Science & TechnologyS


Info

App Help Make Sense Of Foreign-Language Food Menus

Menu App
© redOrbit

Researchers have created an application that enables cell phones and other portable devices to translate foreign-language food menus for English speakers and could be used for people who must follow restricted diets for medical reasons.

"You type in the menu listing and the application translates it automatically without talking to a server," said Mireille "Mimi" Boutin, an associate professor in Purdue University's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. "It only takes a fraction of a second, you don't need connection to the Internet and it won't empty your battery."

Before entering a foreign country, the user would download a region- and language-specific configuration and database. From then on, the system can operate without a network connection.

"The problem with menus is that even if you know the language you may still have to ask questions to clarify what a dish contains," Boutin said. "For example, in German, "Schinken" means ham, but it can be raw ham or cooked ham. If you are going to eat the ham, you might want to know which."

The user types the desired dish into a prompt field in the graphical user interface. The text is translated, and the best possible translations are then listed, along with other information, including pictures and ingredients. The user can then browse the multimedia database to obtain more information about the dish or the ingredients. When appropriate, information and questions for the waiter are suggested.

"With Albert Parra Pozo, a graduate student who is fluent in Spanish, we were able to develop and implement this system on the iPod Touch for English speakers traveling in Spain," said Boutin, who specializes in signal and image processing. "Our tests indicate that our system yields a correct translation more often than general-purpose translation engines. Moreover, it does so almost instantaneously. The memory requirements of the application, including the database of pictures, are also well within the limits of the device."

Info

When Do Babies Start to Feel Pain?

NewBorn
© Carolina K. Smith, M.D. | shutterstockThe scientists noted the babies' electrical brain activity as they underwent a routine heel lance, which is a standard, essential procedure of pricking the baby's foot to collect blood samples after birth.

Researchers are homing in on the exact time during an infant's development when it begins to tell the difference between basic touch and pain. A new British study indicates most babies can start sensing pain a few weeks before they are born.

These findings may help to improve clinical care for preterm babies.

"Babies can distinguish painful stimuli as different from general touch from around 35 to 37 weeks gestation, just before an infant would normally be born," study researcher Lorenzo Fabrizi of University College London said in a statement.

The researchers studied 46 babies at University College Hospital's Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Wing in Bloomsbury, London. Because 21 of the babies were born prematurely, scientists were able to monitor the different stages of human brain activity from just 28 weeks of development to those born full term at 37 weeks. (Babies' due dates are based on 40 weeks of pregnancy, but babies born even at the 37-week mark are considered full term.)

To determine whether the babies were able to feel pain, researchers relied on recordings of brain activity using electroencephalography (EEG). The scientists noted the babies' electrical brain activity as they underwent a routine heel lance, which is a standard, essential procedure of pricking the baby's foot to collect blood samples for clinical use. A change from general brain activity to a localized brain reaction suggested the baby was experiencing pain.

Blackbox

Zapping the brain with magnets makes it IMPOSSIBLE to lie?

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© AlamyMind out: The brain is susceptible to magnetic interference
If truth be told, magnetic interference with the brain makes it impossible to lie. At least, that's what a group of Estonian researchers are claiming.

They found that when magnets were applied to either the right or left side of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, found directly behind your forehead, it made you lie or tell the truth, depending on which side was stimulated.

When magnetic interference was directed at another part of the brain, the parietal lobe, the subjects' decision-making remain unchanged.

'Spontaneous choice to lie more or less can be influenced by brain stimulation,' researchers Inga Karton and Talis Bachmann wrote in Behavioural Brain Research.

The experiment involved giving 16 volunteers disks that varied in colour. Half were then given magnetic stimulation on the right side of their prefrontal cortex, half on the left.

Blackbox

Genetic secret behind virus that turns caterpillars into zombies discovered

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© APGruesome: Beautiful monarch caterpillars are turned into zombies by a vicious virus - then melted
Like a plot from a horror film, there's a virus that brainwashes caterpillars, forces them to march up trees, then turns them to goo.

Now scientists at Penn State University have found the single gene that enables the virus to carry out its dark deeds.

The caterpillars would normally return to the ground to hide after feeding on leaves, but the baculovirus reprogrammes them to stay in the trees, melts them, then drips down among the remains to infect more of the creatures.

Researcher Kelli Hoover, writing in Science, said: 'When gypsy moth caterpillars are healthy and happy, they go up into the trees at night to feed on leaves, and then climb back down in the morning to hide from predators during the day.

No Entry

Moon to Have No-Fly Zones by Month's End

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© Agence France-PresseThe Purpose: NASA's "recommendations" of no-fly zones are for preserving and protecting Apollo missions' historical sites and artefacts.
No-fly zones will come into effect on the moon for the very first time by the end of this month! Why, even buffer zones that spacecraft may have to avoid will come into existence. The reason: avoiding any spraying of rocket exhaust or dust onto certain historical sites and artefacts on the moon.

The historical sites are of course the Apollo landing sites and artefacts present on the moon. And the "recommendations" are for preserving and protecting these historical sites. There are currently more than three dozen historical sites that preserve the more than four-decade-old remains.

"Apollo 11 and 17 sites [will] remain off-limits, with ground-travel buffers of 75 metres and 225 metres from each respective lunar lander," states the July 20 guidelines of NASA. Science journal had obtained the guidelines.

Info

Closest Human Ancestor May Rewrite Steps in Our Evolution

Early Human
© Brett Eloff / Lee Berger and the University of WitwatersrandFossils of the extinct hominid known as Australopithecus sediba were accidentally discovered by the 9-year-old son of a scientist in the remains of a cave in South Africa in 2008, findings detailed by researchers last year. The fossils' mix of human and primitive traits found in the brains, hips, feet and hands make a strong case for it being the immediate ancestor to the human lineage, scientists report in the Sept. 9, 2011, issue of the journal Science.

The fossils included remains of a male juvenile (whose cranium is shown here) along with a female of the same species, who was likely in her 20s or 30s.

A startling mix of human and primitive traits found in the brains, hips, feet and hands of an extinct species identified last year make a strong case for it being the immediate ancestor to the human lineage, scientists have announced.

These new findings could rewrite long-standing theories about the precise steps human evolution took, they added, including the notion that early human female hips changed shape to accommodate larger-brained offspring. There is also new evidence suggesting that this species had the hands of a toolmaker.

Fossils of the extinct hominid known as Australopithecus sediba were accidentally discovered by the 9-year-old son of a scientist in the remains of a cave in South Africa in 2008, findings detailed by researchers last year. Australopithecus means "southern ape," and is a group that includes the iconic fossil Lucy, while sediba means "wellspring" in the South African language Sotho.

Two key specimens were discovered - a juvenile male as developed as a 10- to 13-year-old human and an adult female maybe in her late 20s or early 30s. The species is both a hominid and a hominin - hominids include humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and their extinct ancestors, while hominins include those species after Homo, the human lineage, split from that of chimpanzees.

Sun

Young, nearby supernova dazzles scientists

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© Reuters/BJ FultonThe Pinwheel Galaxy is pictured a few days ago as a supernova (PTF11kly) heads towards peak brightness in this photograph released to Reuters September 7, 2011.
Los Angeles - California astronomers have found the closest, brightest supernova of its kind in 25 years, catching the glimmer of a tiny self-destructing star a mere 21 million light years from Earth and soon visible to amateur skywatchers.

The discovery, announced on Wednesday, was made in what was believed to be the first hours of the rare cosmic explosion using a special telescope at the Palomar Observatory near San Diego and powerful supercomputers at a government laboratory in Berkeley.

The detection so early of a supernova so near has created a worldwide stir among astronomers, who are clamoring to observe it with every telescope at their disposal, including the giant Hubble Space Telescope.

Scientists behind the discovery at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley say the extraordinary phenomenon -- labeled by the rather obscure designation PTF 11kly -- will likely become the most-studied supernova in history.

"It is an instant cosmic classic," said Peter Nugent, the senior scientist at UC Berkeley who first spotted it.

Robot

How the Cleverbot Computer Chats Like a Human


Last week, an artificial intelligence computer named Cleverbot stunned the world with a stellar performance on the Turing Test - an IQ test of sorts for "chatbots," or conversational robots. Cleverbot, it seems, can carry on a conversation as well as any human can.

In the Turing Test - conceived by British computer scientist Alan Turing in the 1950s - chatbots engage in typed conversations with humans, and try to fool them into thinking they're humans, too. (As a control, some users unknowingly chat with humans pretending to be chatbots.) At a recent Turing competition, Cleverbot fooled 59 percent of its human interlocutors into thinking it was itself a human. Analysts have argued that, because the chatbot's success rate was better than chance, the computer passed.

So what magnificent algorithm lies in the gearbox of this brilliant machine, which can seem more human than not? How have its programmers equipped it with so much conversational, contextual and factual knowledge?

The answer is very simple: crowdsourcing. As the chatbot's designer, Rollo Carpenter, put it in a video (above) explainer produced by PopSci.com, "You can call it a conversational Wikipedia if you like."

Black Cat

South Korea's Antitrust Investigation Into Google Heats Up With Raid

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© AFPSouth Korean authorities have completed their second raid of Google this year. This time the investigation focused on allegations of Android competitive abuses.
Asian nation is concerned about whether Android is blocking competitors' search engines

Has Google Inc. been playing dirty with Android? That's the allegation raised by some South Korean rivals. The smartphone and tablet OS may be dominating in sales, but it's also drawing increasing antitrust scrutiny in both the U.S. and South Korea.

South Korea antitrust regulators' pending investigation of the Android accusations heated up this week with authorities raiding Google's Seoul offices, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

In South Korea, search portal firms NHN Corp. (SEO:035420) and Daum Communications Corp. (KDQ:035720) have accused Google of using their control of Android to block rival search portals on smartphones. The companies do not accuse Google of overtly blocking their portals, rather they say that Google's bundling of a search engine with Android and making it labor intensive to "swap in" a different search amounts to an anticompetitive tactic.

Meteor

New theory claims all Earth's gold arrived here in meteor shower lasting 200 million years

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Your wedding ring, the gold chain around your neck... even the platinum in your catalytic converter. For all of these you can thank a slew of meteorites that pelted Earth around 3.9 billion years ago, says new research.

Certain metals like gold, platinum, nickel, tungsten and iridium are attracted to iron, which comprises the Earth's core. So when the Earth first formed as a molten mass, all of these elements should have migrated to the core, leaving the outer layers of Earth stripped of its precious metals.

Yet as hopeful '49-ers knew, Earth's crust is laced with these enticing elements. Geologists have posed several theories to explain this puzzle, but one suggests that Earth was bombarded with meteorites between 3.8 and 4 billion years ago, studding the early crust with our favorite shiny metals. These metals then became incorporated into the modern mantle over time.

This idea is supported by the presence of craters on the moon, which date back to the same time, suggesting that the moon was also hit. Now, research published today in Nature, provides further evidence in favor of this explanation.

A team led by Matthias Willbold of the University of Bristol, U.K., sampled ancient rocks from southwest Greenland that formed some of the Earth's earliest crust, predating the proposed bombardment, and compared those with newer rocks from other places representing the modern mantle.