April 23, 2012 – 11:37 am
Intelligence – what does it really mean? In the 1800s, it meant that you were good at memorising things, and today intelligence is measured through IQ tests where the average score for humans is 100. Researchers at the Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, have created a computer programme that can score 150.
IQ tests are based on two types of problems: progressive matrices, which test the ability to see patterns in pictures, and number sequences, which test the ability to see patterns in numbers. The most common math computer programmes score below 100 on IQ tests with number sequences. For Claes Strannegård, researcher at the Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science, this was a reason to try to design ‘smarter’ computer programmes.
The research group, which consists of Claes Strannegård, Fredrik Engström, Rahim Nizamani and three students working on their degree projects, believes that number sequence problems are only partly a matter of mathematics – psychology is important too.
The group is therefore using a psychological model of human patterns in their computer programmes. They have integrated a mathematical model that models human-like problem solving. The programme that solves progressive matrices scores IQ 100 and has the unique ability of being able to solve the problems without having access to any response alternatives. The group has improved the programme that specialises in number sequences to the point where it is now able to ace the tests, implying an IQ of at least 150.
The research group has recently started collaborating with the Department of Psychology at Stockholm University, with a goal to develop new IQ tests with different levels of difficulty.
Ian Flemming
Amazon.com bought the U.S. licensing rights to Ian Fleming’s original 14 James Bond novels for ten years.
The agreement also includes two non-fiction works by Fleming.
The e-books will initially only be available on Amazon’s Kindle.
March 14, 2012 – 10:15 am
This doesn’t surprise me, but given the trouble I have to go to weekly to advocate the adoption of electronic publishing, this can be considered important news on the street. The New York Times reports that the Encyclopedia Britannica is about to announce that it will no longer print its 32-volume set of printed encyclopedias. After 244 years this publication is saying goodbye to the printing press.
The Britannica will not cease to exist. At this stage the print edition only brings in a small percentage of the company’s revenue. The tradition of the Britannica continues with its educational and electronic offerings.
After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses
Noteworthy piece in the UK’s Telegraph about a Gartner report on Samsung’s market share that is triple Apple’s in China and is still increasing. The iPhone currently accounts for 7.5 per cent of the Chinese market, compared to 24.3 per cent for Samsung.
The iPhone is not yet compatible with the largest mobile network, China Mobile, in the world’s fastest expanding market.
Apple ‘can’t catch Samsung in China’
March 13, 2012 – 11:05 am
People are adept at recognizing sensations such as sounds or smells, even when many stimuli appear simultaneously. But how the association works between the current event and memory is still poorly understood. Scientists at the Bernstein Center and the Ludwig-Maximilians Universität (LMU) München have developed a mathematical model that accurately mimics this process with little computational effort and may explain experimental findings that have so far remained unclear. (PLoS ONE, September 14, 2011)
The so-called ‘cocktail party-problem’ has already kept scientists busy for decades. How is it possible for the brain to filter familiar voices out of background noise? It is a long-standing hypothesis that we create a kind of sound library in the auditory cortex of the brain during the course of our lives. Professor Christian Leibold and Dr. Gonzalo Otazu at LMU Munich who are also members of the Bernstein Center Munich now show in a new model how the brain can compare stored and perceived sounds in a particularly efficient manner. Figuratively speaking, current models operate on the following principle: An archivist (possibly the brain region thalamus) compares the incoming sound with the individual entries in the library, and receives the degree of matching for each entry. Usually, however, several entries fit similarly well, so the archivist does not know which result is actually the right one.
The new model is different: as previously the archivist compares the sound with the library entries, this time getting back only a few really relevant records and information about how much the archived and heard elements differ. Therefore, only in the case of unknown or little matching inputs are large amounts of data sent back.
The researchers now want to incorporate their findings into other models that are more biologically detail-oriented, and finally test it in psychoacoustic experiments.
February 22, 2012 – 10:04 am
Pay attention! It’s a universal warning, which implies that keeping close watch helps us perceive the world more accurately. But a new study by Yale University cognitive psychologists Brandon Liverence and Brian Scholl finds that intense focus on objects can have the opposite effect: It distorts perception of where things are in relation to one another. The findings was published in an issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
The findings add to a growing body of cognitive psychology that destabilizes our trust in what we think we know for sure and how we think we can know it more surely.
January 24, 2012 – 1:44 pm
This was posted on The Pirate Bay yesterday by WinstonQ2038:
We’re always trying to foresee the future a bit here at TPB. One of the things that we really know is that we as a society will always share. Digital communication has made that a lot easier and will continue to do so. And after the internets evolutionized data to go from analog to digital, it’s time for the next step.
Today most data is born digitally. It’s not about the transition from analog to digital anymore. We don’t talk about how to rip anything without losing quality since we make perfect 1 to 1 digital copies of things. Music, movies, books, all come from the digital sphere. But we’re physical people and we need objects to touch sometimes as well!
We believe that the next step in copying will be made from digital form into physical form. It will be physical objects. Or as we decided to call them: Physibles. Data objects that are able (and feasible) to become physical. We believe that things like three dimensional printers, scanners and such are just the first step. We believe that in the nearby future you will print your spare sparts for your vehicles. You will download your sneakers within 20 years.
The benefit to society is huge. No more shipping huge amount of products around the world. No more shipping the broken products back. No more child labour. We’ll be able to print food for hungry people. We’ll be able to share not only a recipe, but the full meal. We’ll be able to actually copy that floppy, if we needed one.
We believe that the future of sharing is about physible data. We’re thinking of temporarily renaming ourselves to The Product Bay – but we had no graphical artist around to make a logo. In the future, we’ll download one.
January 12, 2012 – 4:30 pm
Birds of a feather flock together in cyberspace.
At least that’s what Dr. Cuihua (Cindy) Shen, assistant professor of Emerging Media and Communication at University of Texas Dallas, has shown in a research article published in the journal First Monday.
Examining an online community using social network analysis, Shen tested the social drivers that shaped the collaboration dynamics among a group of users from SourceForge, the largest open source community on the Web.
Who Connects with Whom? A Social Network Analysis of an Online Open Source Software Community co-written by Peter Monge shows that users in online communities choose which users to interact with, and that their choices reveal the motivations and processes that create collective networks.
December 12, 2011 – 4:20 pm
Mobile phone positioning data can be used to monitor population movements during disasters and outbreaks, according to a study published in PLoS Medicine.
The study, conducted by Linus Bengtsson and colleagues from the Karolinska Institute, Sweden and Columbia University, USA, finds that reports on the location of populations affected and in need of assistance can be generated within hours of receiving data.
Population movements after disasters make it difficult to deliver essential relief assistance to the right places and at the right scale. In this geospatial analysis, Bengtsson and colleagues investigate whether position data from mobile phone SIMs (subscriber identity modules) can be used to estimate the magnitude and trends of population movements. The authors collaborated with Digicel, the largest mobile phone operator in Haiti, to retrospectively follow the positions of 1.9 million SIMs in Haiti before and after the January 2010 earthquake, and found that the estimates of population movements using SIM cards were more accurate than ad hoc estimates generated immediately after the earthquake. The authors then tracked population movements by SIM positioning during the first few days of the cholera outbreak that occurred following the earthquake, showing that these estimates of population movements could be generated within 12 hours of receiving SIM positioning data.
Their findings show that routinely collected data on the movements of active SIM cards in a disaster-affected nation can provide estimates of the magnitude, distribution, and trends in population displacement, and that the method can be used for close to real-time monitoring of population movements during an infectious disease outbreak. Results of the study also suggest that this method could provide estimates on area-specific population sizes and could lead to important improvements in the allocation of relief supplies.
However, this approach may not be effective in all situations, since disasters can destroy mobile phone towers and some areas have sparse network coverage. Additionally, mobile use may be lower in some population groups such as children or the elderly.
Paper on the study
November 22, 2011 – 8:36 am
Word recognition behavior can be fine-tuned by experience and practice, according to a new study by Ian Hargreaves and colleagues from the University of Calgary in Canada. Their work shows, for the first time, that it is possible to develop visual word recognition ability in adulthood, beyond what researchers thought was achievable. Competitive Scrabble players provide the proof. The study is published online in Springer’s journal Memory & Cognition.
Scrabble
Competitive Scrabble involves extraordinary word recognition experience. Expert players typically dedicate large amounts of time to studying the 180,000 words listed in The Official Tournament and Club Word List. Hargreaves and colleagues wanted to establish the effects of experience on visual word recognition. They compared the visual word recognition behaviors of competitive Scrabble players and non-expert participants using a version of the classic word recognition model – the lexical decision task – where subjects need to make a quick decision about whether the word shown to them is a real word.
In a series of two experiments, the authors showed participants words presented both vertically and horizontally, as well as common concrete (e.g. truck) and abstract (e.g. truth) words and measured how quickly, and how, they made judgements about those words.
Competitive Scrabble players’ visual word recognition behavior differed significantly from non-experts’ for letter-prompted verbal fluency (coming up with words beginning with a specific letter) and anagramming accuracy, two Scrabble-specific skills. Competitive players were faster to judge whether or not a word was real. They also judged the validity of vertical words faster than non-experts and were quicker at picking up abstract words than non-competitive players. These findings indicate that Scrabble players are less reliant on the meaning of words to judge whether or not they are real, and more flexible at word recognition using orthographic information.
The authors conclude: “Our results suggest that visual word recognition is shaped by experience and, that with experience, there are efficiencies to be had even in the adult world recognition system. Competitive Scrabble players are visual word recognition experts and their skill pushes the bounds of what we previously considered the end-point of development of the word recognition system.”
