Who would have thought it? According to a press release, six major conventions and tradeshows—The American Baseball Coaches Association, the Mid-American Horticultural Trade Show, the International Air-Conditioning, Heating, Refrigerating Expo, and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons—are heading to Chicago in January, bringing about $60 million to the city.

I know the Society of Thoracic Surgeons is a relocation from New Orleans (as is the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, which is headed to Chicago in March), since I talked to them for an article in Medical Meetings, but it sounds like the others were already on the books. I bet the Chicago CVB has its party hat on—what a way to start 2006.

After analyzing the Mona Lisa with “emotion recognition” software developed with researchers at the University of Illinois, the experimenters “concluded that the subject was 83% happy, 9% disgusted, 6% fearful and 2% angry, New Scientist magazine was told,” according to a BBC article. Some day in the not too distant future, you won’t have to rely on evaluations to determine how your meeting went—you’ll be able to just take some snapshots of the crowd, run it through the software, and let the results speak for themselves. Or not. But it’s a strange thing to think about, isn’t it?

The article also says that this new capability “could lead to PCs that adjust their response depending on the user’s mood,” which could make online learning a whole new ballgame.

I don’t know about you, this picture could make me smile on the most rotten of days. There are lots more at Cute Overload.

(Thanks to BoingBoing for the pointer. I needed that!)