AURA - AUtomatic Research Acronymizer

A discovery, project, tool or model is measured by the coolness of its acronym. There are BRAIN, and MUSIC, STEM and ICARUS and the list goes on and on (check this out). But finding the right acronym is not that easy. A short personal story: I once worked on a quantum mechanical problem called Entanglement Sudden Death, ESD. It's a macabre name for a really cool phenomenon. However, I showed that entanglement, even after its sudden death, can be brought back to life. So I really wanted a cool acronym for it and I found the acronym ESD-CPR (which usually stands for Cardio-Respiratory Resuscitation). So I had my acronym, but I had to find what it stood for. After hours of agony I came up with Controlled Partial Resuscitation, which is actually a good description of the phenomenon.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was an automatic tool that, given the short description of the research, gives you a cool, relevant acronym? AURA - AUtomatic Research Acronymizer. The problem is obviously, NLP (Natural Language Processing), which requires to "read" the research description, "analyze" what is written and "come up" with the correct acronym. However, related tools are already out there, such as the HAHAcronym. 

I believe that combining tools such as the tool cited above (a database of known acronyms and an algorithm for generating acronyms), as well as semantic networks such as concept net, that will accommodate the network of scientific jargon, can facilitate this very important, highly influential and greatly required tool.

A completely folding bike

The trend of folding bicycles is growing, due to urbanization, high density of people inside cities and the wheel to reduce pollution (yes, it is a pun). There are many types of foldingbicycles but they all have one thing in common: the wheels are not folding. If you look at pictures of folding bikes you'd notice one of two things: either the wheel dominates the size of the folded bikes, such that you see a large circle with some bars and hinges attached to it; or the bike's wheels are very small, reduced in size exactly because of this problem.

On the other hand, wheelchairs have progressed much more due to the large demand and the subsidized market. In this unique apparatus, the concept of folding wheels is now possible, with several competitors out there. 

Why not combine the two? Why not enjoy the world of folding bikes as well as folding wheels, to reduce even further the size and complexity of the bikes to a minimum? This can be done, while still enjoying the benefits of a large wheel.

And while we're contemplating "revolutionary" ideas on folding and bikes, why not do it an automatic unfolding and folding? The idea of inserting some kind of engine into the design to supply the power for the transformation is prohibitive, since then the bike will need battery, and the complexity and weight will dramatically increase. However, there are other possibilities. One can be taken from the simple idea of a folded springy ring, that are ubiquitous in IKEA children toys. Is there a possibility to construct a formidable bike from springy materials that can then carry the weight of a person on them? 

The design of new materials is reaching a turning point where flexibility and hardness can transformed with a turn of a switch Maybe using such materials and concepts from folded wheelchair's wheels one can created a truly and wholly folded bicycle that can be carried in your purse.

Conductive tattoos

There is a new trend called "wearables", which means technology that is worn as clothes. Some sensors can now be embedded into clothes and they monitor your heart rate and skin conductance which relates to anxiety. Other wearables are buttons and displays that are sewn into clothes, and will hopefully make cellphones obsolete, i.e. everything will be in your clothes.

I want to suggest an even more radical wearable, i.e. the conductive tattoo. Recently a new form of designing electronic circuits has been introduced, namely, conductive ink. With this contraption, you can simply draw a circuit and make it work. You can draw whatever circuit you wish, augmented with some electronic devices, e.g. LED and batteries, and you simply have a working circuit.

What will happen if you make a conductive tattoo? Suddenly, your body acts as the circuit and you can connect your wearables whichever way you like. You can close a circuit by simply contorting your body, moving your hand, touching your ear, etc. More elaborate circuits require more elaborate tattoos, but hey, after Prison Break, that's probably very popular.

There are two main concerns with this project. The first is the toxicity of the conductive tattoo. While regular tattoo are also not that safe, putting in them conductive materials is probably not that healthy. One should first come up with a bio-compatible conductive ink. The second is the extra electronic that you actually need to make the circuit run, e.g. batteries. However, these can be worn on the body, e.g. wrist bands, and the rest of the tattoo closes the circuit.

I agree that this idea doesn’t make much efficiency-sense, but wouldn't it be cool to see a tattooed contortionist make a body-electrical-display?

Singing as the optimal educational medium - Part III Education

In the last two posts I have claimed that singing is an optimal medium for conveying information, both from an engineering perspective and a neuroscience perspective. I want to tie it all in with education. I believe that due to the points raised before, mainly that singing conveys the optimal combination of language (content) and melody (affect) and that our brain is wired to remember dynamical patterns apparent in singing, one can use singing to educate and teach in an optimal manner.

First I want to make a distinction between what I think can and cannot be taught with singing. Singing is optimal for teaching content-driven material, such as history lessons, as well as higher-level concepts, such as philosophy, law and basic science. However, I believe it is less adequate for teaching repetition-requiring and manual dexterity material, e.g. writing and algebra. Whenever there is knowledge to be learned, singing can form a "wrapper" for that knowledge which augment it in several ways: (i) it can imbue affect into the knowledge, which is usually lacking in dry written textbooks. For example, historical events are immersive in emotional content and singing about them can strike a chord with our emotional neuronal circuits to form more long-lasting memory of the knowledge itself. This is obviously nothing new, as ballads of fallen heroes and great events have been common in the Middle Ages as an effective medium of passing knowledge. (ii) The melody and dynamical patterns of singing can create a cohesive web of knowledge, so that events or facts are tied together via the melody. The simple a-b-c song is a great example of this fact.

As written above, these ideas are not new, but I believe they were forgotten or neglected in recent decades, as the written word has claimed priority in our educational system. I propose a project of re-introducing singing in the educational system in a more structured, scientific-based and optimal manner. This can be done by a comprehensive reformulation of the educational curriculum to the singing medium. In other words, one can take the required body of knowledge and write and compose songs about each and every "fact" in it, in such as a way so as to utilize the known (or researched) relationships between melody, emotion, memory and content to enhance memory and understanding. History lessons are a good place to start, although basic science is just as adequate.

I must stress two things. I do not suggest that singing supplants the written word, but augment it to enhance memory and enthusiasm about the material. Furthermore, several things, e.g. writing and algebra, cannot be taught in this way since they must be practiced over and over again. Nevertheless, their principles can be taught, in my opinion, via singing which will ease the pain of practice. Furthermore, I believe we can all agree that hearing songs is must nicer than reading and memorizing endless texts.

Finally, I want to share the wonder of They MightBe Giants, which I learned to love due to their passion to the topic discussed about. This shows that while optimality and research are important (and lacking) qualities in this specific field, the performing arts are just as crucial.

Singing as the optimal educational medium - Part II Neuroscience

I want to analyze songs and signing from a neuroscience perspective and show that it has all the qualities to make an optimal educational medium. Songs has several unique cognitive aspects. The first is its sequence-memory aspect and by this I mean that once you know a song, even hearing the first few notes, you can recite the song completely. Even more than that, if you hear a note in the middle of a song, you can continue with no problem reciting it. However, it is almost impossible to recite the song backward in time, i.e. from start to finish. In order to do that, you need to re-sing the song from the beginning each time. The second aspect is song's catchiness and by this I mean our extraordinary ability to remember songs from first hearing. This field has been studied, but I'm not certain as to the degree we fully understand why (more on this below). Songs, in this aspect, are very different from poems or any other non-musical verbal medium. It is the rhythm and fluency of the song that makes them so memorable, in my opinion. I propose a project to find out the exact border between songs and poems, in that how much rhythm is required for us to learn and remember them.

The next aspect is the neurobiological one. Memories are created and recalled by patterns of activations of neuronal cell firing. There is a vast network of neurons that form an intricate and complex connectivity pattern and the sequence of activation determines the memory being recalled. Note that a specific neuron spiking may be enough to cause a recall, or other behavioral outcomes, but the memory itself is stored across a plethora of neurons. I believe that singing has that unique aspect of optimal recall due to their rhythm and fluency, mentioned above. I believe that opposed to a story or a poem, the temporal aspect of songs somehow resonate with the neuronal activation patterns. Furthermore, as opposed to music, which may also be unique in the former aspect, we have quite a large chunk of brain associated with language. I believe that this unique combination of a verbal and a rhythmic component is what makes songs so memorable. I propose a project in which activation of neuronal cells resonate with their inherent network activation and show that in the human auditory cortex and language areas, these activations occur only, or mostly, during singing.

To sum up the neuroscience aspect of singing as the optimal educational medium, I believe that for some bizarre reason, our brain is wired such that songs are optimal in the encoding and retrieving of memory. This grants us the opportunity to use them as an educational tool, if memory is required.

Singing as the optimal educational medium - Part I Engineering

Audio signal can be presented as what is called a spectrogram, which is a way to show the distribution of audio frequencies over time. Along the x-axis is time, and y-axis is frequency, where color codes for intensity. Think of it as the equalizer bars you have while playing your favorite mp3, smeared over a page. This representation is very common in speech recognition and other audio-based analysis.

Music

Speech

Now think of different types of audio signals that humans use to convey messages. The first is speech. Speech is compose of short utterances, called words (dah!). However, when viewed in the spectrogram they look like vertical stripes, i.e. short in time, but complex in frequency. On the other hand, music without words are the complete opposite. They are long in time but narrow in frequency, since they represent something closer to "pure tones". Singing, i.e. speech with melody, is just in the middle.

What all of this have to do with "optimal" and "education"? In signal processing there is a notion called a "compact set", which is the minimal set of features you need to have in order to convey information. In other words, with these features you can code the most information and then send it to other people. It is "compact" because just a few features can generate a lot of information. It is "optimal" in the sense that you cannot have the same number of different features that can convey more information; any change in the features will result in loss of information. What are you talking about???

The project I'm suggesting is to analyze singing in the context of a compact set of auditory human information. If information is coded via the spectrogram, i.e. the information content is frequency over time, then I believe that singing, which contains both long sequences and high frequency content, can serve as the optimal compact set to convey that information. I think that the reason is that complex frequency conveys meaning, e.g. words, whereas the long temporal domain conveys sentiment, e.g. emotion. In human communication both are important and I believe it can be quantified.

One such suggested experiment is to have a questionnaire on the information conveyed via several types of communications, for example: "what did this person think?" "what did this person feel?" "what did this person try to convey to you?" The three conditions will be: (i) speaking; (ii) musical instrument and (iii) singing. Each condition will be of equal duration. My hypothesis is that the best answers will be with singing.

This type of experiments suggest that the optimal way to communicate is not talking, but rather singing. Can this be used in education? Wait for the next blogpost…

Creating mythical creatures

Today's genetic manipulations and understanding of embryonic development is quite astounding. You can actually write the genetic code on your computer, send it over the web and get to your home/lab a vial with the DNA you've written. On the other end, our understanding of biological genetic code is increasing. Scientists know the exact codes of several thousands of proteins, and most of their functions.

A more difficult field is embryonic development, in which the genetic code unfolds into creating the beings that are then born. It is a delicate balance between the genetic code, transcription factors that regulate the production of proteins, differentiation of cells and local and global chemical gradients. Nevertheless, a lot is known about the sequence of organ developments and how to influence them.

The last piece of the puzzle is genetic manipulations and creation of chimeras, in which a gene sequence from one species is inserted into another. You probably all know of the glowing mouse, where genes from a glowing bacteria has been inserted to the mouse genome and it glows in the dark.

Putting it all together, I think it is time to start bringing mythical creatures into life. While dragons are still out of the question, minor variations can be made. The first such animal that is the easiest to create, from my understanding, is the unicorn. The only unique thing about it is a single horn in the forehead. It has been shown that grafting an organ is possible, but I'm talking about a genetic/embryonic manipulation, such that a unicorn will be born. I believe it should be made similar to the rhinoceros horn, since it can be made pointy and doesn't require a bony structure. Hence, the genetic manipulation should be not major. Furthermore, the structure of the horn is not dissimilar from that of the horse's hooves, hence there is no need to insert new proteins into the pool, only regulating its expression. I admit, the way there is not easy in the design, implementation and regulation, but… a unicorn.

Other mythical creatures are probably harder, although I'll bet that Cerberus should not be that hard. It's simply having a siamese-triplet with a single body. Directly controlling this, so as to make it reproducible is probably not easy, but if Harry Potter has one, why shouldn't we? Pegasus is altogether another problem, since while I believe it would not be too difficult to have a horse with wings, to have a flying horse is, to the best of my knowledge, against the laws of physics. The same is true with a fire-breathing dragon, but that is for another post…

Why do this? Except for scientific curiosity, engineering challenge and pure geekiness, the market of such creatures could be huge. Which zoo would pass an opportunity to show its unicorn? Think of the extra marketing a circus can have with a Cerberus at its gate. The opportunities are endless. The only thing remaining is the curios scientist/engineer/geek with enough money to start this crazy project. Good luck!