"Total Recall" may be getting creamed by critics but fans of VR headsets are firmly behind the Oculus Rift.The Oculus Rift is a head-mounted display with a few features that make it ideal for gamers;  impressive head-tracking capabilities; stereoscopic 3D rendering; a wide field of view - 110 degrees, compared to around 40 degrees for most headsets —so you don’t see the screen. And multiple inputs (DVI/HDMI and USB). When wearing the Oculus, each eye gets close and personal with a 640x800 LCD screen for a total resolution of 1,280x800 in 720p.

People with an agenda usually blame cultural stereotypes of black men for why white police officers mistakenly shoot unarmed black suspects more often than white ones during computer  simulations. There's just one problem; psychology undergraduates in simulations do the exact same thing. New research points to another factor: how individuals view threats from outside groups, independent of culture or race. Across two studies, participants with strong beliefs about interpersonal threats were more likely to mistakenly shoot members of outside groups versus members of their own groups. 

The poles in the climate change debate always insist the other side is either stupid or motivated by funding. It's likely true in some cases but lots of policy issues have worked out even though highly paid people were against it.  It can't be a constructive thing to throw a blanket over 50% of the society who will all need to get behind a policy decision, though.

Two gray literature studies (translation: good enough for the IPCC, but Science 2.0 should be skeptical until they are peer-reviewed) have different answers on how fast the planet is warming. The first,  from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project run by physicist Richard Muller, agrees with earlier findings about the pace of global warming, while the second, by Anthony Watts and colleagues, argues that half of the recent warming in the U.S. is artificial.

Kinesio tape, developed by Dr. Kenzo Kase decades ago, claims to provide muscle and joint support without restricting movement.  And it's so popular that Kinesio's product website advocates a particular taping technique which practitioners need to learn on a special training course. 4000 in Britain are qualified in this 'art' of Kinesiotaping, but the big question is, does it really work? 

Anti-science activists in a war on genetically modified organisms are for more pervasive than right-wing types who limited federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research 10 years ago - because right-wing people just wanted to let taxpayers opt out and left-wing zealots want things banned if it violates their naturalistic world view.Ireland is, by heritage, a potato culture - and nothing is worse for potatoes than blight.  Who wouldn't want a science solution that could safely prevent blight? Scientists agree, and so does Ireland's environmental protection agency because they understand, you know, science.Irish anti-science hippies are outraged. 

If necessity is the mother of invention, then surely poor farmers will invent more than billion-dollar corporations or highly paid academics.Or so believes Prof. Anil Gupta, who has spent two decades traveling rural India and searching for for its hidden innovations. So far, Gupta says he and his aides have uncovered more than 25,000 inventions.Some examples: A bicycle-mounted crop sprayerAn electric paintbrush that never needs to be dipped in a paint can.A rice cleaner designed by a 13-year-old after he watched his mother wearily picking pebbles from yet another sack of grain.A washing machine mounted on the back of a scooter and powered by its engine

It’s a scientist’s duty to be properly skeptical, says Berkeley physics Prof. Richard Muller, who still says that much, if not most, of what is attributed to climate change is speculative, exaggerated or just plain wrong. He has analyzed some of the most alarmist claims and his skepticism about them hasn’t changed. What has changed is his doubt about the very existence of global warming. And he is now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause, he says.

The downside to an MP3 culture is that its pretty solitary. If I want to make a mix for the wife, I have to buy an .mp3 player and just give it to her - or I have to go retro and burn a CD. It's better than the 1990s, when people made cassette mix tapes - but they certainly showed you care. It was no trivial thing.  You can bet if I told my wife today I made a mix tape for another woman, she would be going to get her pistol.Makerbot has brought them back - but with a modern twist.  You can make it in your house on a 3-D printer.  But it won't work in a cassette player, it is still basically a USB drive.

Chinese athletes had been warned by the country's Sports Ministry to avoid meat because it may contain clenbuterol, banned by the International Olympic Committee as a performance-enhancing substance.  China bans clenbuterol because of the chemical's noxious long-term effects on human health.  The World Anti-Doping Agency issued a warning last year about clenbuterol-tainted meat in China. Mexico also has a serious issue with it but pork farmers in China still use it because it produces leaner meat so the choice was avoidance or take risks.