Do You Love Me?

Playing the random "He loves me, he loves me not" game is not the best way to determine if the object of your affection returns your feelings.

However, new research from Carnegie Mellon suggests that perhaps the best way to have your partner love you is to show him/her love first. Published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, the study offers a direct measure of perceived partner closeness, or how to gauge if he or she does in fact love you. Read more.

Related links: Journal of Social and Personal Relationships | Jennifer M. Tomlinson | Department of Psychology

Oracle and Curriki Release Curriculum for Alice

The Oracle Academy, an educational initiative of Oracle, and Curriki, a nonprofit, global community for sharing educational resources, are working to make a curriculum for Carnegie Mellon University's Alice software widely available to secondary school teachers and students. Read more.

Related links: Oracle Academy | Curriki | Alice software

Phone Game

A silly telephone game that became a viral phenomenon in Pakistan has demonstrated some serious potential for teaching poorly educated people about automated voice services and provided a new tool for them to learn about jobs, say researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Pakistan's Lahore University of Management Sciences.

The game, called Polly, is simplicity itself: a caller records a message and Polly adds funny sound effects, such as changing a male's voice to a female voice (or vice versa), or making the caller sound like a drunk chipmunk. The caller can then forward the message to one or more friends, who in turn can forward it along or reply to it. Read more.

Related links: Polly | Language Technologies Institute | CHI 2013