Toyota Robots Play Trumpet and Violin In Tokyo (video)

There are many things that make humans unique, but apparently a love of music isn’t one of them. Toyota had its violin and trumpet playing robots on display recently during several public performances at their AMLUX building in Tokyo. Visitors got to see the humanoid bots play their instruments alongside real human violinists and pianists in an interesting blend of man and machine musicianship. It’s a little recursively surreal to watch humans try to match their playing to machines that are (ostensibly) designed to mimic human playing themselves. Check it out in the videos below. These ‘Partner Robots‘ may be putting on a good show, but Toyota’s final goal is anything but music. Part of their longterm vision, the automotive company hopes these bots will play major roles in its ventures in healthcare, housework, and manufacturing.

First, a quick rendition of Pomp and Circumstance. It’s a piece the robot violinist has performed many times in the past, including at its debut. It sounds better here with a few humans to back it up.

via Toyota Robots Play Trumpet and Violin In Tokyo (video) | Singularity Hub.

Scientists unveil the world’s smallest computer that is just a 1 MILLIMETRE square

Scientists have created the world’s smallest computer system to help treat glaucoma patients.

At just one square millimetre in size, the tiny device is a pressure monitor that is implanted in a person’s eye.

It may be small but it packs a hefty punch, containing an ultra low-power microprocessor, a pressure sensor, memory, a thin film battery, a solar cell and a wireless radio with an antenna that can transmit data to an external reader device.

Developed by researchers at the University of Michigan, the unnamed unit – which is expected to be commercially available in several years – is already being touted as the future of the computing industry.

Its creators – Professors Dennis Sylvester, David Blaauw and David Wentzloff – claim that as the device’s radio needs no tuning to find the right frequency it could link to a wireless network of computers.

A network of such units could one day track pollution, monitor structural integrity, perform surveillance, or make virtually any object smart and trackable, according to the scientists. …

The processor in the eye pressure monitor is the third generation of the researchers’ Phoenix chip, which uses a unique design and an extreme sleep mode to achieve ultra-low power consumption.

The newest system wakes every 15 minutes to take measurements and consumes an average of 5.3 nanowatts.

To keep the battery charged, it requires exposure to ten hours of indoor light each day or 1.5 hours of sunlight. It can store up to a week’s worth of information.

While this system is miniscule and complete, its radio doesn’t equip it to talk to other similar devices, which is an important feature for any system targetted towards wireless sensor networks.

The researchers are confident their miniature device will take off.

They cite the concept of Bell’s Law – that a new breed of smaller, cheaper computers arises each decade.

This theory is upheld by the personal computers of the 1980s turning into the laptops of the 1990s, and those into the smartphones of the new millemium.

Professor Sylvester said: ‘This is the first true millimeter-scale complete computing system. …

via Scientists unveil the world’s smallest computer that is just a 1 MILLIMETRE square | Mail Online.

How nature’s patterns form

… Newell’s talk, “The Universal Nature of Fibonacci Patterns,” is part of the symposium, “The Growth of Form in Mathematics, Physics and Biology,” to be held in Room 147A of the Washington Convention Center.

The symposium honors the 150th anniversary of the birth of mathematical biologist D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson.

In 1917, Thompson published an extremely influential book, “On Growth and Form,” in which he argued that biological forms are controlled more by the laws of physics than by evolution.

Newell agrees that many of the biological — and non-biological — forms in nature are the products of physical forces, rather than evolutionary ones.

In his talk, he discussed how the arrangement of flowers, bracts, florets and stickers near the growth shoots of plants — known as phyllotaxis — is a consequence of biochemically and mechanically induced pattern-forming instabilities.

“All the lovely patterns on plants have their origins in mechanical forces and biochemical processes,” he said.

Newell and his students approach the problem of patterns in plants from a mechanistic point of view, he said.

“We look at the phenomenon we’re interested in, and we learn about it, we read about it, we find out what other people say about it, and we look at the experimental evidence,” he said. “Then we try to capture what we see using mathematical models.”

Patterns arise when the symmetry of a system is broken, Newell said. The similarity in patterns from system to system occur when the systems have similar symmetry, rather than because the systems are made from the same materials.

“The mathematics elegantly captures the fact that pattern structure depends more on shared geometrical symmetries than material properties, because the simplified equations for all these very different situations turn out to be the same,” he said.

Newell said, “Mathematics is like a good poem, which separates the superfluous from the essentials and fuses the essentials into a kernel of truth.”

via How nature’s patterns form.

Why many historians no longer see alchemy as an occult practice

No, wizards have not learned how to transmute lead into gold and they haven’t found any rejuvenating elixir of life. But the scholars who write the history of science and technology no longer lump alchemy in with witchcraft as a pseudo-science.

Instead they see alchemy as the proper precursor to modern chemistry.

The modern word “alchemy” comes from the Arabic word “al kemia,” which incorporated a spectrum of knowledge of chemical properties and practices from ancient times.

Chemist and historian Lawrence Principe of Johns Hopkins University in Maryland believes that the hardworking alchemists of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, a period stretching across the 14th to the 17th centuries, were defamed by being lumped in with charlatans of the 19th century, quacks that were often depicted wearing eccentric costumes and casting spells.

“We’re in an alchemical revolution,” said Principe during a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in February. Principe said that just in the past 30 years articles about alchemy were being accepted into Isis, one of the leading journals devoted to the history of science. Before that a prohibition on alchemical subjects had been in place.

The reason for this change is that historians are now recognizing the huge role alchemists had in producing valuable things, even if the alchemists never succeeded in turning lead into gold. By the way, making new gold was of great concern to kings since it would have interfered with the valuation of coins. This is why transmutation was considered a crime and why alchemists often had to do their research in secret.

Alchemists … were instrumental in the development of many technologies during pre-modern times in Europe. For example, alchemists could be considered as an early form of industrial researcher. William Newman of the University of Indiana points out that alchemists …  were active in assaying metals, refining salts, making dyes and pigments, making glass and ceramics, artificial fertilizers, perfumes, and cosmetics. An alchemists’ shop was often the place in a town where you would go for medicine. Even today in many parts of Europe you go to “the chemist,” for medicine, rather than to a “drug store.”

Principe said that alchemists perfected the process of distillation, in which a mixed substance is boiled in such a way as to separate out one component by letting a vapor collect in a portion of the apparatus where it can be drawn off. Distillation is of course well known as the means of making spirits like whiskey. But it was also used by alchemists to make powerful acids, which in turn were important for a variety of industrial purposes, such as for separating metals from their ores. …

via Why many historians no longer see alchemy as an occult practice.

Cats bond with women — and not just for food

The bond between cats and their owners turns out to be far more intense than imagined, especially for cat-aficionado women and their affection-reciprocating felines, suggests a new study.

Cats attach to humans, and particularly women, as social partners, and it’s not just for the sake of obtaining food, according to the new research, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Behavioural Processes.

The study is the first to show in detail that the dynamics underlying cat-human relationships are nearly identical to human-only bonds, with cats sometimes even becoming a furry “child” in nurturing homes.

“Food is often used as a token of affection, and the ways that cats and humans relate to food are similar in nature to the interactions seen between the human caregiver and the pre-verbal infant,” co-author Jon Day, a Waltham Centre for Pet Nutrition researcher, told Discovery News. “Both cat and human infant are, at least in part, in control of when and what they are fed!”

… “A relationship between a cat and a human can involve mutual attraction, personality compatibility, ease of interaction, play, affection and social support,” co-author Dorothy Gracey of the University of Vienna explained. “A human and a cat can mutually develop complex ritualized interactions that show substantial mutual understanding of each other’s inclinations and preferences.” …

via Cats bond with women — and not just for food – Health – Pet health – msnbc.com.

Anti-gravity superfluid superconductor core uncovered inside neutron star

Brian Murphy – A University of Alberta astronomer has glimpsed the inner working of a neutron star and found a unique world where the physics can be described as “weird.” Craig Heinke’s team found the neutron star’s core contained a superfluid, a friction-less liquid that could seemingly defy the laws of gravity.

“If you could put some of this superfluid in a jar it would flow up the walls of the container and over the edge,” said Heinke.

Heinke says the core of the neutron star also contains a superconductor, a perfect electrical conductor. “An electric current in a superconductor never loses energy—it could keep circulating forever.”

These discoveries came about when the researchers used NASA’s Chanda space satellite telescope to investigate a sudden temperature drop on one particular neutron star 11,000 light years from Earth. A neutron star is the extremely dense core left behind from an exploding star, or supernova.

Heinke says this neutron star, known as the Cassiopeia A offered the researchers a great opportunity.

“It’s only 330 years old,” said Heinke. “We’ve got ringside seats to studying the life cycle of a neutron star from its collapse to its present, cooling off state.”

The researchers determined that the neutron star’s surface temperature is dropping because its core recently transformed into a superfluid state and is venting off heat in the form of neutrinos, sub atomic particles that flood the universe. Here on Earth our bodies are constantly bombarded by neutrinos, with 100 billion neutrinos passing harmlessly though our eyes every second.

They also found that the neutron star contains a superconductor, the highest temperature (millions of degrees) superconductor known.

This research helps us to better understand the life cycles of stars, as well as the behavior of matter at incredibly high densities.

via ‘Weird science’ uncovered inside neutron star.

Migrating sea turtles have magnetic sense for longitude

Elisabeth Lyons – From the very first moments of life, hatchling loggerhead sea turtles have an arduous task. They must embark on a transoceanic migration, swimming from the Florida coast eastward to the North Atlantic and then gradually migrating over the course of several years before returning again to North American shores. Now, researchers reporting online on February 24 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, have figured out how the young turtles find their way.

“One of the great mysteries of animal behavior is how migratory animals can navigate in the open ocean, where there are no visual landmarks,” said Kenneth Lohmann of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“The most difficult part of open-sea navigation is determining longitude or east-west position. It took human navigators centuries to figure out how to determine longitude on their long-distance voyages,” added Nathan Putman, a graduate student in Lohmann’s lab and lead author of the study. “This study shows, for the first time, how an animal does this.”

It appears that the turtles pick up on magnetic signatures that vary across the Earth’s surface in order to determine their position in space—both east-west and north-south—and steer themselves in the right direction. Although several species, including sea turtles, were known to rely on magnetic cues as a surrogate for latitude, the findings come as a surprise because those signals had been considered unpromising for determining east-west position.

The loggerheads’ secret is that they rely not on a single feature of the magnetic field, but on a combination of two: the angle at which the magnetic field lines intersect the Earth (a parameter known as inclination) and the strength of the magnetic field.

Near the Equator, the field lines are approximately parallel to the Earth’s surface, Putman and Lohmann explained. As one travels north from the Equator, the field lines grow progressively steeper until they reach the poles, where they are directed straight down into the Earth. The magnetic field also varies in intensity, being generally strongest near the poles and weakest near the equator. Both parameters appear to vary more reliably from north to south than east to west, which had led many researchers to conclude that the magnetic field is useful only for latitudinal information.

“Although it is true that an animal capable of detecting only inclination or only intensity would have a hard time determining longitude, loggerhead sea turtles detect both magnetic parameters,” Putman said. “This means that they can extract more information from the Earth’s field than is initially apparent.”

What had been overlooked before is that inclination and intensity vary in slightly different directions across the Earth’s surface, Putman added. As a result of that difference, particular oceanic regions have distinct magnetic signatures consisting of a unique combination of inclination and intensity.  …

via Migrating sea turtles have magnetic sense for longitude.

This is from 2001, and makes me wonder if mole rats have the same trick as the turtles.

Do you ever wonder why migrating animals such as birds, salmon, and whales, to name a few, never seem to meander off course and get lost? The answer, according to a couple of new studies, may be that those migration routes and navigation skills are hard-wired into the animals’ brains. Studies of loggerhead turtles revealed that hatchlings have the ability to sense the direction and strength of Earth’s magnetic field, which they use for navigating along the turtles’ regular migration route. … In a second report published in Science, scientists have discovered a collection of nerve cells in the brains of subterranean Zambian mole rats that enable the animal to process magnetic information used in navigation. The mole rats dig tunnels up to 200 meters (220 yards) long and build their nests in the southernmost tip of their burrows. As the direction of the magnetic field changes, so does the location of the moles’ nests. As in the loggerhead turtle study, the German and Czech researchers who conducted the mole rat study have not yet determined how the mole rats detect the magnetic fields. – natgeo

Since the earth’s magnetic field is changing, is this confusing animal migrations?

The Earth’s Magnetic Pole Shifting: Flux Forces Airport Shutdown In Tampa

The planet’s northern magnetic pole is drifting slowly but steadily towards Russia — and it’s throwing off planes in Florida. Tampa International Airport was forced to readjust its runways Thursday to account for the movement of the Earth’s magnetic fields, information that pilots rely upon to navigate planes. Thanks to the fluctuations in the force, the airport has closed its primary runway until Jan. 13 to change taxiway signs to account for the shift, the Federal Aviation Administration said. The poles are generated by movements within the Earth’s inner and outer cores, though the exact process isn’t exactly understood. They’re also constantly in flux, moving a few degrees every year, but the changes are almost never of such a magnitude that runways require adjusting, said Paul Takemoto, a spokesman for the FAA. The magnetic fields vary from place to place. Adjustments are needed now at airports in Tampa, but they aren’t immediately required at all airports across the country. – conrefoc

Earth’s magnetic field linked to changing orbit

Long-term fluctuations in the intensity and inclination of the Earth’s magnetic field could arise from variations in the eccentricity of our planet’s orbit, according to Japanese geophysicists. Toshitsugu Yamazaki and Hirokuni Oda of the Geological Survey of Japan examined the magnetic properties of a sample of marine sediment deposited over a period of 2.25 million years to establish that the Earth’s magnetic field varies over a 100 000-year cycle. Such studies could shed new light on the energy sources that drive the Earth’s dynamo (T Yamazaki and H Oda 2002 Science 295 2435). … Astronomers know that the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit varies between 0 and 0.06 every 100 000 years. This causes the Earth to pass slightly closer to the Sun during certain epochs. Yamazaki and Oda believe that this could induce slight changes in the Earth’s iron core that affect the generation of the magnetic field, and therefore the way that sediment is deposited in the ocean.

Based upon the study of lava flows of basalt throughout the world, it has been proposed that the Earth’s magnetic field reverses at intervals, ranging from tens of thousands to many millions of years, with an average interval of approximately 300,000 years.^[15] However, the last such event, called the Brunhes–Matuyama reversal, is observed to have occurred some 780,000 years ago.  – physicsworld

Earth’s Magnetic field reversals

There is no clear theory as to how the geomagnetic reversals might have occurred . Some scientists have produced models for the core of the Earth wherein the magnetic field is only quasi-stable and the poles can spontaneously migrate from one orientation to the other over the course of a few hundred to a few thousand years. Other scientists propose that the geodynamo first turns itself off, either spontaneously or through some external action like a comet impact, and then restarts itself with the magnetic “North” pole pointing either North or South. External events are not likely to be routine causes of magnetic field reversals due to the lack of a correlation between the age of impact craters and the timing of reversals. Regardless of the cause, when the magnetic pole flips from one hemisphere to the other this is known as a reversal … – wiki

Meditation beats dance for harmonizing body and mind

The body is a dancer’s instrument, but is it attuned to the mind? A new study from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that professional ballet and modern dancers are not as emotionally in sync with their bodies as are people who regularly practice meditation.

UC Berkeley researchers tracked how closely the emotions of seasoned meditators and professional dancers followed bodily changes such as breathing and heart rates.

They found that dancers who devote enormous time and effort to developing awareness of and precise control over their muscles – a theme coincidentally raised in the new ballet movie “Black Swan” – do not have a stronger mind-body connection than do most other people.

By contrast, veteran practitioners of Vipassana or mindfulness meditation – a technique focused on observing breathing, heartbeat, thoughts and feelings without judgment – showed the closest mind-body bond, according to the study recently published in the journal Emotion.

“We all talk about our emotions as if they are intimately connected to our bodies – such as the ‘heartache of sadness’ and ‘bursting a blood vessel’ in anger,” said Robert Levenson, a UC Berkeley psychology professor and senior author of the study. “We sought to precisely measure how close that connection was, and found it was stronger for meditators.” …

via Meditation beats dance for harmonizing body and mind.

 

Ancient Remains Suggest a Fox Was Man’s First Best Friend

In a 16,500 year-old graveyard in Jordan, archaeologists have found evidence of man’s first furry friend: a fox.

Archaeologists from the University of Toronto in Ontario and Cambridge University in England uncovered remains of the fox, alongside other animals, at a burial site containing 11 sets of human remains. The fox’s remains are seen to be more significant than those of the other animals, as they showed signs of decoration and were moved, along with with a human’s body, when the site was reopened some years after the initial burial.

A researcher from the University of Cambridge, Lisa Maher, said the team were surprised when they made their discovery: “When we were first excavating the site, we thought it might have been a dog,” she said, but upon further analysis the remains were shown to belong to a red fox.

It’s not certain whether the fox was a “pet” in the modern sense of the word. Many hunter-gatherer tribes formed close spiritual bonds with the animals they hunted, often involving them in death rituals. But those working on the site were keen to stress the similarities of this site to burial sites from 4,000 years later. These similarities suggest, according to Maher, that “it probably was a more emotional relationship of one particular fox to one particular person.”

Archaeologists are finding earlier and earlier evidence of the close bonds between animals and humans, with these fox remains the first of their kind. Although naturally timid, the red fox is tameable, but was probably ousted as “top dog” when humans discovered that dogs took to being pets much more readily.

via Was a Fox Man’s First Ever Best Friend? Ancient Remains Suggest So – TIME NewsFeed.

Another win for the FireFox web browser.  An Explorer was not Man’s first best friend. Neither was a Safari. It was a fox. Ha!

South African doctor invents female condoms with ‘teeth’ to fight rape

South African Dr. Sonnet Ehlers was on call one night four decades ago when a devastated rape victim walked in. Her eyes were lifeless; she was like a breathing corpse.

“She looked at me and said, ‘If only I had teeth down there,’” recalled Ehlers, who was a 20-year-old medical researcher at the time. “I promised her I’d do something to help people like her one day.”

Forty years later, Rape-aXe was born.

Ehlers is distributing the female condoms in the various South African cities where the World Cup soccer games are taking place.

The woman inserts the latex condom like a tampon. Jagged rows of teeth-like hooks line its inside and attach on a man’s penis during penetration, Ehlers said.

Once it lodges, only a doctor can remove it — a procedure Ehlers hopes will be done with authorities on standby to make an arrest.

“It hurts, he cannot pee and walk when it’s on,” she said. “If he tries to remove it, it will clasp even tighter… however, it doesn’t break the skin, and there’s no danger of fluid exposure.”

Ehlers said she sold her house and car to launch the project, and she planned to distribute 30,000 free devices under supervision during the World Cup period.

“I consulted engineers, gynecologists and psychologists to help in the design and make sure it was safe,” she said.

After the trial period, they’ll be available for about $2 a piece. She hopes the women will report back to her.

“The ideal situation would be for a woman to wear this when she’s going out on some kind of blind date … or to an area she’s not comfortable with,” she said. …

via South African doctor invents female condoms with ‘teeth’ to fight rape – CNN.com.

Awesome.