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It’s an oddly stormy July day here in Southern California (a bit worrisome because I have outdoor theatre tickets tonight). Still, storms make it a perfect time for some stew. I’ve also got two other themed articles brewing on the back burners (one on food, and one on cybersecurity), but the haven’t quite set up right yet. So let’s dig into the stew:

• Benefitting from the Drought. Having a pool is a headache. You’ve got to keep it full; you’ve got to keep it clean. Additionally, when there is a drought, you worry about the water lost to evaporation… and leaks. Further, if you have a leak, think of the water bill if you have to drain and refill it to repair. I’m telling you this because some niche businesses benefit from a drought: In particular, a pool repair man who is able to repair pools under water has more work than he can handle. He’s developed a pool repair compound (trade secret) that can be applied and cure under water, meaning that pools do not require draining for repair. I found this very interesting, as I suspect my pool to have another leak… and for that leak to be somewhere deep where I can’t find it. During the summer, it is hard to differentiate water lost to a leak from water lost to evaporation.
• No One Ever Plans to Be A Mortician. This is one of my favorite phrases… and so here’s an article about morticians. Specifically, it is about two Los Angeles morticians who are trying to effect a radical shakeup of the undertaking business. What they want to do is return death to the home. In other words, people are removed from death and their loved ones. People used to die at home; now they die in hospitals. They are handled in isolation by undertakers, who pump them full of chemicals to make them look alive. These two young morticians work with families to facilitate what the two call a “more natural” death — no formaldehyde cocktail, no pods that fill hollow eyes, no mouth former, no satin-lined casket, no metal vault. The goal is to promote home funerals. If family members care to, they can undress, bathe, and cool the body with ice themselves or they can watch them do so. Interesting concept.
• The Rebirth of Vinyl. If you purchase music these days, you’ve probably heard about the rebirth of vinyl records; quite suprising in this day of digital music and CDs. But not everyone thinks it will last. In particular, Noel Paul Stookey, of Peter Paul and Mary, thinks the current resurgence of vinyl is just a fad. Specifically, he thinks a trend to oversampling will eliminate the sound advantage, but the tactile and emotional advantage will remain. Then again, if you don’t have a place or way to listen to the music you own, what difference does it make.
• Invisible Girlfriends. On the Internet, there’s a service for everything — even being an invisible girlfriend who is there only in text messages. This service is provided in a way similar to a Mechanical Turk: it is crowdsourced. What is it like to be an Invisible Girlfriend? Funny you should ask: Someone wrote an article about the experience. This seems the perfect subject for a Reply All episode.
• Magnets and Plutonium. Pluto has been in the news, so why not Plutonium. Plutonium is an odd metal: based on where it is in the periodic table, one would expect it to be magnetic — yet it isn’t. Scientists have just started to figure out why. The reason is that plutonium can have four, five or six electrons in the outer shell in the ground state (they previously thought the number was fixed); further, not only does it fluctuate between the three different configurations, it is in all three at the same time. Because the number of electrons in plutonium’s outer shell keeps changing, the unpaired electrons in the outer shell can never line up in a magnetic field and so plutonium can’t become magnetic.
• Taking Control of Your Digital Life. One of the things that was nice about Livejournal was the ability to see what was happening with your friends chronologically, back to the point where you had last done so. Facebook and their algorithms made that difficult: you were never sure if you were seeing everything from everyone — Facebook tried to bring up what it thought was most important. That all may be changing. Supposedly, Facebook is going to soon let you bypass their algorithm. After years of sorting news feeds primarily by algorithm, Facebook is letting users choose what they want to see first.An update to Facebook’s iOS app expands the existing “News Feed Preferences” section with a way to choose whose updates appear at the top of the timeline. A similar update is coming to Facebook’s Android app and desktop website in the coming weeks. Users can check out the new settings by pressing the “More” button in the Facebook app’s bottom-right corner, then tapping on “News Feed Preferences” and selecting “Prioritize who to see first.” This brings up a list of friends and Pages that users can mark as favorites. Unread updates from favorite contacts will always appear at the top of the News Feed, overriding Facebook’s predictive algorithms.

That’s it — your stew for the weekend. Let’s now hope that the storm (we’ve got thunder and rain as I type this) doesn’t cancel tonight’s theatre. Update: It did

This entry was originally posted on Observations Along The Road (on cahighways.org) as this entry by cahwyguy. Although you can comment on DW, please make comments on original post at the Wordpress blog using the link below; you can sign in with your LJ, FB, or a myriad of other accounts. There are currently comments on the Wordpress blog. PS: If you see share buttons above, note that they do not work outside of the Wordpress blog.

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This has been another busy week, what with trying to get the truth out about the kerfluffle at the REP in Santa Clarita (#IStandWithTheREP),  my daughter Erin being in town getting ready to go off to a summer Yiddish program back east, installing and setting up a new password manager, and loads of stuff at work. Still, I grabbed a few articles of interest:

• A Real Crappy Job. Here’s an interesting article about one of the dirtiest jobs involved in the construction of the Hoover Dam, and how the city of Boulder City is remembering… the man who cleaned all the toilets.
• What’s In A Name? Scientists have discovered that hurricanes with female names are more deadly. I’m not making this up folks, but it may also be a perception issue.
• Lechon Asado. Here’s a list of the best Cuban restaurants in Los Angeles.  Back when my wife and I got together, I got this book called “Diving Out in Los Angeles”, and it let us to one of the restaurants on this list: Versailles in Palms. It became a favorite, and the desire to write a review for it let to the creation of the newsgroup that became la.eats.
• OK, Google. My new phone (a Moto X), supports Google Now. Here’s a list of all Google Now commands.
• Checking Out. Tomorrow morning, I’ll do my regular Sunday morning ritual — printing checks off the computer. It seems I’m a dinosaur. Atlantic has an article on the spectacular decline of the check.
• Cleaning the Pot Lastly, here’s an interesting review of a product used to clean out those stubborn tea stains.

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Ah, the weekend after Thanksgiving. Time to sit down to a hearty bowl of Turkey Stew, with nice chucks of news:

• Smelling The Subway. This is a real interesting article (and quite likely of interest to Andrew Ducker and those in the UK). A fellow who has synaesthesia, a neurological condition which prompts an involuntary reaction to sensory experiences, tastes things that he hears. In particular, place names provoke real tastes and intense cravings for particular foods. Using this knowledge, he has made a “taste map” of the London Underground. For example, to this fellow, Tottenham Court Road provokes a particularly strong taste of a sausage and egg breakfast, whilst nearby Bond Street prompts the less appealing tang of hairspray. Among the flavors that appear on the map are apple pie, bubble and squeak, HP sauce, purple grapes, chicken soup and soft boiled egg. Others include sweets such as love hearts, poppets, soft wine gums and jelly tots. Obscure flavors include coal dust, putrid meat, burnt rubber, wet wool, pencil eraser, fuzzy felt and dried blood.
• Shel Silverstein. One of my favorite warped authors is Shel Silverstein. His kids stuff is great; his adult stuff is even better. He was also an accomplished songwriter, penning many folk and comedy songs. Here’s an interesting article on the unlikely way he rose to fame. Here’s a hint: Whenever you read his children’s stuff, look for the hidden subversive adult message.
• I’m Bored. Many of us, I’m sure, get bored. But most of us don’t make it their job to boredom. Luckily, there are researchers that do. Did you know, for example, that there are five types of boredom … one more than researchers expected? (Well, you did if you were bored enough to listen to Wait Wait).  The types of boredom that they expected were: (1) Indifferent boredom, a relaxing and slightly positive type of boredom that “reflected a general indifference to, and withdrawal from, the external world”; (2)Calibrating boredom, the slightly unpleasant state of having wandering thoughts and “a general openness to behaviors aimed at changing the situation”; (3) Searching boredom, the kind that makes you feel restless and leaves you “actively seeking out specific ways of minimizing feelings of boredom”; and (4) Reactant boredom, which is so bad that it prompts sufferers “to leave the boredom-inducing situation and avoid those responsible for this situation (e.g., teachers).” What they discovered was a fifth type of boredom: Apathetic boredom. I’d go on, but I’m sure you’re bored by now.
• Next on Wait Wait. Do you ever see scientific studies, and go “That’ll be on Wait Wait”. Here’s one for Wait Wait: Sexual frustration decreases lifespan — at least in flies. Specifically, the chemical attractant wafting from a female fruit fly shortened the lifespan of male flies when the femme fatale didn’t deliver on the signal’s promise, according to a new study.
• Oh, How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning. I’m a morning person. In fact, I often get up just shortly before my alarm goes off. Turns out, there’s a reason why. It’s due to having a very accurate body clock. The body happens to love predictability. Your body is most efficient when there’s a routine to follow. So if you hit the hay the same time each night and awake the same time each morning, your body locks that behavior in.  The implication of this, of course, is that having constantly changing bedtimes and waking times puts stress on your body. That’s one of the reasons that, for me, sleeping me means sleeping until 530am.
• Good News for Steve Stepanek. Dr. Steve Stepanek is one of the folks I work with regularly at CSUN, as he is head of the Computer Science Liaison Council. The Daily Sundial is reporting that Steve just got elected to the CSU Board of Trustees. That’s great news — they’ve got a great educator, an engineer, and a computer scientist (as well as a train aficionado) as a member.
• Eating the Brain. One last science related item: Scientists have discovered an overlooked type of brain cell that may be responsible for learning. What it does is prune connections (essentially, eating them) in the brain, permitting new connections (and thus new learning) to be recorded. This could carry important implications for the battle against neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, for psychiatric disorders, and for the nagging loss of memory that comes with aging.

This entry was originally posted on Observations Along The Road (on cahighways.org) as this entry by cahwyguy. Although you can comment on DW, please make comments on original post at the Wordpress blog using the link below; you can sign in with your LJ, FB, or a myriad of other accounts. There are currently comments on the Wordpress blog. PS: If you see share buttons above, note that they do not work outside of the Wordpress blog.

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Today was the 62nd Annual California State Science Fair, and it was my 11th year of serving as a judge for the Mathematics and Software Panel (Junior Division)… and my (mumble-number) year as chair of that panel. As is my tradition, here’s a recap of our panel and my day. Here is the full list of major fair awards and the category awards.

In our panel, the unanimous winner was Saving Lives One Swimmer at a Time. This project was the development of a system in Python to detect when a swimmer is underwater. It did this by comparing images to a baseline, and included mechanisms to eliminate non-relevant items such as slightly moving lane-lines. The software was well-written and commented. The only problems this had was that it couldn’t handle multiple swimmers, or distinguish between those in distress and those not in distress.

The second place winner was Computer-based Automatic Music Creation through Analysis of Existing Music Pieces. This project took as input existing music pieces in the form of note sequences, note sequence repetition, and measures and developed a composition algorithm to develop similar new pieces. The software to do the generation and analysis was written in MATLAB. There was a fair amount of code developed, and all except the chunk that played the resulting music was developed by the student.

The third place winner (and one of my favorites) was Are Your Passwords Secure over Public Wi-Fi? This project looked at the security of unencrypted wi-fi, and also investigated the SSLstrip  and man in the middle attacks. It also looked at how some browsers have not implemented mechanisms to address the SSLStrip attack. There was less programming effort involved, but this guy knew his stuff. What hurt here was the lowered amount of effort compared to the other highly ranked projects.

The fourth place winner was Danger, Will Robinson! Life Critical Computer User Interfaces and the Science of Safety. Although the title was hokey, the subject was not: it explored what was the most effective user interface for a warning display.

Honorable mentions went to three projects: (1) Misspelled! Creating an Accurate Computerized Spell Correcting Algorithm, which was a reasonably good attempt at programming a spell-correction algorithm; (2) Wi-Fi Watchdog: Application to Observe the Indoor Mobility of Senior Citizens, a project that had seniors carrying android devices and looking at signal strength to determine their locations; and (3) Programmatic Signature Fraud Detection, a program that attempted to determine when signatures were fraudulent.

As for the other projects. We had two (#1, #2) related to the Monty Hall problem. Hint: If you are going to do this, make it original. Everyone knows one car and two goats. But what about more than three doors? multiple cars? multiple goats? the effect of different values of the prizes? the values of incentives to switch? Exploring how these change the odds would be an interesting project. The original question? It’s been done to death. However, I must admit that one of the students was a born salesman — he’ll end up hosting a game show one day, or end up being in sales!

And for those wanting to calculate π… again, figure out what would make this unique, because it’s been done to death. For example, one project related to Buffons Needle.  First, you need to understand why it works. Secondly, you need to understand the effects of random  number generator quality on your results… and perhaps you might explore how you can use such a calculation to test a RNG.

You should try not to do projects where the results appear obvious: we had a few where we couldn’t figure out why the project was even submitted. In such cases, you need to make clear what was unique about this. If you are going to be doing pure math, there needs to be something novel there … something that makes us see the hard work and the applicability (if possible) of the results. Most importantly, you need to understand what you are doing. If you are doing common subjects (especially things like probability in sports or gambling), try to find the unique angle — simple effort to duplicate what is likely known makes it hard for you to shine above the middle of the pack.

As for the other projects, we had some good ones related to cell counting and identifying dementia that just seemed to be in the wrong category — they were most likely in this category due to the fact they involved programming or modeling.  We had some others where the student just didn’t seem to think about the problem fully. For example, in a project related to developing a language for evaluating linear programming, the issue was less the program to solve the equation, and more (in my eyes) about the parser developed to address the language. This was not robust and provided no error feedback. This placed the project more in the middle of the pack.  We had another on security algorithms for attack/defend, but the student had difficulty explaining how the algorithms worked or understanding how the input and results mapped to the real world, other than they affected placement of resources. This was an example of a timely subject hurt by the understanding.

I should clarify here that, as usual, projects had some clear divisions. From the end of the first session, we knew the likely leaders because every judged liked them to some degree. We also knew the ones at the lower end of the spectrum. The great bulk of the projects were in the middle. This didn’t make them bad, but it didn’t make them outstanding. So if you are doing a project, you need to ask what you can do to make yours outstanding. From what I’ve seen, in this category, the answer is: (1) understanding what you did and all aspects of it; (2) being able to communicate that understanding; (3) being able to show that there was some significant effort put into the project; (4) if you developed code, developing the code using good techniques and making it robust.  If you want your project to be able to move beyond the category winner, I’d suggest making it have some utility that makes it stand head and shoulders above the typical engineering or scientific projects — which is something hard to do with math and software.

[ETA: When I generate the project pages, I've been adding a stamp of the form illustrated to the right. This illustrates the various dimensions of judging according to the Judges Handbook. I've done this for about 5 years now, and every year I get annoyed because it doesn't work. By the time the next CSSF comes around, I've forgotten about the problems with this and use it again... and curse again. Perhaps this year, by making this note, I'll remember. There are two problems with this form. First, using this at the state level with a scale of 1-5 does not work, because most of the projects (by virtue of the fact they made it to state) are already at a 3 level. Thus I end up with a number of projects clumped at the higher levels. I need to modify this to indicate the scale, along the lines of: "[Scale: -5 to 5, where 0 = minimal state level and 5 = exceptional]“. Secondly, the dimensions are unclear, and in some cases, difficult to judge through the interview. I need to rework the dimensions to clarify what we appear to be looking for. This would give the following table:]

As for other aspects related to the day:

First, instead of driving to USC I took Metro. It was lovely. Parked in North Hollywood, Red Line to Metro/7th Street, and then Expo line to USC/Expo Park. Easy-peezy, and something I’ll do again.

Second, I took a little time to visit the space shuttle Endeavour. Nice display; it should be even nicer when they have the new building built. The shuttle itself is both larger and smaller than I expected, and certainly looks more worn. They also have a display of the Rocketdyne command center, the tires, an engine, and various other shuttle ephemera and artifacts. Well worth visiting if you are down at the ScienceCenter. Note: The page talked about timed tickets being required, but that wasn’t the case when I was there. It may have been a special day due to the CSSF.

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Today’s skimming of the news sites over lunch has unearthed a fair number of articles all relating to science and scientific stuff:

• Useless No More. For the longest time, the term “appendix” has referred to something that could be removed without harm; something felt to be useless (although often, especially in government documents, the appendices often contain more information than the main part of the document). However, science is learning more about the appendix, and finding it may not be useless after all. In particular, ScienceNow/HuffPost is reporting that the appendix evolved independently over 30 times. This is yet another acknowledgment of the apparent usefulness of the appendix. The current belief, by the way, is that the appendix harbors the good gut bacteria when something bad is overtaking the gut. I’ve yet to come up with a good analogy between this use and Appendix F in NIST SP 800-53.
• I Call Your Name. Humans tend to look for things that make us unique, and thus superior. But more and more we are finding that we are just another animal. Today’s example: Discovery is reporting that dolphins call each other by name. Now what I found interesting was the comment in the article that “it can be challenging to study dolphin signature whistles, since it’s difficult to identify which particular dolphin is emitting the sounds, and whether or not the sounds are just mimicked copies.”. I’m sure if dolphins were studying human speech, they might be, umm, saying the same thing.
• Engineering Food. The New York Times has a very interesting article about the science behind food — in particular, the lengths to which commercial companies will go in order to get you to buy (and buy, and keep buying) their food. The article goes into a number of detailed examples where particular engineering adjustments were made in the composition of the food to make it more addictive appealing to consumers. In many ways, reading this will make you even more wary of commercially processed foods. Of course, everytime I read something like this I feel the urge to shout the words of Alton Brown, which once appeared on his old blog:
  

  Here’s what it comes down to kids. Ronald McDonald doesn’t give a damn about you. Neither does that little minx Wendy or any of the other icons of drivethroughdom. And you know what, they’re not supposed to. They’re businesses doing what businesses do. They don’t love you. They are not going to laugh with you on your birthdays, or hold you when you’re sick and sad. They won’t be with you when you graduate, when your children are born or when you die. You will be with you and your family and friends will be with you. And, if you’re any kind of human being, you will be there for them. And you know what, you and your family and friends are supposed to provide you with nourishment too. That’s right folks, feeding someone is an act of caring. We will always be fed best by those that care, be it ourselves or the aforementioned friends and family.We are fat and sick and dying because we have handed a basic, fundamental and intimate function of life over to corporations. We choose to value our nourishment so little that we entrust it to strangers. We hand our lives over to big companies and then drag them to court when the deal goes bad. This is insanity.

  One additional thing related to this article. The article goes into details about how Dr. Pepper designed a new flavor, and how Coca-Cola tinkers with its flavors. Both note that the actual formulation is secret. This, of course, raises the question of how they do kosher certification of Coca-Cola. Wonder no more.

• You Say Tomato. As we’re talking about food here, another big issue in food is how we have been genetically adapting and engineering our foods to be “better”. There’s lots of fighting over whether genetically engineered food is safe (go head… go to Google News and search on “genetically engineered food”), and even over the profits. One thing generally agreed, however, is that genetic engineering has broken… the tomato. It is hard and flavorless. Well, science is coming to the rescue by trying to engineer a better tasting tomato.
• We Knew They Were Off In The Head. Evidently, brain scans can determine political party preferences. A lot of this has to do with how the brain assesses risk (something humans are notoriously bad at). Recent investigations into the psychology of liberals and conservatives have found a number of subtle differences, from conservatives exhibiting more squeamishness to liberals paying less attention to negative stimuli or threats. In particular, a 2011 study published in the journal Current Biology found differences in some brain structures between politically liberal and political conservative young adults. Many of these areas were linked to risk-assessment and decision-making. Here’s a good example of how we are bad at assessing risk, from a wonderful Freakanomics episode dealing with effective approaches regarding guns: which is riskier: letting your child visit a friend’s house where there is a swimming pool, or letting your child visit a friend’s house where there are guns?
• Monotheists Believe in One Dog. Some interesting research has found a biological marker that is indicative of dyslexia. According to the study authors, there is a relationship between a person’s ability to read and how their brain encodes sounds. This is because, according to the researchers, people learn language skills by making meaningful associations between sounds and information. The most difficult sounds for the brain to encode are consonants, which are shorter and contain more complex sounds compared to vowels, which tend to have longer and simple intonations. More stable brain responses to these sounds can lead to easier interpretation of both aural and written words.

This entry was originally posted on Observations Along The Road (on cahighways.org) as this entry by cahwyguy. Although you can comment on DW, please make comments on original post at the Wordpress blog using the link below; you can sign in with your LJ, FB, or a myriad of other accounts. There are currently comments on the Wordpress blog. PS: If you see share buttons above, note that they do not work outside of the Wordpress blog.

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