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Monday, February 18, 2013
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Babble-onia: Solving the Cocktail Party Problem
Over at Scientopia, Scicurious wrote about a new MEG study by neuroscientists on how the brain deals with the so-called ?cocktail party problem? ? distinguishing one conversational thread amid a cacaphony of babble in a crowded room. It?s not just a question of attention, although it can be difficult to concentrate on even the most fascinating discussion if there?s too much background noise.
The brain doesn?t just detect sounds, it also processes temporal patterns of speech and visual cues. The latter was the basis for the latest study, in which the authors set out to measure whether (as Scicurious put it)? ?the visual input from the face that is speaking might help someone to ?predict? what they are about to hear, easing processing of the words.? As expected, they found that people followed a conversation just fine one on one, and had difficulty in a small cocktail party setting. But their performance improved dramatically in the latter setting if they had a face to go along with the speech patterns. Per Scicurious:
Why does this help? It could be that the visual input helps you maintain attention. The visual input could also help you predict what is to be said next and help with auditory processing that way.
This is a perennially favorite topic for science writers; I blogged about it back in 2011 when Scientific American featured an article by Graham Collins on how our brains separate various auditory streams when in a crowded room, like a restaurant or a cocktail party, so why not revisit that classic post now? (Personally, my brain has never been especially good at this. I find myself having to really concentrate when the noise levels reach a certain critical threshold.) Scientists have been pretty successful at studying how the brain accomplishes this feat. They?ve been less successful at devising computer algorithms to do the same thing.
Nick and Nora Charles mastered the cocktail party problem their own way in "The Thin Man": copious martinis!
A few years ago, at an acoustics conference, I chatted with Shihab Shamma, a researcher at the University of Maryland, College Park. He believes this ability arises from auditory nerve cells in the brain that re-tune themselves to specific sounds as part of the adaptive process. It?s kind of an auditory feedback loop that enables us to sort out confusing incoming acoustical stimuli.
He?s surprised, however, by how quickly this process happens: auditory neurons in adult mammal brains make the adjustment in a few seconds. To Shamma, this suggests that the developed brain is even more ?plastic? or adaptable than previously realized. We?re literally changing our minds.
Scientists are still a bit in the dark in terms of understanding the mechanisms that cause this rapid tuning, but Shamma says that if we can mimic those abilities, it could lead to the development of more effective hearing aids and cochlear implants. In the shorter term, it might help improve automatic speech recognition systems by teaching them to filter out moderate levels of background noise and other acoustical ?clutter.?
And that brings us to the 2011 Scientific American article. Apparently a team of researchers at IBM?s TJ Watson Research Center have managed to create an algorithm for the ?cocktail party problem? that outperforms human beings. Why is it so hard, and therefore such a bit deal? It comes down the number of possible sound combinations which quickly becomes unwieldy. Here?s how Collins phrases it:
?Whether one person is talking or many, the sound contains a spectrum of frequencies, and the intensity of each frequency changes on a millisecond timescale; spectrograms display data of this kind. Standard single-talker speech recognition analyzes the data at the level of phonemes, the individual units of sound that make up words? Each spoken phoneme produces a variable but recognizable pattern in the spectrogram. Statistical models ? [specify] the expected probability that, for instance, an ?oh? sound will be followed by an ?n?. The recognition engine looks for the most likely sequences of phonemes and tries to build up whole words and plausible sentences.?
Collins continues:
?When two people talk at once, the number of possibilities explodes. The frequency spectrum at each moment could come from any two phonemes, enunciated in any of the ways each person might use them in a word. Each additional talker makes the problem exponentially worse.?
The good news is that such algorithms can simplify the search by focusing on the dominant speaker ? c?mon, we all know there?s at least one Loud Talker in any given crowd. A number of shortcuts have been devised in recent years by exploiting this kind of thing. A ?bottom-up? approach looks for segments in a spectrogram without a dominant speaker, and sets those segments aside, literally removing them from the equation so the algorithm can focus on finding phoneme sequences in the ?clean regions? ? i.e., where there is a dominant speaker. That approach has been adopted by scientists at the University of Sheffield in England, apparently.
Alternatively, you can use a ?top-down? approach, devising an algorithm that analyzes trial sequences of the most likely phonemes for all speakers in a given spectrogram. Finnish researchers at Tampere University of Technology exploit this approach by switching between each of two speakers. As Collins explains, ?Given the current best estimate of talker A?s speech, search for talker B?s speech that best explains the total sound.? Context is everything, baby. The IBM achieved their ?superhuman? automated speech separation by tweaking a ?top-down? approach and devising an algorithm to seek out areas on the spectrogram where one talker was bellowing so loudly s/he masked the voices of the other(s).
But you really shouldn?t worry too much just yet about secret agents eavesdropping on your party guests: the new algorithms aren?t that good. Maybe someday. In the meantime, please to enjoy this classic party scene from Breakfast at Tiffany?s to illustrate just how tough the cocktail party problem is likely to be. As one of the YouTube commenters remarked, ?It?s not a party until someone is laughing and crying at themselves in the mirror.?
[Adapted from an April 2011 post from the archived Cocktail Party Physics blog.]
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=56faf08b6370f4e40234a892a60ac9c1
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Highly flexible organic semiconductors: Research paves way for thin-sheet plastic displays or wearable electronics
Feb. 15, 2013 ? Organic semiconductors hold promise for making low-cost flexible electronics -- conceivably video displays that bend like book pages or roll and unroll like posters, or wearable circuitry sewn into uniforms or athletic wear. Researchers have demonstrated the ability to "print" transistors made of organic crystals on flexible plastic sheets, using technology that resembles inkjet or gravure printing.
However, for the technology's potential to be realized, scientists have to show that these organic semiconductors will withstand the rugged handling they invite -- they will need to perform reliably in spite of frequent flexing and sharp bending.
In an article published Dec. 11, 2012 in Nature Communications, scientists led by Rutgers University physicist Vitaly Podzorov report they have demonstrated extremely flexible organic semiconductors that withstood multiple bending cycles in which the devices were rolled to a radius as small as 200 micrometers. The scientists worked with numerous crystalline devices they made and found no degradation in their performance.
Podzorov claims his is the first rigorous study of solution-crystallized organic semiconductors under various types of strain -- sharp bending and repeated flexing along with compression and stretching. He acknowledges some earlier encouraging studies of mechanical robustness, but felt those lacked rigorous tests of flexibility involving different types of organic semiconductors, especially those that show the most promise for development of low-cost printed electronics. The scientists at Rutgers focused on two soluble small molecules (developed in the group of Prof. John Anthony at the University of Kentucky), depositing and crystallizing them on thin plastic sheets from solution, and claim the results should apply to numerous other organic formulations that researchers are investigating.
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Huge asteroid won't strike Earth on Friday. But what about the next time?
There's no chance that the 150-foot-wide?asteroid 2012 DA14 will strike our planet, but it's only a matter of time before a large space rock does, say scientists.?
A simulation of asteroid 2012 DA14 approaching from the south as it passes through the Earth-moon system on Friday. The 150-foot object will pass within 17,000 miles of the Earth.
JPL-Caltech/NASA/AP
EnlargeToday's super-close asteroid flyby should be a wakeup call, spurring humanity to keep better track of the millions of space rocks whizzing through Earth's neighborhood, some scientists say.
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There's no chance the 150-foot-wide (45 meters)?asteroid 2012 DA14?will hit Earth on its closest approach today (Feb. 15) at 2:24 p.m. EST (1924 GMT). But it will cruise within 17,200 miles (27,000 kilometers) of our planet, marking the closest encounter with such a large space rock that researchers have ever known about in advance.
Some scientists hope the flyby serves as a warning shot, reminding folks that Earth sits in a cosmic shooting gallery and that it's just a matter of time before we suffer a major impact ? unless we take action.
"This close approach could just as easily have been an impact," Dan Durda, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo.,?wrote in a blog post?Wednesday (Feb. 13).
"With many tens of thousands of undiscovered objects this size roaming our neighborhood, it?s only a matter of time before one of them booms through our atmosphere rather than skating through our planet-circling constellation of satellites," added Durda, who also serves on the board of directors of the B612 Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to predicting and preventing devastating asteroid strikes. [Asteroid 2012 DA14's Flyby: Complete Coverage]
Durda's point was rammed home early Friday morning when a?brilliant fireball exploded?in the skies over Russia's Chelyabinsk region, which is about 930 miles (1,500 km) east of Moscow. The blast damaged hundreds of buildings and wounded perhaps 1,000 people, according to media reports.
Scientists think the Russian fireball was caused by an object weighing about 10 tons. For comparison, 2012 DA14 tips the scales at about 140,000 tons. The two space rocks are completely unrelated, NASA researchers said.
Millions of space rocks
Earth has been pummeled by asteroids throughout its 4.5-billion-year history. Perhaps the most famous impact came 65 million years ago, when a 6-mile-wide (10 km) behemoth smashed into our planet and?wiped out the dinosaurs.
The good news is that another such catastrophic impact does not appear to be in the offing anytime soon. NASA researchers have mapped out the paths of more than 90 percent of the near-Earth asteroids at least 0.6 miles (1 km) across, which could threaten human civilization if they hit us. Not one is on a collision course with our planet in the foreseeable future.
But the numbers get worse from there. Observations by NASA's WISE space telescope suggest that about 4,700asteroidsat least 330 feet (100 m) wide come uncomfortably close to our planet at some point in their orbits.
So far, astronomers have spotted less than 30 percent of these large space rocks, which could destroy an area the size of a state if they slammed into Earth. And they've identified just 1 percent of the objects that are about the size of 2012 DA14 or bigger, B612 officials have said.
Such asteroids are capable of inflicting serious damage on a local scale, as the "Tunguska Event" illustrates. In 1908, a 130-foot-wide (40 m) asteroid exploded over the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Siberia, flattening about 825 square miles (2,137 square km) of forest.
Astronomers think, all together 1 million or more near-Earth asteroids are out there, cruising silently through the dark depths of space. About 9,600 have been discovered to date.
"It is actually difficult to look for these things," said Paul Dimotakis of Caltech in Pasadena, who is part of a team studying the feasibility of capturing and retrieving a near-Earth asteroid for future study and potential use.
Dimotakis notes that it's tough to spot asteroids between Earth and the sun, because the star's glare drowns out the relatively tiny objects from our perspective here on Earth. So researchers often point their instruments in the other direction, spotting more-distant space rocks that generally pose less of a threat. The ones that likely hold more potential risk are left in the dark of sorts.
"It's like the man who lost the keys and is looking where there is light, not where the keys were lost," Dimotakis told SPACE.com. [The 7 Strangest Asteroids in the Solar System]
New space telescope needed
Dimotakis says humanity should place an asteroid-hunting telescope near the orbit of Venus, where it could look outward and scan Earth's neighborhood without having to fight the sun's overwhelming glare.
The B612 Foundation agrees and is working to make it happen. The organization is developing a?space telescope called Sentinel, which is slated to launch in 2017 or 2018 and eventually settle into a Venus-like orbit around the sun.
In 5 1/2 years of operation, Sentinel should find about 500,000 near-Earth asteroids, including all of the remaining mountain-size space rocks that could potentially end civilization and roughly 90 percent of the asteroids big enough to wipe out an entire state, B612 officials have said.
The main goal is to spot the really dangerous asteroids decades before they may hit us, giving humanity plenty of time to mount a?deflection mission? for example, to launch a gravity-tractor probe that would fly alongside the asteroid for years, nudging it off course via a tiny gravitational tug.
"Rather than playing the odds of time, wouldn?t it be far better to be able to know, with some reasonable certainty, that we?ve cataloged the entire population of potentially hazardous asteroids?" Durda wrote. "With such a catalog in hand, we'd either know we're safe from disastrous impacts for the foreseeable future or at least be able to plan ahead for any known to be on our near-term cosmic planning calendar."
Editor's note:?If you snap a photo of asteroid 2012 DA14, or any other amazing night sky object, and you'd like to share it for a possible story or image gallery, please send images and comments to managing editor Tariq Malik at?spacephotos@space.com.
Follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter?@michaeldwall?or SPACE.com?@Spacedotcom. We're also onFacebook?and?Google+.?
Copyright 2013?SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Saturday, February 16, 2013
Facebook gets unwelcome look at hackers' dark side
This Feb. 8, 2012 photo shows a mural at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. Intruders recently infiltrated the systems running the world's largest online social network but did not steal any sensitive information about Facebook's more than 1 billion users, according to a blog posting Friday, Feb. 15, 2013, by the company's security team. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)
This Feb. 8, 2012 photo shows a mural at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. Intruders recently infiltrated the systems running the world's largest online social network but did not steal any sensitive information about Facebook's more than 1 billion users, according to a blog posting Friday, Feb. 15, 2013, by the company's security team. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? Facebook is getting an unwelcome look at the shady side of the hacking culture that CEO Mark Zuckerberg celebrates.
Intruders recently infiltrated the systems running the world's largest online social network but did not steal any sensitive information about Facebook's more than 1 billion users, according to a blog posting Friday by the company's security team.
The unsettling revelation is the latest breach to expose the digital cracks in a society and an economy that is storing an ever-growing volume of personal and business data online.
The news didn't seem to faze investors. Facebook Inc.'s stock dipped 10 cents to $28.22 in Friday's extended trading.
The main building at Facebook's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters lists its address as 1 Hacker Way. From there, Facebook serves as the gatekeeper for billions of potentially embarrassing photos and messages that get posted each month.
This time, at least, that material didn't get swept up in the digital break-in that Facebook said it discovered last month. The company didn't say why it waited until the afternoon before a holiday weekend to inform its users about the hack.
It was a sophisticated attack that also hit other companies, according to Facebook, which didn't identify the targets.
"As part of our ongoing investigation, we are working continuously and closely with our own internal engineering teams, with security teams at other companies, and with law enforcement authorities to learn everything we can about the attack, and how to prevent similar incidents in the future," Facebook wrote on the blog.
Online short-messaging service Twitter acknowledged being hacked earlier this month. In that security breakdown, Twitter warned that the attackers may have stolen user names, email addresses and encrypted passwords belonging to 250,000 of the more than 200 million accounts set up on its service.
Late last month, both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal ? two of the three largest U.S. newspapers ? said they were hit by China-based hackers believed to be interested in monitoring media coverage of topics that the Chinese government deemed important.
Facebook didn't identify a suspected origin of its hacking incident, but provided a few details about how it apparently happened.
The security lapse was traced to a handful of employees who visited a mobile software developer's website that had been compromised, which led to malware being installed on the workers' laptops. The PCs were infected even though they were supposed to be protected by the latest anti-virus software and were equipped with other up-to-date protection.
Facebook linked part of the problem to a security hole in the Java software that triggered a safety alert from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security last month. The government agency advised computer users to disable Java on their machines because of a weakness that could be exploited by hackers.
Oracle Corp., the owner of Java, has since issued a security patch that it says has fixed the problem. In its post, Facebook said it received the Java fix two weeks ago.
Facebook never mentioned the word "hack" in describing the breach. That, no doubt, was by design because hacking is a good thing in Zuckerberg's vernacular.
To most people, hacking conjures images of malevolent behavior by intruders listening to private voicemails and villains crippling websites or breaking into email accounts.
Zuckerberg provided his interpretation of the word in a manifesto titled "The Hacker Way" that he included in the documents that the company filed for its initial public offering of stock last year.
"The word 'hacker' has an unfairly negative connotation from being portrayed in the media as people who break into computers," Zuckerberg wrote. "In reality, hacking just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done."
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Ohio teen's lawyers begin plea talks in fatal school shooting
CLEVELAND (Reuters) - An attorney for the Ohio teen charged in the shooting deaths of three high school students in the town of Chardon said on Saturday he is negotiating with prosecutors to settle the case as the first anniversary of the attack approaches.
It was not immediately clear if accused shooter T.J. Lane would plead guilty to the aggravated murder of three students in the February 27, 2012, attack in the Chardon High School cafeteria, where three others were wounded.
"We're in the process of plea negotiations," said Lane's attorney, Ian Friedman, adding that his client will first undergo a court-ordered competency evaluation.
"Assuming it is completed timely and finds T.J. competent, a plea may be entered as soon as February 26, which is our next court date," Friedman added.
Lane, who was 17 at the time of the shooting, is being tried as an adult, and has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
He is scheduled to go on trial later this year for three counts of aggravated murder in the deaths of Demetrius Hewlin, 16; Russell King Jr., 17; and Daniel Parmertor, 16. He is charged with the attempted murder of Nick Walczak, 18, who was paralyzed from the waist down, and felony assault for wounds to two other students.
Prosecutors said Lane brought a .22-caliber pistol to school and fired 10 rounds randomly at students in the cafeteria.
If a plea deal is reached and announced on February 26, it would be on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the shooting rampage, which will be remembered with a candlelight vigil, a memorial walk and concert in downtown Chardon.
Earlier this week, one of the shooting victims, Nate Mueller, traveled to Washington, D.C., as part of a group urging Congress to pass measures to reduce gun violence.
President Barack Obama and some Democrats have proposed gun control legislation in the wake of the December massacre of 20 school children and six adults in Connecticut. That tragedy sparked national outrage and renewed calls for action.
Geauga County Judge David Fuhry in January granted a joint request by prosecutors and defense attorneys for more time to prepare for trial. He denied a motion by the defense for a change of venue from the small county, which includes a number of Amish residents who are exempt from jury service for religious reasons.
Lane would not be eligible for the death penalty because of his age, but he could be sentenced to life in prison.
(This story corrects second paragraph to show shooting occurred on February 27, 2012)
(Reporting by Kim Palmer; Editing by Greg McCune and Gunna Dickson)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ohio-teens-lawyers-begin-plea-talks-fatal-school-213723658.html
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