Photo by Joe Angeles / WUSTL PhotoThe Truster hand-held “Emotion Reader.”Voice-stress analysis, an alternative to the polygraph as a method for lie detection, is already widely used in police and insurance fraud investigations. Now, however, it is being touted as a powerful and effective tool for an array of new applications — everything from screening potential terrorists in the nation’s airports to catching wayward spouses in messy marital disputes. Despite its booming popularity, recent federally sponsored studies have found little evidence that existing voice-stress technologies are capable of consistently detecting lies and deceptions. “You could have gotten better results by flipping a coin,” says Washington University in St. Louis psychologist Mitchell S. Sommers, lead investigator on a recent voice-stress study.
Photo courtesy of The OASIS InstituteVolunteering can have a positive effect on the overall well-being of older Americans.Looking to chase away the winter blues? Interested in staying active after retirement? Need a boost to your health? Try volunteering at your church or a neighborhood organization for a few hours a week — it could do you a world of good. Just two hours of volunteering a week can have a positive effect on the overall well-being of older Americans, according to a study from the George Warren Brown (GWB) School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. The researchers found that older adults who volunteered had better assessments than non-volunteers on three measures of well-being: daily functioning, self-rated health and self-rated depression.
Determining the right pricing strategy can make or break the overall profitability of a firm. One such strategy, dynamic pricing, long practiced in the airline and hotel industries, is showing promise and profitability in the world of retail. When applied to products sold over a short sales season—new toys, skiwear, and the like— dynamic pricing can boost profits for a firm, according to research recently conducted by two professors at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis.
Coached by educators who were anxious to prove that colleges and universities were military assets, the War Department in the spring and summer of 1918 laid plans for the organization of the Student’s Army Training Corps. Able-bodied men from ages 18-21 with a high-school education could seek admission to any college or university on the […]
Eminent physicist Charles Falco contends that the great master painters of earlier centuries used optical instruments nearly 200 years earlier than previously even thought possible and account for the remarkable transformation in the realistic portraits appearing as early as the 15th Century.
A study that included investigators in the School of Medicine is the first to demonstrate an association between a particular gene and alcoholism.
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Study participants with optic nerve disease were 20 times more likely to be pathologically sleepy than those with normal sight.
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Sabine Eckmann, curator of the Washington University Gallery of Art, and Paul Ha, director of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, will speak on Recalling 1980s New York for the Gallery of Art’s Friday Forum series at 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 13. CALENDAR SUMMARY WHO: Sabine Eckmann, curator, Washington University Gallery of Art, and Paul […]