OCT 06
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Zilch at ITPEC
Really Magazine likes to draw attention ( on a regular basis ) to the fact that hydrogen – the gas which the oil companies would love you to embrace as the basis of their envisioned ‘ new economy ’ – is fiercely explosive.
If any leaks out of a vehicle tank – and it’s the ‘ leakiest ‘ gas known to science – then it’s definitely best that you’re somewhere else.
But researchers from Moscow’s Institute of Thermal Physics of Extreme Conditions aren’t standing idly by. Using their custom-made 12 metre diameter spherical blasting chamber, they have been investigating the use of various inhibitor chemicals to pacify the dramatic explosive power of a hydrogen fireball.
In an admirably contrary Russian way, they decided to mix the H2 with three other highly volatile and inflammable gases : propane, butane and propylene.
Their hunch proved correct, and, in the right proportions, it’s claimed that the additive mixture which they’ve developed can reduce the blast pressure by up to thirty times.
“ Instead of blowing up, the dangerous mixture simply burns down - and there is zilch in place of explosion ! “
Read the full story here on the almost unfailingly engaging Russian science
newswire ‘ Informnauka ‘.
31 OCT 06
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Location, location - how %#¥?£$#&% much ?
Yesterday’s Daily Telegraph alerts us to a possible probable new high-tech scheme to work out the levels of ‘ council tax ’.
[ For non UK readers, the Council Tax is a replacement for the old ‘rates’ system - which taxed property owners - to one which taxes the residents themselves instead - so is, in essence, a tax on ‘ living somewhere ’. ]
Until now, it could be said that the levels of tax have been a touch anomalous in some areas. So, for example, residents in a very well-off London borough – say Westminster – can find themselves paying less than half of the tax levied on residents of similar properties in poorer boroughs on the other side of the same street – e.g. Camden.
According to the Telegraph , the government’s new idea is to utilise a sophisticated software suite to set the taxes for some 21 million homes. The Computer Assisted Mass Appraisal (CAMA) System will gauge the tax levels by using ‘ intelligent proximity analysis ‘ – and works from a database which lists 287 ‘ geo-demographic lifestyle variables ‘ such as crime levels, school exam results, and, somewhat controversially, ethnicity and ' cohabiting ' levels.
Unfortunately, The Telegraph doesn’t give us any specific
details regarding the software, and Really magazine has no details
either - although we could wildly speculate that it might perhaps be somewhat
similar to property-tax-rating
software called ‘ Spatialest ‘ (
G00gle it ) which the Govt. has been guinea-pigging testing in Northern
Ireland since March 2004. It’s managing to substantially re-configure
the anomalous nature of the property-based tax system.
In place of ‘ intelligent proximity analysis ‘ the software uses the striking similar sounding ‘ intelligent property attributes ‘ – and extensively leans towards Prof. Waldorf Tobler’s First law of Geography : who revealed, in 1970, that :
“ everything is related to everything else, but near things are more
related than distant things “
The results so far ?
Some Northern Ireland residents are seeing their bills reduced, and others
apparently have already received 2007/8 tax-estimates - increased
by almost 400%.
Reader Carmelita points out that:
' . . . neighbourhoods that improved their houses
and streets by painting and planting flowers and trees would be rewarded
for their efforts by an
increased tax levy. Another increase would be incurred by installing double
glazing in an effort to reduce energy use. '
30 OCT 06 ( late edition - thanks to our ISP )
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Link of the day :
Environmentally friendly fire ( from The Times , Sept. 17 )
( thanks to Tony at Other Men's Flowers for drawing it to our attention )
Money and power ( electrical )
Researchers from Rutgers University and the Baylor College of Medicine recently conducted experiments exploring the role of fear in decision making - and found that money can influence conditioning, and brain mechanisms associated with fear.
Participants
( students ? ) played a ‘gambling game’ – in which they
were guaranteed to win $59 – whilst hooked up to functional magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI) machines which monitored their brain’s electrical
activities. But during the experiment, they also had to endure losing $6
and, at other times, a mild electric shock.
Subsequent analysis of the fMRI data showed little difference between the two unpleasantnesses.
" This suggests that money, a secondary reinforcement that acquires its properties through social and cultural means, can influence the conditioning and underlying mechanisms in the brain that lead to learning about fear, similar to how a biologically based reinforcement would "
Or, looked at from a broader perspective :
" Neuroscience and economics have long been cousin disciplines for the mere fact that organisms run on batteries "
The findings were presented at a recent meeting of the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Atlanta.
27 OCT 06
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Enhanced Cubicity Revisited.
It was just over a year ago that Really Mag drew attention to a Saab 93 SportsWagon press ad.
At the time, the car an impressive luggage carrying capacity of " 1273 cubic litres ".
We like to imagine that it might have been due in part to our small effort that, a few weeks later, a corrected version of the ad ( ‘cubic’ dropped ) was seen running in the press.
But now it’s back ! 
This time a double page spread in the Oct 19th issue of the London Review of Books .
The car now has its full 1273 cubic litres of storage space back again - and we can also reveal that it’s:
• 4654 linear millimetres long,
• can pull a trailer of 1,600 weight kilograms,
• and has seating capacity
for five
person
people.
25 OCT 06 (late)
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Lost in machine translation.
Today, New Scientist and the BBC are s running a story about ‘ the next best thing to a Babel-Fish. ‘
Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, are developing a machine-translation device which analyses tiny electrical signals produced by muscles in the human vocal tract to work out which phonemes are being spoken.
Once the system has worked out the phoneme sequence, it can then translate the speech into another language – for audio output.
The approach is surprising, since one might guess that it would be far easier to take the usual route and identify the phonemes via a microphone.
The device’s current phoneme-sequence accuracy is 62% - but the New Scientist article doesn’t say what that represents in terms of word accuracy.
Really Magazine makes a wild guess that it could be substantially less.
Intriguing as the story is, the Language Technologies Institute (LTI) at Carnegie Mellon is involved with a swathe of other translation projects, some of which would seem, at first glance, to completely overshadow the Quasi-Babel-Fish.
For example : GALE ( Global Autonomous Language Exploitation ).
“ The goal of the GALE program is to develop and apply computer software technologies to absorb, analyze and interpret huge volumes of speech and text in multiple languages. “
The multi (50?) million dollar five year taxpayer-funded project has the aim of developing software engines which can process, with 95% accuracy, naturally-occurring speech and text from :
• Broadcast news (radio, television)
• Talk shows (studio, call-in)
• Newswire
• Newsgroups
• Weblogs
and, of course
• Telephone conversations
which ‘ will meet requirements for utilization by military personnel. ‘
The target languages ? English, Chinese and Arabic [ plus some ‘ surprise languages ‘ to be announced later. Place your bets here : ]
Bearing in mind the huge scale of the project, its technical challenges, and the social implications, it’s perhaps surprising that it has managed to stay pretty much under the mainstream media-radar so far ?
Perhaps we missed it.
؟ ؟ ؟
Other LTI projects include :
• the Building a Digital Aristotle project
• and the Communication with Dolphins project
( shame Douglas Adams isn't still around )
Reader Geoff H comments :
From what I can gather, the idea behind not using a microphone is that you can whisper (or possibly even just mouth) the words, so that listeners hear just the translation. Clever stuff if it works.
Reader Malcolm wonders :
Can the proposed system deal with management speak?
25 OCT 06
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' Ample Delicious Food Cues ' ( perils of )
If you ‘ have difficulty controlling your intake at restaurants ‘ – you might want to read this report ( in the upcoming Nov. issue of Western Journal of Nursing Research )
Researchers interviewed 71 female non-purge ‘ binge eaters ‘ – and found that no less than 30% of binges occurred at restaurants.
The team are therefore raising the highly plausible conjecture that perhaps :
“ . . . restaurants may be high-risk eating environments for nonpurge binge eaters. “
25 OCT 06
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Link of the day (2)
From MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Link of the day
The art of xxxxxxxxxxxxx : from the Guardian's arts editor in chief's blog today.
No atmosphere
The Haidian District Court in Beijing ruled on Friday to uphold the trading ban on the ‘ Lunar Embassy of China ‘ – a corporation who would like to sell plots of land on the Moon.
The Lunar Embassy has in mind a ‘ certificate ‘ which proclaims property ownership, including rights to use the land - and minerals up to 3 kilometres underground.
There's a loophole in the The 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty , which prohibits signatory countries from owning land on the Moon – but not individuals or companies.
However, the later ( 1979 ) ‘ Moon Agreement ‘ :
“ provides that the Moon and its natural resources are the common heritage of mankind and that an international regime should be established to govern the exploitation of such resources when such exploitation is about to become feasible. “
So far though, only 12 countries have ratified the agreement : and China’s not one of them.
Leading Really Magazine to speculate whether perhaps the Chinese Govt. would quite like to stake some future claims there itself ?
[ Editor's note : That’s bearing in mind that the US, UK, Russia and Japan also haven’t signed it yet either – let alone ratified it . . . ]
Update :
The entrepreneur behind the Chinese moon-land operation has landed another lawsuit this week – after his attempt to gain a permit to sell ‘ World Cup Air ’ ( in bags ) was blocked by the local trade bureau.
ChinaDaily reports the story in full here
: ( except the bit about the ' UN Moon Agreement ' . . . )
24 OCT 06
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Morlocks.
Really Magazine doesn’t often have occasion to link to stories from the UK’s Daily Telegraph – but today is a welcome exception.
The article in question is by professor Steve Jones – and when prof. Jones speaks, Really Magazine listens. [ please note : no relation whatever to the prof. Jones in the previous story ]
The refreshingly asymmetric Prof. Jones writes an amusing , insightful and much needed rebuttal to last week’s “ frankly daft “ story – from the London School of Economics ( LSE) enigmatically titled Evolutionary Moral Psychology Group - which suggested that “ a genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass “ may emerge in future human evolution. ( See the BBC's unquestioning coverage of the study here )
Prof. Jones's article doesn’t end on a high note though. He's more confident of an Einsteinian fate for humanity than a Darwinian one.
And presumably sooner too. Either way, all bets on the future existence
of Morlocks are off. [ please note : excludes Camden ]
23 OCT 06 (late)
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Fell ? Or were pushed ?
“ Every year since 1976 Project Censored has highlighted the exceptional stories that fell through the cracks of the mainstream news “.
And this year, their thirtieth anniversary, they are holding a Media Accountability Conference ( Nov. 3rd and 4th , Sonoma State Univ. CA. ) where they will officially launch Censored 2007 – a comprehensive guide to the 2006 news stories which should have been front page news – but weren’t.
Examples ?
• A (very) well-known American construction company ( registered in the Cayman Islands ) still selling nuke-tech components to Iran as late as 2005.
• Corporate sanctioned ‘crimes against humanity’ and ‘genocide’ in
the Congo.
And ( quote )
• “ The World Bank Funds Israel-Palestine Wall “
Going back to the conference, the keynote address will be from professor
Steven E. Jones ( Brigham
Young University ) who asks how the laws of physics appear
to have been defied when the WTC buildings collapsed.
23 OCT 06
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Segments of the speech ecosystem up for standardisation.
Back in June, Really Magazine published
a note about a new service called
GetHuman .
The website has an extensive list of tips / tricks / hacks to get around the automated call-answering services that many large corporations now use.
So, for example, if you want to speak to a rep at a certain major credit card company, the site reveals that if you just press '0' at each prompt, ignoring all the messages – then you’ll get straight through to a human operator.
The site's founder, Paul English , is now ( with the public's help
) developing a ‘standard’ for
call-answering services – called Earcon – to
which companies will have to adhere if they want to be awarded the Earcon-standard sticker. 
With ideas like :
“ if a human operator is available when a consumer calls, the human should answer the phone “
“ do not ever make a caller repeat any info provided during a call. “
“ while holding, allow caller to disable hold music. if you play ads or promotions, allow user to disable them. “
All of which you would think might have been common-sense design options for the system builders in the first place. Unless of course you assume that the companies concerned ( viz. designers and system customers ) are concentrating heavily on a single goal – cutting down the workforce and wagebill – rather than working to improve their customer relations.
؟ ؟ ؟
Not surprisingly perhaps, since the launch, the site has come in for a fair bit of attention from companies who design, install and operate such systems.
For a good overview of the current ' speech ecosystem ' , and the industry take on GetHuman, see this article in the current issue of CallCenter Magazine , which begins with this intriguing double entêndre -
“ Like much of the technology used in the
call center today, speech recognition tools are no longer on the sometimes
thrilling, sometimes intimidating
bleeding edge; now it's time to make them work. “
20 OCT 06
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Moderate physical pressure.
A huge survey, covering 27,000 people in 25 different countries has found that “ A majority of people around the world are opposed to torture “.
The poll, commissioned by the BBC World Service , was carried out by the international polling firm GlobeScan together with the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland.
The results showed that 59% of the world’s citizens felt that :
“ Clear rules against torture should be maintained because any use of torture is immoral and will weaken international human rights standards against torture. “
On the other hand , 29% were of the opinion :
“ Terrorists pose such an extreme threat that governments should now be allowed to use some degree of torture if it may gain information that saves innocent lives. “
The poll showed up some stark differences of opinion between countries. Of the those surveyed, Italians were the most anti-torture, where only 14% of those interviewed thought that ‘ some degree of torture ‘ should be allowed.
Contrasting sharply with Israel, the country at the bottom of the table, where just 43% thought that ‘ clear rules against torture should be maintained ‘.
Ironic perhaps, as the country doesn’t have clear rules - despite the fact that it ratified the Convention against Torture in 1991 - which categorically prohibits any use of torture under any circumstances.
Human Rights Watch put it this way in 2001 :
" In 1987, as a result of a series of scandals associated with torture of Palestinian suspects in detention, a Commission of Inquiry headed by then-Supreme Court Justice Moshe Landau concluded that ' exertion of a moderate measure of physical pressure ' should be allowed in interrogations. "
And what exactly is ' moderate physical pressure ' ? ( Google
it )
Full details of the report:
• here (PIPA)
• here ( Worldscan )
• and here (BBC)
Editor’s comment :
Oddly, though it was the BBC themselves who commissioned the study, a search today on the BBC news website for ‘ torture ’ , ‘ PIPA ’ , and ‘ Worldscan ’ fails to find any mention whatever of it.
Bearing in mind the extremely ‘hot’ nature of the subject, it’s peculiar to say the least that they should pay for a survey of 27,000 people , and then not heavily publicice the findings . . .
Did I miss it ? Or perhaps the results weren’t
quite 100% welcome in some quarters.
19 OCT 06
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Internet Video ; rights and wrongs
The Times is
worried about blogger’s rights.
Today’s piece ‘ Amateur 'video bloggers' under threat from EU broadcast rules ’ warns about proposed EU legislation – called the Television Without Frontiers directive .
If adopted , personal websites [ which use video clips ] :
“ would have to be licensed as a ‘ television-like service ‘. “ says the Times.
Could the entire future of moving-image-based internet be in serious jeopardy ? No more video uploads ? How about Flash ™ animations ? And even animated .gifs ?
The combined legal might of the entire EU aimed at confronting the amateur video bloggers ?
Or, has the Times got it wrong ?
Or has Really Magazine thoroughly misunderstood how the proposals would work ?
To help clarify, here’s a clause from the EU-commissioned draft report about the new directives, which was released at the end of August
“ non-economic activities such as blogs and other user-generated contents without an economic objective and all forms of private communication such as e-mails and private websites, do not fall within the scope of the directive. “ ( our italics )
Seems pretty clear ?
Could there perhaps be other, business-orientated reasons why the UK Govt.’s media regulator Ofcom ” is also opposing the proposed directive “ ?
And little, if anything, to do with bloggers ?
• All the background on the new proposals can be found here.
• A wonderful example of an internet-based video clip here :
18 OCT 06 (late)
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Internetomania or not
Internet addiction : is it a problem ? asks a new study from the Stamford School of Medicine.
The school’s press release, issued yesterday, says a cautious ‘ maybe ’ :
“ Potential markers of problematic Internet use seem present in a sizeable proportion of adults “
But of course there’s naturally some dispute as to what constitutes ‘problematic ‘ use. Previous studies took the view that more than 30 hours per week of ‘ non essential ’ internet use was probably excessive.
The new research did underline though that a significant number of people try to hide their level of internet use, or use the internet to escape a negative mood.
“ In a sense, they’re using the Internet to ‘ self-medicate ‘ ”
However, whether Internetomania ( if it exists ) should really be considered an obsessive-compulsive disorder ( or not ) will certainly need further research.
“ this study was a necessary first step toward possibly identifying something clinically significant.”
[ The study was co-funded by a pharmaceutical company
which makes selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) – used
to treat obsessive-compulsive disorders. ]
Read the research here :
18 OCT 06
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mp what d'you say ?
How long could you listen to your mp3 player every day without ' greatly increasing your risk of hearing-loss ' ?
A new study from University of Colorado and Harvard Medical School , which was specifically concerned about hearing loss in children, goes some way towards providing an answer.
The team examined five different brands of mp3 players as well as four other models of earphones, and found that, if you turned up the sound level to full ( 100% ) you shouldn’t listen for more than 18 minutes ( in the best case ) or just 3 minutes ( in the loudest of the players ).
Listeners should bear in mind though that, according to the researchers, some of us have ‘ Tough Ears ’ and others have ‘ Tender Ears ’ ( which are more susceptible to damage.)
And, unfortunately,
“ . . . we have no way of predicting who has ‘tough’ ears and who has ‘tender’ ears. “
The findings will be presented at the NIHL in Children Conference , Cincinnati, OH, on Thursday.
More details here :
17 OCT 06
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New boiler
“ Studies into other household devices have highlighted a demand for more expensive, gadget based, domestic products. “
- and a recent press release from the UK's Bournemouth University alerts us to a new device addressing this need. The ‘ Bulbed Egg Maker ‘. (BEM)
The machine, developed via the university’s product design course, uses four 500W halogen lightbulbs to ‘ boil ’ an egg without water.
There are of course already boiled-egg makers on the market, but :
“ Currently available egg boilers are dull in appearance and offer the user little interest or stimulation.
They display an undeniable lack of innovation and novelty, to the age old process of boiling an egg.”
After cooking, which takes between 4.5 and 7.5 minutes, the top of the egg is faultlessly cut to a diameter of 4cm. with a force of 0.687N.
The invention was first displayed back in June at the university’s Festival of Design and Innovation , and was subsequently featured on BBC Radio Solent -
“ successfully cooking an egg live on air “
Full details can be found in the BEM brochure , available here :
Reader Carmelita comments :
" If he [ the inventor ] tones down the heat of the bulbs a bit, he could come up with a new incubator for eggs, or even premature babies (minus the decapitation mechanism, of course). "
16 OCT 06
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Link of the day :
snaebjornsdottirwilson.com have made available online an exhaustive directory of all known locations of stuffed polar bears in the UK.
The site has a clickable
map – viewed unconventionally ( yet perfectly
logically ) form the North – which links directly to photos of the
taxidermic bears in their respective locations.
13 OCT 06 (late)
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The DPRK’s unclear weapon ( and others )
The debate rolls on about whether the Democratic People's Republic of Korea really tested an N-weapon or not.
What is clear though, is that in other parts of the world, the testing of nuclear weapons is carrying on as usual.
Take this one for instance - which was carried out at the beginning of last month in Nevada.
The latest in a series of tests which are initiated underground and so don’t contravene the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty.
They're plutonium based, but the detonations are classed as ‘ subcritical ‘ because the amount of plutonium used is below the critical mass - and so, technically, there's no nuclear explosion.
Which means that they probably wouldn’t contravene the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) either – if it was in force . . . ( see note below )
If the CTBT ever does come into force, then there’s still the option of using enormous quantities of conventional explosives to ‘ simulate ‘ the effects of an N-weapon.
Like, say, this
one : originally scheduled for detonation in June 2006, but now on
hold, largely due to legal protests headed by Native
American groups whose
land would likely have been affected.
( The govt. now have it penciled in for 2007 – though a new test site has yet to be determined.)
؟ ؟ ؟
Note: The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty still hasn’t been fully ratified yet – so it’s not in force.
In the ten years of opportunity to ratify, 135 countries - e.g. Albania, Botswana, Liechtenstein, Madagascar, and Vanuatu managed to - but the US, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and the DPRK haven’t got around to it yet ( for some reason ).
Full table of signatory countries here
;
13 OCT 06
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Texan Testosterone Testing.
New ( soon to be published ) research from the University of Texas has examined
whether there might be a positive correlation between testosterone levels
and “ dominant behaviors when men attempt to
woo women. “
The experimental procedure involved a 7-minute videotaped ‘competition’ ( between groups of two men ) for the attention of “ a young, attractive woman.”
Their testosterone levels were plotted against their displays of “ overt dominant behaviors “ ( as rated by a panel of trained judges ) .
Results ?
“ Books, film and television often portray men who are bold and self-assured with members of the opposite sex as being high in testosterone. Our results offer evidence that there is a kernel of truth to this stereotype. “
• Read the full details
here
• Also see, the Sept. issue of ‘ Hormones and Behavior ’ for :
‘ Interspecies hormonal interactions between man and the domestic dog ‘
from one of the same authors.
12 OCT 06
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Harmonichaos
There’s still time to catch the Harmonichaos exhibition at the Paula Cooper Gallery in Soho, New York. ( until Oct 14th )
TimeOut NY describes it thus :
“ French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot has casually arranged 13 vacuum cleaners, hoses curled and metal tubes standing at attention. Their indicator lights glow green and each has a harmonica stuck in its nozzle . . . “
a bigger picture here
:
11 OCT 06 (late edition)
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An exclusive interview with the creators of Philica . . .
If you're an academic in any field, and you'd like to publish your
work quickly ( and have it peer-reviewed quickly too ) then you'll want to
read
this exclusive
interview with the creators of the on-line journal Philica .
. .
11 OCT 06
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Chop chop.
[ Editor’s comment : Dear readers, don’t be concerned that we have carried three ‘robot’ stories in rapid succession. It’s just a coincidence. ]
It cost about a quarter of a million dollars to develop, and the project
took more than four years, but now :
“ The robot is happy to fry, bake, boil and steam,
and can perform other special Chinese cooking actions. “
says a report in today’s ChinaView ( via. Shenzhen Economic Daily.)
The machine, confidently flagged as " the first cooking robot " is called AIC-AI , and can create “ thousands of Chinese dishes “ .
It deftly handles Shandong, Jiangsu, Guangdong and Sichuan regional cookery styles, reading a barcode programmed with the ingredients and the requisite movements.
It reportedly looks like ‘ a big fridge ’ ( presumably a fridge with arms ) though sadly, Really Magazine has failed to source a photo - if any readers can, pease let us know.
10 OCT 06
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AM system arrives in Penn.
It’s hard to imagine a scenario where the following sentence would
be appropriate :
" You could be sleeping and still milking cows."
But it makes perfect sense when applied to a new(ish) AM-system or, as we like to call it, a Robot Milking Machine.
“ Each robot can handle about 60 cows, most of which get milked two or three times per day. “
The robot costs $250,000 , but reduces labour costs substantially.
And how do the cows like it ?
“ Cows adapt to the one-at-a-time system much as college students who share an apartment learn to cope with having one bathroom “
bearing in mind though, as the manufacturer’s website puts it :
“ Robot milking is not just about the robot “
؟ ؟ ؟
• Read the full story here on CenterDaily : ( Central Pennsylvania’s Homepage )
• Further tech details re. the ins and outs of the machines here :
09 OCT 06 ( late edition - thanks to our ISP )
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Robotics in Beijing.
If you happen to be in Beijing on Monday morning, you’ll be able to catch the start of the highly extensive 2006 IEEE / RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.
a.k.a IROS 2006 ( runs 9th –15th Oct )
The theme of this year’s conference is :
‘ Fusion of Human and Robot Intelligence in our Cyber Society ‘
There’s an impressive list of talks from international experts in the field.
For example, on Wednesday, Prof. George A. Bekey , founder of the Robotics Research Laboratory at the University of Southern California , will be presenting :
‘ Co-existing with Robots ‘
His talk will review various aspects : Robots in the home, Robots in society , and slightly worryingly perhaps :
“ Robots in and on our bodies “.
There will also be live presentations of a truly huge list of robotics research papers, on topics as varied as Mobiligence, Underacutuated Two-link Manipulators, and Large Gymnastic Motions.
Some example titles :
“
Motion having a Flight Phase: Experiments Involving a One-Legged Robot “
“ A Mobile Robot that Performs Human Acceptable Motions “
“ A System for Robotic Heart Surgery that Learns to Tie Knots Using Recurrent Neural Networks “
Really Magazine is particularly unhappy to be missing this one – a
Freudian-slip allusion to prophetic hyperopia ?
“ An IEEE 1394 Based Real-Time Robot Control System for Efficient Controlling of Humanoids “
؟ ؟ ؟
• Full prog of events here :
• Full list of papers here:
؟ ؟ ؟
07 OCT 06 ( late edition )
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Scientific journal spotlight
This month, we focus on the online e-journal :
' The History of Madness in Canada. '
Published by Simon Fraser University , Burnaby, Canada.
Click here to view a ( fond ) message from the editor.
07 OCT 06
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‘Obesity Epidemic’ not restricted to West shock.
China now has 20,000,000 overweight adults - and, in large cities, the figure
is nearing 30% of the population.
Looking on the bright side though, the recent increases do mean that non-obese airline passenger will soon have more room.
Airlines are reportedly considering reducing the number of seats on new deliveries of Airbus 321s by twenty or so.
So says a Reuters report today –
06 OCT 06
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The 2006 Ig® Nobel prize ceremony . . .
Today, at 7.30 pm ( Boston time ).
There will be a Live Webcast of the event beginning at 7.20 pm ( Boston time ), or possibly even before, ( 7:15 pm U.S. Eastern time )
Then, on Saturday, there will be a series of (free) informal lectures at the Ray and Maria Stata Center, Kirsch Auditorium, MIT Building 32, Room 123 ( starting at 1.00 pm ( Boston time ? ))
- in which the new Ig® Nobel Prize winners will attempt to
explain what they did - and why they did it.
Do not miss.
05 OCT 06
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H O W much ?
It’s fairly easy to work out how much your car is worth. There are directories of secondhand car prices, or you can just look in the classifieds for similar models.
But there are, of course, many goods which have decidedly ‘ fuzzy ’ prices.
The syndrome has recently been investigated by researchers from Princeton and the University of Chicago.
The team looked at various items - such as bottles of wine - and asked if the bottles were ‘worth’ the same if you bought one to drink at a later date, or dropped it and broke it.
The found significant differences.
For instance, more than half of those interviewed felt that a bottle of 1982 Bordeaux bought at the time for $20, was worth $75 ( the current market price) if it was dropped - whereas it was perceived as almost ‘free’ if it was opened and enjoyed.
" . . . people can avoid the feeling of
having spent money when they make purchases that are seen as investments
to
be consumed at a later time. "
As another example, they asked whether an espresso machine was a money saving device – since those who posses one no longer need to go to expensive cafes for their hit.
The result :
“ . . . suggests a kind world in which the machine (which is difficult mentally to amortize) never really cost its full expense, and the coffee it yielded was essentially free or even a bit of a money saver. “
In general though, there is an overridng caveat :
“ there are limits to the amount of self-deception one can engage in. “
You can read the full research paper in the current issue of the Journal
of Economic Psychology : for $30.
Or you can read it here for free. . .
The choice is yours.
p.s.
p.s. the paper has some interesting examples of real-world ‘odd’ pricing, from recent auctions ::
“ $8000 for false teeth warn by Ty Cobb;
$2400 for pitcher Tim Hudson’s discarded goatee shavings;
$25,000 for Nolan Ryan’s jockstrap;
over $10,000 for Arizona Diamondback Luis Gonzalez’s
already-chewed bubble gum. “
05 OCT 06
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The future is now . . . ( ish )
When an inventor presents their idea to the Patent Office , the examining patent officers must ask two fundamental questions about the invention :
1) Is it possible ?
2) Is it a new idea ?
Unfortunately, neither is quite as straightforward as it might first appear.
Here are two examples of recent patents which illustrate the difficulties of each question.
The first is patent US 7,096,526 B1 ,
With regard to the first question ‘ Is it possible ? ’ - this one probably wouldn’t overly stretch the imagination of the patent officers.
Since it’s a towel with a hole in it.
On the other hand, has it been done before ? Remember that if anything substantially similar has be previously described, made, or simply been commonly seen around, then it can’t be patented.
But, according to the US Patent Office, in this case the answer to the question ‘ has
it been done before ? ’ is ‘No’ – the patent was
granted on Aug 29th this year.
At the other extreme, here’s patent US 7,114,882 B1 ,
This time, we can be almost fully confident that it has never been done before – since it’s a plan for a futuristic oceanic floating ‘city’ and its transportation systems.
The Aqua Stations - which are 10 mile diameter offshore floating platforms – will provide energy, housing, food, water storage, entertainment, healthcare, educational ( Pre-School through University ), sports, recreational, and resort facilities for the occupants.
Energy for the floating complex will come from :
“ giant windmills to be located at strategic locations around the circumference of each Aqua Station. “ backed up by “ wave motion technology and an oceanic waterfall system. “
Transport to, from and within the ‘city’ :
“ utilizes pneumatic and magnetic principles to propel a cylinder container containing cargo and eventually passengers through a tube-link network located beneath the surface of the ocean. “ linking the ‘Terra-Stations’ with the ‘Aqua-Stations’.
The transportation cylinders will travel at speeds up to 14,000 mph. ( for comparison, that’s roughly 10 times the speed of Concorde )
Security concerns are covered by solar powered drone aircraft, sub-surface security/maintenance vehicles, smart torpedo launchers, an ' electronic guidance scrambler ' and surface to air laser beam devices.
There's also provision for “ an emergency retractable sub-surface explosion proof stainless and special alloy composite curtain that may be deployed during an emergency “
And so . . . to the patent officers’ second question ? Is it possible ?
There’s nothing in the description which – given our current science / tech knowledge – seems 100% out of the question.
The patent was granted yesterday.
04 OCT 06
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Bang Bling
Controlarms.org - a campaigning coalition formed by Amnesty
International, IANSA, and Oxfam has just released a new report into the global arms trade.
( caution: 46 page .pdf )
The report’s release was timed to coincide with the opening in New
York of a session of the UN General Assembly's First Committee.
According to the authors, the projected 2006 global military spend clocks in at :
$1,058,900,000,000
That’s roughly 15 times the yearly global international aid budget.
Or, enough cash to achieve all the UN’s Millennium Development Goals thirty times over by 2015.
And yes, the top five arms manufacturing countries are ( as ever ) USA, UK, France, Germany and Russia – with an estimated 82% of the arms market sewn up.
Their efforts helping to ensure that :
“ Each year, at least a third of a million people are killed directly with conventional weapons and many more die, are injured, abused, forcibly displaced and bereaved as a result of armed violence. “
As is often pointed out, in the unlikely event that USA, UK, France, Germany and Russia suddenly decided that they would relinquish their vision to remain committed in maintaining a world-class arms-industry infrastructure – then plenty of other countries would rapidly step in to fill the vacuum.
And ?
Oddly, the governments, companies and individuals concerned routinely assume that the voters and taxpayers - whose continued support is absolutely essential to them - are consistently dumb enough not to see through the half-baked logic of this argument.
If your neighborhood’s top-ranking crack dealer pleads in court along the lines of :
“ Well your Honour, if I don’t sell it, then someone else will won’t they ? . . . “
what would be the chances that the judge will take the revelation on board and release him/her without a sentence ?
* * *
The report also tries to draw attention to the ways in which existing arms export guidelines can be circumvented – but the examples provided lack punch.
Luckily, far clearer insights are available in the 2005 film Lord of War – coincidentally also endorsed by Amnesty International.
At the end of the film, Yuri Orlov ( Nicholas Cage ) is finally in police custody on US soil, after years of narrowly avoiding arrest. He patiently explains to his naïve captors how and why he will soon be released :
“ . . .And while the biggest arms dealer in the world is your boss
- the President of the United States, who ships more merchandise in a day
than I do in a year - sometimes it’s embarrassing to have his fingerprints
on the guns. Sometimes he needs a freelancer like me to supply forces he
can’t be seen supplying. So. You call me evil, but unfortunately for
you, I’m a necessary evil.”
As Orlov predicts, and without his assistance, various high-level incoming
phone calls to the police/customs dept. chiefs ensure that he walks free
shortly
afterwards.
See Amnesty's Nicholas Cage clip regarding “ .
. . arms brokers and their governmental accomplices “ here
: ( Realplayer format )
* * *
To sum up, the report says :
“ In October 2006, all governments have the opportunity, at the First Committee of the UN General Assembly, to launch a process to negotiate an Arms Trade Treaty, based on full respect for international law when governments decide whether or not to allow specific international arms transfers. “
Unfortunately though, for various reasons, most governments will go to extraordinary
lengths to ensure that the arms makers which they sanction on their soil
can continue their activities unabated.
Not only continue unabated but with active encouragement - by any means necessary – legal, quasi-legal or illegal – and backed up with ample supplies of taxpayers’ cash.
* * *
So, will there eventually be an Arms Trade Treaty ? The chances are tolerably good - but how it would be implemented, respected and enforced would remain very much to be seen.
After all, the neighbourhood crack dealers could voluntarily stop tomorrow if they wanted to – and they might - if they weren’t making so much bling . . .
03 OCT 06
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Oniomania meets Citalopram
The word Oniomania was coined in 1915 to be used as a descriptive noun for ‘ compulsive buying ’.
But . . .
“ Is Compulsive Buying a Real Disorder, and Is It Really Compulsive “ asks the editorial in this month’s American Journal of Psychiatry .
The editorial was ( presumably ) prompted by a research paper published in the current issue from the Stanford University School of Medicine - which has tried to pin down the prevalence of the syndrome in the US.
Before the study, ‘ Compulsive Buying ’ [ an irresistible, intrusive and often senseless impulse to buy ] was estimated to affect between 1.8% to 16% of the US population ( note the margin of error approaching an order of magnitude ).
Now it’s suggested that the true figure is around 5.8% ( 6.0% for women, 5.5% for men ).
In other words affecting roughly 1.7 million people.
But Oniomania is not, as yet, classified as a ‘ disorder ’ in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ( DSM ) – the handbook used most often in diagnosing mental disorders in the United States.
If it was to be included in the next issue of the DSM, then we might guess that the following old adage could soon be applicable ? :
‘ Where there’s an ill , there’s a pill ’
[ e.g. where ' pill ' = Citalopram ]
؟ ؟ ؟
Notes:
“ The study was funded by an unrestricted educational grant from Forest
Pharmaceuticals Inc. “
Also see:
Also see this
study from 2003 - from the same author ( funded by Forest Pharmaceuticals
Inc. )
Another one from 2003 - from the same author ( funded by Forest Pharmaceuticals Inc )
And this one from 2002 - from the same author ( funded by Forest Pharmaceuticals Inc )
02 OCT 06
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