Brain and Behavior
Japanese consumers know rice. And nearly 80 percent of them "know" that California grown rice is inferior to domestically produced rice, and maintain they can tell the difference. The perception plays a significant part in justifying Japanese trade restrictions on imported rice. But can they really tell the difference? "The answer is, 'no,'" said Ken Chinen, professor of international business at California State University, Sacramento. "In blind tests they cannot tell the difference even though they say they can."
Gambling is widespread -- and spreading -- in American society with 82 percent of individuals interviewed having gambled in the past year, according to a national survey conducted at the University at Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions (RIA) and reported in the Winter 2002 issue of the Journal of Gambling Studies. Previous surveys found gambling participation at 61 percent (1975) and 63 percent (1998). The two most common types of gambling identified in the RIA study were lottery (66 percent) and raffles/office pools/charity gambling (48 percent).
Intel this week launches the Itanium 2 server processor. The company is betting big that it can convince companies which build servers to use the new chip as ubiquitously as PC makers now employ its lower-end CPUs. But the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) reports Intel has its work cut out. By Intel's own admission, most corporate clients are already plenty happy with the oomph their existing 32-bit processors provide. And for folks that need supercomputer-level power, clustering many weaker, but far cheaper chips may provide an appealing cost-benefit ratio. Yes, there is that segment --- which in revenue terms is substantial --- willing to pay a premium for 64-bit processors. But in that arena Intel will compete with entrenched products from IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Sun. Finally, if and when all those dragons are slain, pokey old Advanced Micro Devices is coming round the bend with a new line of "Hammer" chips that feature both 32- and 64-bit capability. Five years from now it'll be a kick to read a "The Soul of a New Machine"-style chronicle of how Intel handles the coming slugfest.
Hand it to eBay CEO Meg Whitman: She knows a bargain when she sees it. The online auction giant said Monday it would buy PayPal for about $1.5 billion. That's a fair enough price by any reckoning for the Internet's most popular electronic payment service. But when the teeming masses of eBay bidders and sellers get thrown into the mix, PayPal truly becomes a bargain. Indeed, with the right marketing it could one day join the likes of Visa and MasterCard among the heavy hitters of consumer payments. It was just as smart for PayPal's board to see recognize which way the wind's blowing. As Reuters notes, the company already derives about 60 percent of its business from eBay.
Vaccinating hundreds of thousands of Americans would be more effective in the case of an intentional or accidental outbreak of smallpox than a more limited "ring" plan endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some specialists believe. "Mass vaccination really leads to fewer deaths than the CDC interim plan," Lawrence Wein of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology told Reuters. Besides, he said, if there were a smallpox attack, "I think it highly likely that people would take to the streets to demand vaccination, or would flee." Of course, the smallpox vaccine could be fatal or severely debilitating for many people, including those with common skin conditions like eczema and psoriasis.
