Category Archives: Science

Brian Reggiannini Figures out Who’s Talking

By Guest PostMay 19, 2012Sciencealgorithms, analog devices, brian reggiannini, brown university, commercial success, computer, conventional wisdom, david orenstein, harvey silverman, industry, microphone, microphone arrays, modeling talkers, norwood, speaker, speaker recognition, who is talking

If computers could become ‘smart’ enough to recognize who is talking, that could allow them to produce real-time transcripts of meetings, courtroom proceedings, debates, and other important events. In the dissertation that will allow him to receive his Ph.D. at Commencement this year, Brian Reggiannini found a way to advance the state of the art for voice- and speaker-recognition.

Everyone does signal processing every day, even if we don’t call it that. With friends at a sports bar, we peer up at the TV to see the score, we turn our head toward the crashing sound when a waitress drops a glass, and perhaps most remarkably, we can track the fast-paced banter of all the people in our booth, even if we’ve never met some of the friends-of-friends who have insinuated themselves into the scene.

Very few of us, however, could ever get a computer to do anything like that. That’s why doing it well has earned Brian Reggiannini a Ph.D. at Brown and a career in the industry.

In his dissertation, Reggiannini managed to raise the bar for how well a computer connected to a roomful of microphones can keep track of who among a small group of speakers is talking. Further refined and combined with speech recognition, such a system could lead to instantaneous transcriptions of meetings, courtroom proceedings, or debates among, say, several rude political candidates who are prone to interrupt. It could help the deaf follow conversations in real-time. (more…)

Berkeley Lab Scientists Generate Electricity From Viruses

By Guest PostMay 19, 2012Scienceberkeley lab, bone, byung yang lee, ceramics, crystals, dan krotz, DNA, electric charge, electric cigarette, electricity, electricity from viruses, futuristic scenario, m13 bacteriophage, mechanical energy, mechanical stress, nano building block, nano devices, nanoamperes, nanoscale, piezoelectricity, proteins, ramamoorthy ramesh, seung wuk lee, Technology

New approach is a promising first step toward the development of tiny devices that harvest electrical energy from everyday tasks

Imagine charging your phone as you walk, thanks to a paper-thin generator embedded in the sole of your shoe. This futuristic scenario is now a little closer to reality. Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a way to generate power using harmless viruses that convert mechanical energy into electricity.

The scientists tested their approach by creating a generator that produces enough current to operate a small liquid-crystal display. It works by tapping a finger on a postage stamp-sized electrode coated with specially engineered viruses. The viruses convert the force of the tap into an electric charge. (more…)

Ancient Giant Turtle Fossil Revealed

By Guest PostMay 18, 2012Nature, Scienceamazon river delta, ancient, behemoth, carbonemys cofrinii, carlos jaramillo, cerrejon formation, coal mine, coal turtle, Colombia, crocodiles, dan ksepka, edwin cadena, fossil, giant turtle, jonathan bloch, national science foundation, orinoco, paleontologist, pelomedusoides, reptiles, skull, south american giant, Titanoboa cerrejonensis

Picture a turtle the size of a Smart car, with a shell large enough to double as a kiddie pool. Paleontologists from North Carolina State University have found just such a specimen – the fossilized remains of a 60-million-year-old South American giant that lived in what is now Colombia.

The turtle in question is Carbonemys cofrinii, which means “coal turtle,” and is part of a group of side-necked turtles known as pelomedusoides. The fossil was named Carbonemys because it was discovered in 2005 in a coal mine that was part of northern Colombia’s Cerrejon formation. The specimen’s skull measures 24 centimeters, roughly the size of a regulation NFL football. The shell which was recovered nearby – and is believed to belong to the same species – measures 172 centimeters, or about 5 feet 7 inches, long. That’s the same height as Edwin Cadena, the NC State doctoral student who discovered the fossil. (more…)

Tilting Cars on the Assembly Line: A New Angle on Protecting Autoworkers

By Guest PostMay 18, 2012Scienceprotecting autoworkers, seat manufacturer, shoulder stress, spine load, tilting cars, untrained autoworkers

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Letting autoworkers sit while they reach into a car’s interior could help prevent shoulder and back strain – but another solution might be to tilt the entire car so that workers can stand up. (more…)

UCLA Researchers Map Damaged Connections in Phineas Gage’s Brain

By Guest PostMay 18, 2012Science1848 case, alzheimer's disease, andrei irimia, arthur w toga, behavioral change, brain, brain disorder, carinna m torgerson, cerebral cortex, computed tomographic data, emotional function, famous case, frontal temporal dementia, gage skull, history, human connectome project, jack van horn, laboratory, limbic structure, loni, mark wheeler, micah c chambers, microscopic links, model, myelin sheath, nerve fibers, neuro imaging, neurons, neuroscience, phineas gage, railroad, rod, san francisco, skull, south america, trajectory, traumatic brain injury, vermont, white matter

Famous 1848 case of man who survived a terrible accident has modern parallel

Poor Phineas Gage. In 1848, the supervisor for the Rutland and Burlington Railroad in Vermont was using a 13-pound, 3-foot-7-inch rod to pack blasting powder into a rock when he triggered an explosion that drove the rod through his left cheek and out of the top of his head. As reported at the time, the rod was later found, “smeared with blood and brains.”

Miraculously, Gage lived, becoming the most famous case in the history of neuroscience — not only because he survived a horrific accident that led to the destruction of much of his left frontal lobe but also because of the injury’s reported effects on his personality and behavior, which were said to be profound. Gage went from being an affable 25-year-old to one that was fitful, irreverent and profane. His friends and acquaintances said he was “no longer Gage.” (more…)

Microbe That Can Handle Ionic Liquids

By Guest PostMay 17, 2012Environment, Scienceanthropogenic chemicals, biofuel production, biofuels, blake simmons, carbon, cellulosic biomass, enterobacter lignolyticus, fossil fuels, hannah wooa, industry, ionic liquids, jane khudyakov, jbei, kristen deangelis, michael thelen, microbe, microorganisms, model, patrik dhaeseleer, properties, scf1 strain, semicrystalline, sharon borglin, soil bacterium, sugar fermenting microbes, switchgrass, Technology, toxic effect, tropical rainforest microbe

New Find From Joint BioEnergy Institute Could Help Reduce Biofuel Production Costs

In the search for technology by which economically competitive biofuels can be produced from cellulosic biomass, the combination of sugar-fermenting microbes and ionic liquid solvents looks to be a winner save for one major problem: the ionic liquids used to make cellulosic biomass more digestible for microbes can also be toxic to them. A solution to this conundrum, however, may be in the offing.

Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), a multi-institutional partnership led by Berkeley Lab, have identified a tropical rainforest microbe that can endure relatively high concentrations of an ionic liquid used to dissolve cellulosic biomass. The researchers have also determined how the microbe is able to do this, a discovery that holds broad implications beyond the production of advanced biofuels. (more…)

Counting Horseshoe Crabs

By Guest PostMay 17, 2012Nature, Sciencecensus, crab line, crab population, delaware bay, dover, eadoh reshef, fertilization, field research, horseshoe crab, joanna york, jonathan dinman, kayla krenitsky, marine science, megan nogan, migration, pvc pipe, st jones reserve, tammy beeson, teresa messmore, university of delaware, will goldman

Marine science majors conduct field research with horseshoe crab census

Wearing sneakers and rain boots, University of Delaware freshmen got their feet wet as marine biologists recently while counting horseshoe crabs along the Delaware Bay. The students participated in a monitoring effort to gain firsthand experience in field research with their fellow marine science majors.

“Where else can you go on a Saturday night to count horseshoe crabs?” freshman Will Goldman said. (more…)

Largest Meteorite Hunt in History Yields Treasure for UA

By Guest PostMay 16, 2012Sciencean ounce, california, carbonaceous chondrites, daniel stolte, dante lauretta, dolores hill, ed beshore, greg hupe, hiroshima bom, meteorite, meteorite hunt, michael farmer, NASA, nevada, nuclear explosion, osiris rex mission, planetary science, robert ward, scientists, sierra nevada, sky, solar system, spacecraft, sutters mill, university of arizona

Thanks to the generosity of three professional meteorite hunters, the UA Lunar and Planetary Laboratory will own three samples of a rare kind of meteorite leftover from the earliest beginnings of the solar system.

To the untrained eye, the black, smooth-edged lump that is sitting under a glass cover looks similar to a piece of charcoal. But to scientists Dante Lauretta and Ed Beshore from the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, it is one of the most intriguing stones they have ever seen.

“This meteorite is the oldest rock you’ll ever find on Earth. In fact, it formed 50 to 60 million years before the Earth even existed,” said Lauretta, who is a professor of planetary science and principal investigator of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, which will send a spacecraft to return a sample from an asteroid in 2023. (more…)