Results for “michelle dawson” 194 found
Living simply in a dumpster
From James Hamblin at The Atlantic:
Not long ago, Wilson was nesting in a 2,500 square foot house. After going through a divorce (“nothing related to the dumpster,” he told me, unsolicited), he spun into the archetypal downsizing of a newly minted bachelor. He moved into a 500-square-foot apartment. Then he began selling clothes and furniture on Facebook for almost nothing. Now he says almost everything he owns is in his 36-square-foot dumpster, which is sanctioned and supported by the university as part of an ongoing sustainability-focused experiment called The Dumpster Project. “We could end up with a house under $10,000 that could be placed anywhere in the world,” Wilson said at the launch, “[fueled by] sunlight and surface water, and people could have a pretty good life.”
Wilson, known around town as Professor Dumpster, recounted in another recent interview that he now owns four pairs of pants, four shirts, three pairs of shoes, three hats, and, in keeping with his hipsteresque aesthetic, “eight or nine” bow ties. (That’s an exceptional bow-tie-to-shirt ownership ratio.) He keeps all of this in cubbies under a recently installed false floor, along with some camping cooking equipment.
The article is interesting throughout, good photos too.
For the pointer I thank Michelle Dawson.
A robot to load your dishwasher
A robot unveiled today at the British Science Festival will be loading dishwashers next year, its developers claim.
“Boris” is one of the first robots in the world capable of intelligently manipulating unfamiliar objects with a humanlike grasp.
It was developed by scientists at the University of Birmingham.
The team also work with “Bob”, an autonomous robot who recently completed work experience at security firm G4S.
“This is Boris’ first public outing,” announced Professor Jeremy Wyatt of the School of Computer Science. The robot took five years to develop at a cost of £350,000.
Boris “sees” objects with depth sensors on its face and wrists. In 10 seconds it calculates up to a thousand possible ways to grasp a novel object with its five robotic fingers and plans a path of arm movements to reach its target, avoiding obstructions.
“It’s not been programmed to pick it up – it’s been programmed to learn how to pick it up,” explained Professor Wyatt.
There is more here, including a video. For the pointer I thank Michelle Dawson.
How much does a Toronto fire hydrant earn in parking tickets?
…as it turns out, some hydrants seem to be more tempting — and more costly — than others.
In Toronto, one hydrant stands above the rest. People are fined so often for parking in front of it that on Google’s Street View, a white Toyota can be seen with a yellow slip under its wiper blade as a parking-enforcement officer walks away.
Since 2008, cars that parked too close to the hydrant at 393 University Ave. have been ticketed 2,962 times. Those fines add up to $289,620 —more than any other hydrant in the city.
More generally:
A Canadian Press analysis of Toronto’s parking-ticket data found the city has collected more than $24 million since 2008 by fining people who parked too close to hydrants.
Fabrizi says all parking fines, including those from parking next to hydrants, add up to $80 million a year.
That may seem like a big number, but Fabrizi says it only represents about one per cent of the money needed to run all of the city’s programs.
“The amount of revenue that parking generates is so minuscule compared to the overall revenue that it really doesn’t serve a great purpose as a revenue generator.”
About half the revenue from parking tickets pays for parking enforcement and operations, he added.
The full article, which also lists the ten most lucrative Toronto hydrants, is here. For the pointer I thank Michelle Dawson.
Rats regret bad decisions, indeed they regret bad restaurant decisions
Do you ever say “Rats!” after making a mistake? It now has a whole new meaning:
They [scientists] developed a task called Restaurant Row, in which rats decided how long they were willing to wait for different foods during a 60-minute run.
“It’s like waiting in line at the restaurant,” Prof Redish. “If the line is too long at the Chinese restaurant, then you give up and go to the Indian restaurant across the street.”
The rats waited longer for their preferred flavours, meaning the researchers could determine good and bad food options.
Occasionally the rats decided not to wait for a good option and moved on, only to find themselves facing a bad option – the scientists called this a regret-inducing situation.
In these cases the rats often paused and looked back at the reward they had passed over.
They also made changes in their subsequent decisions, being more likely to wait at the next zone and rushing to eat the reward that followed. The scientists say such behaviour is consistent with the expression of regret.
When experiments were carried out where the rats encountered bad options without making incorrect decisions, such behaviour was not present.
The article is here, the paper is here, all via Michelle Dawson.
Has the Turing test now been passed?
A programme that convinced humans that it was a 13-year-old boy has become the first computer ever to pass the Turing Test. The test — which requires that computers are indistinguishable from humans — is considered a landmark in the development of artificial intelligence, but academics have warned that the technology could be used for cybercrime.
…Eugene Goostman, a computer programme made by a team based in Russia, succeeded in a test conducted at the Royal Society in London. It convinced 33 per cent of the judges that it was human, said academics at the University of Reading, which organised the test.
It is thought to be the first computer to pass the iconic test. Though there have claims other programmes have successes, those included set topics or question in advance.
A version of the computer programme, which was created in 2001, is hosted online for anyone talk to. (“I feel about beating the turing test in quite convenient way. Nothing original,” said Goostman, when asked how he felt after his success.)
The computer programme claims to be a 13-year-old boy from Odessa in Ukraine.
So far I am withholding judgment. There is more here, lots of Twitter commentary here. By the way, here is my 2009 paper with Michelle Dawson on what the Turing test really means (pdf).
Markets in everything
Danieal Cormier of Quispamsis, N.B., is hoping to revolutionize the men’s underwear industry with a new design that provides pockets for cellphones and other gadgets.
Cormier, 20, came up with idea while sitting around alone at home in his boxers one day.
“I had my cellphone and I kept doing the hand motion to put my cellphone in my pocket, but my underwear didn’t have any pocket,” he said.
“So that’s when it kind of sparked in my head — ‘Why don’t underwear come with pockets?'”
The story is here, via Michelle Dawson.
Steven Pinker has a new book due out in September
The title is The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century.
For the pointer I thank Michelle Dawson.
Vancouver’s cheapest house?
A house listed for just under $600,000 in East Vancouver sold for $643,000 after its first weekend on the market.
According to the Huffington Post B.C., Vancouver’s cheapest listed single family home attracted large numbers to open houses, with two written offers pushing the final purchase price seven per cent over asking.
The price of the 100-year-old, 1,951-square-foot, three-bedroom, detached house at 2622 Clark Dr. was set low initially due to its smaller size and half lot site.
“It’s very rare, and that’s why all the excitement,” said RE/MAX realtor Mary Cleaver.
There is more here, and I thank Michelle Dawson for the pointer.
Only Singapore markets in everything
For the pointer I thank Michelle Dawson, citing David Dobbs.
Swear words on Twitter
In daily life it is thought that between 0.5% and 0.7% of the words we use are swearwords, but the proportion on the site is roughly twice this, at 1.15%. According to this study, about one in every 13 tweets contains a swearword of some kind.
Intriguingly, swearing also seems to be an early-week thing. Tweets become more and more likely to contain a swearword as the day progresses, perhaps reflecting the accumulation of things we have to swear about, and peak profanity is reached between midnight and 1.30am, suggesting that people who are awake at that time are, let’s say, the least inhibited. Yet Friday, Saturday and Sunday are consistently the least sweary days of the week.
Please note there are specific swear words (with data) at this link. And there are lulls during lunch time.
For the pointer I thank Michelle Dawson.
The biggest problem with Swiss immigration restrictions
Switzerland really does produce global tfp, Tim Berners-Lee being the most obvious example, not to mention CERN, particle colliders, and pharmaceuticals:
The outcome of an ill-conceived referendum on 9 February against ‘mass immigration’ threatens to spoil Switzerland’s beautiful science landscape (see page 277).
The full story is here. For the pointer I thank Michelle Dawson.
A new RCT study of preschool
From Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst:
I see these findings as devastating for advocates of the expansion of state pre-k programs. This is the first large scale randomized trial of a present-day state pre-k program. Its methodology soundly trumps the quasi-experimental approaches that have heretofore been the only source of data on which to infer the impact of these programs. And its results align almost perfectly with those of the Head Start Impact Study, the only other large randomized trial that examines the longitudinal effects of having attended a public pre-k program. Based on what we have learned from these studies, the most defensible conclusion is that these statewide programs are not working to meaningfully increase the academic achievement or social/emotional skills and dispositions of children from low-income families.
There is much more at the link at the Brookings blog, including the major details of the Vanderbilt study, with some very useful pictures. For the pointer I thank Michelle Dawson.
Do children brought up in the same family share the same environmental influences?
Maybe not. Here is a fascinating 2011 paper (pdf) from Robert Plomin and Denise Daniels, and here is part of the abstract:
…environmental differences between children in the same family (called ‘‘nonshared environment’’) represent the major source of environmental variance for personality, psychopathology, and cognitive abilities. One example of the evidence that supports this conclusion involves correlations for pairs of adopted children reared in the same family from early in life. Because these children share family environment but not heredity, their correlation directly estimates the importance of shared family environment. For most psychological characteristics, correlations for adoptive ‘‘siblings’’ hover near zero, which implies that the relevant environmental influences are not shared by children in the same family. Although it has been thought that cognitive abilities represent an exception to this rule, recent data suggest that environmental variance that affects IQ is also of the nonshared variety after adolescence.
My favorite part of the paper is the section which discusses how siblings represents a non-shared environment for each other. For instance my sister grew up with a slightly younger brother and I grew up with…a slightly older sister, which is a somewhat different proposition.
For the pointer I thank Michelle Dawson.
Thomson Reuters predicts the 2013 Nobel Laureate in economics
Joshua D. Angrist, David E. Card, Alan B. Krueger, Sir David F. Hendry, M. Hashem Pesaran, Peter C.B. Phillips, Sam Peltzman, and Richard A. Posner, all very good possible picks in my view.
My personal prediction (which never once has been correct, at least not in the proper year) is for an early “shock” prize to Banerjee, Duflo, and Kremer, in part to show (try to show?) that economics really is an actual science.
In any case the above link offers Reuters picks for the science prizes as well. Here are some other speculations for the science prizes as well.
For the pointer I thank Michelle Dawson.
Are we making mouse brains bigger?
Maybe urban living makes all of us smarter:
In two species — the white-footed mouse and the meadow vole — the brains of animals from cities or suburbs were about 6 percent bigger than the brains of animals collected from farms or other rural areas. Dr. Snell-Rood concludes that when these species moved to cities and towns, their brains became significantly bigger.
Dr. Snell-Rood and Ms. Wick also found that in rural parts of Minnesota, two species of shrews and two species of bats experienced an increase in brain size as well.
Dr. Snell-Rood proposes that the brains of all six species have gotten bigger because humans have radically changed Minnesota. Where there were once pristine forests and prairies, there are now cities and farms. In this disrupted environment, animals that were better at learning new things were more likely to survive and have offspring.
Studies by other scientists have linked better learning in animals with bigger brains. In January, for example, researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden described an experiment in which they bred guppies for larger brain sizes. The big-brained fish scored better on learning tests than their small-brained cousins.
There is more here, via Michelle Dawson.