PS5 - Restock of new PlayStations causes chaos online
Jan 2021, BBC News
Robots are buying video game consoles online faster than people can keep up.
We will never be ready when the future gets here.
Wednesday, June 30, 2021
Friday, June 25, 2021
Random Instantiation Generator
Not sure where the obsession over random number generators (RNGs) came from, but here it is.
And let's start with this tangentially-related image, a working diagram of a slot machine taken from the book Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas by Natasha Dow Schüll, 2012.
It's a cool picture to look at, but what it means is quite diabolical, and in order to understand it, you will need to read the book, which should be required reading for any cold-blooded capitalist, or anyone who plays video games, or engages with social media, or even for people who go grocery shopping for **** sake, because you're getting played, and you should know how the game works.
Back to the RNG's.
Using the unpredictable nature of quantum mechanics to generate truly random numbers
Jan 2021, phys.org
Lasers, photons, beam splitters, and quantum magic.
via: David Drahi et al. Certified Quantum Random Numbers from Untrusted Light, Physical Review X (2020). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevX.10.041048
Scientists develop laser system that generates random numbers at ultrafast speeds
Feb 2021, phys.org
Light rays reflect and interact with each other within the cavity of an hourglass-shaped cavity to create random patterns, which can then create random numbers.
via Nanyang Technological University: "Massively parallel ultrafast random bit generation with a chip-scale laser," Science (2021). https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6532/948
A device-independent protocol for more efficient random number generation
Mar 2021, phys.org
Researchers are currently trying to integrate their device-independent random number generator into public randomness beacons that output random bits at periodic intervals.
But what would I want with a public randomness beacon? What would I do with all these RNGs? Just wait.
via University of Colorado/NIST Boulder (CU/NIST Boulder) and the NTT Corporation in Japan: Device-independent randomness expansion with entangled photons. Nature Physics(2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41567-020-01153-4.
Post Script:
South Africa's lottery probed as 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 drawn and 20 win
Dec 2020, BBC News
That's all.
Post Post Script:
On randomness and cheating -- I used to take air samples in office buildings for carbon dioxide, to see if your ventilation system was working properly (people exhale CO2, and an excess suggests the air in the room isn't being ventilated). Hundreds of times over, I would write down the location and the CO2 concentration. After a long day, it got real hard to resist taking one measurement per office to get the basic idea and then writing random numbers for the rest of the space.
But I remembered something from graduate school -- you can't create a random number set. No matter how hard you try. You're just not random enough. If you try to make up the numbers on your CO2 map, it will be less random than chance, and you can actually measure that in the number set. Your boss, or your client, might run your measurements and find that they aren't random enough, and discover that you're a scheister.
Thursday, June 24, 2021
Now Hiring
AKA The Bot Market's Hot
ISIS still evading detection on Facebook report says
Jul 2020, phys.org
To amass digital territory is their purpose. It's been a while since I thought about the internet as real estate, or rather our eyeballs as real estate...
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) tracked 288 Facebook accounts linked to a particular ISIS network over three months.The researchers believe that at the centre of the network was one user who managed around a third (90 out of 288) of the Facebook profiles.This was accomplished by generating real North American phone numbers and looking for associated Facebook accounts.If it found a match it would request a re-set code to be sent to the phone number, so it could lock out the original account holder and use the Facebook profile to spread content.The researchers say another key to the survival of ISIS content on the platform was the way in which ISIS supporters have learned to modify their content to evade controls. This included:
- Breaking up text and using strange punctuation to evade any tools which would search for key words
- Blurring ISIS branding, or adding Facebook's own video effects
- Adding the branding of mainstream news outlets over the top of ISIS content
Image credit: Adeen Flinker NYU School of Medicine
Instagram removes hundreds of accounts tied to username hacking
Feb 2021, Reuters
But imagine that we're already semibots, and buying and selling each other.
Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk' online
Feb 2021, BBC News
It's the Amazon Marketplace, you can buy anything here:
The cost of fake reviews - £5 each to start. These included "packages" of fake reviews available for sellers to buy for about £15 individually, as well as bulk packages starting at £620 for 50 reviews and going up to £8,000 for 1,000.
Researchers study online 'pseudo-reviews' that mock products
Apr 2021, phys.org
New fakes for the new world. Pseudo-fakes and quasi-forgeries. Pseudo reviews mock the product, like this example:
"I was able to purchase this amazing television with an FHA loan (30 year fixed-rate w/ 4.25% APR) and only 3.5% down. This is, hands down, the best decision I've ever made. And the box it came in is incredibly roomy too, which is a huge bonus, because I live in it now."Apparently too many pseudo reviews can sway purchaser intent. And if a particular platform becomes infested with them, they can lose credibility altogether.via University of Akron: Federico de Gregorio et al. Pseudo-reviews: Conceptualization and consumer effects of a new online phenomenon, Computers in Human Behavior (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2020.106545
Omegle: 'I'm being used as sex-baiting bot' on video chat site
Apr 2021, BBC News
God-level fake operation:
Kid goes to a website where you meet random strangers. An older woman convinces him to take off his clothes and go full Discovery Channel on himself. He does it again with other people. He quits the site, but then one day a year later, he goes back on and gets matched to ... himself. Someone uses his recorded video, overdubbed with typed conversations created in real time, in order to get other people to join. Who knows, maybe that's how he got convinced in the first place.
"It was like a fully advanced system with different video sequences of me doing different stuff."
-BBC
One day, the people running this "advanced system" won't be people or even a corporation, but an intelligent entity -- today we call it AI, but it will by then be a combination of people and computers all mashed together so you can't really tell who's who anymore.
Army of fake fans boosts China’s messaging on Twitter
May 2021, AP News
This isn't really news, I added this one just for posterity.
Good term though: "Counterfeiting Consensus"
Mass scale manipulation of Twitter Trends discovered
June 2021, phys.org
"We found that 47% of local trends in Turkey and 20% of global trends are fake, created from scratch by bots. Between June 2015 and September 2019, we uncovered 108,000 bot accounts involved, the biggest bot dataset reported in a single paper. Our research is the first to uncover the manipulation of Twitter Trends at this scale," Elmas continued. (But don't forget to check how they define bot activity, as this can differ a lot.)via Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne: Ephemeral Astroturfing Attacks: The Case of Fake Twitter Trends. arXiv:1910.07783v4 [cs.CR] arxiv.org/abs/1910.07783
Conservatives more susceptible to believing falsehoods
Jun 2021, phys.org
Sorry guys:
Researchers found that liberals and conservatives in the United States both tended to believe claims that promoted their political views, but that this more often led conservatives to accept falsehoods while rejecting truths."But the deck is stacked against conservatives because there is so much more misinformation that supports conservative positions. As a result, conservatives are more often led astray."Although the information environment was the primary reason conservatives were susceptible to misinformation, it may not be the only one.Results showed that even when the information environment was taken into account, conservatives were slightly more likely to hold misperceptions than were liberals."It is difficult to say why that is," Garrett said. "We can't explain the finding with our data alone."Conservatives also showed a stronger "truth bias," meaning that they were more likely to say that all the claims they were asked about were true."We show that the media environment is shaping people's ability to do this very basic, fundamental task."via Ohio State University: R.K. Garrett el al., "Conservatives' susceptibility to political misperceptions," Science Advances (2021).
Post Script (Don't even try it)
The double-down is real: Correcting online falsehoods might make matters worse
May 2021, phys.org
Not only is misinformation increasing online, but attempting to correct it politely on Twitter can have negative consequences, leading to even less-accurate tweets and more toxicity from the people being corrected, according to a new study co-authored by a group of MIT scholars....On Twitter, people seem to spend a relatively long time crafting primary tweets, and little time making decisions about retweets.via Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Mohsen Mosleh et al, Perverse Downstream Consequences of Debunking: Being Corrected by Another User for Posting False Political News Increases Subsequent Sharing of Low Quality, Partisan, and Toxic Content in a Twitter Field Experiment, Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (2021). DOI: 10.1145/3411764.3445642
Post Post Script (Then again)
Artificial intelligence system could help counter the spread of disinformation
May 2021, phys.org
In total, they compiled 28 million Twitter posts from 1 million accounts, during the 2017 French elections, and found bots with 96% accuracy. Note that the way you define a bot is important in these studies. But also note that they've gone beyond using mere activity levels as their metric, they also look at how each bot causes the network as a whole to change and amplify messages, and at the bot's behaviors such as whether they interact with foreign media or what language they use.
Also, this approach looks at not just bots but the real people too, and how they all impact the network as a whole.
via MIT Lincoln Laboratory's Artificial Intelligence Software Architectures and Algorithms Group: Steven T. Smith et al, Automatic detection of influential actors in disinformation networks, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2011216118DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2011216118
Tuesday, June 22, 2021
Say What
Researchers offer insights on how diet ultimately reshapes language
Jan 2021, phys.org
Everett spent several years studying how environmental factors such as ambient aridity—extreme dryness—shift speech patterns by reducing vowel usage, which requires more effort to pronounce....Labiodental sounds such as "f" and "v"—sounds common today but rarely existed until soft diets became pervasive...In studying thousands of languages, the researchers established two linguistic camps—hunter-gatherers, whose diets have changed little and whose mouths get a lot more wear, and non-hunter-gatherers.via University of Miami: Caleb Everett et al, Speech adapts to differences in dentition within and across populations, Scientific Reports (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-80190-8
Image credit: Mouthbreather, Habib M’henni
Shrinking massive neural networks used to model language
Dec 2020, phys.org
Chen and colleagues sought to pinpoint a smaller model concealed within BERT [a deep language model]. They experimented by iteratively pruning parameters from the full BERT network, then comparing the new subnetwork's performance to that of the original BERT model. They ran this comparison for a range of NLP [natural language processing] tasks, from answering questions to filling the blank word in a sentence.The researchers found successful subnetworks that were 40 to 90 percent slimmer than the initial BERT model, depending on the task.via Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Tianlong Chen et al. The Lottery Ticket Hypothesis for Pre-trained BERT Networks. arXiv:2007.12223 [cs.LG] arxiv.org/abs/2007.12223
AI can predict Twitter users likely to spread disinformation before they do it
Dec 2020, phys.org
Results from the study found that the Twitter users who shared stories from unreliable sources are more likely to tweet about either politics or religion and use impolite language. They often posted tweets with words such as 'liberal," 'government," 'media," and their tweets often related to politics in the Middle East and Islam, with their tweets often mentioning "Islam' or "Israel."In contrast, the study found that Twitter users who shared stories from reliable news sources often tweeted about their personal life, such as their emotions and interactions with friends. This group of users often posted tweets with words such as"mood." "wanna," "gonna," "I'll," "excited," and "birthday."via Uiversity of Sheffield: Identifying Twitter users who repost unreliable news sources with linguistic information, Yida Mu, Nikolaos Aletras, PeerJ, doi.org/10.7717/peerj-cs.325
After reading this, it's kind of ironic to think that social media is used to target people who have no social life. Then again, robots don't have much of a social life either... .
The linguistic device that creates resonance between people and ideas
Jan 2021, phys.org
In literature, writers often use the word "you" generically to make an idea seem more universal, even though it might not be....They found that highlighted passages [selected by electronic book readers] were 8.5 times more likely to contain generic "you" than passages that were not highlighted, leading them to identify generic-you as a linguistic device that enhances resonance."This study is a really nice example of how sensitive people are to even a subtle variation in perspective and language," Gelman said. "I'm sure people who are reading these novels were not thinking about the linguistic device the authors were using, and the authors themselves may not have been aware, but this study shows this linguistic device has a measurable effect, and that it's part of the fabric of language and thought that people are sensitive to."via University of Michigan: Ariana Orvell et al. "You" speaks to me: Effects of generic-you in creating resonance between people and ideas, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2020). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2010939117
Linguists predict unknown words using language comparison
May 2021, phys.org
They found missing pieces in their dataset, but came up with a predictive algorithm to guess what they were. To test their predictions, they sought out native speakers and asked them about the missing words in the data. Turns out they got a 76% hit rate. (In this case, the dataset is 8 Western Kho-Bwa linguistic varieties spoken in India about which not much scholarship is documented.)
via the Max Planck Society: Timotheus A. Bodt et al, Reflex prediction, Diachronica (2021). DOI: 10.1075/dia.20009.bod
Big Words
Sometimes I don't even bother to explain these things; I just imagine reading this paragraph back in 1989 alongside my new issue of Nintendo Power:
Bot mafias have wreaked havoc in World of Warcraft Classic
Jun 2020, Ars Technica
Dozens of websites easily found on Google sell code or services that automate the World of Warcraft Classic experience. Some individual players pay to hand their accounts over to a bot to level up their characters in the slow, meditative game while they’re at their day jobs or snoozing. Others turn a profit by automating groups of accounts that kill specific monsters and farm specific resources to earn mass amounts of in-game gold. Some use game-breaking techniques to gain an edge, like flying in the air and massacring rare monsters that can’t fight back. (Characters cannot fly in-game.) Then, they round up the goods.
- In-game anti-bot protest - just what it sounds like (but see Rainbow's End for more information.)
- Multiboxing - allowing people to tie the same keyboard and mouse input to multiple clients
Wildlife scientists examine the great human pause
Jun 2020, BBC News
- The Anthropause - the time a global pandemic sent most humans on earth into their houses for months on end
Being 'mind-blind' may make remembering, dreaming and imagining harder
Jun 2020, phys.org
- Mindblind - when you don't have "theory of mind"
Glass-like wood insulates heat, is tough, blocks UV and has wood-grain pattern
Aug 2020, phys.org
- Aesthetic wood - because technically it's not synthetic, it comes from regular wood
Your data and how it is used to gain your vote
Dec 2020, BBC News
When I buy your name, I can guess your income, number of children and ethnicity, and then send you targeted political messages. Experian, Equifax and Transunion are all brokering your data. AKA Selling your data. Read further at UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) Report
When they said big data they didn't say which data. But I'm just here for the words:
- Onomastic data - the study of the etymology, history, and use of proper names, helpful in data mining. [wiki link]
Japanese increasingly single, disinterested in dating: study
Nov 2020, phys.org
The Herbivore Phenomenon - when dudes just give up and stop trying to get laid anymore
The Japanese media has dubbed the much-discussed increase in virginity and a purported decline in interest in dating and sex as symptoms of the 'herbivore-ization' of younger generations. In popular culture, adults who are unmarried and seemingly disinterested in finding romantic or sexual partners are 'herbivores' and those who are actively pursuing romantic partners are 'carnivores.'"This herbivore phenomenon, both its definition and whether it really exists, has been hotly debated for a decade in Japan, but nationally representative data have been lacking," said Dr. Peter Ueda, an expert in epidemiology and last author of the research published in the journal PLOS ONE.via University of Tokyo: Cyrus Ghaznavi et al. 9 Nov 2020. The Herbivore's Dilemma: Trends in and Factors Associated with Heterosexual Relationship Status and Interest in Romantic Relationships Among Young Adults in Japan - Analysis of National Surveys, 1987-2015. PLOS ONE (2020). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0241571
'Multiplying' light could be key to ultra-powerful optical computers
Feb 2021, phys.org
- Polaritons - they're half-light half-matter
Promising computer simulations for stellarator plasmas
Sep 2020, phys.org
- Just Stellarators
- Cryptojack My Fauxbots - just made that shit up, doesn't mean anything
GameStop surges again as Reddit crashes temporarily
Feb 2021, BBC News
- Activist investors
Monday, June 21, 2021
Plot Twist
Let's start here -- people have been scared of electromagnetic radiation (aka EMF) for a long time. And you can't really blame them; microwave ovens are pretty hard to believe. Wifi even more so. The same device that can "send movies through the air on invisible electromagnetic waves" can't also read my mind and control my thoughts?
The next exit off the Tinfoil Highway, after mind control, is for cancer. Working in Indoor Air Quality and Environmental Health, we get phone calls from time to time about concerns over EMF exposure. People have some symptoms, either physical or mental, and they wonder if something in their environment is causing the problem, and they know they have these magical waves floating all around their home every day. Technically, we can monitor for EMF exposure, there's equipment for it, but chances are the EMF is not your problem. After years and years of using cell phones, we can't seem to get any signal on them causing cancer.
But that's hard to explain to someone who is already convinced. And it puts the environmental consultant in the awkward position of offending a potential client.
But now, we get these new discoveries which are the stuff of conspiracy theory nightmares, only in reverse:
Electromagnetic fields hinder spread of breast cancer, study shows
Mar 2021, phys.org
Electromagnetic fields appear to slow cancer cells' metabolism selectively by changing the electrical fields inside an individual cell.
via Ohio State University: Travis H. Jones et al, Directional Migration of Breast Cancer Cells Hindered by Induced Electric Fields May Be Due to Accompanying Alteration of Metabolic Activity, Bioelectricity (2021). DOI: 10.1089/bioe.2020.0048
Tiny implant cures diabetes in mice without triggering immune response
Jun 2021, phys.org
"The implants floated freely inside the animals, and when we removed them after about six months, the insulin-secreting cells inside the implants still were functioning. And importantly, it is a very robust and safe device."
via Washington University School of Medicine: X. Wang el al., "A nanofibrous encapsulation device for safe delivery of insulin-producing cells to treat type 1 diabetes," Science Translational Medicine (2021). https://stm.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.abb4601
Controlling insulin production with a smartwatch
Jun 2021, phys.org
"No naturally occurring molecular system in human cells responds to green light, so we had to build something new."The ETH professor and his colleagues ultimately developed a molecular switch that, once implanted, can be activated by the green light of a smartwatch.The switch is linked to a gene network that the researchers introduced into human cells. Depending on the configuration of this network—in other words, the genes it contains—it can produce insulin or other substances as soon as the cells are exposed to green light. Turning the light off inactivates the switch and halts the process.
via ETH Zurich: Mansouri M, Hussherr M-D, Strittmatter T, Buchmann P, Xue S, Camenisch G, Fussenegger M: Smart-watch-programmed green-light-operated percutaneous control of therapeutic transgenes. Nature Communications, 2021, 7 June; DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-23572-4
Remote control of blood sugar - Electromagnetic fields treat diabetes in animal models
Oct 2020, phys.org
Exposing diabetic mice to a combination of static electric and magnetic fields for a few hours per day normalizes two major hallmarks of type 2 diabetes. And it works by remote control, and it can be applied in your sleep to normalize your blood sugar for the rest of the day.
And this makes it even better; "The initial finding was pure serendipity." One scientist borrowed another scientist's mice; he was working on EMF exposure, and she was working on blood sugar. Using his mice in her experiment, she found something strange going on. Now we think the EMFs prolong activation of superoxide molecules in the liver, rebalancing the body's response to insulin.
Later, they even treated human liver cells with EMFs, for six hours, and found that the surrogate marker for insulin sensitivity improved.
via Calvin S. Carter et al, Exposure to Static Magnetic and Electric Fields Treats Type 2 Diabetes, Cell Metabolism (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.cmet.2020.09.012
Artificial Tongues
 |
3D Fractal by Mourelas Konstantinos (not a closeup microphotograph of a tongue at all) |
3-D printing the first ever biomimetic tongue surface
Oct 2020, phys.org
Sounds like an artificial vagina to me.
via University of Leeds: Efren Andablo-Reyes et al, 3D Biomimetic Tongue-Emulating Surfaces for Tribological Applications, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces (2020). DOI: 10.1021/acsami.0c12925
Doppler Vibrometers, Persistent Surveillance, and Free Energy
We're seeing a lot of noise about energy harvesting in the last few months. It sounds like a scifi dream, but it's actually not that uncommon, especially for wearables and wifi.
It grabs extra ambient energy, whether it's solar, pressure, temperature differences, or just the electromagnetic radiation that's floating all around us from our advanced communications technologies.
The crazy part is when you scale it up. Wearables aren't really here yet, and neither is the 5G mesh network. It's also not being integrated into our building materials or civil infrastructure. But it's coming, and here's some examples, besides the obvious examples of solar, wind and hydro:
Using softened wood to create electricity in homes
Mar 2021, phys.org
They're using fungus to eat-away the insides of the wood, to make it more spongy, so it can become squishy when you walk on it, and thereby generating electricity via the piezoelectric effect. The floor creates electricity as we walk across it.
via: Jianguo Sun et al. Enhanced mechanical energy conversion with selectively decayed wood, Science Advances (2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abd9138
Battery-free Game Boy runs forever
Sep 2020, phys.org
Your own button-pressing as you play the game powers the game:
"It's the first battery-free interactive device that harvests energy from user actions," said Northwestern's Josiah Hester, who co-led the research. "When you press a button, the device converts that energy into something that powers your gaming.""Sustainable gaming will become a reality."
Your paper notebook could become your next tablet
Sep 2021, phys.org
"Self-powered paper-based electronic device""We developed a method to render paper repellent to water, oil and dust by coating it with highly fluorinated molecules. This omniphobic coating allows us to print multiple layers of circuits onto paper without getting the ink to smear from one layer to the next one."BUT -- "flourine" and "omniphobic" sound like PFAS which, if scaled-up, is bound to be an ecological distaster.Martinez said this innovation facilitates the fabrication of vertical pressure sensors that do not require any external battery, since they harvest the energy from their contact with the user.via: Marina Sala de Medeiros et al, Moisture-insensitive, self-powered paper-based flexible electronics, Nano Energy (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.nanoen.2020.105301
Small generator captures heat given off by skin to power wearable devices
May 2021, phys.org
It converts heat from our skin into electrical energy.
via: Cell Reports Physical Science, Liu et al.: "Efficient Molecular Encoding in Multifunctional Self-Immolative Urethanes". DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrp.2021.100412
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| Nikon Small World 2020 - Crystals - Justin Zoll |
Researchers develop flexible crystal, paving the way for more efficient bendable electronics
Feb 2021, phys.org
A team of researchers led by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has developed a new material, that when electricity is applied to it, can flex and bend forty times more than its competitors, opening the way to better micro machines.Conversely, when it is bent, it generates electricity very effectively and could be used for better 'energy harvesting' — potentially recharging batteries in gadgets just from everyday movements.The novel material is both electrostrictive and piezoelectric. Its electrostrictive properties means it can change shape when an electric current is applied, while piezoelectric means the material can convert pressure into electric charges.via Nanyang Technological University: Yuzhong Hu et al. Ferroelastic-switching-driven large shear strain and piezoelectricity in a hybrid ferroelectric, Nature Materials (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41563-020-00875-3
Engineers harvest Wi-Fi signals to power small electronics
May 2021, phys.org
To harness this under-used source of energy, a research team from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Japan's Tohoku University (TU) has developed a technology that uses tiny smart devices known as spin-torque oscillators (STOs) to harvest and convert wireless radio frequencies into energy to power small electronics. In their study, the researchers had successfully harvested energy using Wi-Fi-band signals to power a light-emitting diode (LED) wirelessly, and without using any battery.via: National University of Singapore: Raghav Sharma et al. Electrically connected spin-torque oscillators array for 2.4 GHz WiFi band transmission and energy harvesting, Nature Communications (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-23181-1
Slightly Off-Track:
World's fastest information-fueled engine designed by university researchers
May 2021, phys.org
"Information engine" converts the random jiggling of a microscopic particle into stored energy. What the f*** is an information engine? (Maxwell's Demon was an information engine.)
Here you go:
The information engine designed by SFU researchers consists of a microscopic particle immersed in water and attached to a spring which, itself, is fixed to a movable stage. Researchers then observe the particle bouncing up and down due to thermal motion."When we see an upward bounce, we move the stage up in response," explains lead author and Ph.D. student Tushar Saha. "When we see a downward bounce, we wait. This ends up lifting the entire system using only information about the particle's position."via Simon Fraser University: Tushar K. Saha et al, Maximizing power and velocity of an information engine, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2021). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2023356118
Researchers create ambient vibration energy harvester with automatic resonance tuning mechanism
Sep 2020, phys.org
Is this real? Because they're making it sound like it's totally real:
The energy harvester performs automatic resonance tuning by adjusting its own frequency in response to the environmental conditions, thereby harvesting electrical energy from waste energy sources such as vibration, heat, light, and so on. It's especially useful for small electronic devices that operate wirelessly, like IoT systems.
So if you have a guitar, or some nice big glassware, you may have tried make it sing all by itself, just by humming or singing at the right frequency, until it sings along. That's the standing frequency of the body of the guitar, or the resonant frequency. It's the overall frequency at which the guitar naturally vibrates. All things naturally vibrate, at a molecular level. And when you scale that up, all the molecules that make a guitar, all their vibrations cancel out, until you have one resonant frequency.
This self-tuning energy harvester has to find that frequency, so that it can collect that waste.
via the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) research team from the KIST Center for Electronic Materials: Youn-Hwan Shin et al, Automatic resonance tuning mechanism for ultra-wide bandwidth mechanical energy harvesting, Nano Energy (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.nanoen.2020.104986
Post Script, for the Wordporn: Doppler Vibrometers
Device tracks house appliances through vibration, AI
Sep 2020, phys.org
Hyper surveillance, the panopticon and integrated building management systems:
Do I even need to explain it? You can already guess how it works. If you give enough data to enough computing power, you can know everything. It's called omniscience.
This is a deep learning neural net that learns the vibration patterns of the appliances in your house by pointing a laser at an interior wall in the center of a home, or the ceiling in two-story homes. It's ultimately identifying the paths traveled by the vibrations from room to room, called path signatures. It's 96% accurate and can even identify dripping faucets, besides the obvious exhaust fan, refrigerator, etc.
But wait, the bonus!! -- The device is primarily useful in single-family houses, Zhang said, because in buildings it could pick up activities in neighboring apartments, presenting a potential privacy risk. -- It's so fucking good it can spy on your neighbors!
Persistent surveillance is the future, accept it.
via: Wei Sun et al, VibroSense, Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (2020). DOI: 10.1145/3411828
Post Post Script:
The Crystal Radio (uses no power except that of the radio signal itself, goes back to the late 1800's, and was responsible for the introduction and popularization of radios for the general public.)
Friday, June 18, 2021
Digital Body Brokers and the Future Futures Market
AKA The Intergalactic Bodynet
Let's talk about this "digital twin" thing. Twins for the planet, twins for people, twins for everything. And why not? Why shouldn't we all have a backup body, and a backup planet?
But that's not it; the "twin" is for performing future forecasting, simulations, modeling potential outcomes, plugging in variables and testing the results -- You want to try geo-engineering? Why seed silver iodide in the actual sky when you can put it in the virtual-double-sky and see what happens? (Or you could just let China do it like during the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and see what happens.)
You want to try intermittent fasting? Why actually do it when you can have your digital twin body double do it and see whether it helps or not? Why ask that girl out when you can have your parallel self ask her parallel self on a date and gauge the outcome? Good time? Worth it? Why waste your time with the real thing when you can run the simulation.
I like to call it the Metabolism of the Anthroposphere; start getting acquainted.
Yet, I can't take credit for the parallel self, so masterfully envisioned by science fiction writer Ted Chiang in his short story "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom", in his 2019 book Exhalation.
Digital content on track to equal half Earth's mass by 2245
Aug 2020, phys.org
As we use resources, such as coal, oil, natural gas, copper, silicon and aluminum, to power massive computer farms and process digital information, our technological progress is redistributing Earth's matter from physical atoms to digital information—the fifth state of matter, alongside liquid, solid, gas and plasma.This scientist, Melvin Vopson, is known for the mass-energy-information equivalence, which says information has mass, and is the basis of the universe."The information catastrophe," AIP Advances (2020). DOI: 10.1063/5.0019941also: The mass-energy-information equivalence principle, M Vopson. AIP Advances 9, 095206 (2019); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5123794
Scientists begin building highly accurate digital twin of our planet
Feb 2021, phys.org
It's called Destination Earth:
A digital twin of our planet is to simulate the Earth system in future. It is intended to support policy-makers in taking appropriate measures to better prepare for extreme events.But in addition to the observation data conventionally used for weather and climate simulations, the researchers also want to integrate new data on relevant human activities into the model. The new Earth system model will represent virtually all processes on the Earth's surface as realistically as possible, including the influence of humans on water, food and energy management, and the processes in the physical Earth system."Information system for decision-making"via ETH Zurich: Peter Bauer et al. The digital revolution of Earth-system science, Nature Computational Science (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s43588-021-00023-0http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s43588-021-00023-0also: A digital twin of Earth for the green transition. Nat. Clim. Chang. 11, 80–83 (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41558-021-00986-y
Digital twin technology a 'powerful tool' but requires significant investment, say experts
May 2021, phys.org
Here's a good description in case you missed it: a virtual version of real-life objects that can be used to predict how that object will perform, could predict how a patient's disease will develop and how patients are likely to respond to different therapies.
And further context: "We are making more measurements in patients in the hospital and from remote monitoring and we need to develop methods for rapidly and robustly combining this patient information into a digital twin to provide a single representation of the patient."... "Another challenge is how do we get better at predicting how the heart will operate under extreme conditions. We often want to predict when the heart will fail, however, we only have information that is obtained from them under normal operating procedures."
-Lead author Professor Steven Niederer from the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences, King's College London
In other words, they want to kill the body double just to see how it dies.
Last one: "The promise of data driven coupling of mathematical models with the physical reality they represent, the so-called digital twin, is going to be transformational in how we interact with and control the physical world. "
-Mark Girolami, Programme Director for Data-Centric Engineering at The Alan Turing Institute
via King's College London, The Alan Turing Institute, the University of Cambridge, and the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at UT Austin in Texas: Scaling digital twins from the artisanal to the industrial, Nature Computational Science, DOI: 10.1038/s43588-021-00072-5
Digital twins could lead to more proactive, personalized medicine, researchers say
Mar 2021, phys.org
The writeup from Medical Express sums it up pretty good: "Obviously, we can't experiment on a real clone of ourselves, but we can research different scenarios with a digital twin."
And what if you could use it for...advertising???
via Indiana University: Reinhard Laubenbacher et al. Using digital twins in viral infection, Science (2021). DOI: 10.1126/science.abf3370
Post Script:
Apr 2021, BBC News
No better fake than yourself.
This is some good shit: Before he died of cancer in 2017 a man from south-east China told his family he wanted a traditional burial, but in some regions these are banned. His family hired someone to find a substitute body that could be cremated in place of their relative's [so that his real body could then go and be buried, albeit still illegally]. But unknown to them, the man they hired committed murder to provide the body. Spotting a man with Down's syndrome picking litter from the street, Huang persuaded him to get into a car and gave the victim alcohol until he passed out. [He put him in a coffin and sold it to the family for about $15K.] The family then proceeded to have that coffin cremated, pretending it contained the body of their own relative. The relative's actual body was then buried in secret in a traditional way.
Got all that? Bodyswapping it's called, and it's not uncommon.
Post Post Script:
Full Steam Ahead (aka the Kufizoid, the Kufi-probe), Network Address 2021
Anthromimetic Cosmogenesis (aka the Virtual Facebook World), Network Address 2021
Wednesday, June 16, 2021
On Quantum Updates and the Photon Revolution
Quantum things are a big deal these days, but you know what's even more of a big deal? Photons. Just wait, you'll be getting upgraded from the Verizon Quantum plan to the Verizon Photon plan in like 2 years tops. Photons, i.e., light, is the electricity of the 21st century.
^That image btw: "Stimulated Photon Emission" -- Illustration of a gold-covered probe tip injecting electrons into a carefully located imperfection in an atomically thin material. The energy from each electron causes the highly localized emission of a single photon, which may then be guided to a detector. Credit: Ignacio Gaubert, 2020.
Time-reversal of an unknown quantum state
Aug 2020, phys.org
Stochastic baths, who can say no?
Abstract - In the present work, the scientists propose using a thermodynamic reservoir at finite temperatures to form a high-entropy stochastic bath to thermalize a given quantum system and experimentally increase thermal disorder or entropy in the system.-A. V. Lebedev et al. Time-reversal of an unknown quantum state, Communications Physics (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s42005-020-00396-0-Seth Lloyd et al. Quantum principal component analysis, Nature Physics (2014). DOI: 10.1038/nphys3029-Gonzalo Manzano et al. Quantum Fluctuation Theorems for Arbitrary Environments: Adiabatic and Nonadiabatic Entropy Production, Physical Review X (2018). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevX.8.031037
An electrical trigger fires single, identical photons
Oct 2020, phys.org
First time we're seeing "memory" used as an analogy for quantum coherence.
Also, "photons on demand"; wait for it.
via: Bruno Schuler et al, Electrically driven photon emission from individual atomic defects in monolayer WS2, Science Advances (2020). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abb5988
Quantum entanglement demonstrated aboard orbiting CubeSat
Jun 2020, phys.org
Quantum computing in outer space.
In a critical step toward creating a global quantum communications network, researchers have generated and detected quantum entanglement onboard a CubeSat nanosatellite weighing less than 2.6 kilograms and orbiting the Earth.
The coldest computers in the world
Aug 2020, BBC News
Also in outer space.
The world's first integrated quantum communication network
Jan 2021, phys.org
Yes they have; via the University of Science and Technology of China.
Using drones to create local quantum networks
Jan 2021, phys.org
This is what it will be like:
A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in China has used drones to create a prototype of a small airborne quantum network. In their paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the researchers describe sending entangled particles from one drone to another and from a drone to the ground.
Robots learn faster with quantum technology
Mar 2021, phys.org
"We are just at the beginning of understanding the possibilities of quantum artificial intelligence" says Philip Walther, head of an international collaboration of experimental physicists, "and thus every new experimental result contributes to the development of this field, which is currently seen as one of the most fertile areas for quantum computing."
Fertile, indeed.
 |
Photon Avalanche, Mikołaj Łukaszewicz at Polish Academy of Sciences, 2021 |
'Multiplying' light could be key to ultra-powerful optical computers
Feb 2021, phys.org
Using polaritons - which are half-light and half-matter
Heat-free optical switch would enable optical quantum computing chips
Mar 2021, phys.org
Molybdenum disulfide ushers in era of post-silicon photonics
Mar 2021, phys.org
Study suggests that silicon could be a photonics game-changer
Apr 2021, phys.org
In addition to being good for controlling electronic information, silicon is also good for controlling light, which will be integral to quantum computing.
Discovered by mistake of course:
"Our finding was lucky because we weren't looking for it. We were trying to understand how a very small number of phosphorus atoms in a silicon crystal could be used for making a quantum computer and how to use light beams to control quantum information stored in the phosphorus atoms."We were astonished to find that the phosphorus atoms were re-emitting light beams that were almost as bright as the very intense laser we were shining on them. We shelved the data for a couple of years while we thought about proving where the beams were coming from. It's a great example of the way science proceeds by accident, and also how pan-European teams can still work together very effectively."via University of Surrey: Nils Dessmann et al, Highly efficient THz four-wave mixing in doped silicon, Light: Science & Applications (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41377-021-00509-6
Wafer-scale production of graphene-based photonic devices
Feb 2021, phys.org
It's here, graphene chips to the rescue.
via Graphene Flagship: Marco A. Giambra et al, Wafer-Scale Integration of Graphene-Based Photonic Devices, ACS Nano (2021). DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.0c09758
Mind Behind the Eyes
Just human things.
An averted glance gives a glimpse of the mind behind the eyes
Aug 2020, phys.org
The amount of stuff our brain does without our even thinking about it, is unfathomable:
In almost all cases, people instinctually follow the gaze of another. But psychologists found an exception in the socially awkward situation where a person caught staring averts their eyes: A third-party observer does not reflexively follow their gaze. (Which means they know, albeit unconsciously.)The researchers conclude that the brain tells the observer that there is no significance to the location where the embarrassed party has turned their attention."The brain is a lot smarter than we thought," said Yale's Brian Scholl, professor of psychology and senior author of the paper.via: Clara Colombatto el al., "Gaze deflection reveals how gaze cueing is tuned to extract the mind behind the eyes," PNAS (2020). www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2010841117
Why the brain is programmed to see faces in everyday objects
Aug 2020, phys.org
They tested this using the process known as "sensory adaptation," a kind of visual illusion where one's perception is affected by what has recently been seen:"If you are repeatedly shown pictures of faces that are looking towards your left, for example, your perception will actually change over time so that the faces will appear to be looking more rightwards than they really are," says Dr. Palmer.via: Colin J. Palmer et al. Face Pareidolia Recruits Mechanisms for Detecting Human Social Attention, Psychological Science (2020). DOI: 10.1177/0956797620924814
^Somewhat related to right angle bias?
Study of ancient Mayan facial expressions suggests some are universal
Aug 2020 phys.org
There's a good paradox about whether human facial expressions are universal. Would a person from across the world understand you just by your facial expression? The paradox is that in order to do this study, a human observer has to be involved, which means they're biased, because they are part of a culture that has programmed their brain since birth to see things a certain way. But not robots. They aren't born at all!
Just kidding, they used English-speaking mechanical turks to label photos of Mayan sculptures. The turks agreed on the photos.
via: Alan S. Cowen et al. Universal facial expressions uncovered in art of the ancient Americas: A computational approach, Science Advances (2020). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abb1005
Totally unrelated image credit: bushmeat, via tengwood.org
Eurkea
Bacteria with a metal diet discovered in dirty glassware
Jul 2020, phys.org
First accidental science article to come out as a result of the pandemic. He left the jar lying around the lab while he went into lockdown for months. When he came back, he found a bacteria that eats metal.
Thursday, June 3, 2021
Full Steam Ahead
Mar 2021, phys.org
Behold, the most hardcore scifi illustration you've ever seen.
I call it the kufizoid, because I envision it as a hat we will all wear, and it will be alive on its own, and we will live with it in symbiosis as it instantiates our autopoetic anthropic amalgam of splinter-selves. You might call it an embroidered lace jellyfish biobot that sucks itself to your head to control your brain. But no need to be afraid; you'll love it.
But what exactly are we looking at in this picture above? Scientists first made mini-brains-in-a-dish, and then created this kufi-probe, outfitted with electrodes, heating elements, oxygen sensors and light fibers to perform optogenetic experiments where they can control genes with light pulses. This probe-hat fits nice and snug right on top of that little brain bubble that lives in a dish.
One day, somewhere between now and the day we become brains in a dish ourselves, we will wear these devices on our heads, to monitor and control our cortical activity, and to synchronize us with each other, so we can build a fully dematerialized anthroposphere, and live there happily together.
But let's continue:
This platform then enabled scientists to perform complex studies of human tissue without directly involving humans or performing invasive testing.-source: phys.org
Obviously the value of such a device is that we can study the human brain while it's not inside a human head. But in reading this, we get a glimpse of what this investigative approach will really do for us in the future -- we will use it in tandem with synthetic body doubles, running simulations by the billions every second, and in real-time, to aid us in planning and executive function. Your synthetic body double will be networked to every other person's double, so that eventually, all our doubles will become more and more enmeshed with each other, not in the physical world with all its physical limitations, but in the network, aka the anthroposphere, where the only limitation is the speed of light. And then, there will be no more doubles; we will become the double.
image credit: Northwestern University
Post Script:
Cortical spheroids used to be called cerebral organoids, so it now sounds a lot less heavy on the ethics scale. You might call it etymological camouflage. And "engineered assembloids" is even better.
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