Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for December 6, 2019

Dogs can recognize vowels within words and that words are the same with different speakers; An AI hearing-aid software that can amplify one conversation in a crowd; A suggestion to supersede the critique method in social sciences; Recognizing the non-native species that will become harmful (invasive); and a video of a right-turn by a truck hauling a 57.5 meter (189 foot) wind turbine

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1. Dogs have a better ear for language than we thought - Scientists played recordings for 70 dogs where voices that the dogs had never heard before said words that only differed by a vowel, such as "had", "hid", and "who'd". The recordings were made at the same pitch, so the only difference was the vowel in the word. After the first time through, the recordings were played again, and the dogs were observed. 48 of the 70 dogs reacted to changes in voice or words. It was previously believed that, "only humans could detect vowels in words and realise that these sounds stay the same across different speakers", but this work showed that dogs also have both abilities. The researchers speculate that this may be a result of the dogs' high degree of domestication. h/t RealClear Science


2. Can You Hear Me Now? - Prototype hearing aid software that enables a listener to "zoom in" on a specific conversation within a crowded room has been created by researchers at Columbia University. The cocktail party effect, where amplifying the sound in a crowded room creates a noise-blurred sound image, has been a long-term challenge for hearing aid customers and producers. The new software overcomes the challenge by capitalizing on the observation that brainwaves from two people in a conversation come to resemble each other. Thus, the AI software was created to scan the crowd for a person whose brainwaves resemble those of the hearing-aid wearer, and then to amplify just the sounds from that individual. The software was tested on a willing group of epilepsy patients. As-of now, however, the software requires a full-scale lab-sized server, as well as electrodes that are attached to a listener, so it is an early prototype. The principal investigator for the work is, Nima Mesgarani, from Columbia's Zuckerman Institute. Eventually, the team would like to miniaturize and commercialize their invention. One critique of the system is that it was tested in a quiet environment with multiple conversations, but the true challenge is performance in a noisy environment. Another critique is that academic systems tend to have narrow scopes and fail in real-world environments. A third critique is that all listeners are not the same, and that older patients tend to have different needs from younger ones.


3. Refashioning Futures - This essay, addressing the social science community, discusses the notion of critique, or critical analysis. It suggests that (i) the tools of critique were initially powerful, but the technique has reached its limit because it undermined the idea of truth, even its own truth; (ii) it has been disconnected from its original purpose, which once included identification of things that are done well and construction of positive alternatives; and (iii) the techniques of critique have been adopted by opposing factions, and twisted into cyclical campaigns of mutual destruction. To counter this trend, the author borrows from the book, Refashioning Futures: Criticism After Post-Coloniality to suggest the use of "intellectual charity - genuine curiosity about why others believe what they do; and engagement across differences - seeking truths from among diverse viewpoints.


4. Can We Identify Invasive Species before They Invade? - Which non-native insects will be invasive (non-native + harmful), and which trees will be at risk? The researchers produced three models. In the first, they found that there is an inverse-Goldilocks relationship between threatened trees and the trees that the invading insects normally eat. The trees need to be different enough from the insects' native trees to have no defense against them, but similar enough to be recognizable as food. In the second model, the researchers found that trees are most at risk if they are shade-tolerant and drought-intolerant, which seems to imply that they have weak regenerative capability when damaged. A third model, surprisingly, did not reveal any relationship between the insects' traits and the trees' vulnerability. As-of now, the article says that there are 450 species of non-native insects in North America, that most of them are harmless, but that the few ecologically harmful ones are reshaping landscapes and ecosystems. The article says this about the combined effectiveness of the three models: "When the researchers combined their new models, they found they could retroactively predict which nonnative insects would become damaging invaders with more than 90 percent accuracy—which gives the scientists confidence these models could predict future problematic invaders." As a Pennsyvlania resident who is near "ground zero" of a lantern fly invasion, this article is interesting in more than just a theoretical sense.


5. STEEM This is how you do a right-hand turn with a 57,5 meter-long wind turbine blade! - Not much to say.
   
   Here is the video.
   

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