While you're not looking » Science

Bowlingual

Wendy Cooper — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 00:49:12 +0000

The international infant and children toy manufacturer, Takara Tomy, have released their improved version of Bowlingual. Believe it or not, it’s a device that translate the bow-wows of your dog into human language, so far only in Japanese. One part is strapped around like a dog collar to detect the vibrations of the dog’s larynx and the other, a hand held device, displays and vocalises the translated barks. My sceptical opinions remains only because there’s no chance of knowing the accuracy of this translator. Is that why it doesn’t translate Japanese back into the bow-wows? It would be an undemanding task for it already has the lexicon database. We could carefully annunciate our message into the hand held device, select the correct variants on the screen if there are any and it plays back the barking to the dog. Woof, Bob’s your uncle. And how would this product rate in Korea? Would we want to speak to our meal? And once Meowlingual, Oinklingual, Baalingual and Moolingual is out there, would we all become vegetarians?

The Bowlingual TVC

Bottle your own

Wendy Cooper — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:20:23 +0000

You can refill and bottle your own water with 321 Water. It has a carbon block filter and housed in special plastic that won’t leak chemical Bisphenol-A (BPA) into the water. Available in March 2010.

Fixing My Gaze

Wendy Cooper — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 08:31:56 +0000

Fixing My Gaze is an autobiographical journey of Susan Barry and her recovery from strabismus, an astounding optical condition where the eyes are not properly aligned and in this case, it resulted in seeing the world flat, only in two dimensions.

The oldest musical instrument found

Wendy Cooper — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:21:43 +0000

The sound of the oldest musical instrument resembles greatly of a pan flute. It is a flute indeed, made out of bone, dated back 35,000 years ago during the colonising of Europe. Three of these artefacts were unearthed in the Hohle Fels cavern, south-west of Germany.

This discovery have proven that:

Music could have contributed
to the maintenance of larger
social networks, and thereby perhaps have helped facilitate
the demographic and territorial expansion of modern humans relative to a culturally more conservative and demographically more isolated Neanderthal populations…

Source: BBC News

The art of mating

Wendy Cooper — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:04:09 +0000

The footage of nematode mating is strangely mesmerising and surprisingly elegant.

The male presses the front side of his tail against the hermaphrodite, while he backs along and searches for the vulva. The tail, controlled by the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, embraces the hermaphrodite, curling round in its quest for the vulva.

On finding it, the male inserts copulatory structures called spicules and mating commences. There are six steps involved in worm mating behaviour.

Source: BMC Biology, New Scientist

Early birds and night owls

Wendy Cooper — Sun, 31 May 2009 14:09:51 +0000

The results in this article are not far from common sense.

The downfalls of early risers

…A reduction in brain activity in areas associated with attention was observed among the early birds. In addition, they felt sleepy and demonstrated slow performance on their tests. As it got later in the day, the early risers also exhibited less brain activity in the region involved with the circadian master clock that regulates alertness.

It’s good to be a night owl

In stark contrast, the late risers did not experience any sluggishness and remained fully alert… “If we have found what can appear as an advantage for evening types, it’s that they are able to perform well after 10.5 hours spent awake, and that they’re able to outperform morning types.”

It ain’t easy being green

“Morning types may be at an advantage, because their schedule is fitting better with the usual work schedule of the society… It may represent a problem for evening types obliged to wake up early while having difficulties going to bed in the evening, eventually leading to a sleep debt.” In addition, early risers experience a faster dissipation of sleep pressure when they do sleep and they feel restored more quickly than late night people.

From the article, Brain Activity Differs Between Early Birds and Night Owls and the Post-It strip is from the super dry Savage Chickens.

Quick news break from the land of OZ

Wendy Cooper — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 14:58:18 +0000

The first operation by a robot has been carried out in Australia!

Source: The Daily Telegraph

Kill the pig! Kill the pig!

Wendy Cooper — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 07:38:58 +0000

NEC System Technologies and Mie University have designed
a wine-tasting robot. It fires a beam of infrared light and the reflected light determines the object’s chemical composition. When a reporter’s hand was placed against the robot’s taste sensor, it was identified as prosciutto. A cameraman was mistaken for bacon. So, the robot revolution will be a feast as well.