Month: August 2017

Enlarge (credit: flickr user: Artiom Gorgan)

Psychology and many related fields are in the midst of what can be viewed as a coming-of-age crisis. Following a stream of depressing revelations about a lack of reliability in the field, lots of researchers are dedicating themselves to improving the discipline’s rigor.

The latest proposal to up that rigor is a big one: 72 researchers from a range of disciplines have drafted a manuscript arguing that the threshold for claiming “statistical significance” should become much stricter. There’s often a fair amount of consensus on how science could be improved, but this suggestion has stimulated some intense debate.

Statistical significance in a very small nutshell

Statistical significance is a concept underlying a huge amount of science—not just psychology or social sciences, but medicine, life sciences, and physical sciences, too. “Significance” used in this way doesn’t mean the importance or size of a finding, rather it's the probability of that finding showing up in your data even though your hypothesis turns out to be wrong.

Enlarge / Toyota President Akio Toyoda, left, and Mazda President and CEO Masamichi Kogai, right, shake hands during a photo session at a joint press conference on August 4, 2017 in Tokyo, Japan. (credit: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images)

On Friday, Toyota Motor Corp. and Mazda Motor Corp. signed a deal to enter into an alliance. As part of the plan, the pair will build a new factory in the US and develop new electric vehicles and connected car and autonomous driving systems. Each company will purchase five percent of the other's shares.

In May 2015, the two companies entered into a partnership to explore avenues of mutual benefit, sharing complementary technologies. This new deal strengthens that partnership.

The site of the new $1.6 billion US factory is yet to be determined, but it's planned to be an equal venture between Mazda and Toyota. The site will employ up to 4,000 workers and produce around 300,000 vehicles a year starting in 2021. Mazda says it will produce CUVs for the North American market at the new plant, and Toyota will use it to build Corollas. As a result, Toyota's new factory in Mexico will instead shift to production of the Tacoma pickup truck instead.

Enlarge / Sweet hat, Crash.

Crash Bandicoot generally doesn't get the same kind of love as classic gaming mascots like Mario and Sonic in gaming's nostalgia-obsessed zeitgeist. So the success of the recent Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy re-release is taking even publisher Activision by surprise, and it has the company thinking about reviving other classic properties.

N.Sane Trilogy was the top-selling game globally for the month of June, Activision said during a recent conference call, despite being only available on one console for two days of the month. The game was also the most downloaded title on PSN for July, according to Sony, results that "outperform[ed] even our most optimistic expectations" as Activision put it. That success is even leading to what's probably the first ever example of some popular Crash Bandicoot-themed memes.

"We knew that there was a passionate audience out there for Crash—full disclosure, myself among them—but we had no idea..." Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg said in an earnings call yesterday. "It's hard to tell if that's a vocal minority or that's a real mass audience until you put something out there. Crash has surpassed all of our expectations by a pretty wide margin."

Enlarge (credit: Sunu)

As some Fitbit wearers find amusing ways to skip steps—attaching the devices to hamster balls, ceiling fans, and power tools—a new wrist gadget aims to make sure others never miss one.

The Sunu band smartwatch, designed for people with visual impairments, uses a sonar sensor to detect objects and people within a 15-foot range. When it does, it gently vibrates to alert the wearer, changing intensity as an object or person gets closer. Wearers can also customize it using an iPhone app via Bluetooth, adjusting for walking speed and to make buzzes stronger or weaker.

Sunu, a company based in Boston and Guadalajara, Mexico, will start shipping the devices for $249 to $299 later this month.