Computer Science / Engineering posts
- January 20, 2011
- 07:00 AM
- 1,185 views
LG’s lucky break and rebooting your brand
by David Bradley in Sciencetext
LG is a strong brand. Life’s good, isn’t it? They build high-quality gadgets, mobile phones and white goods. LG is all slick websites and vast 3D TVs, viral and vital ads and green tech. Aren’t they? Well…they are today, but it doesn’t take a degree in ancient history to see that LG was once a [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkLG’s lucky break and rebooting your brand
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Khan, B. (2011) Reinventing the LG brand: a manifesto for corporate brand management. J. for International Business and Entrepreneurship Development, 5(3), 199. DOI: 10.1504/JIBED.2011.038030
- January 20, 2011
- 06:26 AM
- 1,643 views
the amazing disappearing habitable world?
by Greg Fish in weird things
Gliese 581g, we hardly knew you. After a grand announcement, nearly immediate colonization plans from a leading sci-fi blog, and even a tale of supposed alien signals emanating from the newly discovered world, which was actually just an invention of the Daily Mail, rumors started surfacing that this planet wasn’t being detected in subsequent reviews [...]... Read more »
Philip C. Gregory. (2011) Bayesian Re-analysis of the Gliese 581 Exoplanet System. n/a. arXiv: 1101.0800v1
- January 19, 2011
- 02:00 AM
- 433 views
Does Google push the most popular content rather than act as a neutral tool?
by SAGE Insight in SAGE Insight
Search engines and the production of academic knowledge From International Journal of Cultural Studies Surveys prove that students performing topic searches for scholarly papers overwhelmingly choose search engines, rather than library-based research discovery networks, as their preferred starting-point. Are they getting the best and most relevant information? This article argues that search engines in general, and [...]... Read more »
van Dijck, J. (2010) Search engines and the production of academic knowledge. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 13(6), 574-592. DOI: 10.1177/1367877910376582
- January 17, 2011
- 01:23 AM
- 1,352 views
What is your personal blogging style
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
How do you experience, perceive your blogging? This is a different question from why do you blog, or your motivation for blogging. This question is more about your blogging style. Well they have an questionnaire for that and it’s recently validated.
A total of 182 bloggers (87 males, 95 females; age range 18–64 years) recruited from [...]
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Baker, J., & Moore, S. (2010) Creation and Validation of the Personal Blogging Style Scale. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 2147483647. DOI: 10.1089/cyber.2010.0130
- January 14, 2011
- 10:45 AM
- 991 views
Computer-enhanced images with almost perfect resolution
by Joerg Heber in All That Matters
I used to laugh at those TV series and movies where crime investigators could take a surveillance camera photo, however fuzzy and blurred, and enhance its resolution beyond belief to the point where every possible (and impossible) detail becomes visible. I stopped laughing last week at a conference when I became aware of a 2009 [...]... Read more »
Gazit, S., Szameit, A., Eldar, Y., & Segev, M. (2009) Super-resolution and reconstruction of sparse sub-wavelength images. Optics Express, 17(26), 23920. DOI: 10.1364/OE.17.023920
- January 11, 2011
- 07:00 AM
- 636 views
Authonomy Points the Way to Open Peer Reviewing
by Simon Harper in Thinking Out Loud
Authonomy is a unique online community that connects readers, writers and publishing professionals. It was conceived and built by editors at HarperCollins Publishers. They are in 'beta' at the moment, so they’re still developing and perfecting the site.... Read more »
Alison McCook. (2006) Is Peer Review Broken?. The Scientist, 20(2), 26-26. info:other/23061/#ixzz16smQbXG3
- January 9, 2011
- 01:18 PM
- 783 views
Glasses tougher than steel
by Joerg Heber in All That Matters
Glasses are very useful structural materials, because they are strong. You can stand on a glass table without it breaking. But once you put too much stress on a glass it breaks. Steels on the other hand are much tougher — which means that they show a much stronger resistance to fracture: rather than suddenly [...]... Read more »
Demetriou, M., Launey, M., Garrett, G., Schramm, J., Hofmann, D., Johnson, W., & Ritchie, R. (2011) A damage-tolerant glass. Nature Materials. DOI: 10.1038/nmat2930
- January 7, 2011
- 01:49 AM
- 1,659 views
Is Facebook the path to happiness?
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
Does a lot of friends on Facebook make you happy or does a positive self representation on Facebook make you feel happy. These two important questions were studied amongst 391 college students using Facebook. How does faceook use contribute to happiness?
Indeed more friends on facebook increases your subjective well-being. This association was not mediated by [...]
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Kim, J., & Lee, J. (2010) The Facebook Paths to Happiness: Effects of the Number of Facebook Friends and Self-Presentation on Subjective Well-Being. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 2147483647. DOI: 10.1089/cyber.2010.0374
- January 6, 2011
- 03:35 PM
- 800 views
Video Games Enhance Visual Attention
by A. Goldstein in WiSci
Video games might cause aggressive behavior,1 and they may contribute to childhood obesity,2 but recent research by Daphne Bavelier and her colleagues at the University of Rochester suggests that playing video games can have at least one benefit: they enhance visual attention. Visual attention is the mental mechanism we use to select relevant visual information [...]... Read more »
Anderson, C., & Carnagey, N. (2009) Causal effects of violent sports video games on aggression: Is it competitiveness or violent content?. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(4), 731-739. DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2009.04.019
Vandewater EA, Shim MS, & Caplovitz AG. (2004) Linking obesity and activity level with children's television and video game use. Journal of adolescence, 27(1), 71-85. PMID: 15013261
Hubert-Wallander, B., Green, C., & Bavelier, D. (2010) Stretching the limits of visual attention: the case of action video games. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science. DOI: 10.1002/wcs.116
- January 5, 2011
- 09:45 PM
- 601 views
Genetically Damaged Bacteria Grow via Synthetic Proteins
by Michael Long in Phased
Bacteria which possess genetic damage that normally prevents reproduction in a nutrient-deficient medium can be saved by expression of artificial proteins, an important step towards constructing artificial life.... Read more »
Fisher, M. A., McKinley, K. L., Bradley, L. H., Viola, S. R., & Hecht, M. H. (2011) De Novo Designed Proteins from a Library of Artificial Sequences Function in Escherichia Coli and Enable Cell Growth. PLoS ONE, 6(1). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0015364
- December 28, 2010
- 07:00 AM
- 1,117 views
Completely Automated Public Turing-test-to-tell Computers and Humans Apart
by David Bradley in Sciencetext
Web sites, services, and apps everywhere often require a user login before you can use the service and even once you’re logged in, there’s often an additional step you must take to prove that you are human, rather than a spam bot or other computer script up to mischief. The device is commonly known as [...]Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech TalkCompletely Automated Public Turing-test-to-tell Computers and Humans Apart
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Brian M. Powell, Adam C. Day, Richa Singh, Mayank Vatsa, & Afzel Noore. (2010) Image-based face detection CAPTCHA for improved security. Int. J. Multimedia Intelligence and Security, 1(3), 269-284. info:/
- December 27, 2010
- 07:19 AM
- 1,343 views
2010 – twelve months of great science
by Joerg Heber in All That Matters
The past year has been a great year for science with major advances in several areas. Too many exciting results to mention here. Instead, to reflect about the past year I have chosen a representative paper for each month of the year that I hope can serve as an example of the great science going [...]... Read more »
Chuang, T., Allan, M., Lee, J., Xie, Y., Ni, N., Bud'ko, S., Boebinger, G., Canfield, P., & Davis, J. (2010) Nematic Electronic Structure in the "Parent" State of the Iron-Based Superconductor Ca(Fe1-xCox)2As2. Science, 327(5962), 181-184. DOI: 10.1126/science.1181083
Lin, Y., Dimitrakopoulos, C., Jenkins, K., Farmer, D., Chiu, H., Grill, A., & Avouris, P. (2010) 100-GHz Transistors from Wafer-Scale Epitaxial Graphene. Science, 327(5966), 662-662. DOI: 10.1126/science.1184289
Kelzenberg, M., Boettcher, S., Petykiewicz, J., Turner-Evans, D., Putnam, M., Warren, E., Spurgeon, J., Briggs, R., Lewis, N., & Atwater, H. (2010) Enhanced absorption and carrier collection in Si wire arrays for photovoltaic applications. Nature Materials. DOI: 10.1038/nmat2635
Ergin, T., Stenger, N., Brenner, P., Pendry, J., & Wegener, M. (2010) Three-Dimensional Invisibility Cloak at Optical Wavelengths. Science, 328(5976), 337-339. DOI: 10.1126/science.1186351
Liang, Y., Xu, Z., Xia, J., Tsai, S., Wu, Y., Li, G., Ray, C., & Yu, L. (2010) For the Bright Future-Bulk Heterojunction Polymer Solar Cells with Power Conversion Efficiency of 7.4%. Advanced Materials, 22(20). DOI: 10.1002/adma.200903528
Yu, X., Onose, Y., Kanazawa, N., Park, J., Han, J., Matsui, Y., Nagaosa, N., & Tokura, Y. (2010) Real-space observation of a two-dimensional skyrmion crystal. Nature, 465(7300), 901-904. DOI: 10.1038/nature09124
Chadov, S., Qi, X., Kübler, J., Fecher, G., Felser, C., & Zhang, S. (2010) Tunable multifunctional topological insulators in ternary Heusler compounds. Nature Materials, 9(7), 541-545. DOI: 10.1038/nmat2770
Lin, H., Wray, L., Xia, Y., Xu, S., Jia, S., Cava, R., Bansil, A., & Hasan, M. (2010) Half-Heusler ternary compounds as new multifunctional experimental platforms for topological quantum phenomena. Nature Materials, 9(7), 546-549. DOI: 10.1038/nmat2771
Bae, S., Kim, H., Lee, Y., Xu, X., Park, J., Zheng, Y., Balakrishnan, J., Lei, T., Ri Kim, H., Song, Y.... (2010) Roll-to-roll production of 30-inch graphene films for transparent electrodes. Nature Nanotechnology, 5(8), 574-578. DOI: 10.1038/NNANO.2010.132
MAIMAN, T. (1960) Stimulated Optical Radiation in Ruby. Nature, 187(4736), 493-494. DOI: 10.1038/187493a0
KLEMENT, W., WILLENS, R., & DUWEZ, P. (1960) Non-crystalline Structure in Solidified Gold–Silicon Alloys. Nature, 187(4740), 869-870. DOI: 10.1038/187869b0
Kim, R., Kim, D., Xiao, J., Kim, B., Park, S., Panilaitis, B., Ghaffari, R., Yao, J., Li, M., Liu, Z.... (2010) Waterproof AlInGaP optoelectronics on stretchable substrates with applications in biomedicine and robotics. Nature Materials, 9(11), 929-937. DOI: 10.1038/nmat2879
Toyabe, S., Sagawa, T., Ueda, M., Muneyuki, E., & Sano, M. (2010) Experimental demonstration of information-to-energy conversion and validation of the generalized Jarzynski equality. Nature Physics, 6(12), 988-992. DOI: 10.1038/nphys1821
Wunderlich, J., Park, B., Irvine, A., Zarbo, L., Rozkotova, E., Nemec, P., Novak, V., Sinova, J., & Jungwirth, T. (2010) Spin Hall Effect Transistor. Science, 330(6012), 1801-1804. DOI: 10.1126/science.1195816
- December 26, 2010
- 10:37 AM
- 815 views
Oscar: training data, models, etc
by egonw in Chem-bla-ics
Oscar uses a Maximum Entropy Markov Model (MEMM) based on n-grams. Peter Corbett has written this up (doi:10.1186/1471-2105-9-S11-S4). So, it basically is statistics once more. If you really want a proper bioinformatics education, so do your PhD at a (proteo)chemometrics department.
N-grams are word parts of n characters. For example, the trigrams of acetic acid include ace, cid, tic, eti, and aci. N-grams of length four include acid, etic, and acet. The MEMM assigns weights to these n-grams, and based on that decided if something is in deed a named entity (in Oscar terminology). For example, consider the acet n-gram: acetone should be matched, but facet not.
Put this in perspective in the ongoing refactoring of the Oscar software. We are changing normalization (e.g. converting all unicode hyphen alternatives into one specific hyphen), updating the tokenizer (e.g. changing the list of non-sentence-endings like Prof.). It is clear this changes the n-grams typical for chemical-like things. Worse, the weights are tuned towards to know n-grams, and statistical models are generally a bit overtrained for the data, or, at least, specific for it.
Now, if the distribution of n-grams changes, the weights in the model need to be updated too, to not degrade the model performance. So, Oscar is useless if we cannot retrain its MEMM component after a refactoring. If that would be impossible, we would have effectively created an intellectual monopoly.
Thus, what the Oscar project needs, is one or more free sets of annotated literature, which can be used to train new MEMM models. The SciBorg corpus was used to train the current Oscar3 and Oscar4 models. This data (copyright RSC) will very likely be available under a Creative Commons license (RSC++), but may have the NC clause, which would not be good for developing a business model around the opensource Oscar (such as providing a high-performance web service via a subscription service). I have recently written up the problems the NC clause introduces, and some examples of commercial Open Source cheminformatics projects.
We need not focus only on this SciBorg data, however. In fact, we will need multiple models anyway. For example, the SciBorg papers (42 if not mistaken) are around a particular kind of literature. So, it introduces the risk of using it to analyse papers out of the application domain. Furthermore, I am very interested (and others indicated so too) to use Oscar for other languages. Surely, English is the major language, but there are many use cases for Oscar when useful for other languages.
Therefore, for what we need in the Oscar project, is a registry of training (/test) data, annotated itself with metadata around how that data was created (what quality assurance, what kind of named entity types, how many domain experts were involved, etc), test results for those data sets, etc. My time on the Oscar project is almost over, and I have no clue when I will be able to invest the same amount of time into the project as I did in the past three months. But the creation of this registry is clear step that must be taken in the Oscar4 development.
Corbett, P., & Copestake, A. (2008). Cascaded classifiers for confidence-based chemical named entity recognition BMC Bioinformatics, 9 (Suppl 11) DOI: 10.1186/1471-2105-9-S11-S4... Read more »
Corbett, P., & Copestake, A. (2008) Cascaded classifiers for confidence-based chemical named entity recognition. BMC Bioinformatics, 9(Suppl 11). DOI: 10.1186/1471-2105-9-S11-S4
- December 23, 2010
- 01:36 AM
- 1,536 views
4 Types of Internet Use among Children
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
Young people are high users of the Internet but we know very little about how they use the Internet, how they “are distributing their engagement across the various resources of the Internet”. This knowledge might be useful for learning and education.
Researchers collected data from a nationally representative face to face survey of young people (n=1069) [...]
Related posts:Elderly and Internet and Computer Skills, An Update
Four Types of Commonly Sought Health Information
Internet and Videogames Improve Reading Skills and Visual Spatial Skills in Children
... Read more »
Eynon, R., & Malmberg, L. (2011) A typology of young people’s Internet use: Implications for education. Computers , 56(3), 585-595. DOI: 10.1016/j.compedu.2010.09.020
- December 22, 2010
- 03:00 AM
- 1,116 views
Email Overload
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
Email overload is the feeling of being overwhelmed by a large volume of incoming messages. Email overload makes the management of the Inbox necessary. Wouldn’t it be great if the inbox itself could filter the email by prioritization, information structuring and work-flow management?
Now the user has to assess and prioritize the message based on [...]
Related posts:9 Email Tips
Raindrop, The New Google Wave or Email Heaven?
Hand Written Letter or Email in Health Care
... Read more »
Szóstek, A. (2010) ‘Dealing with My Emails’: Latent user needs in email management. Computers in Human Behavior. DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2010.09.019
- December 21, 2010
- 07:00 AM
- 504 views
Defining UX – and a Merry Christmas 2010!
by Simon Harper in Thinking Out Loud
As a positivist research scientist I've been struggling with the whole User Experience (UX) space for a long time, because to me it just seems a bit - well - 'fluffy'.... Read more »
Law, Effie Lai-Chong and Roto, Virpi and Hassenzahl, Marc and Vermeeren, Arnold P.O.S. and Kort, Joke. (2009) Understanding, scoping and defining user experience: a survey approach. Proceedings of the 27th international conference on Human factors in computing systems, 1(1), 719-728. info:/10.1145/1518701.1518813
- December 21, 2010
- 03:29 AM
- 681 views
My article « A History of Virulence » finally published in Body and Society
by ---a in Bodyspacesociety.eu
Sage journal Body and Society vol 16, n. 4 is finally out! Pardon my enthusiasm, but this issue features my 30-page essay A History of Virulence: The Body and Computer Culture in the 1980s: a killer mix of hackerdom, virality and computer nostalgia that also happens to be IMHO one hell of a contribution to [...]... Read more »
Casilli, Antonio A. (2010) A History of Virulence: The Body and Computer Culture in the 1980s. Body , 16(4), 1-31. DOI: 10.1177/1357034X10383880
- December 17, 2010
- 07:55 PM
- 727 views
Danger, Will Robinson!!! or injury prevention with sensors and algorithms
by Aurametrix team in Health Technologies
Injuries are most likely to be perceived as “acts of fate”, but they depend on the same determinants as other health factors: individual behavior, social and physical environment. The likelihood of injuries - unintentional ones and those caused by acts of violence - can be computed from physical location, gene-environment interactions, prior medical history, and physical traits. There are many ways to prevent injuries - just say "no" to risky behaviors, wear preventative gear while playing sports or fall-optimized shoes for elderly, watch out for others engaged in similar activities... Yet, sometimes we forget to watch, don't have access to histories of others or get diverted. Would a body sensor or a gadget with smart software be able to warn us about potential accidents ahead to help prevent accidents? What would it need to measure? Software and devices automatically detecting and reporting accidents already exist: Halo Monitoring's fall detection system, for example, consists of a chest strap and belt clip with motion sensors, heart rate and skin temperature monitors. Although the system detects falls only after they happen, a study showed that just the fact of wearing it increases alertness of seniors and reduces the number of falls. Although fall detection systems are not as advanced as telematics for cars - like OnStar or mbrace that "intelligently integrate the driver, the vehicle and the environment" - capabilities such as this will be provided in the area of next-generation health management systems like Aurametrix.Unprecedented accumulation of data - such as snapshots of driving behavior or 1.2 million person-years of hip fracture observations (Kanis JA) allows development of smarter software able to predict injuries. Logistic regression models (Kononen et al., 2011) predict seriousness of auto accidents, first-principles mathematical models (such as AHAAH for the ear) connect forces with injuries, neural net and other data mining approaches foretell which juvenile offenders are likely to return to crime (source of "intentional injuries"), or allow to calculate risk of fractures based on milk intake, personal history of accidents and body mass index. Self-quantifiers such as René Ghosh are able to figure out how to use their own data to predict future injuries. Using simple math (Riegel equation bringing all running logs on to a comparable level) and trend analysis, he tied his accidents to wanes following waxes in running performance. Researchers keep refining the variables predicting injuries. Swanenburg et al., for example, predicted multiple falls for those with a history of multiple falls (odds ratio, 5.6) and use of multiple medications (odds ratio, 2.3). And there is another simple measurement of standing position helpful in prediction. Frequent fallers, indeed, have a narrower stance width than non-fallers.In the always-connected smart-sensor-equipped future, things such as Intel's magic carpet - picking up the weight, angle and pressure of steps - will be a commodity. Gene tests predicting injuries will be integrated with data coming from our carpets, clothing, footwear and location information. And this may be sooner than you think. References 1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS); 2010 Mar 4 Available from: http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/index.html 2. Husted JA, Ahmed R, Chow EW, Brzustowicz LM, Bassett AS. Childhood trauma and genetic factors in familial schizophrenia associated with the NOS1AP gene. Schizophr Res. 2010 Aug;121(1-3):187-92. PMID: 205413713. Swanenburg J, de Bruin ED, Uebelhart D, & Mulder T (2010). Falls prediction in elderly people: a 1-year prospective study. Gait & posture, 31 (3), 317-21 PMID: 200478334. Kononen DW, Flannagan CA, Wang SC. Identification and validation of a logistic regression model for predicting serious injuries associated with motor vehicle crashes. Accid Anal Prev. 2011 Jan;43(1):112-22. PMID: 21094305. Price GR. Predicting mechanical damage to the organ of Corti. Hear Res. 2007 Apr;226(1-2):5-13. Epub 2006 Sep 15.PMID: 16978813 ... Read more »
Swanenburg J, de Bruin ED, Uebelhart D, & Mulder T. (2010) Falls prediction in elderly people: a 1-year prospective study. Gait , 31(3), 317-21. PMID: 20047833
- December 16, 2010
- 01:10 PM
- 889 views
Extreme Homeopathic Delusions?
by Arunn in nOnoScience (a.k.a. Unruled Notebook)
There is a news item in today’s (Dec 16th) online edition of Times of India titled IITB team show how Homeopathy works. When directed to this news item through a group email alert, I thought it is one of those bland TOI humor column. The news item was promising to be one when it began, [...]... Read more »
Chikramane, P., Suresh, A., Bellare, J., & Kane, S. (2010) Extreme homeopathic dilutions retain starting materials: A nanoparticulate perspective. Homeopathy, 99(4), 231-242. DOI: 10.1016/j.homp.2010.05.006
- December 15, 2010
- 02:07 PM
- 502 views
Sociologie en boîte vs. analyse des réseaux sociaux
by ---a in Bodyspacesociety.eu
PDF de mon article "'Petites boîtes' et individualisme en réseau. Les usages socialisants du Web en débat", tout juste paru dans Les Annales des Mines, série Réalités Industrielles (novembre 2010).... Read more »
Antonio A. Casilli. (2010) "'Petites boîtes' et individualisme en réseau. Les usages socialisants du Web en débat". Annales des Mines (série "Réalités Industrielles"), 216(4), 54-59. info:/
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