Washington, Oct. 3: Barack Obama's campaign for the White House is receiving increasing complaints about scam pollsters involved in dirty tricks operations to discredit the Democratic candidate.

According to a report appearing in The Guardian, victims claim the fake pollsters work insinuations into their questions, designed to damage Obama.

Those targeted in swing states such as Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania include Jews, Christian evangelicals, Catholics and Latinos.

Washington, Oct 3: NASA scientists are hoping to hear what Mars sounds like when they attempt to switch on the Phoenix Mars Lander’s microphone in the next week or two.

Phoenix’s microphone is a part of the Mars Descent Imager system (MARDI) that was included on the underside of the lander to take downward-looking images during the three minutes of descent before the spacecraft touched down on the planet’s surface.

The MARDI on Phoenix was originally designed for the Mars Surveyor 2001 Lander missions, which were eventually canceled.

Washington, Oct 3 : Your faith in the almighty could help you become more helpful, honest and generous, but only under certain psychological conditions, says a new study by University of British Columbia researchers.

For the study, the scientists analyzed the past three decades of social science research.

UBC social psychologists Ara Norenzayan and Azim Shariff said that religious people are more likely than the non-religious to engage in prosocial behaviour - acts that benefit others at a personal cost - when it enhances the individual''s reputation or when religious thoughts are freshly activated in the person''s mind.

Washington, Oct 3: Want to know why some people are not musically talented? Well, a new study has revealed that that trained musicians use both sides of their brains more frequently than average people.

The Vanderbilt University psychologists have found that professionally trained musicians more effectively use a creative technique called divergent thinking, and use both the left and the right sides of their frontal cortex more heavily than the average person.

Washington, Oct 3: Economists across the board still have a lot of concerns with the financial rescue bill passed by the US Senate.

Interviews conducted with a dozen prominent academic economists, Obama supporters as well as McCain supporters, found little support for the bailout bill.

Indeed, even the one economist who supported the proposal passed by the Senate on Wednesday night had serious reservations, FOX News reported.

Washington, Oct 3 : A new study by researchers at the University of Missouri has suggested that advergames are more effective as a way of developing positive consumer attitudes towards a particular product.

During the study, researchers found that consumers expressed a strong positive relationship towards brands when they played advergames with strong thematic connections to the products advertised.

In the study, participants played two advergames, both with either high or low thematic connection to the brand.

Thematic connection refers to the degree that the object of the advergame relates to the brand’s product or services.