Businesses hungry for insights into human thought and
behavior have a rapidly growing supply of information, thanks to cognitive science.
Researchers at Warwick University in Great Britain are now promoting their insights into
the human mind as a business tool. At the Institute for Applied Cognitive Science, a
financial services consulting firm seeks information on consumers' tolerance of risk and
on their decision-making processes; this will help the company learn how to boost consumer
confidence in their products. The Institute also promotes the application of cognitive
science to improving the human condition, such as treating eating disorders and autism,
improving the teaching of reading, and understanding the mental processes of the elderly.
Source: Institute for Applied Cognitive Science, Department of Psychology, University
of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, United Kingdom. Web site www.warwick.ac.uk.
Talking Trash Cans
Our increasingly intelligent environment is now becoming a force for positive
behavioral change: In Berlin, talking trash cans will soon thank people for not littering.
"We want to encourage people in a nice, funny way to throw their trash in the baskets
and not on the street," city sanitation spokesperson Bernd Mueller told the
Associated Press. The strategically located smart baskets, powered by solar cells, will be
able to say "thank you" in three languages, demonstrating to residents and
visitors that Berlin is "a modern city with high-tech services, and that it is also
very cosmopolitan," says Mueller. Plans are under way to market the talking trash
cans elsewhere in Germany.
Source: The Week in Germany (November 26, 2003). Press Office, German Embassy,
4645 Reservoir Road, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20007. Web site www.germany-info.org.
Diversity Could Protect Computers
Computers could be made more immune to cyberattacks if they were less uniform,
believe researchers studying cyberdiversity at Carnegie Mellon University. Just as
diversity--slight variations among individuals in a genetically related group--can help
resist pathogens, differences in software configurations could help protect computers from
the next worm or virus infection or other menace, says computer engineer Mike Reiter of
CMU's CyLab. Reiter and colleagues are seeking ways to make individual computers
automatically change certain aspects of their software in order to keep an Internet worm
like Code Red from rapidly invading hundreds of thousands of computers.
Source: Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213.
Web site www.cmu.edu.
Compulsive Spending in Younger Generations
Generation Y--Americans born between about 1977 and 1997--is turning out to be Generation
$$--a cohort of compulsive spenders. While only 1%-3% of baby boomers and 5% of Gen X'ers
can be classified as clinically compulsive buyers, a whopping 10% of Gen Y'ers in the
United States can be so described, according to Jim Roberts, associate professor of
business at Baylor University. "This is a significant increase," he says,
blaming the trend on shifting attitudes about debt and credit cards. About 80% of Gen
Y'ers have credit cards--a strong predictor of compulsive buying, according to
Roberts--and half got their first credit cards in high school.
Source: Baylor University, Media Relations, P.O. Box 97024, Waco, Texas 76798. Web site
pr.baylor.edu.
More Women in the Boardroom
Britain's biggest corporations are seeing record numbers of women serving on boards of
directors: The number of female directors in the top 100 U.K. companies has passed 100 for
the first time, according to research for the Cranfield School of Management. In the top
20 firms, 90% now have female directors, compared with 40% of the 20 firms at the bottom
of the top 100 in terms of market capitalization. And more companies have several female
directors on their boards, allowing them to be viewed more as individuals than as tokens.
"The best businesses are definitely realizing that diversity in the boardroom goes
hand in hand with good corporate governance, better customer relations, and ultimately is
beneficial to the bottom line," says British Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia
Hewitt. "Now the rest need to learn from the best."
Source: Department of Trade and Industry, 1 Victoria Street, London SW1H 0ET, United
Kingdom. Web site www.dti.gov.uk.
