study

According to a new study, post-traumatic stress disorder can be significantly alleviated by playing the classic puzzle video game Tetris. The game's visually-oriented design reportedly makes it easier for sufferers to avoid flashbacks by keeping ... their brains occupied. The study comes from world-renowned Oxford University, where researchers recently conducted a study comprised of two individual experiments. In the first experiment, sixty participants were asked to watch a film containing shocking violence. They were then provided a 30-minute rest, before they were broken into three distinct ... (view more)

Security company Symantec recently compiled a list naming the 50 most dangerous cities in the United States for cyber crime. Some of the top entries are big surprises. The rankings are based on those cities Symantec determined were most susceptible ... to a cyber attack, and factor in the number of high-risk activities and crimes committed in a particular state and city. The study wasn't all just about where cyber attacks take place, however. The study also also investigated other factors -- for example, if a city has a high use of public wireless Internet or network access (WiFi), hosts many ... (view more)

Microsoft says that not only will they benefit from sales of its new Windows 7 operating system (OS), but the local economy could benefit from it too. Microsoft hired research firm IDC Corp to conduct a study on the ripple affect of Windows 7 which ... launched on October 22nd this year. Estimates from the IDC study found that American companies could hire 25,000 additional workers through the end of 2010. Sales of Win7 Products Estimated at $110B Microsoft's launch of Windows 7 can affect tech companies that depend on Microsoft's software. Some companies make computer hardware, others produce ... (view more)

While an increasing number of businesses are encouraging their employees to listen to music in the hopes of making them happier and thus increasing production, most U.S. bosses are taking an opposite approach to social networking sites like Twitter ... or Facebook, with more than half of all companies banning them from the workplace. The finding comes from a recent study by Robert Half Technology, an IT company -- appropriate, since most of the time it's a company's local IT rep who's responsible for setting out which sites are okay and which are not for employees to visit on company time. ... (view more)

What do you think of when you imagine the typical video gamer? A pre-teen hopped up on 7-Eleven slushies and processed cheese nachos twiddling his PlayStation 3 controller in front of the boob tube at 3am? You might be wrong. A recent study found ... that the average age of gamers is surprisingly high, and that the average player might also be overweight and understandably unhappy about it. This most recent study was launched by researchers from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. They examined approximately 552 adults between the ages of 19 and 90, most from the Pacific Northwest, ... (view more)

According to a new study, more than 40 per cent of the world's software is pirated. The study also claims the software industry lost $53 billion to pirates last year, though that figure has a major flaw in its calculation. According to the Business ... Software Alliance (BSA), the United States has the world's lowest piracy rate, with just 20% of software being unlicensed. However, the size of its software market means the losses have the biggest financial value, totaling $9.8 million last year. Across the world, the study found that while piracy dropped in the majority of countries, the ... (view more)

How much of your time does Facebook consume? According to a recent study, most college students that use Facebook also admitted to lower grade point averages than those who said they did not have an account on the popular social networking site. ... It's pretty obvious that most 9-to-5 employers feel Facebook wastes time, decreases productivity, and generally hurts the work ethic of employees. Thus, it's not particularly surprising that this recent Ohio State University study found that of those student participants who used Facebook, grade-point averages (GPA) hovered around 3.0 to 3.5 -- ... (view more)

Think video games are wasting away a new generation of frag-happy, overweight teens? Nutritionists might have good reason to be worried, but optometrists could soon be pushing action games on patients after a recent study found they can actually ... improve eye sight. According to a study launched by the University of Rochester in New York, those participants who played a significant amount of action video games were better able to differentiate between varying shades of gray. Doesn't sound notable? Well, researchers believe it could actually help people see at night, particularly when they're ... (view more)

A recent study conducted by NSS Labs revealed that of the six most-used browsers, Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) RC1 is "head and shoulders" above Firefox, Safari and Chrome in its ability to detect and block socially-engineered malware. ... Socially-engineered malware is considered to be among the most prevalent computer viruses in existence. The infection process becomes a very familiar scenario: a user is enticed to visit an external website and agrees to the malware download under false pretences. NSS reported on the dangers of these attacks many times in the last year, urging users to constantly ... (view more)

How do you feel about color? Does black depress you? Does yellow lift your spirits? Does red make your brain scream, 'alert!'? According to a recent study, color might actually have a significant impact on the way we feel and the way we work -- and ... the findings might even help companies improve productivity as the economy continues to struggle . In a fascinating study unveiled by University of British Columbia (UBC) researchers this week, certain colors were found to have drastically different effects on cognitive skills and even creativity. According to the group's findings, participants ... (view more)