Transportation Network Analysis

How the road network determines traffic capacity
Nov 2019, phys.org

ETH researchers have shown that we can use the structure of urban road networks to predict their traffic capacity ... using billions of traffic measurements to reveal a set of rules that enable us to easily estimate the critical number of vehicles, and by extension, the traffic capacity of a city's road network:

• road network density (kilometers of lanes per surface area)
• redundancy of alternative routes
• frequency of traffic lights
• density of bus and tram lines

image source: Alan Stark, "Mini Stack" Interchange of Interstate 10, Loop 202, and State Route 51 at Night (2), 2012. link

Allister Loder et al. Understanding traffic capacity of urban networks, Scientific Reports (2019).
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-51539-5

Brothers and Sisters

Mapping the end of incest and dawn of individualism
Nov 2019 phys.org

Apparently the Romans had to learn not to have incest in order to advance their civilization. Thanks Jesus.

Historians and scholars still don't know why Europe shifted between 1300 - 1500 AD, but they did. They were under the influence of the Catholic Church.

They think maybe: "Kin-based institutions reward conformity, tradition, nepotism, and obedience to authority, traits that help protect assets—such as farms—from outsiders. But once familial barriers crumble, the team predicted that individualistic traits like independence, creativity, cooperation, and fairness with strangers would increase."

So in conclusion - the willingness to trust strangers correlates to whether or not your family structure is the kind where your cousins mate. If it is, you're less likely to trust strangers, because you tend to find yourself surrounded by your own blood.

Now whether this means Europe needed to start trusting strangers because they were getting mixed up faster than a bag of microwave popcorn, or they facilitated this dynamism because of their beliefs, either way the association paints an interesting picture of the physics of sociology.

Post Script
Facial deformity in royal dynasty was linked to inbreeding, scientists confirm
Dec 2019, phys.org

Big Datty

Scientists use phone movement to predict personality types
Aug 2019, phys.org

I know they call it big data, but the flip side to that is the little data, nano data that sounds ludicrous. This is where I remind folks that 20 years from now, we will be able to see 360 degrees into pictures, based in the interference of light patterns and how they affect the things actually in the picture. Or how we will be able to see in a dark room by listening to the absolutely miniscule  interference patterns of sound waves as they bounce around, all taken from decades-old youtube videos. You think that sounds crazy now, but try to imagine what the world will be like when you're torrenting yottabytes from your phone, which will be in your brain. There will be sensors on your hand that will immediately identify the microbiomes of the people you shake hands with, and tell you super-intimate details about who they slept with last night. People will stop shaking hands. They will stop making contact period.

***
Inequality in the UK can be detected using deep learning image analysis
Apr 2019, phys.org

"The authors hypothesized that some features of cities and urban life, such as quality of housing and the living environment, have direct visual signals that a computer could recognize.

"These visual signals include building materials and disrepair, cars, or local shops. Combined with government statistics on outcomes such as housing conditions, mean income, or mortality and morbidity rates for one city, images may be used to train a computer programme to detect inequalities in other cities that lack statistical data."

Esra Suel et al. Measuring social, environmental and health inequalities using deep learning and street imagery, Scientific Reports (2019).
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-42036-w

Low resolution, Big data.
Surveillance of the Future.

Post Script:
Virtual spaces mirror income inequality
Oct 2019, phys.org

"In American cities, lifestyle hashtags abound in richer areas, while sports, zodiac signs and horoscopes seem to be more popular in poorer areas."

People, Particles and Social Science

aka Sociothermodynamics

Let's not forget that we do live in the era of Big Data, and it's only getting Bigger.

Big data requires new methods of analysis. As we get more and more info about the world around us, we need more basic, underlying frameworks to organize and interpret that data. And that is where physics comes to the rescue. Physicists are used to looking at complex systems with millions, billions and trillions of interactions, and being able to make predictions about their behaviors.

You would think it would show up in the news way more often, because it sure sounds like magic to me. But alas, it's not an everyday headline, so I thought I would spit a few terms up here, just to help stay familiar. This is in relation to urban design and economics.

Inness - the tendency for people to gravitate to the socioeconomic center of a city; this can be correlated to socioeconomic factors, infrastructure factors, and even mortality rates, and an example would be how well-developed cities with multiple socioeconomic centers would have a low inness value.

Betweenness Centrality - a measure of how many things you are in the between of; an example would be how some locations are at the intersection of more than two streets.

These examples are pretty straightforward because they're based on physical objects or locations. Things get a bit more abstract when we start to talk about the spread of disease through a population, or better yet, memetic propagation, which is the spread of ideas.

The practical applications of using network science to predict complex systems are much needed -- the way people move throughout a city is increasingly important when more than half the world's population is now living in cities. But I'd rather hear about how we can predict your chances of adopting a new slang term based on the gesture recognition of your 5 best friends, for example. 

Post Script:
Urban Planning and Big Data
Study finds online restaurant information can closely predict key neighborhood indicators
July 2019, phys.org

What can Wikipedia tell us about human interaction?
June 2019, phys.org

"...if we look at Wikipedia pages about the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, we can see that the page about the attack is directly connected to the page about Charlie Hebdo magazine, and also to a cluster of pages representing terrorist organizations," Miz explains.

Benzi and Miz call this kind of information-seeking "collective memory," as it can reveal how current events trigger memories of the past.

Hyphens in paper titles harm citation counts and journal impact factors
June 2019, phys.org

Notes:
Can the laws of physics untangle traffic jams, stock markets, and other complex systems?
Mar 2019, phys.org

Here's some other topics at the intersection of science and society:
The hipster effect - Why anti-conformists always end up looking the same
Mar 2019, phys.org

Social media can predict what youíll say, even if you donít participate
Jan 2019, Ars Technica

The 2008 recession associated with greater decline in mortality in Europe
Feb 2019, phys.org

"Periods of macroeconomic recession are associated with lower levels of pollution and fewer accidents in the workplace and on the roads. These are the factors most likely to have the greatest influence on accelerating the decline in mortality. Alcohol and tobacco consumption also fall during periods of greater austerity, as do the prevalences of sedentary lifestyles and obesity. While the underlying mechanisms are still not well established, the findings of some studies also point to the influence of other factors, such as work stress and the fact that healthy habits demand time, something less available to a person working in a full-time job."

And finally, totally unrelated wordporn:
No longer qubits but qutrits!
Complex quantum teleportation achieved for the first time - qutrits

Seeing into the Future

Stalker 'found Japanese singer through reflection in her eyes'
Oct 2019, BBC News

This is nothing.
Wait til the robots start looking at reflections.
No joke, they will be able to see into the past, by looking at a still image and computing the paths of photons. Watch.

image source: Outer Limits

Liability Train First Stop

Instagram demands date of birth from new members
Dec 2019, BBC

The company is asking all users to input birthdates to be able to protect them from ads that might make hurt them. (Because it sounds like we've accepted the idea that advertising can hurt people.)

But let's be realistic here, this isn't about the business protecting kids; they're protecting themselves.

You know darn well they can tell based on behavior analysis, which is conducted on every user, they can tell who is a kid and who's not. So they already know your "birthdate."

They already know because it's their business to know everything they can about you, so they can provide better ads.

The reason they're now asking for your age is so that if you if you lie about your age, but then later try to sue them for something that you saw on their site (because advertising is a weapon that can accidentally hurt you), they can say, no, you said you were not a kid, and therefore we are protected.

Prediction vs Perception

Climate models are often attacked, but most of the time they're remarkably good
Dec 2019, phys.org

Alternative headline:
High stakes test, models perform well, good sign for the future of humanity?

image source: Carl Zeiss

Note:
Zeke Hausfather et al. Evaluating the performance of past climate model projections, Geophysical Research Letters (2019).
DOI: 10.1029/2019GL085378

Partially Related Article:
The geoengineering of consent: How conspiracists dominate YouTube climate science content
July 2019, phys.org

In the last paragraph, a message from a passionate scientist says that Science needs to be more transparent, more open to communication with the public, and to use the massive channel to the public that youtube offers.

But the irony is that youtube is not a public entity. Neither is the internet the wild west it once was. It's monetized. That's a key point that seems to evade current discourse on this topic.

Videos that make people click will make more money. Posts that get shared make more money because they put the corresponding ad in front of more eyeballs. That's one half of the equation, the other half is that people love fake news. It's not like the National Enquirer hasn't been around for almost 100 years. so in the end, science can do all it wants try and combat conspiracy theories, but until the revenue scheme is changed, conspiracy theory stuff we always get more views.

(btw, The National Enquirer pays their sources, something other mainstream news organizations don't do as a matter of practice; should sound familiar to the above. They were also indicted but never charged on a count of sedition in 1942)

Joachim Allgaier, Science and Environmental Communication on YouTube: Strategically Distorted Communications in Online Videos on Climate Change and Climate Engineering, Frontiers in Communication (2019).
DOI: 10.3389/fcomm.2019.00036

For the Record

Study shows there's nothing wacky about conspiracy theorists
Nov 2019, phy.org

(Statistically, they're normal people, so their goes your theory.)

Bicameral in the Wild

Federal pension fund to include China investments, bucking political pressure
Nov 2019, Reuters

He said bicameral.

Bicameralism

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
Julian Jaynes, 1976

Overview of Julian Jaynes's Theory
In January of 1977 Princeton University psychologist Julian Jaynes (1920–1997) put forth a bold new theory of the origin of consciousness and a previous mentality known as the bicameral mind in the controversial but critically acclaimed book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Jaynes was far ahead of his time, and his theory remains as relevant today as when it was first published.

Jaynes asserts that consciousness did not arise far back in human evolution but is a learned process based on metaphorical language. Prior to the development of consciousness, Jaynes argues humans operated under a previous mentality he called the bicameral ('two-chambered') mind. In the place of an internal dialogue, bicameral people experienced auditory hallucinations directing their actions, similar to the command hallucinations experienced by many people who hear voices today. These hallucinations were interpreted as the voices of chiefs, rulers, or the gods.

To support his theory, Jaynes draws evidence from a wide range of fields, including neuroscience, psychology, archeology, ancient history, and the analysis of ancient texts. Jaynes's theory has profound implications for human history as well as a variety of aspects of modern society such as mental health, religious belief, susceptibility to persuasion, psychological anomalies such as hypnosis and possession, and our ongoing conscious evolution.
-Julian Jaynes Society

Artificial Impressionism

Fake news via OpenAI - Eloquently incoherent?
Nov 2019, phys.org

Robots slowly taking over. Give them a sentence and they can now keep it going for a few more sentences, but after that it gets stupid.

So you can give it a fake headline, and it will generate the first line of the story, but after that things will start to fall apart.

Good thing the targets for engineered memetic propagation are not trying to read past the first sentence!

Post Script
Researchers develop a method to identify computer-generated text
July 2019, phys.org

In the above 3 images, the first is a chunk of text written by a robot (most of the words are green, with a few yellows sprinkled in), the second is a real New York Times article (only half is green, the rest is yellow, with some red, and a sprinkle of purple) and the third picture is a clip from "the most unpredictable human text ever written", James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake (the colors green, yellow, red, purple are all evenly distributed about the page).

Green words are very predictably the next word. Yellow words are less likely to show up after the word they show up after. And red and purple are for when the next word is something you absolutely did not expect.

Because text-writing algorithms today use a statistical correlation program based on a compendium of written language (so they know what words typically occur together) the output of such algos will tend to look like the topmost image with all green words. The algos can't think for themselves, they can't 'come up with' new stuff, and they can't be unpredictable. The whole point of writing an algorithm to do this is to prescribe what it's going to do in advance, i.e., it's predictable.

Anyway, soon we won't be writing our robots to write like that. They'll use less predictable programs to generate their text, with unpredictability and random association thrown in there on purpose.

Universe Machine and The Metaversal Omnibot

aka Deep Takeover

DeepMind AI achieves Grandmaster status at Starcraft 2
Oct 2019, BBC News

"This all took place across 44 days. But because the process was carried out at high speed, it represented about 200 years of human gameplay."

Virtual 'universe machine' sheds light on galaxy evolution
Aug 2019, phys.org

"Universe Machine"
aka Dawn of the Anthroposphere

image source: gettyimages-1095967942

Shady as Hell

City trees can offset neighborhood heat islands, researcher says
Apr 2019, phys.org

That's a crazy idea.
Here's another one - municipal land use regulations can require shade trees on the West side of any building. If every single building in the United States had a tree shading its west side, reducing the temperature by about ten degrees F for a few hours on every hot day, how much energy in air conditioning would be saved?

Simulacra City

Meet N.J.'s newest downtown, designed for kids and adults with special needs
Aug 2019, nj.com

Here's an urban design story you don't hear too much. It looks like a typical downtown, with stores and sidewalks, but it's indoors. It used to be a warehouse in Livingston, New Jersey, but now it's kind of like a Disney village.

It's got normal stores and full time workers and patrons from the community, but with jobs prioritized for people sensitive to dynamic social interactions - there's just enough but not too much people buzzing around. And so they get to be gently immersed in everyday activities, to build up their people skills.

With the metabolizing gray blob of abandoned strip malls that sprawls over New Jersey, there's plenty of room for a few more of these.

Music Science

Dubstep artist Skrillex could protect against mosquito bites
Aug 2019, BBC News

Mosquitos use low frequencies to have sex, or to find mates. Something about bass drops and mosquito sex. When you interfere, or add noise to this frequency, it can entrain them, or hypnotize them, because they are so sensitive to it. They get hypnotized and don't sting as much.

Why music makes us feel, according to AI
Nov 2019, phys.org

Contrast made this one part of the brain light up a lot, like a change in loudness, or introduction of a new instrument. "Dynamic variability".

In fact, for each new instrument, there was a spike in palm sweat (aka galvanic skin response).

But the most stimulating moments happened from heightened complexity; as you add more instruments and as you approach crescendo, you experience the whole autonomic response on at the highest level.

And emotional response?

"That award goes to the raised 7th note of the minor scale. The study found the note F# in a song in the G minor key positively correlated with high sadness ratings.
-A Multimodal View into Music's Effect on Human Neural, Physiological, and Emotional Experience

image source: Jason Mowry, Black and Green Music Equalizer

Post Script
Chimpanzees spontaneously dance to music
Dec 2019, phys.org

"dance-like music" (?)

Rachmaninoff the most innovative composer according to network science
Feb 2020, phys.org

Comparing Western and Chinese classical music using deep learning algorithms
Mar 2020, phys.org

"While previous music studies mainly use models based on music, we were curious about whether a model trained on general soundscape can be used for analyzing music and how they are different for Chinese and Western classical music," Fan explained. "Therefore, we tried using two models built on general sound: a sound event detection model and a soundscape emotion recognition model."
...
The researchers also observed that their deep learning classifier recognized soundscape recordings as Chinese classical music. This suggests that soundscape recordings typically share more similarities with Chinese classical music than with Western classical music.

Mozart may reduce seizure frequency in people with epilepsy

June 2020, phys.org

aka the new CBD

Seeing is Believing

A new approach to discover visual patterns in art collections
Mar 2019, phys.org

A little bit of art history - prior to the van Meegeren Forgeries in the 1940's, art historians and art authenticators would perform their forensics thus: stand in front of the painting, and if you feel it, if it moves you, then it's real.

Artificial Life and The Designer Microbe

Artificial life form given 'synthetic DNA'
May 2019, BBC News

It's a form of E. coli that's been "written from scratch". In other words, every gene it has was altered. And yet it's alive.
Also, it has a name - Syn61.
Welcome.

image source: flowvis.org

Note:
The article points out that "The approach is more cautious than that used by bio-entrepreneur, Craig Venter, whose microbial replicant based on the tiny organism Mycoplasma genitalium was presented to the world in 2010.

Keeping Up with the Hertzbergs

How do you know your diamond isn't fake?
July 2019, BBC News

Being that it's not that hard to grow diamonds in a lab anymore, customers need new ways to tell whether their diamonds are real or not.

Identification codes can now be etched with lasers beneath the surface so it can't be tampered with, and small-scale diamond mines can use blockchain to prove they're not being tampered along the way to the customer.

Bottom line though, it's getting harder and harder to justify the diamond trade overall when you can just make them in a lab. Like the meatburgers made without meat - once you can no longer tell the difference, does it matter?

image source: The Z machine, the largest X-ray generator in the world, is located in Albuquerque, New Mexico. No idea what this has to do with diamonds, but it looks cool. Also, it rains diamonds on other planets.

Light Hype, Crystal Prediction, and Cerebral Diamonoids

Energy-free superfast computing invented by scientists using light pulses
May 2019, phys.org

Researchers demonstrate all-optical neural network for deep learning
Sep 2019, phys.org

Researchers teleport information within a diamond
June 2019, phys.org

Diamonds in your devices - Powering the next generation of energy storage
Dec 2019, phys.org

Boron-doped nanodiamond to be specific.

Crystal with a twist - scientists grow spiraling new material
Jun 2019, phys.org

"No one expected 2-D materials to grow in such a way. It's like a surprise gift," said Jie Yao, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at UC Berkeley.

"While the shape of the crystals may resemble that of DNA, whose helical structure is critical to its job of carrying genetic information, their underlying structure is actually quite different. Unlike "organic" DNA, which is primarily built of familiar atoms like carbon, oxygen and hydrogen, these "inorganic" crystals are built of more far-flung elements of the periodic table, in this case, sulfur and germanium. And while organic molecules often take all sorts of zany shapes, due to unique properties of their primary component, carbon, inorganic molecules tend more toward the straight and narrow."

Cyborg organoids offer rare view into early stages of development
Aug 2019, phys.org

"If we can develop nanoelectronics that are so flexible, stretchable, and soft that they can grow together with developing tissue through their natural development process, the embedded sensors can measure the entire activity of this developmental process," said Jia Liu, Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at SEAS and senior author of the study. "

Brain waves detected in mini-brains grown in a dish
Sep 2019, phys.org

World first as artificial neurons developed to cure chronic diseases
Dec 2019, phys.org

Optimal solid state neurons, Nature Communications (2019).
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-13177-3 

***
We will all live inside diamonds.
Optical intelligentities in neuromorphic cerebral organoid diamonds, to be specific.

***

Scientists create a 'crystal within a crystal' for new electronic devices
Dec 2019, phys.org

Storing data in everyday objects
Dec 2019, phys.org

A method for marking products with a DNA "barcode" embedded in miniscule glass beads -- These nanobeads are used in industry as tracers for geological tests or as markers for high-quality food products, thus distinguishing them from counterfeits using a relatively short barcode consisting of a 100-bit code. This technology has now been commercialized by ETH spin-off Haelixa. 

They call the storage-form "DNA of Things" 

"All other known forms of storage have a fixed geometry: A hard drive has to look like a hard drive, a CD like a CD. You can't change the form without losing information," Erlich says. "DNA is currently the only data storage medium that can also exist as a liquid, which allows us to insert it into objects of any shape." 

A further application of the technology would be to conceal information in everyday objects, a technique experts refer to as steganography. 

Grass, Erlich and their colleagues used the technology to store a short film about this archive (1.4 megabytes) in glass beads, which they then poured into the lenses of ordinary glasses. "It would be no problem to take a pair of glasses like this through airport security and thus transport information from one place to another undetected," Erlich says. In theory, it should be possible to hide the glass beads in any plastic objects that do not reach too high a temperature during the manufacturing process.

Substance found in fossil fuels can transform into pure diamond
Mar 2020, phy.org