Plus: The World’s Largest Train Set, the Colbert Space Station Module and Did Smiles Lead to the Economy’s Collapse?

Does seeing a happy face encourage people to take risks they wouldn’t normally? According to a graduate student at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, it would.

At the Cognitive Neuroscience Society meeting in San Francisco last month, grad student Julie Hall presented experiments in which 12 male and 12 female volunteers played an investment game where they had to choose between investing in a “safe” bond and two riskier stocks. As with real-world stocks the safe option varied throughout the game. The rational strategy would be to invest in the safe bond, which is what participants mostly chose, but only when they were shown an image of an emotionless face before each round.

Volunteers who were shown a smiling face were more likely to choose the risky stocks. How long the face was displayed — fleetingly or long enough for volunteers to register it consciously — did not affect their decision to pick risky stocks.

During the experiment, the volunteers’ brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging. The MRI revealed that risky decisions were preceded by activity in the nucleus accumbens, while the safe bets followed excitation in the anterior insular cortex.

Similar results were found in an earlier investment game by Brian Knutson, a psychologist at Stanford University. According to Knutson, the nucleus accumbens is activated when we are anticipating a reward. “In a rising market, stoking activity in the nucleus accumbens is advantageous,” Hall argues. New Scientist adds that “the problem comes when stimulation of this brain circuitry is out of whack with the likelihood of things turning out well.”

Off-the-Wall Tax Deductions
With the tax filing deadline fast approaching, there are many filers out there trying to figure out creative ways to get tax deductions. Some have tried to write off $35,000 dance lessons to a wedding as a business expense and claim New York City as a dependent.

Bankrate has released its fourth installment of wacky tax deductions, which includes some that were approved by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Among the unusual write-offs:

• Dogs and dog food — One pet lover claimed his dog as a dependent, another tried to write-off dog food for his “home security system” and yet another who claimed the dog as a landscaping subcontractor.
• Trees for charity — A Texas woman dug up her trees and donated them to charity. The IRS let it slide after she had an appraiser valuate the trees.
• Toilet paper — A newly self-employed filer attempted to deduct toilet paper for his house as a business expense.
• Ex-husband’s possessions — A newly divorced woman donated her ex-husband’s belongings to Goodwill after their divorce (he cheated on her and never came back). The charitable donations almost equaled her annual income. However, she could only deduct 50 percent of her gross income and wound up with $15,000 in contributions. She was never audited.

For more tax hijinks, see the first, second and third installment of unexpected tax deductions.

World’s Largest Train Set
German brothers Frederick and Gerrit Braun have built the world’s largest train set, covering 12,380 sq. ft.

And they’re still not finished. They began building the “Miniatur Wonderland” in 2000 and expect to complete the project in 2014, when the train set will cover more than 19,376 sq. ft.

After more than £8 million ($11,840 million) and 500,000 hours, the set has 700 trains — including one that is 46 ft. long — 900 signals, 2,800 buildings, 4,000 cars — many with illuminated headlights — and 160,000 individually designed figures. More than 4,000 kg (8,818 lbs) of steel was used to construct the scenery along with 700 kg (1,543 lbs) of artificial grass.

The set is on display to the public in Hamburg, but you can watch the trains in action below.

Accidental Inventions
Sometimes brilliant innovations are created on accident. These include the following tasty treats:

• The Popsicle — In 1905, 11-year-old Frank Epperson left a mixture of powdered soda, water and stir stick out on the porch one night when temperatures in San Francisco reached a record low. The next morning, he discovered that it had frozen to the stir stick, creating a fruit-flavored ice treat that he named the Epsicle. He didn’t patent it until 18 years later and renamed it the Popsicle.
• Chocolate chip cookies — Sometimes running out of ingredients can be a good thing. According to About.com: Inventors, Ruth Wakefield (owner of the Toll House Inn) ran out of regular baker’s chocolate for chocolate cookies so she substituted broken pieces of semi-sweet chocolate thinking they would melt and mix with the batter. They didn’t and thus the chocolate chip cookie was born.
• Potato chips — In response to a customer complaining their potatoes were too thick and soggy, lodge cook George Crum decided to slice the potatoes so thin that they couldn’t be eaten with a fork, according to KitchenProject.com. The customer was so ecstatic about them that they became a regular “house specialty” item on the lodge’s menu under the name “Saratoga Chips.”

For more accidental inventions, visit Listverse.com.

The Colbert Space Station Module
Encouraging the public to be part of space history, NASA opened up the naming of its new module for the International Space Station to the general public. Node 3 will serve as a control tower and observation deck.

NASA hosted an online vote from Feb. 19 through March 20, when people were asked to choose between Earthrise, Legacy, Serenity, Venture or write in a name. Space.com added that “[the write-in name] would likely represent a dark horse in the race.”

That dark horse’s name is Colbert. Comedian Stephen Colbert and host of Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report urged his viewers to write in his name and they enthusiastically complied. With 230,539 votes, Colbert clobbered Serenity by more than 40,000 votes.

Although Colbert is not the guaranteed name as NASA reserves the right to choose the name, agency spokesman John Yembrick said NASA will give top vote-getters “the most consideration.” NASA will announce the winning name at Node 3′s unveiling on April 28.
Toodles!