Technology Trends

Alex is a 28-year-old grey parrot who lives in a lab at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., and can count, identify objects, shapes, colors and materials. And now, Alex has grasped the concept of zero, according to World Science. In fact, Alex can describe the absence of a numerical quantity on a tray containing colored cubes. When a color is missing, Alex consistently identified this “zero quantity” by saying “none.” You might think that this is just a parrot trick, but this research about ‘bird intelligence’ might also help autistic and other learning-disabled children “who have trouble learning language and counting skills.” Read more…

One of the really interesting things about Alex is that it had learned in the past that “none” meant a lack of information. And without any training, when Alex was asked to say how many green or red cubes were on a tray in front of him, he spontaneously said “none” when there was no cubes with this color. In fact, he was able to connect two different concepts, a lack of information and the absence of a quantity. Pretty brilliant parrot, isn’t?

Before going further, below is a picture of Alex in front of his counting blocks (Credit: Brandeis University). And here is a link to a larger version (193 KB).

Now, let’s look at how the researchers made the discovery that Alex possessed a “zero-like concept.”

The story began when researchers started testing Alex to see whether he understood small numbers, between one and six. Zero wasn’t expected of him. The researchers would lay out an array of objects of different colors and sizes, and asked questions such as “what color four?” — meaning which color are the objects of which there are four.

Apparently, Alex was pretty good on these tests, until he got bored. So the researchers “found some more interesting toys to give as rewards.” And here came the decisive experiment.

One of these apparent lapses occurred one day when an experimenter asked Alex “what color three?” Laid out before Alex were sets of two, three and six objects, each set differently colored. Alex insisted on responding: “five.” This made no sense given that the answer was supposed to be a color.

After several tries the experimenter gave up and said: “OK, Alex, tell me: what color five?” “None,” the bird replied. This was correct, in that there was no color that graced exactly five of the objects. The researchers went on to incorporate “none” into future trials, and Alex consistently used the word correctly, they said.

A few days after this article was published, Brandeis University decided to issue a press release adding that Alex was the “first bird to comprehend numerical concept akin to zero.”

“It is doubtful that Alex’s achievement, or those of some other animals such as chimps, can be completely trained; rather, it seems likely that these skills are based on simpler cognitive abilities they need for survival, such as recognition of more versus less,” explained comparative psychologist and cognitive scientist Dr. Irene Pepperberg.

Dr. Pepperberg’s research, which uses a training method called the model-rival technique, also holds promise for teaching autistic and other learning-disabled children who have difficulty learning language, numerical concepts and even empathy.

So far, results using this learning technique with small groups of autistic children have been very promising.

The latest research work about Alex and his comprehension of zero has been published by the Journal of Comparative Psychology in its May 2005 issue (Volume 119, Issue 2) under the name “Number Comprehension by a Grey Parrot (Psittacus erithacus), Including a Zero-Like Concept.” You’ll get to the abstract from this page (scroll to number #8).

A Grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus) that was able to quantify 6 item sets (including subsets of heterogeneous groups, e.g., blue blocks within groupings of blue and green blocks and balls) using English labels was tested on comprehension of these labels, which is crucial for numerical competence . He was, without training, asked “What color/object [number]?” for collections of various simultaneously presented quantities (e.g., subsets of 4, 5, and 6 blocks of 3 different colors; subsets of 2, 4, and 6 keys, corks, and sticks). Accuracy was greater than 80% and was unaffected by array quantity, mass, or contour. His results demonstrated numerical comprehension competence comparable to that of chimpanzees and very young children. He also demonstrated knowledge of absence of quantity, using “none” to designate zero.

For more information, you can buy this article for $11.95.

Finally, if you still want to know more about Irene Pepperberg’s work with gray parrots, you can visit the Alex Foundation, where you’ll find that someday, Alex may be able to read. Amazing…

Sources: World Science, July 2, 2005; and various web sites

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If you visit the Lights of Liberty Show in Philadelphia, you will not have to pay the $17.76 entrance fee to speak with a virtual Ben Franklin because his ghost is located in the free visitors area. There, you’ll be able to choose from a list of 160 prepared questions or type your own request. And Ben’s image will appear to float in front of you, like a ghost. But don’t worry! In fact, you’ll see a video of Ralph Archibald, an actor who has been portraying Franklin for more than 25 years. And Ben’s ghost will give you the most appropriate of about 800 possible answers from its own database using a technology developed at Carnegie Mellon University and already in use by some medical firms online.

So here are the facts about this exhibit.

An exhibit developed by the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and now open in Philadelphia at least gives the illusion that the founding father can still keep up his end of a conversation.

Called “Ben Franklin’s Ghost,” it is open across the street from Independence Hall in the visitors center for the Lights of Liberty Show, a sound-and-light walking tour after dark through Independence National Historical Park.

How does this work?

Using a Carnegie Mellon-patented technology called Synthetic Interview, visitors can ask questions of Franklin, either by choosing from 160 prepared questions or typing in their own questions based on a list of key words.

Computer software then calls up the most appropriate of about 800 possible answers as performed by actor Ralph Archbald, who has portrayed Franklin in hundreds of appearances in the Philadelphia area over the past 25 years. These digitally recorded images are then displayed using a 150-year-old illusion known as Pepper’s Ghost, which makes Archbald’s image appear to float in front of the visitor like a ghost.

You might think that this technology is only useful to entertain your kids. But you’ll be wrong. This technology, invented and patented by Scott Stevens and Mike Christel is already used online.

For example, MedRespond, a technology company servicing the healthcare and medical communities, already has started to design and develop Synthetic Interviews for online interactive applications.

If you happen to see Ben Franklin’s Ghost, don’t ask him silly questions, such as what will the host city for the Olympic Games in 2012 — tip: the answer is London! Instead, please take some pictures of the ghost in the air and tell me where to find them online. Thanks.

Sources: Various news releases and web sites

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Merriam-Webster, the dictionary publisher, recently asked its readers on its web site to submit their favorite words which didn’t exist yet in the dictionary. After receiving about 3,000 submissions, the company published a top ten list of non-existing words. This list is dominated by ‘ginormous‘ (bigger than gigantic and bigger than enormous) and by ‘confuzzled‘ (confused and puzzled at the same time). However, a search on Google reveals a different story. Read more…

A research on ‘ginormous’ brings 70,900 results while a look at ‘confuzzled’ returns 48,300 items — even if you still can’t look at more than a thousand results in reality.

The number 3 on the Merriam-Webster list, ‘woot’ (an exclamation of joy or excitement), is the clear winner on Google, with 717,000 results. But it’s not surprising with the popularity of the Woot web site where you can buy things only on a single day.

‘Chillax’ (chill out/relax, hang out with friends) and ’snirt’ (dirty snow) are numbers 4 and 9 on the Merriam-Webster list, and are respectively mentioned 21,700 and 14,900 times by Google.

After these five words, numbers are falling dramatically.

The number 5 on the Merriam-Webster list, ‘cognitive displaysia’ (the feeling you have before you even leave the house that you are going to forget something), has only been found in 42 documents by Google.

And one of my favorites on this list at number 7, ‘phonecrastinate’ (what you do when you check the caller ID box before answering the phone), is only mentioned 45 times by Google. So I guess there are not many ‘phonecrastinators.’

Other words fare a little bit better: for instance, ‘lingweenie’ (a person incapable of producing neologisms), which is number 10 on the list of the dictionary publisher, is featured in 466 documents found by Google.

Contrary to ‘lingweenies,’ ‘vocabularians’ are people who make up new words. And you can find today 2,040 references to this word on Google.

So, as a very unscientific conclusion, there are about four times more people able to create new words than people who can’t. This is refreshing.

Sources: Roland Piquepaille, with various websites

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Some students are luckier than others — or have more fun. For example, this Stanford University report says that some of the students there may have some hard and physical work to do: dancing. But in exchange, they’re working with sensors, cameras and computers to study how a dancer of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company is moving. This must be exhilarating, especially after finding — and confirming — that he acts as a ‘biomechanical rebel.’

Here is the experience of Jonah Bokaer, a dancer from the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, who was enrolled in the program.

The test subject danced wearing only blue shorts and the 50 silver balls the size of marbles that stuck to his skin, mapping out his physique.

“I know what I think my body is doing. But is it really doing that? I don’t really know, but I’d like to,” he said during a break in the afternoon session at the Motion and Gait Analysis Laboratory at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital.

A member of the Merce Cunningham modern dance company, Jonah Bokaer said he couldn’t wait to see the results — a digital record of his skeleton’s behavior as it undulates, spins and leaps.

His moves are monitored by students of the Anatomy of Movement class which is now in its second year.

“We’re looking upside down, inside out, at the human body,” said course director Amy Ladd, MD, professor of orthopedic surgery. “It’s not the way any single discipline would frame the study of movement.”

Ladd added, “Each project reflects an integration of disciplines spanning the humanities and sciences to portray human movement.” The exercise was part of an extensive series of interdisciplinary art projects that were tied to Cunningham’s performances on campus last week.

So what methods are using these students to analyze a dancer’s movements?

Eight cameras in the lab tracked the motion of the silvery balls on their test subjects: Cunningham dancers Frank and Bokaer and course director Ladd, who also happens to be a trained ballet dancer.

“We thought that the study needed a comparison, and analyzing someone in pointe shoes would be a good contrast,” said Ladd, who has studied ballet for years. “So I reluctantly agreed.”

The cameras sent the data to a computer, operated by motion analysis lab’s engineer Erin Butler. The output includes motion capture of dancers as well as quantitative information.

But what do you learn from such interdisciplinary projects?

Projects like this, mixing science with art, are challenging to conceptualize, said Ladd. “We’re looking for projects that merge science and art. No one really knows how to do this well yet. It’s a difficult mix. It calls for a philosophical paradigm shift for people who have been trained to think in one realm or the other.”

Here is a link to the other projects at the Anatomy of Movement.

And as a conclusion, it’s not the first time that Stanford University is mixing several disciplines, such as arts, sports and science. Check for example this article from Technology Research News, “Sensors track martial arts blows.”

Sources: Rosanne Spector, Stanford University Report, March 16, 2005; and various websites

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Hugo Liu, a researcher at the MIT, thinks about using English as a programming language because it is much more concise than any traditional programming language, and eliminates the need to learn one in the first place. In “Tool turns English to code,” Technology Review writes that Liu and his colleague have written an English-to-code visualizer named Metafor. You type a story in plain English in one panel of the tool. In other panels, you can see the outputs of the parser and the debugger. Finally the fourth panel contains your story rendered as code — or the program “skeleton.” Here is an example taken from Liu’s research. ‘If I said, “Look in the bin and pick out just the red apples,” that’s the equivalent of programming: “map(Pick, filter(lambda apple: apple.color == red, bin.getApples())).”‘ Read more…

Here is the introduction of the Technology Review article.

Writing software has been relatively difficult since people began programming computers in the mid-1900s. Although programming a computer is eminently useful — it gives you fine control of a powerful tool — it requires learning a programming language.

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are aiming to remove this requirement. They have taken a step toward that goal with a language-to-code visualizer dubbed Metafor.

The visualizer uses natural language instructions to sketch the outlines of a program. It can be used as a programming learning tool and to provide rough drafts of programming projects, and could lead to more complete programming-by-natural-language methods.

The illustration above shows you how the different panels of Metafor.

But how does this work?

The basic logic of the program Pacman, for instance, is revealed by talking about how it works, said Liu. “The basic ingredients for the program are there — the noun phrases are objects, the verbs are functions, [and] the adjectives are object properties.”

Metafor translates the description “Pacman is a character who eats dots” into a “Pacman object” that is a member of and can share traits, or functions, with a “character superclass” and has a character superclass member function of “eat dots”, said Liu.

Please read the full article for more details, but note that Metafor can ‘translate’ an English story in several programming languages, including Python, Lisp and Java.

But what can you do with such a tool?

The first goal is to help students to learn programming. This method could also be used as a programming teaching tool for kids or enhanced storytelling within three years.

For more information, you can read this technical paper, “Metafor: Visualizing Stories as Code” (PDF format, 3 pages, 723 KB), or this presentation, “english: the lightest weight programming language of them all” (PDF format, 22 slides, 2.34 MB). The illustration above comes from this presentation.

You also can watch this animated demo (QuickTime format, size unknown).

Sources: Kimberly Patch, Technology Research News, March 23/30, 2005; and various pages at MIT

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The European Union has now 25 members — and 20 official languages, a nightmare for translators. Anticipating this, the EU started three years ago a 4-million euro project, TransType2, which is currently under test with results exceeding the original goals. In this article, the EU’s Information Society Technologies (IST) reports productivity gains in excess of 30% above traditional methods. The system mixes the advantages of both computer-assisted translation (CAT) and machine translation (MT). When you use the computer-assisted system, you start your translation, and several suggestions are offered to you while you’re typing, reducing your number of keystrokes and saving you time. Today, TransType2 allows bidirectional translations between English, French, German, and Spanish. Other European languages could easily been added. The EU is now thinking to bring this tool to us  either as a commercial product or a Web service. Read more…

Before going further, here are two screenshots illustrating the TransType2 concept (Credit: TransType2 project).

The first one comes from a page containing other screen captures while the second has been picked from this animated GIF image.

Now, let’s look at the introduction of the IST Results article.

Due to end in February, the 36-month IST programme project has drawn on two of the most commonly used translation technologies developed to date: Computer-Assisted Translation (CAT), in which human translators work in unison with a computer; and Machine Translation (MT), in which the computer handles the entire process. While both techniques have advantages and drawbacks, TransType2 has “used the best of both worlds” says project manager José Esteban at Atos Origin in Spain.

And here is how the system works.

The system works by providing translators with suggestions to complete sentences as they type which can be incorporated simply and rapidly, reducing the number of keystrokes needed to complete a translation. The suggestions are created based on statistical models of translated texts, used by the MT engines to predict the words and phrases that will come next.

The question is: does this system help to produce high quality translations faster than other methods?

Based on the work of two previous projects TransType (Canadian government-funded) and EuTrans (EU-funded), TransType2 offers significant benefits over existing techniques. Trials currently underway with two translation agencies in Canada and Spain are showing results that could be better than the project partners first expected.

“We originally thought the system would increase productivity by between 15 or 20 per cent, but in some cases we’re seeing gains in excess of 20 per cent and as high as 25 or 30 per cent,” Esteban says. “Once translators have familiarised themselves with the system the productivity increases start to become noticeable almost immediately.”

Not surprisingly, TransType2 works well with structured documents, such as technical, political or legal ones and is not very good with literary works. Still, it looks like a promising tool for the people in charge of translating the huge amounts of texts produced by the EU.

Sources: IST Results, January 12, 2005; and various other websites

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