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Study Discovers Whale Song Syntax

New research into the mathematical properties of whale songs reveals that they have a complex language:

The songs of the humpback whale are among the most complex in the animal kingdom. Researchers have now mathematically confirmed that whales have their own syntax that uses sound units to build phrases that can be combined to form songs that last for hours.

Until now, only humans have demonstrated the ability to use such a hierarchical structure of communication. The research, published online in the March 2006 issue of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, offers a new approach to studying animal communication, although the authors do not claim that humpback whale songs meet the linguistic rigor necessary for a true language.

"Humpback songs are not like human language, but elements of language are seen in their songs," said Ryuji Suzuki, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) predoctoral fellow in neuroscience at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and first author of the paper.

This research is important because it brings us one step closer to someday being able to decode whalesongs and eventually even communicate with whales. In the long-term it may also contribute to the development of general techniques for interspecies language translation -- techniques that could someday come in handy if and when we start to interact with extraterrestrial species.

Physics World Buzzing Over Faster-Than-Ever Particle

Hot news from Fermilab... (see this article)

Tom Spears

Ottawa Citizen

A major physics lab in the U.S. has found a particle, far smaller than any atom, that switches itself back and forth between being a piece of matter and a piece of anti-matter 17 trillion times each second.

It has taken 700 people in 20 countries, millions of dollars' worth of custom equipment, vast amounts of energy, and 20 years of work to find this.

The back-and-forth switching appears to be one of the fastest processes in nature. One of the big mysteries in physics is why the universe is practically all matter, and not anti-matter. The universe once had equal amounts of both, scientists believe.

So where did the anti-matter go?

And while the physics world has been buzzing since Thursday's announcement of the latest anti-matter find, outsiders have barely noticed.

Why?

The experiment illustrates the difficulty in publicizing work in this abstract world of concepts unknown to most people -- quarks, muons, particle accelerators, and anti-matter itself.

The finding at Fermilab, a U.S. federal physics laboratory, is never going to affect your daily life. Fermilab found a particle called a "B-sub-s meson." You won't ever buy an iPod made of B-sub-s mesons. And Fermilab's announcement was pure gobbledygook, which didn't help.

The work's significance? "This measurement has confirmed the Standard Model," says physicist Wendy Taylor of York University, one of the 700 who toiled on the experiment.

Neuro-Chips

Researchers continue to make progress in fusing living neurons with computer chips:

The line between living organisms and machines has just become a whole lot blurrier. European researchers have developed "neuro-chips" in which living brain cells and silicon circuits are coupled together.

The achievement could one day enable the creation of sophisticated neural prostheses to treat neurological disorders or the development of organic computers that crunch numbers using living neurons.

To create the neuro-chip, researchers squeezed more than 16,000 electronic transistors and hundreds of capacitors onto a silicon chip just 1 millimeter square in size.

They used special proteins found in the brain to glue brain cells, called neurons, onto the chip. However, the proteins acted as more than just a simple adhesive.

"They also provided the link between ionic channels of the neurons and semiconductor material in a way that neural electrical signals could be passed to the silicon chip," said study team member Stefano Vassanelli from the University of Padua in Italy.

The proteins allowed the neuro-chip's electronic components and its living cells to communicate with each other. Electrical signals from neurons were recorded using the chip's transistors, while the chip's capacitors were used to stimulate the neurons.

From: http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/060327_neuro_chips.html

Location Awareness -- The Next Big Thing

Japanese cell phone company KDDI is offering a new GPS-enabled 3D navigational tool to their 17 million subscribers (see article and picture). Their system helps consumers navigate city streets and even within buildings, using an innovative 3D map and audio directions. This system is similar to (but possibly more advanced than) the in-car navigation systems we are familiar with, such as Hertz "Neverlost" or the Magellan products (note: I have a Magellan aftermarket nav system in my car -- it's one of the most useful things I ever bought!).

GPS-enabled mobile devices and the location-aware services they enable are definitely a "Next Big Thing" contender.  They have many compelling potential uses in the near-term and mid-term future. Below are some of my wild speculations on how this technology could be used:

• Personal navigation. Your device can help you find your way when walking, driving, or even on the water or in the wilderness.
• Location-aware advertising. Your device can get special offers from stores near you, as you walk or drive around, according to your permissions, preferences and profile of course.
• Location-aware storage, search and retrieval. Your device remembers where you were when you wrote a note, took a photo, or sent a message.You can later search for your stuff based on where you were -- for example, "photos I took in Brazil" or "Notes I made at PC Forum in 2006" (for the best example of this, see the amazing product, EverNote -- the next version of which I got to preview recently, it is mind-blowingly cool!).
• Location-aware photo-enhancement. When you take a photograph it is not only tagged with time and location where it was taken, but the content of the photo can be automatically tagged based on the orientation of the camera. For example, if you take a photo of the Empire State Building, your camera will someday be able to tag the photo as being about the Empire State Building, and can even detect and tag the shape of the building itself in the photo.
• Location-aware social networking. Your device can track people nearby who are your friends, family, colleagues, or who match your interests and want to meet you (for example: dating). This can be useful to find people at a crowded event, or to hook up with your friends while out on the town, or to meet people at a trade show or conference.
• Location-aware personal security. Your device can keep a transcript of your movements on a server. Parties you authorize can track you if they need to find you immediately, or in case you go missing. In addition, bulk alerts can be sent to people who happen to be in particular areas -- for example, if a tornado is coming, people who happen to be in that vicinity can be warned.
• Location-aware information services. You can get news and other local info about the place you happen to be in. If you are standing outside a restaurant you can see reviews and discussions from people who have been there before. If you are already in the restaurant you can see recommendations of what to order from people who were there before you. Information can be virtually posted to particular places or regions -- you can hang a virtual post it note in your doorway so that anyone who passes through it gets the note.

Harnessing The Collective Mind

Today I read an interesting article in the New York Times about a company called Rite-Solutions which is using a home-grown stock market for ideas to catalyze bottom-up innovation across all levels of personnel in their organization. This is a way to very effectively harness and focus the collective creativity and energy in an organization around the best ideas that the organization generates.

Using virtual stock market systems to measure community sentiment is not a new concept but it is a new frontier. I don't think we've even scratched the surface of what this paradigm can accomplish. For lots of detailed links to resources on this topic see the wikipedia entry on prediction markets. This prediction markets portal also has collected interesting links on the topic. Here is an informative blog post about recent prediction market attempts. Here is a scathing critique of some prediction markets.

There are many interesting examples of prediction markets on the Web:

• Google uses a similar kind of system -- their own version of a prediction market -- to enable staff members to collaboratively predict the likelihood that various internal projects and events will occur on-schedule.
• Yahoo also has a prediction market called BuzzGame that enables visitors to help predict technology trends. 
• Newsfutures Exchange is a prediction market about the news, which is powered by a commercial prediction market engine sold by a company called Newsfutures.
• BlogShares, a fantasy stock market for Weblogs in which players invest virtual money in the blogs they think will gain the most audience share.
• Intrade is another exchange for trading on idea futures.
• The Iowa Political Futures Exchange is a prediction market that focuses on political change.
• Tradesports is a prediction market around sports topics.
• The Hollywood Stock Exchange is a prediction market around movies.
• The Foresight Exchange is another prediction market for predicting future events.

Here are some interesting, more detailed discussions of prediction market ideas and potential features.

• http://hanson.gmu.edu/ideafutures.html
• http://hanson.gmu.edu/ifwired.html
• http://ideastockexchange.com/about.htm

Another area that is related, but highly underleveraged today, are ways to enable communities to help establish whether various ideas are correct using argumentation. By enabling masses of people to provide reasons to agree or disagree with ideas, and with those reasons as well, we can automatically rate what ideas are most agreed with or disagreed with. One very interesting example of this is TruthMapping.com. Some further concepts related to this approach are discussed in this thread.

SF Web Innovators Meetup This Thursday at Microsoft SF Offices

Hey everyone, if you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, be sure to come to the SF Web Innovators (SFWIN) meetup this Thursday. This month's event is hosted by Microsoft and co-sponsored by Fish and Richardson. There will be an open bar and catered finger food and deserts. Last month over 120 people showed up at the event we ran at Adaptive Path's offices. A good time was had by all! Hope to see you there. To get in, please RSVP here by Thursday AM. Also, please pass this around to your friends who may want to come.

I'm Off to PC Forum -- See you There?

I'm headed out to PC Forum this weekend. If any of my readers are there be sure to find me and say hello. Looking forward to seeing you there!