Robots that recognize when people are stupid

Lost the remote? Use your face | NetworkWorld.com Community

By using a combination of facial expression recognition software and automated tutoring technology Jacob Whitehill, a computer science Ph.D. student from UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering, is leading the project that ultimately is part of a larger venture to use automated facial expression recognition to make robots more effective teachers.

The researchers recently conducted a pilot test with 8 people that demonstrated information within the facial expressions people make while watching recorded video lectures can be used to predict a person’s preferred viewing speed of the video and how difficult a person perceives the lecture at each moment in time.

“If I am a student dealing with a robot teacher and I am completely puzzled and yet the robot keeps presenting new material, that’s not going to be very useful to me. If, instead, the robot stops and says, ‘Oh, maybe you’re confused,’ and I say, ‘Yes, thank you for stopping,’ that’s really good,” said Whitehill in a release.

Is there anything people can’t do with a little bit of image processing?

Because the Times has not yet discovered the 3d dimension

Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol - Times Online

The closest that LS9 has come to mass production is a 1,000-litre fermenting machine, which looks like a large stainless-steel jar, next to a wardrobe-sized computer connected by a tangle of cables and tubes. It has not yet been plugged in. The machine produces the equivalent of one barrel a week and takes up 40 sq ft of floor space.

However, to substitute America’s weekly oil consumption of 143 million barrels, you would need a facility that covered about 205 square miles, an area roughly the size of Chicago.

Obviously if you can feed the things on something you don’t want (i.e. not corn or any other food) you’re in good shape — roughly as good as with cellulosic ethanol.

Back of the envelope says 143 billion liters is 143 million cubic meters, which is 143 meters high by a kilometer on a side. That sounds rather smaller (depending on how it’s divvied up) that the volume occupied by refineries at the moment. Of course, you’d also need to be moving roughly that volume of biomass around…

I’m sure this means a huge jump in sales of books by Stephen J Gould

La. House supports changes to science teaching - NewsFlash - NOLA.com

A proposal that would let science teachers change how they teach topics like evolution, cloning and global warming in public schools was overwhelmingly approved Wednesday by the Louisiana House.

The bill by Sen. Ben Nevers, D-Bogalusa, would let teachers supplement school science textbooks with other materials.

This is sad. And, as lots of folks have noted, just as soon as the idiots start bringing pseudo-religious tracts into the classroom it’s going to result in a lot of expensive lawsuits that the state really doesn’t have money for.

The environmental pony

The Reality-Based Community: Biodegradability: Bug or Feature?

The second part has to do with what happens to the materials after use. For a piece of organic material (plastic, wood, fabric, etc.):, five futures are of interest:
-1.nothing (sitting forever in that landfill);
-2a. burning for usable energy (you can put lots of plastic into a boiler with other fuels directly, or process them into liquid fuel);
-2b. recycling (for example, turning old soft drink bottles into polyester fabric);
-3a.aerobic decay to CO2 and water, which is what happens to that potato-starch bag in the compost; and
-3b.decomposition and decay in anaerobic conditions, which generates methane, an especially nasty greenhouse gas (if you catch the methane and burn it for fuel, this is about equal to 2a). This is what happens in a landfill that’s airtight but isn’t kept dry inside.

Which is most green? If you care about carbon in the atmosphere, 1 is the winner, 2a and 2b are next, though if doing 1 instead of 2a just means more coal goes in the boiler, there’s no real gain, and if 2b requires a lot of fossil energy it may be even worse than 3a. So at least to a first approximation, simply “saving” organic materials indefinitely, which may be a very long time, perhaps until global temperatures are stabilized, is the best option, and this is best done by putting them into a dry, well-constructed, landfill.

Notice (my main point) that this ranking does not depend on how the object in question was made. Though biomaterial may be more green in creation than petromaterial, it doesn’t have any special claim to fate 3a. Biodegradability is better than having plastic junk floating around the ocean or sitting in the woods forever, but it’s a litter and wildlife and aesthetic strategy, and inferior to good housekeeping and landfilling.

Of course any strategy that releases carbon back into the atmosphere is inferior to strategies that sequester it. But given humanity’s past record in this regime, it’s important to consider what happens if we’re stupid as well as what happens if we’re smart. And for that, it seems that making stuff that biodegrades reasonably benignly if you treat it carelessly — and can still be sequestered if you want — is a good idea. (We also have to remember, of course, that collecting stuff and putting it in a purpose-built well-maintained landfill results in a fiar bit of emission as well, so that side of the process starts with a deficit that has to be overcome before you reach neutrality and net sequestration.)

Short answers to simple questions

Will Whole Genome Research Result In Genetic Profiling?

The consensus statement, a product of a workshop involving an interdisciplinary panel of eminent bioethicists, lawyers, and researchers, tackles the central issues facing whole-genome research: informed consent, the right to withdraw from research, the return of results, and the public release of data. In each case, the authors argue, the public dissemination of collected data presents challenges to the standard methods researchers use to protect participants’ privacy and autonomy.

I like that use of the word “challenges”. It’s like the way that a short-order cook presents challenges to the structural integrity of an egg.

Or it could just be lousy statistics

BBC NEWS | Health | ‘Killer’ marrow transplant hope

in some cases, immune cells called “natural killer” cells were active in the donor bone marrow after transplantation, and could launch an effective attack on the leukaemia cells, and that he could predict in advance, using tests, how effective that would be.

In a small group of patients with acute myeloid leukaemia - which makes up approximately a third of all cases - survival rates improved when this kind of transplant was given with the patient already “in remission” - cleared of the disease by chemotherapy.

However, it significantly increased survival - from 2% to 30%, among those patients whose disease had not responded fully to treatment prior to the transplant.

Nothing to see, move along

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Arctic losing long-term ice cover

Ice more than two years old now makes up about 30% of all the ice in the Arctic, down from 60% two decades ago.

It’s simple little tidbits like that that can freak you right out. (Note that older ice tends to be thicker, less riddled with salt, solider and a bunch of other things. The old arctic explorers didn’t even consider first or second-season ice as real floes.)

Send the colony ships now

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Huge ice deposits ’seen’ on Mars

The ice is found in distinctive geological structures on Mars’ surface that are hundreds of metres thick.
….
Mission scientists used Sharad to probe Martian surface features known as lobate debris aprons (LDAs). These distinctive, dome-shaped structures are concentrated around mid-latitudes in the planet’s northern and southern hemispheres. Geological clues The researchers looked at LDAs in the Deuteronilus Mensae region of Mars’ northern hemisphere, where the features can be found at the bases of valley walls, craters and scarps of mesas. Scientists have long suspected that LDAs were flows consisting of mixed up rock and ice. The radar penetrated these geological features with very little attenuation (reduction in signal strength), suggesting they were predominantly made of ice. “We would say, robustly, more than 50% ice by volume - but it could be much more,” said Jeff Plaut, the chief scientist for Sharad.

A quick look at some of the pictures suggests that we’re talking about flows a few kilometers across. At 50% ice that would be more than a cubic kilometer of water per flow. That’s a billion tons of water, aka somewhere north of 200 billion gallons. You could support Las Vegas for days with that kind of water.

This could be interesting

General Electric scientists have worked out how to manufacture OLED displays on a roll

The GE version is apparently for light-emitting panels (2×2 ft for the same as an incandescent bulb), but once the basic technology exists there’s not much stopping it from being used for displays.

The light-panel application is interesting because (assuming price comes down) the fact that OLEDs degrade over time stops being as much of an issue. We’re all used to replacing lightbulbs. What price would a flat, flexible display screen have to come down to so that no one would be upset about tossing an old one when it burned out and plugging in a new sheet of plastic to replace it?

Very, very cool if it works

BBC NEWS | Health | Diabetic mice ‘cured’ with drugs:

Last year, Dr Terry Strom and his team demonstrated that they could stop the on-going destruction of insulin-producing beta cells in mice using a combination of three drugs, although they were unable to regenerate the cells. It is exciting that these drugs could stop the immune system from attacking insulin-producing cells, but it is too early to tell whether these cells recovered in the mice or if new cells were produced Iain Frame Diabetes UK However, when they added an extra ingredient - an enzyme called alpha 1 anti-trypsin - a significant rise in the number of beta cells was seen.