A Really Helpful House


 As we get older we forget odd things. Like where we last saw our car keys, the cordless phone or the dog. The cordless phone will try and let us know if someone calls, we may even have our car keys connected to a gadget that will squeak if we’re searching, but the dog? Well, he’s probably gone off with someone more reliable.

But don’t panic, Nirjon and Stankovic from U of Virginia are rushing to our aid with a new high tech breakthrough called “Kinsight” (1). The system uses Microsoft’s Kinect sensors scattered liberally throughout the house and all connected up to your computer.

The system follows you around the house and notes where you put a range of your everyday household objects. Each sensor has a range of a little over 3 meters so you will need a number of these around.

The motions sensors in Kinect can recognize a figure so they will track other people losing things as well as you. Of course, the secret is in the extensive programing and training the system which things you want to lose and those that you don’t.

You will also need to be careful when you install such a system with locations such as bedrooms and bathrooms. However, the big advantage of this type of system over having RFID chips in everything is that is ultimately cheaper and simpler. In addition other people could read your chips when you are wandering out and about, which is something that you probably would wish to avoid.

I was champing at the bit because it wasn’t wireless and I could have it as an app on my iPhone until I realized that I could be totally lost if I forgot where I put it. One can imagine how the system could be expanded so that we’d be living in a really helpful house that would note how much and what foods we’d put in the fridge and warn us when they should be replenished or were becoming outdated, as well as other useful bits of advice.

  1. http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~stankovic/psfiles/DCOSS2012.pdf


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Dancing Robots


   A long tradition of cultural academic research has been into the traditions of folk singing and folk dances. There is always great play of connectivity across disparate groups so that origins can be tracked. It’s always good for a thesis or two to describe these connections.

Now it seems that these cultural shifts can also occur with our friendly robots as they do their best to respond and learn from their neighbors. The BBC reports on a study of dancing robots at the University of WoE in which a host of little robots were cast adrift in a large room to fend for themselves.

A few had some cool moves programed in, but the rest had to pick up the latest trend by trial and error.  Now these weren’t sophisticated robots, but simple little creatures cast into the big world with only a couple of wheels and some sensitive sensors to cope with the fast movers and shakers let loose in the room.

There was no question of the old days when there could be “wallflowers” who rarely got asked to dance. This was up to date clubland practice where everybody dances, but in this case now one was hawking E around.

Well, of course, a little robot with only two wheels and trailing a butt is going to be a tad limited on the more advanced moves and when they tried to learn from the stars on the floor, they could only come close, but no cigars were awarded.

Now, one learned from another and eventually stable variants of the original dance motion were established – a new folk culture for the group had been born. It might evolve further over time, but it was now a relatively stable variant of the original.

Now came the thing that you can do with little robots, but that you can’t do with your kids who have got into habits that you’d rather they hadn’t – you can wipe their memories and start over. When that was done and the original dancing robots were let loose, the hoi polloi did their best and ended up with their cultural dance which was stable, but not the same as the first variant.

In effect, they had ended up with a new folk culture from the same starting point. They had been born again and had not reverted to the same old, same old.

  1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18352293


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A Good Story


A good story needs conflict, inner and external of course. If we watch a movie or video rather than read the story, the conflict is usually heightened because it has to build and be resolved in a short time. In sitcoms there is about 25 minutes minus the adverts to get us worked up, relieved and primed to want to watch the next episode.

Our kids are often watching specially designed programs for them while we rush about getting food, sorting stuff out for tomorrow or simply relaxing, but Mares et al have checked out how such programs can effect the expectations of our kids (1). They selected a group of tweens (11±3 years old) and subjected them to a couple of episodes of a sitcom based on school life.

Of course, there were two sitcoms, one friendly with low conflict, while the other was full of fierce conflict, bullying and heavy stuff requiring resolution. So what do you think was the result? You’re quite correct – those who watched the episodes with lots of conflict and bullying had become distinctly worried about moving up to high school when asked. In contrast, the happier episode watchers were much happier at the prospect.

I’m rather surprised that we didn’t know this already as we have had lots of evidence of how short TV adverts designed to be scary have played a huge part in elections for a few years now so people have made strange decisions once in the voting booth.


  1. M-L. Mares, M.T. Braun and P. Hernandez, J Media Pyschol. 15, 121, (2012).

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A Good Chemical Defense


The plant life that surrounds us stands around doing its best to get along with the animal life that assumes control, whether it’s humans, birds or insects.  Our aid is usually sought with continuing the propagation of the genes via pollination or seed dispersal and, in many cases,  with more or less diligence.

 This is only one side of the jockeying for position though. Plants have their own defense strategies. Big thorns keep us away, unless the fruit is ripe and then we may get tempted, but the reputation of toxins as deployed as a good chemical defense strategy by poison oak or poison ivy keep us well away. Even stinging nettles discourage all except the most hardy from harvesting them for soup. Even when we do they, like dandelion leaves exact payback should we consume too many.

The rain forests are full of a huge variety of plants and some of these have their chemical defense strategies too. Birds for instance often eat fruit and void the seeds which is an effective seed dispersal program.

Parrots don’t subscribe to the same symbiotic relationship and Gilardi and Toft from U Cal Davis have been worrying about the habits of macaws that crunch up the seeds as well as fruit with their strong beaks. Their study is in yesterday’s PLoS ONE (1).

 The problem is that many of the plants have attempted to protect their seeds via a good chemical defense, but the parrots want the highly nutritious protein and lipid content in the seeds. The study used brine shrimp mortality as a surrogate for a vertebrate toxicity test as the authors didn’t want to poison any parrots by feeding them enough to make them fall off their perches.
It seems that the phrase, so beloved by the English: “as sick as a parrot” has no valid etymology from the natural world and can only be applied to the binge drinkers who wanders the streets.
It seems that the phrase, so beloved by the English: “as sick as a parrot” has no valid etymology from the natural world and can only be applied to the binge drinkers who wander the streets.



  1. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0038293


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A Mosquito's Version Of Surfing.


 Watching the heavy rain from the shelter of a convenient porch while the lighting lights up the dark sky and we count one and two and … eight and boom, the thunder rolls out in a majestic display of nature’s power, the plight of small insects caught out a ways from shelter come to mind.

Dickerson et al from Georgia Tech. also worried about this and focused their attention on mosquitos in their recent paper in the Proceedings of The National Academy of Science (1,2). Perhaps the plight of mosquitos might not be at the top of everybody’s list, but they are small and they are insects too.

The experimental kit of choice was a high-speed video camera, but sitting with a large number of mosquitos in nice humid conditions, waiting for a thunderstorm would be taking the scientific method too far. Instead, they took a group of mosquitos, threw droplets of water at them, and photographed the collisions.

The expectation was from a simply engineering picture that a small mosquito, being hit by a large mass of water would have a very hard time of it. After watching the video, Dr. Hu and his colleagues realized that the principals of Tai Chi were in play.

The small, light mosquitos just went with the drop instead of resisting it. They were carried along in a drop–insect combination until it could work its way free from the drop and fly off before the collision with the ground.

So it is a mosquito’s version of surfing where they drop in and kick out before the big crash. Every now and then there will be an unexpected wipeout, but there are a lot more mosquitos and drops to drop into than would result in a change to the gene pool.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/05/25/1205446109
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/05/25/1205446109

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Like Father Like Son?


Our Western diet has been heavily criticized for some time. It tastes good, it is cheap and fast, but too much of it and we don’t end up very fast ourselves. The current big issue is childhood obesity and the risk that puts them in for cardiovascular and type 2 diabetes problems.

A new study from the UK of 1147 school children in the 11 – 13 age group  by Brophy et al hit the streets last week in an issue of the Public Library of Science (1).

They found that a third were overweight, but more worrying, 17% had high blood pressure with 10% having high cholesterol values. Those from areas classified as deprived were more at risk than those from more wealthy areas. That’s the basic information, but the study prodded and poked a little more.

The problems start for the youngsters at conception, apparently. It seems that children born with a large birth-weight tended to be unfit and then more likely to get significantly overweight which then led to elevated blood pressure etc.

The other big risk factor is their father’s body mass index. Recall that once it gets into the 30’s, your physician will start poking you and “tut-tutting” as you’re standing there feeling vulnerable at your annual physical. So Dads need to keep slim and trim if they are planning to have a family, otherwise it won’t just be the family gold and jewels that they will be handing on, but the heart medicine and the insulin injections too as it becomes like father like son.

Up until now Dads have had a free pass when it comes to eating from conception on, but no longer. They need to get to the gym and get into training for pregnancy and beyond. They may end up with stretch marks, but for a different reason from those of the mothers.


  1. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0036597


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