Showing posts with label predictive analytics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label predictive analytics. Show all posts

Thursday, December 11, 2025

Super Surveillance on Steroids


Every day it gets a little bit easier to make the phone call from inside the house.

AI-driven video analyzer sets new standards in human action detection
Oct 2024, phys.org

If you were one person in a sea of thousands, we can now tell you're up to something by the way you move your body, with only one camera:

Semantic and Motion-Aware Spatiotemporal Transformer Network - a multi-feature selective attention model helps the system focus on the most important parts of a scene while ignoring unnecessary details, and a motion-aware 2D positional encoding algorithm tracks how things move over time, to  accurately recognize complex actions in real time, making it more effective in high-stakes scenarios like surveillance, health care diagnostics, or autonomous driving.

via University of Virginia's School of Engineering and Applied Science: Matthew Korban et al, A Semantic and Motion-Aware Spatiotemporal Transformer Network for Action Detection, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (2024). DOI: 10.1109/TPAMI.2024.3377192



A stapler that knows when you need it: Using AI to turn everyday objects into proactive assistants
Oct 2025, phys.org

And there you have it, the AI stapler.

via Carnegie Mellon University: Violet Yinuo Han et al, Towards Unobtrusive Physical AI: Augmenting Everyday Objects with Intelligence and Robotic Movement for Proactive Assistance, Proceedings of the 38th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (2025). DOI: 10.1145/3746059.3747726


New 'hidden in plain sight' facial and eye biomarkers for tinnitus severity could unlock path to testing treatments
Apr 2025, phys.org

Researchers knew that the pupil dilation was a sign of increased arousal and that involuntary facial movements could provide a window into threat assessment; and they hypothesized that people with debilitating tinnitus are chronically in vigilance mode, reacting to everyday sounds as if they are threats.

Video recordings were made while participants listened to pleasant, neutral, or distressing and unpleasant sounds. In people with severe tinnitus, pupils dilated extra wide at all sounds, while facial movements were blunted in response to the same sounds.

via Mass General Brigham Eye and Ear: Samuel Smith et al, Objective autonomic signatures of tinnitus and sound sensitivity disorders, Science Translational Medicine (2025). DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.adp1934.


Deepfakes now come with a realistic heartbeat, making them harder to unmask
Apr 2025, phys.org

Photoplethysmography - The analysis of the transmission of light through the skin and underlying blood vessels has long been indispensable in medicine, for example in pulse oximeters. Its digital cousin, so-called remote photoplethysmography (rPPP), is an emerging method in telehealthcare, which uses webcams to estimate vital signs. But rPPP can, in theory, also be used in deepfake detectors.

In recent years, such experimental rPPP-based deepfake detectors have proven good at distinguishing between real and deepfaked videos. These successes led some experts to judge that current deepfakes couldn't yet mimic a realistic heart rate. But now, it appears that this complacent view is outdated.

"Our experiments have shown that current deepfakes may show a realistic heartbeat, but do not show physiologically realistic variations in blood flow across space and time within the face."

via Humboldt University of Berlin: High-quality deepfakes have a heart!, Frontiers in Imaging (2025). DOI: 10.3389/fimag.2025.1504551

Nikon Small World - Sunflower pollen on an acupuncture needle - John-Oliver Dum - 40X - 2023

Diagnostic pen converts handwriting into electrical signals to detect Parkinson's
Jun 2025, phys.org

The pen's design integrates a silicone-based magnetoelastic tip embedded with magnetic particles, and a reservoir of ferrofluid ink containing nanomagnets. During writing, mechanical stress from hand pressure deforms the tip and causes ink movement, generating shifts in magnetic flux that induce voltage in an embedded coil.

via UCLA: Guorui Chen et al, Neural network-assisted personalized handwriting analysis for Parkinson's disease diagnostics, Nature Chemical Engineering (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s44286-025-00219-5

Also: Diagnosing Parkinson's disease using a soft magnetoelastic smart pen, Nature Chemical Engineering (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s44286-025-00228-4


One of a kind: Humans have unique breathing 'fingerprints' that may signal health status
Jun 2025, phys.org

Scientists can identify individuals based solely on their breathing patterns with 96.8% accuracy. 

This high-level accuracy remained consistent across multiple retests conducted over a two-year period, rivaling the precision of some voice recognition technologies. Respiratory fingerprints correlated with a person's body mass index, sleep-wake cycle, levels of depression and anxiety, and even behavioral traits. For example, participants who scored relatively higher on anxiety questionnaires had shorter inhales and more variability in the pauses between breaths during sleep.

via Noam Sobel of the Weizmann Institute of Science: Humans Have Nasal Respiratory Fingerprints, Current Biology (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2025.05.008. 


Banking data reveals early warning signs of cognitive decline in older adults
Jun 2025, phys.org

The results reveal that subtle but significant changes in financial behavior—such as reduced spending on travel and hobbies, increased household bills, fewer online banking logins, and more frequent requests to reset PINs — begin to appear several years before individuals are formally identified as lacking financial capacity.

"Lacking financial capacity" is another way of saying it. 

via University of Nottingham's School of Economics: Anna Trendl et al, Early Behavioral Markers of Loss of Financial Capacity, JAMA Network Open (2025). DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.15894


WhoFi: New surveillance technology can track people by how they disrupt Wi-Fi signals
Jul 2025, phys.org

Total and absolute surveillance is inevitable.

WhoFi captures how Wi-Fi signals change when they encounter people and objects, interpreting unique Wi-Fi disruptions as individual "fingerprints" unique to a person.

The team acknowledges the issues and potential for misuse, but states that their re-identification (Re-ID) system does not capture a person's identity or personal data. "By leveraging non-visual biometric features embedded in Wi-Fi CSI, this study offers a privacy-preserving and robust approach for Wi-Fi-based Re-ID, and it lays the foundation for future work in wireless biometric sensing."

via Sapienza University: Danilo Avola et al, WhoFi: Deep Person Re-Identification via Wi-Fi Channel Signal Encoding, arXiv (2025). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2507.12869

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Thursday, March 20, 2025

Hide Your Brains


The era of the omnicortex is upon us, and by upon us I mean it's coming for you, and your brain.
 
Mini-brains reveal how mitochondrial mutations affect brain cells
Dec 2024, phys.org

Mini-brains, aka Brain Organoids. That is all.

via University of Bergen: Anbin Chen et al, Hallmark Molecular and Pathological Features of POLG Disease are Recapitulated in Cerebral Organoids, Advanced Science (2024). DOI: 10.1002/advs.202307136



Researchers achieve success in allowing a patient to 'speak' using only the power of thought
Jul 2024, phys.org

(Epilepsy patients) In the first stage of the experiment, with the depth electrodes already implanted in the patient's brain, researchers asked him to say two syllables out loud: /a/ and /e/ while they recorded brain activity. Researchers then trained AI models to identify the specific brain cells whose electrical activity indicated the desire to say /a/ or /e/. Once the computer learned, he was asked to only imagine... The computer then translated the electrical signals...

via Tel-Aviv University Sourasky Medical Center, Ichilov Hospital: Ariel Tankus et al, A Speech Neuroprosthesis in the Frontal Lobe and Hippocampus: Decoding High-Frequency Activity into Phonemes, Neurosurgery (2024). DOI: 10.1227/neu.0000000000003068


Artificial imagination with the 'exocortex:' Researcher proposes software to aid scientific inspiration and imagination
Jan 2025, phys.org

The conceptualized exocortex will be an extension of a scientist's brain.

Maybe you just want to know that Brookhaven is doing this, that's all.

via U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and Electronic Nanomaterials Group leader at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials: Kevin G. Yager, Towards a science exocortex, Digital Discovery (2024). DOI: 10.1039/D4DD00178H


'DeepFocus' offers minimally invasive brain stimulation through the nose
Feb 2025, phys.org

"By going through the nose, we can place electrodes as close to the brain as possible without opening the skull."

And that's all you need to know.

via Carnegie Mellon University Electrical and Computer Engineering: Yuxin Guo et al, DeepFocus: a transnasal approach for optimized deep brain stimulation of reward circuit nodes, Journal of Neural Engineering (2025). DOI: 10.1088/1741-2552/adac0c


Direct translation of brain imaging to text with MindLLM
Feb 2025, phys.org

fMRI to text. You're fucked. 

  • AKA decoding brain activity into natural language
  • Improves on prior models like UMBRAE, BrainChat, and UniBrain

via Yale University, Dartmouth College, and the University of Cambridge: Weikang Qiu et al, MindLLM: A Subject-Agnostic and Versatile Model for fMRI-to-Text Decoding, arXiv (2025). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2502.15786

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Saturday, February 8, 2025

How Humans Work


Having been human for some time now, there's lots of quirks of human behavior that have been explained, and the world is a less confusing place as a result.

Yet there are some that remain. Such as - when you're driving in traffic and look at a person in another car, but in such a way that there's no way they could see you looking at them, and yet they somehow know, and stare right back at you. Or when you get caught looking at someone and try to avert your eyes, but you can tell you got caught. Or the reverse, just as common. How on earth do we do this? ESP? That's been my only explanation, which is to say, I've got no explanation. Until now:

Team succeeds in determining the exact moment when the brain detects another person's gaze direction
Jul 2024, phys.org

They succeeded in determining with unprecedented precision the exact moment at which the direction of gaze is detected using an electroencephalogram (EEG) and machine learning.

The brain first perceives the more global visual cues, i.e. the orientation of the head, before focusing on the more local information. Hierarchical organization then allows for integration of eye region and head orientation information.

(And this is why "side eye" is a creepy, uncanny valley thing; it's a mismatch of head direction and eye direction.)

via University of Geneva: Domilė Tautvydaitė et al, The Timing of Gaze Direction Perception: ERP Decoding and Task Modulation, NeuroImage (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2024.120659



Study links social and non-social synchrony to romantic attractiveness
Jul 2024, phys.org

Some people are super synchronizers, and super synchronizers are consistently rated as more attractive.

The ability to synchronize stems from fundamental sensorimotor abilities and that this adaptability might be perceived as beneficial in romantic contexts. ("Romantic Contexts")

Synchronized physiological states between two people can facilitate the regulation of bodily systems, ultimately enabling more fulfilling interactions between them.

The researchers first carried out an initial online experiment involving 144 participants. These participants were asked to watch short videos in which a male and a female actor interacted with each other, exhibiting either a low or high physiological and behavioral synchrony.

After watching this video, they were asked to rate the attractiveness of the male and female actors. The researchers found that greater synchrony between the actors in the videos increased the attractiveness ratings provided by the study participants. 

In a follow up experiment, some participants were asked to interact with potential partners in a speed dating experiment, and complete a tapping task designed to measure their synchronization, while using a wearable device called the Empatica E4 wristband which measured the activation of the sympathetic nervous system, the secretion of sweat and changes in electrodermal activity.

via Hebrew University: M. Cohen et al, Social and nonsocial synchrony are interrelated and romantically attractive, Communications Psychology (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s44271-024-00109-1


The Big 5 is a Lie! And now we're all rethinking the effectiveness of surveillance advertising; it's quite possible that someone is lying to us.

Team uncovers the complex social life of rats, with potential implications for human psychiatry
Oct 2024, phys.org 

I'm only here for this:

Another unexpected result was that there was relatively little correlation between the "personality" traits defined in standard personality and social tests (commonly used in drug or behavioral research) and the actual behavior observed within the real groups.

via Department of Biological Physics and Department of Ethology at Eötvös Loránd University: Máté Nagy et al, Long-term tracking of social structure in groups of rats, Scientific Reports (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-72437-5

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Thursday, January 30, 2025

Predictus Maxiumus


I wanted to make a list of all the things we can predict about you based on all the things you had no idea you were even doing, starting with the re-post from five years ago:

Personal Behavior via Likes 
A few dozen "likes" can guess:
  • race (95%)
  • marital status (88%)
  • political party (85%)
  • marital status
  • religiosity
  • cigarette smoking
  • drug use
  • separated parents
70 likes gets you:
  • the Big 5 personality trait survey responses (better than a friend could guess)
150 likes:
  • Big 5, better than a parent
300 likes:
  • Big 5, better than a partner
--via the book User Friendly: How the Hidden rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work, and Play, by Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant, 2019. https://bookshop.org/p/books/user-friendly-how-the-hidden-rules-of-design-are-changing-the-way-we-live-work-and-play-cliff-kuang/10360410


And as for the rest, starting from 2009 but mostly 2022-2024:

Throws in Paper Rock Scissors via High Speed Vision

Identity via 4 Points of Purchasing Data

Thoughts via Brain Activity 11 Seconds in Advance

Personality Type via Mobile Phone Accelerometers as Proxy for Phone Use

Keystrokes via Video Recording of Shoulder Movements While Typing

Emergency Hospital Visit via Increasing Use of Formal Language to Describe Health

Identified Troll Status via 50 Tweets Worth of Meta-data

Opioid Overdose via 311 Call Complaints About General Nieghborhood Conditions

Disinformation Spread Potential of User via Reliability of Sources Posted by User 

Fraudlent Activity via Slow and Deviating Computer Mouse Movements

Drunkenness via 12 Seconds of Speech

Structural Integrity of Bridges via Mobile Phone Accelerometer Data of Users on Bridge

Choice Preference via Faster Eye Movement Speed

Eavesdropping via Radar Sensing of Phone Vibrations During Call

Passwords via Heat of Fingers Left on Keyboard

Anxiety via Gait

Location Data via Network of Colocated Strangers

Depression by Tweeting Habits

Eyeball Movements and Viewing Direction via Ear Squeaks

Choice Preference via Eye Movements

Emotional Status via 1 Second of Voice

Smiling via Minute Facial Expressions in Preparation for Smiling

Depression via Increased Use of First-person Singular Pronouns on Social Media

Traffic Stop Outcome via Officer's First 45 Words

Behavior via 25-Day Cycle Patterns of Phone Touching Behavior

Stress via More Often and Less Precise Computer Mouse Use and Frequent Typing Pauses

Cryptographic Keys via Changes in Power Consumption Seen in Power LED Lights

Call Information via Speaker Vibrations Recorded on Phone's Motion Sensors

Blood Volume Pulse via Face Color

Diabetes via 10 Seconds of Voice

DNA via Face Similarity (yeah it's true)

Disease via Tongue Color

Driver Alertness via Seatbelt-Integrated Biosensor

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Wednesday, January 29, 2025

Mindless Autonomy


Everybody loves slime molds, nature's gift to urban planning, so let's start there.

Evidently efficient - Self-organization of informal bus lines in the Global South
July 2024, phys.org

The Global North usually have centrally planned public transport systems, and the Global South has it provided by informal services and ad hoc routes. They studied 7,000 formal and informal bus lines across 36 cities and 22 countries using open GPS data.

The routes of informal transport self-organize in a way that reaches or even exceeds the efficiency level of centralized services. The findings call into question the general perception of informal transport as an "inferior alternative" to centrally organized services.

"Informal transport, however, has fewer detours and more uniform routes than centrally planned services, so the routes are efficient - and profitable even without the extensive subsidies that are common in the Global North" 

Ah yes, the transfer of money from public funds to private funds, where the public gets a less efficient, lower quality system, and rich people who own the private entities get a nice, consistent, government-guaranteed source of income for their (dis)service.

via Dresden University of Technology: Kush Mohan Mittal et al, Efficient self-organization of informal public transport networks, Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-49193-1



Study explores the link between stock market fluctuations and emergency room visits in China
Jul 2024, phys.org

Using daily emergency room visit records from the three largest hospitals in Beijing from 2009 to 2012, we find that a one percentage point decrease in daily market returns is associated with 0.185 increased cases of cardiovascular diseases and 0.020 increased cases of mental disorders on that day. Moreover, a one percentage point increase in daily market returns is associated with 0.035 increase in cases of alcohol abuse on that day. By contrast, diseases that are less related to psychological stress (infections, parasitic diseases, etc) are not significantly affected by market fluctuations.

via National University of Singapore, Jinan University, Peking University and Sun Yat-sen University: Sumit Agarwal et al, Associations between stock market fluctuations and stress-related emergency room visits in China, Nature Mental Health (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s44220-024-00267-5


Women's education influences fertility rates in sub-Saharan Africa, forecasting model finds
Nov 2024, phys.org

So it's not just GDP but also women's education that lowers fertility:

They developed a fertility forecasting model based on education levels of 138 demographic and health surveys conducted in 39 sub-Saharan African countries between 1986 and 2022, and found not only the education of the individual women matters, but also the average education of the environment in which the women live. Higher average educational attainment is significantly correlated with lower ideal family size and lower actual fertility for women in each separate education category. 

"Educated women are leading the shift towards smaller family sizes in high-fertility communities, even influencing the choices of women with less education around them."

via International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, University of Vienna, and the Wittgenstein Center for Demography and Global Human Capital: Saroja Adhikari et al, Forecasting Africa's fertility decline by female education groups, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2320247121


Researchers propose a mathematical definition of cell death
Nov 2024, phys.org

"My long-term scientific goal is to understand the inherent difference between life and nonlife, mathematically; why the transition from nonlife to life is so difficult, while the other way around is so easy."

This led them to develop a computational method for quantifying the life-death boundary, which they call "stoichiometric rays." The method was developed by focusing on enzymatic reactions and the second law of thermodynamics, which states that systems naturally move from ordered to disordered states.

"We naively believe that death is irreversible, but it is not so trivial and does not have to be the case. I believe that should death come more under our control, human beings, our understanding of life, and society will change completely. In this sense, to understand death is crucial in terms of science and also in terms of social implications."

via University of Tokyo: Yusuke Himeoka et al, A theoretical basis for cell deaths. Physical Review Research (2024). On arXiv. DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2403.02169

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Wednesday, August 28, 2024

On Modern Tongues and the Slipperiness of the Spoken Word


We are always being reminded that Darwin used the "tree of language" to come up with his "tree of life" idea; others might refer to it as evolution, natural selection, or survival of the fit.

When languages collide, which survives?
Nov 2023, phys.org

Language is a meme - 

Our findings lead to the conclusion that the more mixing that occurs between different social groups, the more challenging it becomes for language varieties to coexist within the same society," said author Pablo Rosillo-Rodes. "The dynamics of the system has a subtle dependence on both the preferences of the speakers and the coupling between different communities."

Existing work from sociolinguistics showed that the social prestige of a language was considered the main factor leading to its extinction or survival. Insights in language contact from these previous studies, in combination with sociolinguistic studies on language ideologies, were used by the researchers to present a comprehensive picture of how language varieties are distributed in societies.

The team chose a quantitative approach based on a society in which only one language with two varieties, the standard and the vernacular, existed. The resulting mathematical model can predict the conditions that allow for the coexistence of different languages, presenting a comprehensive view of how language varieties are distributed within societies.

via University of the Balearic Islands in Spain: Pablo Rosillo-Rodes et al, Modeling language ideologies for the dynamics of languages in contact, Chaos An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science (2023). DOI: 10.1063/5.0166636

Image credit: AI Art - Mouth - 2024


Rare pre- and post-operative recordings show what happens after the brain loses a hub
Dec 2023, phys.org

This is the first direct recordings of the human brain in the minutes before and after a brain hub crucial for language meaning was surgically disconnected, and was conducted during surgical treatment of two patients with epilepsy. 

The innovation in this study was that the neurosurgery team was able to safely complete the procedure with the recording electrodes left in place or replaced to the same location after the procedure.

"The rapid impact on the speech and language processing regions well removed from the surgical treatment site was surprising, but what was even more surprising was how the brain was working to compensate"

The findings disprove theories challenging the necessity of specific brain hubs by showing that the hub was important to maintain normal brain processing in language. (Don't forget the girl who could smell despite having no olfactory cortex.)
via University of Iowa: Zsuzsanna Kocsis et al, Immediate neural impact and incomplete compensation after semantic hub disconnection, Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-42088-7


Study suggests existence of a universal, nonverbal communication system
Dec 2023, phys.org

Hints of the presence of a universal system of communication:

The children either spoke English or Turkish. They were asked to use their hands to act out specific actions, such as running into a house.

They found that when the children spoke and gestured at the same time, their gesture followed the conventions of their language, with clear differences between the gestures of the Turkish and English speakers.

When the children used gestures without speaking, however, their gestures were remarkably similar.

via Georgia State, University of Chicago, and Cornell: Şeyda Özçalışkan et al, What the development of gesture with and without speech can tell us about the effect of language on thought, Language and Cognition (2023). DOI: 10.1017/langcog.2023.34

AI Art - Making Mouths - 2024

Survival of the fittest: Words like 'sex' and 'fight' are most likely to stand the test of time
Jan 2024, phys.org

Words with the strongest lasting power are:
  • Words acquired earlier in life
  • Words associated with things people can see or imagine, termed "concrete" words. For example, "cat" is more concrete than "animal," which is more concrete than "organism"
  • Words that are more arousing, including words like "sex" and "fight"

Early acquisition, concreteness, and arousal give linguistic information a selective advantage.

via University of Warwick: Ying Li et al, How cognitive selection affects language change, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2220898120


Faulty machine translations litter the web
Jan 2024, phys.org

Eat This

They state, "Machine generated, multi-way parallel translations not only dominate the total amount of translated content on the web in lower resource languages, it also constitutes a large fraction of the total web content in those languages."

Such content, they suggested, tends to be simpler, lower-quality passages "likely produced to generate ad revenue." Since fluency and accuracy are lower for machine-trained material, numerous translations will lead to even less accurate content and increase the odds of AI hallucination.

Medical prescription translation tool for Armenian speakers:
English: "You can take over-the-counter ibuprofen as needed for pain."
Translation to Armenian: "You may take anti-tank missile as much as you need for pain."

Regions under-represented on the web such as African nations and other countries with more obscure languages will face greater challenges in establishing reliable large language models.

via Amazon Web Services Artificial Intelligence Lab and the University of California Santa Barbara, and also a Vice Motherboard interview w the scientist: Brian Thompson et al, A Shocking Amount of the Web is Machine Translated: Insights from Multi-Way Parallelism, arXiv (2024). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2401.05749


Can any English word be turned into a synonym for “drunk”? Not all, but many can
Feb 2024, Ars Technica

Drunkonyms - like the words wasted, smashed, hammered, obliterated

Because the British are far better at this game than the Americans, also see - wellied, trousered, ratarsed, "I was utterly gazeboed," or "I am going to get totally and utterly carparked." (these come from the British comedian Michael McIntyre in a bit concerning the many slang terms posh British people use to describe being drunk)

They found the basic structure is common - combining "be" or "get" with an intensifying adverb ("totally") and a random word ending in "-ed." 

Bonuses:
  • The authors include an appendix of 546 English synonyms for "drunk" 
  • Benjamin Franklin penned the Drinker's Dictionary in 1737, with 288 words https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-02-02-0029
  • Dictionary of American Slang by 1975 had 353 synonyms
  • Linguist Harry Levine in 1981 noted 900 terms https://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/~hlevine/Vocabulary-of-Drunkenness-Levine.pdf
  • P.G. Wodehouse's books especially 'Wooster's World,' a condensed version of The Millennium Wodehouse Concordance he produced with Tony Ring, includes them throughout with in each case referring you to the next term, if you follow the trail you end up back at the first one with no meaning every having being given. For example: Awash: see blotto. Blotto: see boiled. Boiled: see fried. Fried to the tonsils: see full to the back teeth. Full to the back teeth: see lathered. And so on. -via user Stendec

via Chemnitz University of Technology and Peter Uhrig of FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg: Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association, 2024. DOI: 10.1515/gcla-2023-0007

Can't forget: The Alcohol Language Corpus (of drunk speech) aka Drunken John
Between 2007 and 2009, linguistic researchers from the Bavarian Archive for Speech Signals at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and the Institute of Legal Medicine in Munich in Germany convinced 162 men and women to get drunk (and talk Drunken John into a voice recorder).

AI Art - Mouthing - 2024

Isolated for six months, scientists in Antarctica began to develop their own accent
Feb 2024, phys.org

"They say it is quicker to get to someone on the International Space Station than it is to medically evacuate someone from Antarctica in the winter" 

  • Over the 26-week winter of near perpetual darkness and harsh weather, Clark and his fellow inhabitants at Rothera would work, eat and socialise together with barely any contact with home. Satellite phone calls are expensive and so used sparingly. With just each other for company and limited entertainment on the base, the "winterers", as they are known, would chat to each other – a lot. 
  • Their common language was English, sprinkled with slang words unique to the Antarctic research stations.
  • 10-minute recordings every few weeks; sit in front of a microphone and repeat the same 29 words as they appeared on a computer screen.
  • They found some of the vowels had shifted.
  • One of those changes was the "ou" sound in words such as "flow" and "sew" that shifted towards the front of the vocal tract.
  • They also saw some of the winterers beginning to converge in the way they pronounced three other vowels.

"When we speak to each other, we memorise that speech and then that has an influence on our own speech production," says Harrington. In effect, we transmit and infect one another with pronunciations every time we interact with others. Over time, if we have regular and prolonged contact with someone, we can start to pick up their sounds.

via Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich: Phonetic change in an Antarctic winter 
Jonathan Harrington et al. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 146, 3327–3332 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1121/1.5130709


AI analysis of social media language predicts depression severity for white Americans, but not Black Americans
Mar 2024, phys.org

Remember the point here is not that an entire subroup of the population doesn't get depressed, it's that models don't work for those people, so they need to be tuned better.

The study, which recruited 868 consenting participants who identified themselves as Black or white, demonstrated that models trained on Facebook language used by white participants with self-reported depression showed strong predictive performance when tested on the white participants. However, when the same models were trained on Facebook language from Black participants, they performed poorly when tested on the Black participants, and showed only slightly better performance when tested on white participants.

While depression severity was associated with increased use of first-person singular pronouns ("I," "me," "my") in white participants, this correlation was absent in Black participants. Additionally, white people used more language to describe feelings of belongingness ("weirdo," "creep"), self-criticism ("mess," "wreck"), being an anxious-outsider ("terrified," "misunderstood"), self-deprecation ("worthless," "crap"), and despair ("begging," "hollow") as depression severity increased, but there was no such correlation for Black people. For decades, clinicians have been aware of demographic differences in how people express depressive symptoms, and this study now demonstrates how this can play out in social media.

via University of Pennsylvania and the National Institute on Drug Abuse: Sunny Rai et al, Key language markers of depression on social media depend on race, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2319837121


First languages of North America traced back to two very different language groups from Siberia
Apr 2024, phys.org

Nichols' techniques involve the use of linguistic typology, a field that involves comparing languages and organizing them based on shared criteria. To learn more about early North American languages, she compiled lists of language characteristics and applied them to all known languages. She then scored each of the languages based on the revealed qualities. This allowed her to compare the languages as a way to find resemblances among them and spot patterns.

Nichols found that she could trace the languages spoken in early North America back to just two lineages, both of which originated in Siberia. They came, she notes, with the people who made their way across land bridges during Ice Age glaciation events.

via University of California Berkeley: Johanna Nichols, Founder effects identify languages of the earliest Americans, American Journal of Biological Anthropology (2024). DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.24923


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Wednesday, July 31, 2024

Social Math and the Particle Physics of People


As a teenager I spent my lunch hour staring at strangers in the mall, trying to figure out their relationship to each other based on no criteria whatsoever, mostly because I was reading Deepak Chopra, the Celestine Prophecy, and Carlos Castaneda, and I thought maybe you really could develop superpowers and see invisible energy fields connecting people together. I did not develop Kirlian vision, but I did learn how to read mostly invisible body language and subtle interpersonal dynamics. Maybe there was some rudimentary social network mapping going on as well:


Math can help people identify the bonds of friendship
Apr 2023, phys.org

People use statistical information to determine bonds between people. It found that children as young as five can enter a room and use statistics on social cues to determine whether two people are friends.

Researchers presented participants with diagrams of social networks that showed lines drawn between two main characters and other people in the group. Participants were told that these lines indicated friendship, and importantly, researchers did not show a line connecting the two main characters. Researchers then asked participants how likely it was that the two main characters were friends.

Both children and adults thought the two main characters were friends when they had a lot of overlap in their social connections in common. This pattern was found in children as young as five years old.

Participants were also able to conclude the strength of social connections from the size of the network. For example, when a character had many mutual connections with someone with a smaller network, participants saw this as more meaningful than having many mutual connections with someone with a larger social network.

via University of Waterloo: Claudia G. Sehl et al, The social network: How people infer relationships from mutual connections., Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (2022). DOI: 10.1037/xge0001330

Totally unrelated image credit: AI Art - Artificial Meat_2 - 2024


Spike in major league home runs tied to climate change
Apr 2023, phys.org

With enough data, you can see all kinds of things

While the researchers attribute only 1% of recent home runs to climate change, they found that rising temperatures could account for 10% or more of home runs by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions and climate change continue unabated.

"There's a very clear physical mechanism at play in which warmer temperatures reduce the density of air. Baseball is a game of ballistics, and a batted ball is going to fly farther on a warm day," said senior author Justin Mankin, an assistant professor of geography.

The researchers analyzed more than 100,000 major league games and 220,000 individual hits to correlate the number of home runs with the occurrence of unseasonably warm temperatures. 

via Dartmouth: Christopher W. Callahan et al, Global warming, home runs, and the future of America's pastime, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (2023). DOI: 10.1175/BAMS-D-22-0235.1


The more stakeholders are included in policy planning, the better their policies protect them
Jun 2023, phys.org

This relates to network science in that it relies on a big complex system (of people and decision making) for maximum effect

"It's a big deal that we found empirical evidence that stakeholder integration leads to better protection. There are very few published papers that show this connection empirically."

"I was pretty stunned. I thought this was going to be a different paper." (Surprise!)

via University of California Santa Barbara: Debra Perrone et al, Stakeholder integration predicts better outcomes from groundwater sustainability policy, Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-39363-y

AI Art - Artificial Meat_3 - 2024

Ridesourcing platforms thrive on socio-economic inequality, say researchers
Apr 2024, phys.org

Platforms that offer rides to passengers, such as Uber and DiDi, thrive on socio-economic inequality. It explains why in some cities ridesourcing services can be big players in the mobility system, while in other cities they don't get off the ground. 

"In cities like Amsterdam, with relatively low inequality, short travel distances and well-established bicycle and public transport networks, Uber is unlikely to flourish," researcher Arjan de Ruijter explains. "Therefore, transport authorities in such cities should rather focus on providing shared bikes and scooters to improve station access."

Conversely, in cities marked by significant inequality, like Johannesburg or Rio de Janeiro, Uber-like ridesourcing platforms thrive. Various explanations, taking into account driver's and passenger's behavior, emerge in the study. The platform capitalizes on a workforce willing to accept lower wages, leading to a service with limited waiting times for passengers. Moreover, it acknowledges the demand for mobility on demand among the affluent segments of unequal societies, willing to pay for a premium-like service.

"In a society with high inequality, companies can charge higher commissions to drivers, as drivers have limited alternative labor opportunities."

"On the other hand, in societies with low inequality, all else being equal, pricing strategies must attract more selective job seekers, resulting in lower commission rates."

via Delft University of Technology: Arjan de Ruijter et al, Ridesourcing platforms thrive on socio-economic inequality, Scientific Reports (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-57540-x


Families will change dramatically over the years to come, says study
Jan 2024, phys.org

Gentle reminder 

  • The number of relatives that an individual has is expected to decrease by more than 35% in the near future. 
  • In 1950, a 65-year-old woman had an average of 41 living relatives. By 2095, a woman of the same age will have an average of only 25 living relatives.
  • The number of cousins, nieces, nephews and grandchildren will decline sharply, while the number of great-grandparents and grandparents will increase significantly.
  • The effects will be felt less in North America and Europe and more in South America and the Caribbean. 

via Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, University of Buenos Aires, and University of Amsterdam: Diego Alburez-Gutierrez et al, Projections of human kinship for all countries, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2315722120

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Tuesday, July 16, 2024

Wearing Someone Else's Skin


Scientists 3D-print hair follicles in lab-grown skin
Nov 2023, phys.org

I can't even put the picture here, it's too much. Follow the link if you insist.

via Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute: Carolina Motter Catarino et al, Incorporation of hair follicles in 3D bioprinted models of human skin, Science Advances (2023). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adg0297



Analysis of ancient Scythian leather samples shows two were made from human skin
Dec 2023 phys.org

It was found in Herodotus' writings reports of Scythians removing the skin from the right hand of an enemy and using it to make leather for their quivers. These researchers used paleoproteomics techniques to analyze 45 leather samples collected from 14 Scythian dig sites and found 2 of human skin.

via The Globe Institute at University of Copenhagen, Institute of Archaeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine: Luise Ørsted Brandt et al, Human and animal skin identified by palaeoproteomics in Scythian leather objects from Ukraine, PLOS ONE (2023). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0294129


3D printed electronic skin provides promise for human-machine interaction
Jan 2024, phys.org

Nanoengineered hydrogels that exhibit tunable electronic and thermal biosensing capabilities.

via Texas A&M University College of Engineering and the Indian Institute of Technology: Shounak Roy et al, 3D Printed Electronic Skin for Strain, Pressure and Temperature Sensing, Advanced Functional Materials (2024). DOI: 10.1002/adfm.202313575


'Electronic skin' continuously monitors nine markers that indicate a stress response
Jan 2024, phys.org

CARES (consolidated artificial-intelligence-reinforced electronic skin)

The introduction of a nickel-based compound helps to stabilize against breakdown of body fluids the enzymatic-based sensors such as those that detect lactate or glucose, as does a new polymer added to the ion-based sensors, which detect biomarkers like sodium or potassium.

via California Institute of Technology: Changhao Xu et al, A physicochemical-sensing electronic skin for stress response monitoring, Nature Electronics (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41928-023-01116-6

AI Art - High Tech 4-Dimensional Liquid Metal 2 - 2024

An e-skin that can detect tactile information and produce tactile feedback
Mar 2024, phys.org

This e-skin integrates multimodal magnetic tactile sensing with vibration feedback, overcoming the bidirectional transmission limitations of current e-skin tech. It uses a flexible magnetic film, silicon elastomer, Hall sensor array, actuator array, and microcontroller unit.

via Tsinghua University: Shilong Mu et al, Dual-modal Tactile E-skin: Enabling Bidirectional Human-Robot Interaction via Integrated Tactile Perception and Feedback, arXiv (2024). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2402.05725


Developing artificial skin that can regenerate skin and transmit sensation at the same time
Apr 2024, phys.org

Smart bionic artificial skin can restore even permanently damaged tactile senses by fusing biocompatible materials and a tactile function delivery system implemented with electronic devices.

The artificial skin developed by the team is a hydrogel composed of collagen and fibrin, the main components of skin, that can detect even small pressure changes by inserting crack-based tactile sensors.

The sensed pressure changes are converted into electrical signals, via a wireless powered pressure-frequency modulation (WPPFM) circuit, which are then transmitted to the nerves by tactile nerve interfacing electrodes, allowing the device to perform the same tactile functions as the skin.

The researchers also found that collagen and fibrin, which are responsible for skin's elasticity and tissue connectivity, trigger the proliferation and differentiation of skin cells around the wound to promote skin regeneration.

via National Research Council of Science and Technology, Post-Silicon Semiconductor Institute, Yonsei University, Sungkyunkwan University: Kyowon Kang et al, Bionic artificial skin with a fully implantable wireless tactile sensory system for wound healing and restoring skin tactile function, Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-44064-7


Virtual skin contact: Smart textiles are making remote hugs tangible
Apr 2024, phys.org

Now we have to begin a sub-section of skin, because we have virtual skin:

The research team are developing ways to realize multi-sensory virtual encounters between individuals. 

They have developed films that are a mere 50 micrometers thick and that can be worn like a second skin. Just as our skin is our body's interface to the outside world, these ultrathin films are the body's interface to the virtual world. The goal is to create a lifelike sensation of touch from interactions between people in a virtual environment.

When incorporated into textiles, these high-tech films allow the child to experience being touched when the mother or father strokes a second smart textile elsewhere.

"The films, known as dielectric elastomers, act both as sensors—detecting the tactile input from mum or dad—and as actuators—that transmit these movements to the child," explained Professor Seelecke, who heads the Intelligent Material Systems Lab at Saarland University.

When functioning as a sensor, the film is able to recognize with very high precision how a hand or finger presses or stretches the film as it brushes over it. This physical deformation caused by the parent's hand is then reproduced exactly in a second textile that is in contact with the child's skin—giving the child the realistic impression of being stroked on the arm, for example.

via Saarland University, Centre for Mechatronics and Automation Technology and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, at 2024 Hannover Messe


An e-skin that can detect tactile information and produce tactile feedback
Mar 2024, phys.org

This e-skin integrates multimodal magnetic tactile sensing with vibration feedback, overcoming the bidirectional transmission limitations of current e-skin tech. It uses a flexible magnetic film, silicon elastomer, Hall sensor array, actuator array, and microcontroller unit.

via Tsinghua University: Shilong Mu et al, Dual-modal Tactile E-skin: Enabling Bidirectional Human-Robot Interaction via Integrated Tactile Perception and Feedback, arXiv (2024). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2402.05725

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Monday, July 15, 2024

Wearing Out


Think I'm going to stop keeping up with the wearables, it's just not as interesting to me anymore and it all kind of sounds the same. Also, skins are the new wearables; see next post.

But before I forget, what the hell happened to China and their science sector? I used to see tons of articles coming from Chinese institutions, especially when reading on the "wearables" topic, also on "ambient energy harvesting". But sometime around the pandemic, it seemed to have stopped almost entirely. It seems to have come back a bit, but there was a noticeable difference for a while there.



Full-day, solar-powered, bidirectional thermoregulatory clothing that can respond to changing temperatures
Dec 2023, phys.org

A microfiber-based meta-fabric of organic photovoltaic modules combined with a bidirectional electrocaloric device that provides full-day thermoregulation of body temperature during periods of changing external temperatures; providing 10.1 K (20F?) of cooling to the skin in a hot environment and 3.2 K of heating when it was cold out

via Nankai University in China: Ziyuan Wang et al, Self-sustaining personal all-day thermoregulatory clothing using only sunlight, Science (2023). DOI: 10.1126/science.adj3654

Also: Xingyi Huang et al, Solar-powered clothes, for the heat and cold, Science (2023). DOI: 10.1126/science.adl5650


Health data, faster: Wearable stretchy sensor can process, predict health data
Dec 2023, phys.org

It's a throat sensor that records vibrations and electrical muscle impulses from the neck area to monitor a user's speech and swallowing patterns using a conductive composite hydrogel electrode interface that can withstand a user's movements while maintaining good signal quality.

via Penn State and Pen-Tung Sah Institute of Micro-Nano Science and Technology at Xiamen University in China: Hongcheng Xu et al, A fully integrated, standalone stretchable device platform with in-sensor adaptive machine learning for rehabilitation, Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-43664-7


Two-channel sensor measures biomarker concentration in sweat
Jan 2024, phys.org

The sensor relies on a dye to signal the presence of the biomarker and can be read with the naked eye, making it inexpensive and easy to use.

via Pennsylvania State University: Muhan Deng et al, Skin‐Interfaced Bifluidic Paper‐Based Device for Quantitative Sweat Analysis, Advanced Science (2023). DOI: 10.1002/advs.202306023


Light-emitting textiles for diverse flexible and wearable displays
Jan 2024, phys.org

Embroiderable, multicolor, electroluminescent threads in blue, green, and yellow, that show compatibility with standard embroidery methods.

The researchers used the threads to stitch decorative designs onto a variety of consumer fabrics, without compromising their wearability or light-emitting capacity. The scientists illuminated specific messages or designs on the consumer products for the purpose of developing emergency alerts on helmet liners and as physical hazard signs.

They coated the electroluminescent layer with a mixture of zinc sulfide phosphors and thermoplastic polyurethane across the surface of a conductive, embroiderable thread, and prepared a transparent conductive fiber by coating a transparent, embroiderable nylon fiber with silver nanowires using an adhesion promoter made of ethyl acetate and resorcinol.

via Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering at Purdue and Indiana University School of Medicine: Seungse Cho et al, Machine embroidery of light-emitting textiles with multicolor electroluminescent threads, Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adk4295

AI Art - Shark-headed Businessman Sips Precision Engineered Champagne - 2024

Research team develops sweat-resistant wearable robot sensor
Jan 2024, phys.org

Smart earrings can monitor a person's temperature
Feb 2024, phys.org

Research team develops wearable device for fashionable personal thermal comfort
Feb 2024, phys.org

World's first real-time wearable human emotion recognition technology developed
Feb 2024, phys.org

Tiny magnetic implants enable wireless health monitoring when paired with wearable device
Mar 2024, phys.org

Chipless fiber for wireless visual-to-digital transmission senses interactions with the human body
Apr 2024, phys.org

The new fiber developed by the research team has three layers. One serves as a core, triggering an electromagnetic field, another serves as a dielectric layer that holds electromagnetic energy obtained from the human body. The third works as an optical layer to visualize the electric field. In short, the new fiber works by capturing and using electromagnetic energy in the air and using the human body as a circuit.

When sewn into a textile and worn on the body, electromagnetic energy from the environment striking the fiber is converted to both radio waves and visible light. This allows the fiber to release signals when touched by a body part such as the skin of the chest or a finger. Then, by controlling the system in specific ways, the signals it emits can be programmed.

To test their fiber, the researchers stitched some of them into a shirt and used them to feed a processor that displayed a message on the shirt. They also added a keyboard that allowed tapping on the wrist to create and send messages.

via Donghua University and the National University of Singapore: Weifeng Yang et al, Single body-coupled fiber enables chipless textile electronics, Science (2024). DOI: 10.1126/science.adk3755

Perspective piece: Yunzhu Li et al, Intelligent textiles are looking bright, Science (2024). DOI: 10.1126/science.ado5922


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