of Chicago and co-author of the study, which appears in the new issue of the journal Biological Psychology.

The researchers had expected that the bullies would show no response when they witnessed pain in somebody else—that they experience a sort of emotional coldness that allows them to steal milk money with no remorse, for example.

Previous research had shown that when nonbullies see other people in pain, the same areas of the brain light up that do when the nonbullies themselves experience pain—a sign of empathy, Lahey said.

The new research showed these areas in the bullies' brains were even more active than in the nonbullies.

But the bullies' empathetic response seemed to be warped by activity in the amygdala and ventral striatum, regions of the brain sometimes associated with reward and pleasure.

"We think it means that they like seeing people in pain," Lahey said.

"If that is true," he added, "they are getting positively reinforced every time they bully and are aggressive to other people."

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XCPV Solar Panels Aim for Much Cheaper, Chip-Based Power

CHICAGO — Paul Sidlo doesn't see solar power toppling king coal's reign in the energy kingdom any time soon—not today and maybe not tomorrow. But he does see it seizing at least a portion of the fossil fuel's territory. On Friday, Sidlo's SUNRGI startup introduced a solar panel he claims will generate electricity cheaper than coal using only a fraction of the space needed by conventional photovoltaic panels. Xtreme Concentrated Photovoltaics (XCPV) technology was publicly unveiled for the first time at Wired NextFest here with the promise of generating electricity at five cents per kilowatt-hour—cheaper than coal-fired power and less than a third the cost of conventional solar power. [Check out hands-on video here; story continues]

China's wasteland of toxic consumer electronics revealed

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Thomas Ricker of engadget writes "Any self-respecting gadget hound knows that China is responsible for packing millions of shipping containers with the consumer electronics we crave. What you may not know is what we ship in return: our waste for recycling. Of growing concern is e-waste, resulting from the deluge of PCs, cellphones, televisions and crapgadgets we churn through at an accelerating clip each year. While domestic recycling programs are good-intentioned, often the most toxic of our e-waste is shipped illegally back to China and boiled down for its precious metals under some of the most crude conditions you can imagine. When faced with the choice of familial poverty or the slow accumulation of poison in their bloodstream (for $8 per day), it's not hard to imagine what many rural Chinese people will choose. So while we give Greenpeace's self-congratulatory promotions and oft-subjective "Guide to Greener Electronics" company ratings the occasional hard time, their attempts to raise e-waste awareness are commendable. Now go ahead, check the video from 60 Minutes' intrepid reporters after the break and let the guilt wash over you."

Click here for the full article and additional disturbing videos

Air-Powered Cars to Hit US by 2010

The Air Car caused a huge stir when we reported last year that Tata Motors would begin producing it in India. Now the little gas-free ride that could is headed Stateside in a big-time way.

Zero Pollution Motors (ZPM) confirmed to PopularMechanics.com on Thursday that it expects to produce the world’s first air-powered car for the United States by late 2009 or early 2010. As the U.S. licensee for Luxembourg-based MDI, which developed the Air Car as a compression-based alternative to the internal combustion engine, ZPM has attained rights to build the first of several modular plants, which are likely to begin manufacturing in the Northeast and grow for regional production around the country, at a clip of up to 10,000 Air Cars per year.

And while ZPM is also licensed to build MDI’s two-seater OneCAT economy model (the one headed for India) and three-seat MiniCAT (like a SmartForTwo without the gas), the New Paltz, N.Y., startup is aiming bigger: Company officials want to make the first air-powered car to hit U.S. roads a $17,800, 75-hp equivalent, six-seat modified version of MDI’s CityCAT (pictured above) that, thanks to an even more radical engine, is said to travel as far as 1000 miles at up to 96 mph with each tiny fill-up.

Domestic Drilling Will Never Satisfy U.S. Oil Demands


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Recycling Myths: Debunking 5 Half Truths about Recycling

Is chucking a soda can in the trash an unforgivable sin? That depends who you ask: You'll find plenty of people on both sides of the great recycling debate, each equally convinced the other side is ill-informed. The truth is that opponents and proponents alike often rely on facts that are outdated, oversimplified or simply untrue. We tackle five of the biggest myths about recycling. For more, check out the December issue of Popular Mechanics.

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Duke Energy Carolinas and Progress Energy, two major utilities in the Southeast, have partnered to test a fleet of smart-charging plug-in electric car

Duke Energy Carolinas and Progress Energy, two major utilities in the Southeast, have partnered to test a fleet of smart-charging plug-in electric Priuses in what they say will be the country’s first interstate electric car-charging scheme involving multiple utilities. Each of the Priuses will be equipped with a V2Green Connectivity Module while Advanced Energy, a non-profit focused on energy and transportation solutions, will design and implement the trial. The project will look at the issues of tracking energy usage and billing when a car that is subscribed to one company charges on another's network.

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T. Boone Pickens - Domestic Energy Sources are Patriotic

The One True Way to Wrap Your Headphones

Via Gizmodo you know there are lots of ways to wrap your headphones. Only one of them is correct. Some ways are more wrong than others—if you hate your buds, looping them tightly around your iPod like a bondage rope is the surest way to kill them fast while making it look like it was done in by natural causes. This is how you're supposed to do it.