Of the 23,160 Facebook applications, I use about 5, but I probably wouldn’t notice if someone randomly removed all of them from my profile in the middle of the night. Kids these days. I used to play BlockStar, but haven’t used it since it changed to Tetris (formerly BlockStar) and haven’t played Scrabulous since my 1,000,000th consecutive loss. What Facebook applications do you use (or not use)?

A new study has found that it may be possible to train people to be more intelligent, increasing the brainpower they had at birth.

Until now, it had been widely assumed that the kind of mental ability that allows us to solve new problems without having any relevant previous experience — what psychologists call fluid intelligence — is innate and cannot be taught (though people can raise their grades on tests of it by practicing).

But in the new study, researchers describe a method for improving this skill, along with experiments to prove it works.

The key, researchers found, was carefully structured training in working memory — the kind that allows memorization of a telephone number just long enough to dial it. This type of memory is closely related to fluid intelligence, according to background information in the article, and appears to rely on the same brain circuitry. So the researchers reasoned that improving it might lead to improvements in fluid intelligence.

First they measured the fluid intelligence of four groups of volunteers using standard tests. Then they trained each in a complicated memory task, an elaborate variation on Concentration, the child’s card game, in which they memorized simultaneously presented auditory and visual stimuli that they had to recall later.

The game was set up so that as the participants succeeded, the tasks became harder, and as they failed, the tasks became easier. This assured a high level of difficulty, adjusted individually for each participant, but not so high as to destroy motivation to keep working. The four groups underwent a half-hour of training daily for 8, 12, 17 and 19 days, respectively. At the end of each training, researchers tested the participants’ fluid intelligence again. To make sure they were not just improving their test-taking skills, the researchers compared them with control groups that took the tests without the training.

The results, published Monday in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were striking. Although the control groups also made gains, presumably because they had practice with the fluid intelligence tests, improvement in the trained groups was substantially greater. Moreover, the longer they trained, the higher their scores were. All performers, from the weakest to the strongest, showed significant improvement.

“Intelligence has always been considered principally an immutable inherited trait,” said Susanne M. Jaeggi, a postdoctoral fellow in psychology at the University of Michigan and a co-author of the paper. “Our results show you can increase your intelligence with appropriate training.”

Why did the training work? The authors suggest several aspects of the exercise relevant to solving new problems: ignoring irrelevant items, monitoring ongoing performance, managing two tasks simultaneously and connecting related items to one another in space and time.

No one knows how long the gains will last after training stops, Dr. Jaeggi said, and the experiment’s design did not allow the researchers to determine whether more training would continue to produce further gains.

Mesothelioma is described as localized if the cancer is found only on the membrane surface where it originated. It is classified as advanced if it has spread beyond the original membrane surface to other parts of the body, such as the lymph nodes, lungs, chest wall, or abdominal organs.

Thanks to our friends over at Facebook, you can now import your dugg stories directly into your mini-feed (no application needed). Simply visit your profile, find your mini-feed, click on the ‘import’ link, and enter your Digg username.

So why does this matter? Once you enable this feature the stories you digg will not only post to your mini-feed, but also syndicate to your friends through the main Facebook news feed. This helps further our mission of spreading the news you care about, to the people you care about.

Digg on,

Kevin

If you’re reading this, chances are you have a Facebook profile. You might not spend every waking moment on the network, but you’ve got your own page. And we’re also willing to assume many of you have accounts with other Web services, too. Like Flickr. Or Picasa. Or Del.icio.us, Digg, or Yelp. Heck, maybe all of them, even.

If you count yourself a registree of any of the sites and services mentioned above, Facebook wants to make your life a little easier. The network’s developers have taken the initiative to offer you their own twist on the lifecasting craze (i.e., FriendFeed). Enter, the brand-new option to import stories into your Mini-Feed.

Now, how important this release is to you depends on how invested you are in any services listed here, sans FriendFeed. But if you’re anything like us here at Mashable, and you’ve got yourself set up to post photos, share bookmarks, vote on stories, and other things that could possibly be of import to your social connections on your personal network(s), this addition to the site is quite a welcome one. It really just makes things a whole lot less hassle when you’re occupied with duties other than, you know, poking people.

Note: Facebook isn’t yet offering a connection to Digg. Only Flickr, Picasa, Del.icio.us, and Yelp are plugged in at the moment. But a Digg option will come soon enough. In the words of Facebook’s Harry Huai Wang, the company “will be adding Digg and other sites in the near future.” So hold tight. The first four active are just the starter set. More choices are to be added.