rail fail - The Sociable

Irish Rail: Twitter, social networking and keeping commuters updated

3.01K

Following on from our article on Wednesday we talked to Irish Rail spokesman Barry Kenny about Twitter, user comments, and the company's plans for their social networking future.

Stranded Irish Rail passengers ask a driver questions

Social Media

Irish Rail’s signal and points failure and its failure to make a point

Piers Dillon Scott10 years ago

2.45K

According to Irish Rail today's delay on the northern line was caused by a signal failure but this was not the only failure Irish Rail encountered - they also suffered a social media public relations failure.

Brains Byte Back

The weekly podcast looking at how our brains, psychology, and society are impacted by the ever-evolving technology that surrounds us. Every Monday we bring you the best stories and guests from around the world relating to technology, psychology, and society.

Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku once said, “The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10,000 other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe.”

Our brain is undeniably an incredibly complex and impressive object, and this is best demonstrated with brain plasticity, a term that refers to the brain’s ability to change and adapt as a result of experience.

Listen to this podcast on Spotify, Anchor, Apple Podcasts, Breaker, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Overcast, Listen Notes, PodBean, and Radio Public.

To better understand how the brain does this and the processes that take place when we learn new skills, we spoke with Alicia Walf, Ph.D., a neuroscientist and a senior lecturer in the Department of Cognitive Science at Rensselaer.

Walf studies the brain mechanisms of stress and reproductive hormones as they relate to behavior and cognition, brain plasticity, and brain health over the lifespan. Her specific areas of expertise are memory, emotions, and social interactions and how these functions not only arise from the brain but change the brain itself.

In this episode, Walf explains how the job of London cab drivers impacts their hippocampus (the area of the brain responsible for memory), how capable we are to retrain in tech jobs relating to cyber and coding at a later age, and what studies on frequent video game players vs novices show us about brain plasticity. She also discusses how the olfactory sense can help us better understand dementia and memory.